Open Mouth, Insert Foot

For once it was NOT me with my foot in my mouth.

What a terrific day we had! It started quietly. Alice Nan's stepdaughter Jocelyn left at 6:15 to take an exam, Joe snuck out shortly after to work, then Alice left for work, then Norm packed up his car and headed home to Petaluma. That left Walt and me to sit here with dueling computers.

Walt had brought his new laptop...and I covet the built in web cam! Now if only he'd get on Skype...

Eventually we got ourselves together and drove over to Maravilla for a visit with his mother, who is very tired after her long day at the christening yesterday, but actually pretty perky, compared to other times we've been here. We sat with her for about an hour, sometimes watching her sleep, while I tested out my new Kindle.

Yes, I have a Kindle. Sort of. It's a faux Kindle. I found there was a free Kindle app for the iTouch, so I installed it, downloaded a book and discovered, to my chagrin, that I enjoy having it to read, even on that tiny screen. It's the best of all possible worlds (and definitely cheaper!!!)

At the appointed hour, I called Laurel's mom, who is the Monday babysitter, and asked about coming over for a bit. She reported that Bri had just gotten up from a 2 hr nap and had finished her lunch and was in a fairly good mood.

What a great afternoon we had! For one thing, we've never actually had time to just sit and visit with Gerry (Laurel's mother) and I thoroughly enjoyed talking, grandma to grandma. And then the three of us had such fun watching Bri toddling around the house.

She was fine as long as we didn't try to hold her, which was definitely OK because we just enjoyed watching her and interacting with her. She did eventually let Walt hold her, briefly, because that beard is just entirely too tempting.

She's just doing so many new things now -- dancing to her favorite music, mimicking sounds, starting to use baby sign language (especially "more"), and she loves books. It's hard to believe she will be a year old in 2 weeks.

We left the house around 4 and went back to Maravilla for dinner with Walt's mother, then we watched Jeopardy and Heuell Howser's California Gold until Alice Nan arrived. I had unfortunately filled up my camera disk and missed the chance to record Grandma, Alice, and the caregiver dancing to "Oh Boy" on Dancing with the Stars!

We came home in time to see The Daily Show and now all have gone to bed and I shall do so myself soon. This has really been a very good trip...and best of all, we'll be back again in 2 weeks for the big birthday party.