Photography, art, things that occur to me.
Recently Jean’s grandfather Lowell celebrated his 95th birthday, and his great grandson was there to share it with him. Yet another occasion where Conrad was cheated of cake for lack of teeth. Check out the Flickr page for more photos from the event. I shot 343 photos the day we were there and I’ve narrowed the selection down to a reasonable chunk. If you were there and you don’t see a photo of yourself, then you didn’t spend enough time within five feet of the baby.
Conrad was born six months ago today. We celebrated by giving him bananas and rice cereal. Maybe we should have done something more, but there’s not much special you can do for a six-month old. He already does whatever he wants, assuming we can figure out what it is. Bonnie said we should have made him half a cake, but then we just would have had to puree it. And who wants pureed cake?
I’ve said from the start of this blog that I didn’t want to repeat tired cliches as though they were novel insights. But it seems like only yesterday that he was born, and at the same time it’s hard to imagine the world before he was in it. We are very, very lucky.
So many people have been so generous giving us clothes for Conrad. We just wanted to show you that he’s getting good use out of all of them:
I’ve just thought of another answer to my friend Bill’s ongoing question of how my life has changed since Conrad was born. Eight o’clock in the evening now feels the way 11 o’clock felt to me about five years ago: time to start getting ready for bed and certainly too late to leave the house, except on weekends. Maybe.
Hastings is the one cat in our house who seems to “get” the whole baby thing. He figured out early on that Conrad was one of our young and thus immediately leaped to the top of the attention chain, and that if he himself wanted to get any action at all he needed to toe the line. And he has. Hastings will lie with us when we’re all on the floor, and stoically accept it when Conrad grabs a big hank of kitty fur and tries to take it with him.
Tuesday night Hastings proved an even more sophisticated level of understanding of the new priorities in our household. About an hour after Conrad had fallen asleep, Jean and I went in to have a last look at him before we went to bed. When we opened the door, Hastings hurried out. He’d been trapped in Conrad’s room for more than an hour, but rather than meowing or throwing himself against the door “which he’ll do instantly if I dare to shut the bathroom door behind me” he sat quietly and waited.
Is it really possible that a cat could understand how important it is not to wake the baby? Seems unlikely. But I have no other explanation.