Eight months

Poppy is eight months old today! She’s moving so fast now, despite her funny little crawl. Or maybe because of it. Her left leg works in a normal crawl, but she keeps her right foot on the ground and propels herself along that way. It’s pretty goofy, but it’s very efficient!

She’s awesome. She helped me get through the thesis writing by being a constant source of … she was a good distraction; she helped me focus on more important things. She helped me keep my perspective and helped me remember why I was writing in the first place.

She started … really communicating more … and holding her bottle herself. And the crawling, it’s huge!
-Rockford

"While I Was Gone"

I finished “While I Was Gone” a few days ago. I didn’t like it. For one thing, the “mystery” was pretty transparent early on. And more importantly, I couldn’t really sympathize with Joey, and I had a hard time buying that she and Daniel had that strong a relationship to begin with. I find it difficult to believe that a minister could have a strong relationship with a nonbeliever — or maybe he just wasn’t entirely convinced of his faith himself. I don’t know; I just didn’t care for the book.

Chicago

I finally managed to download the pictures from our trip to Chicago. We started the day at Shedd Aquarium and finished it up at Wrigley Field.

The aquarium was alot of fun — Poppy seems to be a big fan of the water. She loved the penguins, the dolphins and the beluga whales. I was very impressed with the whales, too. They’re so pretty!

By the time we finally found the El station (or whatever they’re called) and got to Wrigley, the Cubs were already losing 3-0. The Reds got hit after hit, homerun after homerun. Poppy was having a blast, though. She’s very much a people person. She was getting pretty tired by the 7th inning, and the Cubbies weren’t showing any signs of turning things around, so we went back to the car for the long, long, long drive home.