First favorite food: refried beans

Double the recipe

Our little casserole at one month.

And now at seven. 

Daily inspiration: simplicity

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

~Henry David Thoreau

(read on pilgrimsteps)

Making a public appearance

Well Lucy, yesterday your dad used you as a prop at a school presentation about Indians. The first-grader who asked me to come was our old neighbor, who wanted people to know that Indians don't run around in feathers and loincloths anymore and to prove it, she wanted me to come talk to her class... and bring you along in your cradleboard. Although the irony was probably lost on the kids that I brought you to show off traditional Indian childcare wearing a Ralph Lauren outfit and rolling into the classroom in a mod Dutch stroller!

It was a fun experience and the kids just ate it up when I showed them how I tie you into your cradleboard. One of the kids asked if it was made out of real jaguar skin, which made me laugh. After I got you tied in, I held you up in the board to look at the kids and asked them why they thought that Indians used cradleboards. "To carry their babies" and "keep their hands free while they did work" came up, but my personal favorite was "so when the Pilgrims attack, the baby is protected." Oh, those bloodthirsty Pilgrims!

You had a great time at the class, though. After the Thanksgiving holiday spent mesmerized by the blur of activity that is all your cousins, you enjoyed seeing all those kids and they enjoyed seeing you, too! A baby with less fortitude would have melted down ages ago, but you are doing admirably in keeping up with the rigorous public appearances that your parents drag you to. What can we say, we can't help but show you off!

Flying adventures

Well, Lucy B, your trouble-free flying streak ground to a teeth-chattering halt this weekend as we flew back from Thanksgiving in Idaho. In your short 6-1/2 months, you've flown six times and for five of them, you've been a dream baby. Playing on our laps. Nursing on the take-off and landing. Sleeping. Lots of sleeping. Well you more than made up for it coming home on your last flight! Halfway through the one-hour flight, you started getting fussy, slowly ramping it up to a cry, from there moving on to a panicky wail, before going all in and concluding the flight with 15 minutes of banshee shrieks as we were landing. Your mom and I tried the whole gamut to help you: bouncing, shoving a pacifier in your mouth, walking up an down the aisle, offering you food, promising you a My Little Pony Malibu beach stable with both the race track AND glue factory add-ons. All to no avail. Looking out the window worked occasionally to give the other poor passengers 30-seconds of respite to rest their eardrums. After you'd refilled your lungs to the volume of that of a blue whale, you were ready to start in again. If it weren't so traumatizing, I'm sure it would have been comical to see your parents frantically pass you back and forth between them in the hopes that a new trick or a change of scenery might console you. When we landed, people actually kept to their seats to let you and your mom off the plane first! They were that eager to see you feel better... and to not hear you crying anymore, but I'm sure that was just a small part of their motivation. Anyway, I stayed on the plane to gather all our stuff and by the time I got into the terminal, there you were, smiling and happy in your mom's arms as if the past eternity hadn't happened at all! I think that from now on, we'll make sure we never again fly in the evening and that we always pack some Mother's Little Helper (AKA Children's Benadryl), since you might be allergic to.... uhh, the little bags of snacks that serves as airline meals these days or maybe the subtle scent of jet fuel. Hopefully one of those two will work, as we're flying to Utah in a week, which will give you another seven days for your lung capacity to grow.