Hi! All Stocked Up Here, Thanks.

Iain's new favorite activity is "reading." He recognizes enough animals and objects that he can turn the pages of a book, identifying things he knows. Of course, Iain likes to generalize. So every bird is "duck!" and every animal is sometimes "Dog!" or "kitty!" But he also knows balloon, monsters (anything blue and hairy is Cookie Monster), hippo, fish, mouse, truck and car. You'd be surprised how many books you can "read" by turning each page and finding one of the above.

Meanwhile, autumn has arrived on the neighborhood trees. Our redbud decided last night to turn yellow and drop all her leaves. The maples in our neighborhood are putting on quite a show, as well.

When we moved here, the streets were lined in the ubiquitous tree of all subdivisions: the Bradford pear. Gorgeous in spring, pretty in fall, cheap and quick-growing, the Bradford is popular anywhere that you need to toss in landscaping on the fly. But they only live about 20 years, and ours are reaching their limit. Plus, they're all infected with Fire Blight.

So the entire neighborhood is transitioning its trees, one house at a time, to things like red maple. And the result is a patchwork of trees in which there are still short, round pears boasting deep red leaves but also now tall, fluffy-leaved maples that have turned orange, yellow, and a red that's almost hot pink. It's much better, more varied and complex and interesting.


This morning, Iain woke at 6:44, talking away in his crib. But he seems happy enough, most mornings, to interview his teddy bears for a good Charlie Rose time period. So I stayed under the covers until 7:20. Even with that later start, though, by 9:45 I was out of fun. So we went to the grocery to replenish the veggie and fruit bowls. Observe the results:

There's something about a full bowl of fruit that just makes me happy. We were out of everything, and now the sideboard has potatoes (yellow and sweet), onions, garlic, bananas, kiwis, apples, pears, lemons, and a full helping of plenty.

Iain's happy about it, too. Given his fruit habit (about 2-3 whole pieces a day, depending on what he's offered), he likes to see that bowl full.

One last thing. Last week Iain learned a new phrase. "You're welcome." Of course, it comes out as "ywyccm." But it's a start. He now says "Please," "Thank you" [teddou], and "You're welcome." Of course, he doesn't say any of those things as often as he says, "more," but you have to be a realist, right?