Sunday... Mom's making a one-day run to NJ to scope a client's new home for a container plan, which leaves NoraBear squarely in the hands of Dad. My folks are visiting, not to babysit Nora - that's my job. No, they'll be here to babysit me, I figure.

First success of the day - waking up, warming up a bottle, and draining that sucker. Phew. A satisfied milk-drunk... see how long that holds up.

More later.

It seems lately that her eyes are starting to focus on things further away than just a few inches in front of her face. We went out for a drive around Little Compton this afternoon, to show Mark the area. Through most of the trip, when she wasn't sleeping or struggling mightily to be freed from the car seat restraints, she stared pointedly at the little furry rabbit strapped to the handle in front of her.

And a good thing it was that she couldn't see much further than that. If she could have turned her head to look out the window, she'd have been treated to the same blindingly bright bare bottom that we were distracted by.

Nearly a full moon over Little Compton, in broad daylight! We were careful to position the trash can just so, to avoid any misconception that this site has any"adults-only" elements to it.

A new relative! And the Robbins family tradition of a mohawk lives on...

Opening day, opening morning, of the 2008 Red Sox season. Time to start establishing some important good habits. They're never too young, and it's never too early. (Actually, truth be told, we missed the game. This was a re-air in the afternoon. In fact, maybe it was too early, in more than one sense.)

I was listening to Greg Brown last night, his live album named, appropriately, "The Live One" from some time ago, which was the first album of his that I ever owned. On it, he talks about Pablo Neruda and his poem "Cierto Cansancio" which I believe translates to "A Certain Weariness."

The line in the poem goes,
I am weary of chickens: no one knows what they're thinking, and they look at us with dry eyes and consider us unimportant.

Brown's comment on this is, "which is true. They do, you know? We are... but it's hard to take it from a damn chicken, you know?"

Now, I'm not weary of any of this. Far from it. But I have little idea what she's thinking, and when she looks at me with these eyes, I do feel unimportant. At least, relatively speaking, that is.

(btw - Greg Brown plays in our neck of the woods on April 3rd, at the Narrows Center for the Arts.)

A friend of ours gave us one solid piece of advice: don't forget to take pictures of the moments when she's angry, sad, frustrated. Oddly enough, about 30 seconds after that advice was passed along, I had a screaming Nora in one arm and the camera within reach, and I thought, "what the heck..."