Mountains and Valleys

I took half the day off yesterday so I could take Alex to his 15-month checkup and then go to the gym without feeling guilty about it.

Alex was awesome. He finally officially outweighs the cat, at 25-ish pounds, and is up to 32 inches tall, which makes him pretty darned tall for his age, though that measurement is suspect, since the nurse marked his head and heels, then straightened a crease in the paper, which could have added as much as an inch. (But even if you subtract that inch, he's still well above average height.)

He was well-behaved for the nurse and the doctor. He wasn't too keen on having his ears looked at or his little testicles prodded, but he didn't fuss up, just tried to squirm a little and gave the doctor a very dubious look.

He screamed for the immunization shots, of course, but stopped as soon as I picked him up afterward, and was fine while I got him dressed. He dozed off in the car and when we got to daycare, wandered off to see what his classmates were doing at the water-table without so much as a backward glance. Yay, independence!

And then last night, Penny had a birthday party to attend, and since it was at a restaurant literally next-door to the daycare, we just went straight there after picking up Alex. He was really good for that, too -- happy and excited to be somewhere new, wandering and exploring but mostly good-tempered about being "redirected" to stay in the party area. I panicked briefly over having forgotten to bring a sippy cup for him -- but then he figured out what to do with a straw! Whoo!

Penny had a great time at the party, though she was frequently overexcited and loud -- but then, so were the other three girls. It's a good thing the restaurant was only sparsely attended. Of course, when the party wound down and it was time to go, she got grouchy about it (pizza, cake, and ice cream smacking into her blood sugar -- I'm almost surprised she was able to walk) and was surly all the way home.

At which point I dumped both the tired Alex and grouchy Penny on Matt and fled to Book Club, where I covered myself in glory by offering up a diatribe about the difference between God and Jesus and why I'm not a Christian anymore (it had to do with the book, really) in front of our new book club member, who is... wait for it... the pastor's wife. Whoo, go me! Well, I've always been the club's token non-Christian, the frog amongst the fish.

I'd post my personal review of the book here, but then I'd have to get into the whole religion thing, and I don't have that kind of energy right now. Or time. Maybe someday, I'll get around to it.