7 Years

Dear Rachel,

We've been celebrating your birthday lately. Reasonable, as your birthday is this week. Seven whole years. I can hardly believe it's gone so fast.

Don made this cake, a Ren de Saba (Queen of Sheba), for your family dinner party tonight. You had some trouble waiting to know what was for dessert, and it probably wasn't fair of us to make you wait for the coffee to brew. Carol suggested that we could follow the French method and have coffee after dessert, which lead to much discussion of their attempts to wait out the French waiters in order to have coffee with dessert. It never worked.

You loved the cake and you got such a great expression on your face when Mommy brought it out. I love the pictures I got; they're great and captured your wonderful smile, except that I also got reflections of the candle flames that mess them up. I am going to see if I can figure out how to get rid of them. Maybe I'll ask Uncle Max to tackle it; he has the patience for that, unlike yours truly.

Tomorrow is the big party at Trapeze Arts, where I'm not sure whether you (jumping, flying, playing & learning) or I (watching & photographing) will have more fun. I know you'll have a wonderful time, and I can't wait.

I love you,
Daddy

Evening Glory?

Rachel and I went on a walk around the block one evening and took this at a neighbor's house. I meant for the flower on the right to be slightly more out of focus, but the flower on the left & the droplets on it look better in this one.

A Small Selection of Random Things

A friend said 'tell me things', so here goes. I'm going to keep it brief because it's 12:20 am and I'm waiting for the water to boil so I can make formula.

Zachary is now 5 months old, and we started him on solid food. He seems to like it, and I'm hoping that it will help him sleep through the night better. He is turning out to LOVE being physical; he likes to be bounced and thrown and swung. He's probably going to love roller coasters. Or flippin' HATE them.

Rachel and I went swimming at Strawberry Canyon today (Cal's outdoor pool up above the stadium) and I was reminded that ... they're baaaa-aaack. The very young college people, that is.
I haven't been on my bike this weekend (I count today and tomorrow as weekend, since I'm taking a couple of days of vacation), which is disappointing in a way, except I haven't seemed to be all that into it. I did start up on pushups and some other morning exercises. We'll see whether I keep it up. And I am teaching Rachel to play hacky-sack. I'm going to be VERY sore tomorrow. Or the next day, really, as old as I am...

I finished The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Pixel is very funny. And there's a fuck-load of sex in that book, as well as Time Enough for Love. Hmm... No pun intended. I'm starting on the Number of the Beast.

Random Reminiscence

Today at the end of dinner, for some reason, Rachel went about getting ready for bed walking backwards. This reminded Dawn of a great old story from when Rachel was maybe 2 at most. As many toddlers do, Rachel would not just sit down on a lap or a chair, she would get in position somewhat in front of the thing she meant to sit on and back up to it before sitting down. At some point, Dawn started saying beep beep beep as Rachel was backing up, imitating the often annoying reverse alarms on many trucks. This was far too amusing to be annoying, of course, especially when one day, in front of Dawn's father, Rachel did it herself!