June 11-17: Grape Jelly

Golly, were there a lot of firsts this week! The biggest was my first overnite away from home (not counting the hospital when I arrived). See, Mama and Papa were in the car one day and the radio station offered free tickets to a concert to the first person with the correct answer to a trivia question. Well, I have now learned what many in the family already know: Papa is a veritable repository of trivia. As you are probably guessing, Papa called in and won two tickets to see someone called Beck (and I thought I had a weird name!). It was just in time, because Mama and Papa's anniversary (11 years!) was coming on Saturday, and they hadn't made any plans. I guess they had a nice time at the concert; more importantly, I got to stay with my GrandB and Grandpa Marty at their place. We had lots of fun chatting and swinging and experimenting with grape jelly. (I'm still not sure what was up with the jelly--I'll have to remember to ask Grandpa Marty once I can talk.) After the concert, Mama and Papa came over too, and made it a big sleepover party. This week I also took my first full-tub bath with Mama. It was really neat to let my legs float in the water. I liked it so much I took another one with Papa on Saturday. Now, I'm not sure how to broach the next subject. Perhaps first I'll share that sometimes I think I'm some kind of behavioral guinea pig for Mama and Papa. I hear them say things like "what will he do if we tickle his toes?" or (while poking) "he smiles every time we touch his chin!" And we all know that Mama just can't get enough of my poo. So I suppose I should not have been surprised that I'm being experimented upon with something called "natural infant hygiene." Google it--you'll learn more than you ever wanted to know about babies and their excrement. Anyway, on the 11th, I sat on the toilet (well, more was suspended over the toilet) and peed (in the general viscinity of the toilet). (There was also a breakthrough involving pooing on cue, but maybe we'll just leave things there for now. I'm sure there will be more later on this subject, alas.) Other fun things this week included applying for my passport. I've been told that in August we'll go to England to see my great uncle Tim. I'm really looking forward to that--I love meeting family! Plus I get to fly (which sounds great--I wonder if that means I can skip all the fuss about learning to crawl and walk?) Mama took hundreds of mug shots of me for the passport photo. I've included the final selection here. On Saturday, we decided to celebrate Fathers' Day early with Grandpa Marty and GrandB by going to Fernbank Science Museum. It was a lot of fun--I think I liked the IMAX movie about the Amazon most. But the electric ball thing sure fascinated Papa. Mama wrote this in her notebook this week that she'd reported to my uncle Norwood that there have been some changes since his visit: "R no longer has little white pimples on his chin; he can more reliably find his fist to suck on (altho not 100% of the tme--or even close); more smiles; likes to kick feet up, esp. on changing table, where he kicks feet toward head and lifts his butt up; smiles on changing table a lot too."