See photos here: On the photo page -- updated 4/7/08 with photos of Alex at Easter (in Easter dress, Easter hat, and bunny ears). Also, don't miss the several pages from Alex's "Baby Books." Jane's handiwork. No surprise here.

Contact us: gcastanias (at) aol.com.

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Sunday, June 15, 2008

Happy Father's Day, everyone.

Although Jane and I agreed this year that our Mother's Day and Father's Day gifts to each other were outdoor furniture (hers) and trees and shrubs (mine) for the back yard, Jane could not resist getting me a gift. Inspired by Greg Nanna telling Jane that he had recently purchased a bobblehead doll of himself from the elegantly named Whoopass Enterprises, Jane immediately knew what my "extra" Father's Day gift would be. So I awoke today to several cards from Alex and Jane, and this:

It's not bad; they even did the glasses pretty well. If I have to be a bobblehead, this is the bobblehead I want to be.

It is Father's Day, indeed. And so let me offer some extended Father's Day greetings.

Happy Father's Day to my Dad, Jess. One of the remaining members of The Greatest Generation; a man who piloted B-17s over Nazi Germany at the age of 20, when most of my generation were trying to figure out how to buy beer illegally; a man who taught me a ton, by quiet example, about how to be a devoted father and husband.

Happy Father's Day to John, my father-in-law (and therefore Jane's Dad). As Jeane Marie Laskas wrote in today's Washington Post Magazine, John was obviously one of those Dads of daughters who "did the job, and completed it." Alex and I are each the better for it. I can only hope that my daughter turns out as well as Jane did.

Happy Father's Day to my brother Rich, and brothers-in-law John and Joe. The three of you turned out nine nieces and nephews -- three for each of you -- before Alex came along, which kept the grandparents busy and showed us a lot about raising our own child.

Happy first Father's Day -- sort of -- to Joseph Firschein. Last year on Father's Day, the Firscheins knew that they had been matched with Jenny-Jenny (as Alex calls her), but Jennifer hadn't arrived in the DC area yet.

Happy first Father's Day -- unquestionably -- to Michael Fudge. The wait was worth it, wasn't it?

Happy Father's Day -- three times over -- to Greg Nanna. After spending some time with Alex at Baby Daniel's Baptismal party, Greg softened on his "I don't know what I'd do with a daughter" stance and was considering how fun it might be to have a daughter, even though he was also looking forward to having a second son. Funny how the fates are, friend -- you got one of each. James William and Claire Brianna Nanna.

Flash! -- this just in -- Happy Father's Day for the fourth time over to my friend Tom Fisher (baby boy Fisher born at 1:10 p.m. today and weighing in at a hardy 8 pounds and 11 ounces).

Happy second Father's Day to Cason Pilliod, the only other person (besides the folks at Whoopass Enterprises) who has made a plastic likeness of me. If memory serves, Cason and Tonia's son Lanham was born just before Father's Day last year.

And a catch-all Happy Father's Day to any other fathers out there who actually stumble across this thing. In a day and time when fathers are sitcom jokes and absent from far too many American families, what you are doing is nothing short of heroic -- I'd even add patriotic -- every time you laugh, read, tickle, or roughhouse with your son or daughter.

Anyway. Here are a few photos of Alex from Father's Day brunch:

-- Here, Alex thinks Daddy is the funniest thing in the world.

-- Here, Alex leans in for a kiss. I look stern for some reason, but that definitely was not the mood.

-- Alex has wanted to wear her sunglasses more and more recently. She is too cool for school.

-- She's learned from Daddy how to peer (peek) over the tops of her glasses.

-- "I want to be Jackie Onassis. I want to wear a pair of dark sunglasses."

One more Alex story and then I'm done for now. Alex's bedroom now features a little tea table -- just Alex's size -- with two chairs. (Jane re-covered the cushioned chairs. Apparently, she can do anything.) It has a fake silver tea set with teacups and a felt (yes, felt) cake. A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of putting the Bug to bed; usually, we read before bedtime, but on this particular evening, Alex wanted to get down from my lap ("Uppy-downie," she says -- still not sure what the difference is between "up" and "down," she wants to cover all of her bases). Because the tea table was new, she went over and climbed up into one of the chairs and wanted to pour tea for herself, for me, and for her three-inch-high Snow White figurine. She poured some "tea" into my cup; I pretended to drink it and pronounced it "Delicious." She then poured tea for Snow White, and in my best, high-pitched, fake British princess accent, I replied (on Snow White's behalf), "Ooooooh, thank you, MADAME!"

Well, you would have thought I had just told the funniest joke ever, because Alex giggled hysterically and started repeating "Thank you, MADAME," in her own voice. She often drops the first syllable of the last word, which might lead you to think she's saying, "Thank you . . . damn!" And we have only heard this 20-30 times a day since then. Of course, ALL the princesses -- Belle, Arial, Jasmine, and Snow White -- say "Thank you, damn!"

(In case you were wondering, Cinderella is presently MIA -- "Cinderella HIDING," according to Alex -- probably somewhere in her playroom.)

And "Princess Alex" (as she has started to refer to herself over the past few days) now also says not just "Thank you," but "Thank you, madame," whenever a simple "thank you" would suffice. This is particularly disturbing when she says "Thank you, madame!" to me, her father.

-- Greg

Thursday, June 12, 2008

So, remember the Nannas? Greg and Christy, parents of Nicholas? Today they're the parents of three.

Last week, June 4 to be specific, we hosted a planning session for the National Capital Area chapter of the Gladney Family Association. Christy, Jane, and Holly, as well as our Oakton neighbor Stacy Reynolds, are all involved with that. That evening, before I even got home, Jane opened the door to see Christy and Greg both, with stunned looks on their faces. They had been matched (again, through Gladney) with a birth mother from Austin, Texas, who was having twins. A boy and a girl. Very soon.

After the planning session was over, Greg -- who had left Christy here to take care of Nicholas -- came back to pick up his bride. And so we visited with them for awhile. Now I was able to see those stunned looks first hand. They hadn't expected to be matched just right now, and they certainly hadn't expected twins. Now they're going to be playing 2-on-3 zone defense in their house. (I think it was Christy who said, "Our life as we know it is over.") They went to Austin to meet the birth parents this past weekend, and apparently ended up staying there, because the birth mother went into labor last night. By now, I expect they are the parents of a new baby boy and baby girl. Congratulations to them and to big brother Nicholas, who now has double the big-brothering job. The Nannas will be stuck in Austin, Texas for a bit while they wait for Interstate Compact paperwork to be completed, but I hope and expect that we'll be hearing from them soon.

The week before that, on May 27, Jane and I went to a cocktail party at the home of Marvin and Margaret Bush. Yes, they're from that family (Marvin is "W"'s little brother). Putting aside whatever I might think of "W" -- and I have a lot of thoughts on that subject -- these Bushes were pathmarkers in the D.C. area for Gladney adoptions -- it seems that all of the parents of Gladney children who are now in their teens or twenties got introduced to Gladney through the advocacy efforts of Margaret and Marvin. We probably can trace our own involvement with Gladney, through a generation, back to the Bushes. So for that, we're grateful.

Let's stick with politics for a second so I can tell you an Alex story. Last Wednesday morning, the morning after the final Democratic primaries, we had MSNBC's Morning Joe on the TV, and, as one might expect, there was a lot of talk about the presumptive Democratic nominee. At one point, Alex was racing around the sofa, doing her laps of "runn-in-ing," when she stopped in front of the television set and pronounced, clear as a bell, "BARACK OBAMA."

I told you that story to tell you this story.

On Tuesday morning of this week, Bug (her Mom has taken to calling her that pretty regularly these days) was sitting on my lap, having some milk, and reading the paper with me. We got to this article in the Metro section, which was accompanied by a picture of Senator Obama along with the three Virginians (Sen. Webb, Gov. Kaine, and former Gov. Warner) who are named as his possible running mates. As I read that page, Alex took the sippy cup out of her mouth and again proclaimed, "BARACK OBAMA." Now, I had the TV -- Morning Joe, again -- on in the background, so I wrote that off to coincidence, figuring our little mynah bird was aping something that had been said on the TV again.

But no. Alex, ever insistent, started pointing and reaching for the picture of Sen. Obama, saying, ever more insistently, "BARACK OBAMA! BARACK OBAMA!" So she knows him on sight.

If Senator Obama were smart, he would consider this an endorsement and publicize it. Why? Because unlike most Presidential candidates, Alex's supporters know no political party -- her fans are on the right, on the left, and in the middle.

Finally, but not in the least: Congratulations to our friends Thomas and Amanda for their own upcoming (early November) blessed event, and congratulations to our friends Greg and Simone (married May 31) and Adam and Margot (married May 24). Mazel tov to all!

-- Greg

Saturday, May 17, 2008 -- Belated Mother's Day edition

It's been over a month . . . blah, blah, blah. It was so much easier to put up daily posts when Alex wasn't in a state of perpetual motion.

Since last I wrote in this space: I've finished teaching my class at Indiana; (almost) finished grading the papers in the class; found out we won the DIRECTV appeal (additional reports here, here, here, here, and here); spent the week of April 21st all out of town (New York for the day on Monday; Silicon Valley Tuesday through Friday); went to a black-tie dinner with Jane on Monday night, April 21st, where we rubbed elbows with Tony Blair, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch, and other swells; argued in a patent claim-construction hearing at the U.S. International Trade Commission for our good clients SanDisk on May 6 and 7; and did a few other things as well.

But this is "Raising Alexandra," so here we go with a couple of stories.

On April 27th, we went to the Fudge-Kortright home for a post-Baptismal reception for Daniel Lewis Fudge (or "Baby Daniel," as we call him around our house). As you may remember, Baby Daniel is also a Gladney Baby, as is Nicholas Nanna, who was there with his parents. Alex was cute and charming, and not shy at all -- she was willing to let the other parents, especially the adoptive parents that she knows, hold her, walk around the yard with her, and so on. It was pretty much an adoption-support-group reunion, with Holly and Michael (and Daniel), Rachel and Joseph (and Jenny-Jenny, as Alex calls her), Christy and Greg (and Nicholas, one of Alex's first suitors -- more on him in a minute), Debbie and Joe (Debbie of the "Deb-BIE! Deb-BIE!" chant), and so many other folks. I'll steal some photos from Holly and Michael's website to put here:

The first one is (L to R) Daniel, Holly, Jenny-Jenny, and Rachel. The second one is Alex, convincing Greg Nanna that it would in fact be great for their second Gladney baby to be a daughter (an epiphany Greg N. was only able to have after some quality time with Alex). The third one is me, having a tickly good time with Baby Daniel, who it is reported isn't usually much for adult males other than his Dad, so I was especially flattered by the fact that Daniel was having so much fun with me.

So after we left the Baptism party, it was still pretty early in the evening, and Alex was still in such a good and charming mood, that we decided to stop at Coastal Flats on the way home. What a coincidence -- Greg and Christy Nanna and Nicholas showed up a couple of minutes later, with Greg's parents, for a Sunday evening dinner. They were seated down the same row of booths as we were, which allowed Alex and Nicholas to wave at each other. (Nicholas had already kissed Alex spontaneously at the Baptism party, which earned him the first over-the-tops-of-my-glasses stare that I've had to apply to a boy.)

So we decided to have some fun with this -- we asked our waitress to deliver a glass of milk to the little boy and to tell the table that it was "compliments of the young lady at the other table." We watched it get delivered to the Nanna table; watched them have the curious "We didn't order that!" looks come over their faces; and watched those curious looks turn into laughter when the waitress explained where the milk came from.

Nicholas raised the stakes -- I'm pretty sure his father was in on this -- by sending a Mojito to our table. (Already trying to get her drunk, son? We're going to have to have another talk.)

So anyway, as we were leaving, the three of us walked over to talk to the Nannas and say goodbye. Nicholas, who had been munching on a carrot, offered it to Alex. Nicholas's grandmother said, "Oh, isn't that cute? He's trying to give her a carrot!" I said, not missing my chance, "You know what Freud would have said about that."

As the Nanna table erupted into "I can't believe he said that" laughter (Christy actually put her head in her hands), I was escorted out of the restaurant by my bride. I believe she may actually have pulled me by the ear; I don't remember. I was grounded for that remark, and I'm really sorry.

I'd do it again, though. It was worth it for the laughs.

So here's another story. Last weekend, the three of us went to New York for a combination Mother's Day/business/seeing friends trip. I arrived Saturday afternoon from Indiana (where I was attending the Spring meeting of the National Association of Wabash Men); Alex and Jane had already flown up. Because the preceding week had been so hectic, I had Mother's Day cards stuffed into my briefcase, and I spent some time on Saturday teaching Alex to say "Happy Mother's Day!" (Please remember this important work I did; it comes up again later.) Saturday night, we went out to dinner with our friends Michelle and Kevin Bergin (Kevin's the architect behind Giorgio Armani's first signature condos in New York City, among many other things; Michelle is a director's representative and one of Jane's college roommates).

Sunday morning, I woke up a little early with Alex and we let Mom sleep. Alex and I sat in bed and signed Jane's Mother's Day cards (Alex put her special signature -- it might look like a scribble to you, but trust me, as an observer, every pen stroke was carefully applied). When Jane awoke, I asked Alex "Do you have anything to say to Mommy?", and she said, "Happy Mother's Day!" (It sounded a little like "Appy Mudder's Day!", but the message was clear as a bell.) Jane was so surprised and delighted that she shrieked and gave Alex a big hug, which only encouraged Alex to say "Happy Mother's Day!" over and over again. We went to brunch that morning at the hotel restaurant, and the maitre'd was inspired to come to our table and tell us that Alex was "the best behaved child we have ever had in this restaurant."

Later on Sunday, we went to the top of the Empire State Building. Despite having lived in New York many years ago, I had never done that before, and it was quite interesting for a number of reasons -- not just because of the independent historical significance of the Empire State Building, but because the building I work in in Washington, DC -- the Acacia Building -- was built at roughtly the same time, by the same architects and designers as built the Empire State Building. And the similarities in the structures -- both classics of the Art Deco era, especially in the interior -- were striking to me.

Sunday evening we went to dinner with our newly married friends Megyn and Doug, but before the sitter came to our hotel room, Jane gave Alex a bath in the hotel bathtub. The warm water is so relaxing, and sometimes the bath inspires Alex to -- there's no way to get around saying it straightforwardly -- poop in the tub. Usually, Alex's verbal response is "Uh-oh! Oh, no! Dirty, dirty! Clean it up, Mommy! Gross!" But today was not like every other day.

Nope. On this day, Alex pooped in the tub, stood up, and announced to her Mommy, with a big grin on her face, "Happy Mother's Day!"

-- Greg

Wednesday, April 9, 2008 -- Special ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK edition

Wow. Over a month since I last put anything here? Fortunately, my bride has been beating me at my own game, with all sorts of pictures and posts over on the photo page. So if anyone is still reading this, at least you haven't been deprived.

Since last we left you, Wee One has continued to develop her vocabulary. She clearly has an ear for words, which is why it is best that Alex was already asleep by the time the KU-Memphis NCAA championship game rolled around on Monday night. I unfortunately had scheduled a trip to Dallas long before I realized that was the night of the BIG GAME, and way before any of us knew that Jane's University of Kansas Jayhawks would be in the championship game. I got to my hotel in Dallas with about 2 minutes to go and Kansas trailing by nine points. It didn't look good for the 'Hawks, but Jane and I stayed on the phone during the last few minutes of (what turned out to be) regulation. But bit by bit, timeout-after-missed-Memphis-free-throw-after timeout, the Jayhawks clawed their way back. Interestingly, because of some combination of our cable service and the delay caused by having our TV signal routed through our TiVo device, I was getting the events of the game on my Dallas hotel TV about five seconds before Jane was seeing them on our TV back at home. So I would go crazy over this play or that missed free throw, and Jane wouldn't know what I was reacting to. Eventually she enjoined me from reacting at all so that SHE could react. Which is of course why it was best that Alex was asleep instead of being awake and hearing her Mommy shout new words at the TV set.

New to Alex, anyway. (Me, I've heard 'em all.)

So, as you know by now, the Janehawks, I mean, Jayhawks, won their third national championship on Monday night. This was all attributable to Alex, who on Saturday and Monday nights wore her Lucky Jayhawk Jammies to bed . . . .

. . . and who, all day Monday, wore her "Beak 'em, Hawks!" t-shirt.

So, speaking of Little Miss Verbal. Here are some of the recent highlights --

This sort of call-and-response thing is a good part of our days together. Now we can read the Sandra Boynton book "Moo, Baa, La La La!" without even having the book in front of us (italicized parts are Alex's):

"The cow says 'moo.' The sheep says 'baa.' Three singing pigs say 'La la la!'" (The singing pigs' "La la la"s sound suspiciously like the littlest piggy's "Wee wee wee"s.)

Or, of course, "A is for Annabelle":

"A is for An-ba-dell. Grandmother's doll. B for the box. That we keep in the hall."

"C for her cloak. That we take out with care. D for the dresses. We want her to wear."

And on and on it goes. What fun.

Oh, P.S., the book is out and on some bookstore shelves. Here's proof.

-- Greg

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

So this morning I'm straightening up the family room. Once, that was a simple task, involving little more than folding up the newspapers and putting them in the mud room or the garage for recycling day. Maybe folding up a blanket that had fallen off the edge of the sofa.

Today, however, in addition to the newspapers and the blankets, I picked up a princess figurine, the book "A is for Annabelle," a penguin Valentine's Day card (sent to Alex by Mamaw Peggy and now part of the permanent rolling collection of Alexware), the book "Pat the Bunny ABCs," a toy watering can, a "Cinderella" book, a "bink" (Alex's blanket), a chirping stuffed toy bluebird, a gun that "shoots" bubbles, and a lazy susan that should be in Alex's play kitchen. I also have been adorned, just now, with two stickers -- one with Ariel the mermaid (bearing the legend "Nice Job!"); the other showing Belle (from "Beauty and the Beast") holding a rose, and bearing the inscription "Fantastic!"

How things have changed in a mere 19 months.

I told Alex that I was particularly pleased by the Belle sticker, because "I always thought she was a little hot." That earned me a smack across the shoulders from my own bride.

In case you've sensed a theme here -- Disney Princesses, for the most daft among you -- there's a good reason for that. We have just returned from Alex's first visit to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. (This was a three-day add-on to our attendance at the Jones Day Partners Meeting.) And Alex was mostly impressed. Sunday morning (February 24), we started our stay in Disney World at a "Character Breakfast." For the indoctrinated, this is pretty much an ordinary buffet breakfast, except that these giant stuffed incarnations of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, and the rest of them circulate from table to table. In a way, it was sort of like what I would imagine Sunday breakfast was like in the 1960s. In Haight-Ashbury. In a commune. And the giant animals weren't actually there.

("Duuuude. A giant bear with a honey pot just sat on my lap. It was AWESOME!")

Come to think about it, that was probably Alex's reaction as well.

The rest of Sunday was spent in the Magic Kingdom. Alex rode the "It's a Small World" ride twice, the "Peter Pan" ride once, the carousel once, and the flying Dumbos once. She loved them all. (We did not visit the spinning teacups. Dad did that once, years ago. It was one of the bigger mistakes of my life.) Nap in the stroller. Lunch at the Coral Reef at Epcot -- with a table abutting the giant fish tank. We got to see the giant turtle awake from his slumber right in front of us and swim to the surface. We saw several different kinds of rays. And a bunch of other fish. Then we ate fish. Now, Alanis, that was ironic.

Back to the hotel for a failed nap, and then dinner at the Polynesian Resort -- specifically, at this sort of hybrid Polynesian luau/Brazilian steakhouse (O' Hana -- looks Irish but it isn't). Complete with ukelele player/singer in grass skirt leading the children all around the dining room. Once I would have thought this was all to kitschy for words, and way too un-cool. But Alex loved it, and if she loves it, we love it, too.

Monday was all Epcot, after breakfast in our hotel. A mid-morning nap was followed by a Princess Lunch (!!!!!) in a Norwegian castle. Alex got her photo taken at the entrance by one of the Disney "party photographers" with Belle. The rest of the Disney Princesses roamed the dining room -- so we got visits from Ariel (I neglected to check to see how she was navigating the dining room with flippers instead of feet), Snow White, Jasmine, and Cinderella. For a mere $31.95, we were able to purchase four prints of Alex's audience with Belle. (Fortunately, the pictures offered a website where we could enter our picture numbers and buy a CD with digital versions of the photos on it. Unfortunately, I got only a good laugh when I visited the website and found out that the CD was a mere $129.95 or something like that. For the privilege of four pictures? No, thanks.)

Monday afternoon Alex and I returned to the hotel and let Jane go over to the Grand Floridian for a pedicure. We tried -- and failed -- to take a nap (too much excitement), so instead we went to the swimming pool. Alex thinks she can swim. I guardedly let her test out that hypothesis. Jane says that was the most fun Alex had at Disney World.

Tuesday, our last day, was not the highlight of the trip. Alex had clearly received too much information, and had two "meltdowns." Screaming, uncontrollably sobbing, alternatively arching and locking her body and then going limp. She slept through Mom and Dad's lunch at Disney's Hollywood Studios (which was a big yawner by our account), only to wake herself into another meltdown. Fortunately, she had calmed herself by the flight home, on which she was very good. (She was good on the flight down to Orlando, too, with the singular exception of the projectile vomiting on Mom and Dad halfway through the flight -- showing her mad barfing skillz, as she got not a speck on herself.) Milk, Sun Chips, and excitement do not mix.

Herewith, what you've been waiting for -- the photos:

-- Greg

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Well, it's been a little while since I last wrote, but it's not because there's been nothing to write about.

Alex's kitchen. As you can see on the photo page, my bride has purchased a fully furnished toy kitchen for Miss Alex. It has a refrigerator, a pantry, a counter with a sink (non-functioning, thank goodness), and a stove and oven. Oh, but that's not all. It has a toaster with wooden pieces of toast, and the pantry and refrigerator are stocked with all sorts of toy food -- wooden "boxes" of cereal, pasta, and so on, as well as "felt food" -- felt fried eggs, felt whole eggs, felt pancakes, felt waffles, felt fruit, felt eggplant, felt squash (fun to say -- "squash"), a felt birhday cake with candles, a felt sandwich ("ham," as Alex enjoys saying), felt fish -- you name it, we probably have it in felt. Jane claims to have "exercised restraint" by not having (yet) purchased the felt sushi, but we all know that's just a question of "when," not "if." Alex "cooks" and "cleans" in her kitchen while Jane is making dinner in the real, but less-elaborately appointed kitchen that we use to cook actual food. This morning, as I was making breakfast (Jane was sleeping in), Alex ran to me, extended her arms skyward, and announced "up." She wanted me to pick her up so she could watch me cook. So I made scrambled eggs with (leftover) fajitas one-handed. If one-handed cooking were going to be an event in the Olympics, I'd already be booked for Beijing.

Visiting Indiana. When last we wrote, we were headed off to Indiana to see Papou and celebrate his 84th birthday. Alex and Papou hadn't seen each other since Alex's baptism last Easter, but Alex hadn't forgotten anything. "Papou!" she would scream in our hotel room when we said we were getting ready to go over and see him. We also visited my Aunt Helen, who (later) reported to my father that Alex looks "just like Greg." Helen knows that Alex is adopted, but we still get a lot of comments like that from those who know -- and from those who don't.

Words. Oh, dear. We are cursed with a smart little girl. One of Alex's doctors refers to her as "Einstein," because she's never encountered an 18-month-old who knows as many words as Alex does. Just this morning, as I was beginning to make breakfast, Alex came over to the refrigerator door with me, pointed to the box of mixed berries on the shelf, and announced that she wanted "berries." Now, she doesn't say "bewwies" in that cute little way that children do; she enunciates "ber-ries" with clear 'r's. Other words and phrases that we hear a lot of are "Vaseline," "Happy Birthday," "pen-gins," "fence" (when indicating the fence we built in December around our back yard), "refrigerator," "ketchup," "meat-malls with sauce" (for "meatballs"), "No, please," "bashtub" (bathtub), "dancing," "scootch-bonk" (which describes the way Alex goes down the stairs on her bottom one at a time), "spin-boom!" (a new little trick in which she spins round and round until she gets dizzy and falls on her bottom), "applesauce," "peaches," "oct-pus" (her eight-legged sea friend), "An-bidell" (referring to her book "A is for Annabelle," which she would not go down for a nap without this morning). And so it goes.

Marching. Thanks to Nana for this one. No, really. Thanks. Apparently, Nana (Jane's Mom) taught Alex to "march" (just like you picture -- knees up, marching all around the house). So we now get requests, Alex holding her hand out, to "March!" Jane sings "The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah" when she marches with Alex. Recently, Alex has wanted to hold things in her own hands while marching, and if she can't hold everything necessary (say, a princess, a fish, and Jane's hand) while marching, she gets very upset. So she's figured out how to hold a fish and a princess in one arm while holding Jane's hand with her other hand and marching all around the house.

Visiting the National Aquarium in Baltimore. This is a second-hand report from Jane. On Thursday of this week, Jane and Alex joined our friend Rachel and her daughter Jennifer Rose (details of Jennifer's adoption last summer are way down on this page) for a trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. They started their tour at around 1 p.m., and Jane was sure that Alex had, at best, an hour left in her before she crashed and needed a nap. Oh, funny. Alex (and Jennifer, for that matter) was so excited to see the "fish" (often accompanied with the "puh puh puh" sound effect made with her lips to indicate the sound that fish make), the "man-tees" (manatees, in case that wasn't sufficiently clear), the "turtles," and all the rest of the sea creatures that they stayed awake, happy, and wired all the way to late afternoon. Alex and Jennifer (who are roughly the same age) are turning into quite the pair -- Alex calls her "Jenny-Jenny," and Jennifer, when her mom asks "Where's Alex?" will make a sad face and say, "Home." After the aquarium, the four returned to Joseph and Rachel's house and had dinner and a bath together (reportedly a lot of fun, splashing each other), and Jenny-Jenny loaned Alex a pair of pajamas for the ride home, since Alex's Mom was certain that Alex would crash and go to sleep in her car seat on the ride home. Wrong again. Alex chatted about her day all the way home (probably 45 minutes), and didn't fall asleep until she hit her crib.

"Pincess." In a couple of weeks we're going to Disney World (our Partners Meeting is in Orlando this year), and Alex is going to be dazzled by the astonishing sight that is Walt Disney World (rejected name: "Six Flags Over Walt's Frozen Dead Carcass"). In preparation for this visit, Jane has stocked Alex's playroom with toy Disney princesses -- so now Alex knows "Belle," "Briar Rose" (Princess Aurora's nom de guerre in "Seeping Beauty"), Cinderella, Ariel, Snow White, and some others who I can't remember right now.

Finally, welcome to Madeline Riley Gorsline, daughter of our friends Melissa and Doug Gorsline, born February 6, 2008, at 4:41 p.m., and weighing in at 7 pounds, 9 ounces!

So there you have it. That's what has been going on for the last three weeks.

-- Greg

Monday, January 14, 2008

Happy 84th birthday, Papou! We're coming to see you later this week.

Now, where have we been since Christmas? Well, my bride has been keeping you up to date with the photo page, which she turned into a sort of mini-blog (mommy-blog?). Me, I've been getting ready to present an oral argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a patent-infringement case on behalf of DIRECTV. You can listen to it here, should you be so interested.

At present, Alex is sitting with her Mom, watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" for the five millionth time. Yes, Christmas was three weeks ago, but I have a feeling that the Grinch is going to know no season. As far as Alex knows, the only things our TV plays are MSNBC and "Ginch."

On the photo page, Jane recounted the traveling manger show that is Alex's little creche. (Short version: We have a miniature creche with figurines of Joseph, Mary, the baby Jesus, the Magi, sheep, and so on. Alex moves them around and sets up mini-manger scenes all around the house, sometimes including such nontraditional participants as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and penguins. You never know where you'll find one.)

After she posted that little illustrated story, I was up very early one morning (the weeks leading up to an oral argument are made up of long days, starting usually around 4:30 a.m.), and I went into the mud room to slip on my old topsider moccasins so I could go out to the end of the driveway to get the newspapers. As I slipped my left foot into my left shoe, I felt something hard and sharp on the delicate sole of my foot. I removed my foot to find that the baby Jesus had taken up residence in my shoe. It's a good thing I didn't step down with full force; I have no idea what the rewards are in the afterlife for someone who pulverizes the baby Jesus, but I'd prefer not to find out.

Alex has more words, some of which surprise me. This morning, she tried to pick up a big, thick shawl blanket that resides on our family room sofa, and announced, as she strained to lift it, "Heavy." (Where did she get that? Jane hypothesizes from her, when she picks Alex up and says "You're getting so heavy.") It's a good thing we watch our *&#%$@ language around the house; there's no telling what might be coming out of our little mynah bird's mouth.

The final changes to the book go to the printer later this week. I'll be so happy to have that done.

-- Greg

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Ho Ho Ho! Merry Christmas!

Santa Claus came to our house last night, and left Alex lots of toys -- especially animal toys. (He also ate the cookie that Alex left for him; Rudolph ate most of the carrot that Alex left for the ruby-schnozzed one; and Santa left Alex a nice note.) Among the bounty that surrounded our Christmas tree this morning was a Fisher-Price set of animals A-to-Z -- 26 animals, each one starting with a different letter of the alphabet. Alex was especially fond of the X-ray fish (true) and the penguin, which she calls "pengie."

And then, we got to unwrapping Alex's gift from Uncle Rich and Aunt Nelle, and Cleo, Jack, and Amber. It was a giant stuffed penguin -- about as tall as Alex. We heard a lot of "Pengie! Pengie! Pengie!" the rest of the day.

But, rather than recount the day in toys, let's talk a little about dinner, because that's where there's a lot to say about Alex. Dad makes Christmas dinner -- a traditional standing rib roast, which we served yesterday with a creamy eggplant-onion-and-garlic soup, asparagus, baked potato, and for dessert, chocolate souffles. We sat in the dining room (probably the second time in Alex's life that we've done that; dinner is usually at the kitchen table), and brought Alex's highchair in. Recently, Alex has taken to reminding us about the blessing before dinner -- she'll clasp her hands together and say "Prayer!" So we say the blessing, and after a hearty "Amen!", Alex almost always says "More! More!" So sometimes we have an extra blessing.

Last night, the plan was that Alex would have some cut-up rib roast, along with some green beans (special for her, since she likes them so much). She certainly had all of that, and more. When Jane asked her if she wanted some "roast beef," she announced "Beast!" (Yes, the 'Grinch' has had some influence here.) But to our surprise -- and really, nothing should surprise us any more on this score -- the biggest hit at dinner aside from the Roast Beast was the eggplant soup. She insisted on having a bite from Daddy's bowl, and soon, the cries of "More! More!" were upon us. Jane had set a place for Alex, with Alex-size silverware, and I think Alex had no fewer than 20 spoonfuls of eggplant, onion, and garlic soup. Two servings of Roast Beast. Asparagus. Potato.

And then dessert. Holy schnikes, you'd think we had never fed the little girl. She ate the chocolate souffle like they weren't going to be making chocolate any longer. She took that same unhinged-jaw approach to the souffle that we had seen earlier this year (on her first birthday) when Alex tasted frosting for the first time.

One of the things that pleases Jane and me the most is the fact that our little girl now says "Thank you" at appropriate times -- like when someone gives her something. She may stand at the counter where the cookie jar is and yell "Coo-coo!", but when Daddy obliges and gets her a cookie, she'll say "THANK you!"

And, thank you. If you're reading this, we know that you're either a stalker or a good friend or dear family member. So (in the latter event, anyway) thank you for reading this. Thank you for caring enough about Alex (and us, by association) to want to know these goofy things about our goofy lives. Merry Christmas to all of you!

-- Greg

Monday, December 17, 2007

As Jane has already told you (complete with pictures), the dread of "The Nutcracker" turned out to be for naught. Alex was well-behaved and attentive for the entire show. My new favorite picture of Alex and my Bride was taken after lunch, before the show, in the atrium of Metropolitan Square, outside the Old Ebbitt Grill.

Since my last post, we have watched the "Grinch" on TiVo approximately -- what do you think, Jane? -- four million times. Alex asks for it by name -- "Ginch" -- and when the song ("You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch") comes on, she'll sing "Giiiiiiiiiiinch." She also finds it hysterical when the Grinch ties antlers to his little dog Max's head, and she will say "Tip!" as that scene is beginning, because she knows that Max will "tip over" when the antlers are tied to his head (before the Grinch hacksaws off the ends of the antler points, of course). She sings along with "Fah-Hoo Ramoos" (the song that all the Whos sing together in the town square, circling the town Christmas tree). And she gets upset when the star begins to rise from that tree toward the end of the show -- my guess is that's because, after four million viewings, she knows that that indicates the end of the show is near.

Alex is a little under the weather today. She's at the end of a cold that has come with a bit of a fever. So much so that a couple of nights she's been allowed to get in the "Big Bed" (Mom and Dad's bed) so we can keep an eye on her and prop her up upright. That plan never works. She is so excited to be in the Big Bed that she stands up and runs around in the bed. Last Friday night, I got out of the bed and sat in the rocking chair so that Alex could run around our bedroom with impunity, and I could catch her if she tried to make a break for it (our bedroom is elevated, meaning that any escape would require Alex to navigate a couple of carpeted steps down from bedroom level). But she ran around in just a diaper (she was so hot between the fever and her jammies, which I believe are made from pile carpeting), holding her bottle, which she would bring to me, hold out for me to take, and then pull away. The first time I did that, I said, "Psych!" After that, our little parrot repeated that every time she offered the bottle and pulled it away -- "Psych!" Followed by giggling as she ran away.

Clearly, I am raising a smartass. But that was to be expected.

Also last week. Our friend Debbie (she and her husband are soon-to-be adoptive parents themselves) babysat for Alex while Jane went out and did some things. Clearly, Debbie was a success. When Jane returned, Alex was marching around the house (usually, that is accompanied by "March march march"), knees up with every step, chanting "Deb-BIE! Deb-BIE! Deb-BIE!" Debbie left, but the chanting did not. Alex is still prone -- at least once a day -- to marching around, chanting "Deb-BIE! Deb-BIE! Deb-BIE!"

Two readings today. First, since I've been talking about holiday TV, please read Liza Mundy's excellent piece on holiday TV from yesterday's Washington Post Magazine. I found her historical observations particularly insightful, especially those about the Rankin-Bass specials, with their message of tolerance and inclusion (Island of Misfit Toys, anyone?), and noting that most of those were released in and around 1964, just as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was changing America.

Second -- and I wanted to put this up earlier, but I forgot -- is Bill Simmons' (ESPN The Magazine's "The Sports Guy") recounting of taking his daughter to her first NBA game. It appears in the December 3 issue of ESPN The Magazine (so named in order to avoid confusion with ESPN The Network or ESPN The Breakfast Cereal). I read it out loud to Jane and she and I laughed, hysterically -- because this is my future. His daughter is 2-1/2; mine is not quite 1-1/2. Especially if you get the sports references (like getting into Mom and Dad's bed being "called up to the majors").

I love fatherhood for the little things. Like having the power to derail any tantrum with five simple words: "Wanna get some ice cream?" Like stepping in on those last few bites of grilled cheese because kids never finish a meal. Like being awakened each morning by a smiling kid instead of a blaring alarm clock. Like having my own mini-McMahon who laughs at every joke I make, especially if it involves flatulence.

As the old saying goes, children make us appreciate what we stopped appreciating long ago. (I don't know who said it, but it's been said. And if it hasn't been said, then please, let me say it.) Ever wonder why Larry King sired two more after turning 125 years old? Because he's selfish, that's why. He wanted those last chances to appreciate the little things.

I totally get that. In the past few weeks, I've relived the following experiences through the eyes of my 2½-year-old daughter: the joyous celebration after the Sox won the World Series (she loved watching everyone jump on each other); trick-or-treating; a first trip to the movies (she threw an impressive complete game at "Bee Movie"); and, finally, a first real live NBA game (Cavaliers at Clippers).

I most wanted to see her reaction to the game. She has actually liked hoops ever since it became part of her nighttime routine last spring. As far as she knew, our TVs could show only Red Sox games and NBA playoff games after 6 p.m. (See, I told you kids are great! They'll believe anything!) She gravitated toward basketball because of its colors and sounds, the running and jumping, the tattoos and chest-thumping and, most of all, the simplicity. Basically, players try to make the basketball rip through the net, and when they do, everyone applauds.

Now, here's where my demented genius comes in: I think that kids can be brainwashed to believe anything is fun as long as you seem excited about it. You could say to your child right now, "You know what we're doing later? We're heading to the yard to watch grass grow!" And if you sell it well enough, they'll be counting the minutes until the back door opens. Seriously. So when I asked my half-asleep daughter if she wanted to watch basketball in Daddy's bed, I made it sound more fun than mashing bananas with The Wiggles. In retrospect, I probably didn't need to sell it so hard. She was so happy to get called up to the majors (Mommy and Daddy's bed) and maybe get her head rubbed, too. But that's how she was introduced to basketball: I brainwashed her, lied to her and wore her down.

Fast-forward to the Nov. 11 Cavs-Clips game. When I asked if she wanted to go, I presented the offer as if I were suggesting we fly in a helicopter to eat M&M's on the moon. And I sold LeBron as a combination of Santa, Elmo and our UPS guy. After a few YouTube clips, she was hooked, screaming at her mom, " We're gonna go see LeBron!" Her excitement only amplified over the next few days. Meanwhile, I started to worry because 150 minutes is a long time to keep a child entertained. Could she make it through the third quarter? Could she even make it to halftime? Would she melt down like Fausto Carmona at Fenway?

As soon as we got inside the Staples Center, I immediately bought a bucket of popcorn that was bigger than Eddy Curry. (We learned at "Bee Movie" that a big bucket buys you 35 solid minutes, even if it might cause diarrhea later. Whatever.) We missed the national anthem but caught the pregame intros; she was transfixed when the arena went dark. We found our seats in time for the opening tip, and within about 3.2 seconds, she was on my lap and promptly entering " The ADD Zone," an inevitability for any little kid who is digesting too many images and noises at once. The Zone-Out -- and the Art Shell Face that accompanies it -- lasted for a good 10 minutes, just her staring straight ahead as she shoveled popcorn into her mouth. It was like the Raiders' 2006 team video.

She eventually emerged from her stupor and started to ask about the JumboTron, which she mistook for a giant TV. Could we touch it? (Um, no.) Was there a remote control? (Sadly, no.) After the 57th straight JumboTron-related question, I steered her toward LeBron. She was captivated as she watched him lope around, right up until she became distracted by the referees' whistles (she wanted one for herself), the substitution horn (she liked the way it sounded) and everyone who was eating and drinking around us ("Look, he has popcorn too").

She liked how the players huddled in a circle for timeouts, as well as my revelation that the players had their own " teacher" (the coach). She liked putting her drink in the cupholder that comes with each seat. In fact, she liked it so much she must have done it 735 times in 20 minutes. She was so delighted by the Clippers dancers that I'm more worried than ever about keeping her off the pole (every father's most important job). She loved clapping with the crowd after each Clippers basket, and she loved hearing the crowd boo and yell after a dubious nontraveling call on LeBron. And she got a special kick out of the guy behind us calling one of the referees a jackass. Really, she loved it all.

But two moments stand out above the rest. In the second quarter, LeBron swiped a pass and had a clear path right in front of us to a breakaway dunk. I nudged her eagerly -- watch this, watch this! -- as the crowd started buzzing and flashbulbs went off. When Bron-Bron delivered the goods with a hellacious double-clutch jam, everyone was delighted, including my daughter, who screamed out loud and giggled afterward. (She officially loves LeBron now. At least I think she does. She kept getting him confused with Larry Hughes and Daniel Gibson.)

The other moment occurred when the crowd improbably broke out the wave, quite possibly the single greatest moment of her young life. She loved watching it slowly ripple around the stadium, waiting for it to reach our section and then jumping up with her arms raised to yell at the top of her lungs. To be honest, I've always thought the wave was reprehensible. But not anymore. Anything that makes my kid that happy is fine with me.

Unfortunately, she threw only seven innings because of a Grady Little-level managerial mistake on my part: At halftime, we shared a large Sprite and one of those pretzels covered with cinnamon and sugar. I may as well have administered an eight ball. What was I thinking? By the end of the third quarter, after she'd turned into the Great Cornholio and started to sing " Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" at the top of her lungs, I knew we had to leave before she kicked a hole through the seat of the poor guy in front of us.

The good news: She threw a tantrum; she wanted to stay. I guess if I'd had a moment to reflect as I hauled my wailing child out of the Staples Center, I'd have realized the NBA had itself another fan. Instead, I had to stop the commotion: " Wanna get some ice cream?"

-- Greg

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Today we go to "The Nutcracker," the second in what appears to be a lifelong tradition of going to the ballet at Christmastime. Last year was a $75 nap for Alex. This year, I await the production with a combination of anticipation and dread. Anticipation, because the little girl is really interested in music and movement. Dread, because she's been quite a little pill a few times this week.

Jane, on the photo page, has elaborated some on Alex's musical inclinations. Last night, driving home from dinner, I sang "The Twelve Days of Christmas" for her. (An aside: When I was a kid, I knew what the true love gave on every day of Christmas. Now, I find myself struggling to remember which day gets the maids a'milking and which one gets the lords a'leaping.) After the end of every verse ("And a partridge in a pear tree."), Alex would chime in with "Tree!" When I finished, I was regaled with the now familiar sounds of clapping and cries of "More! More!" My throat hurt from all the times I ended up singing the "Twelve Days."

But, as I mentioned, there is dread, too. Why? Because (as Jane has also detailed on the photo page), Alex is occasionally having the spur-of-the-moment, arch-her-back-and-lock-her-body, lying-on-the-floor-and-wailing, tantrum. Sometimes (as it was this morning) it's triggered by something as simple as not allowing her to play with the TiVo remote control. Sometimes it's something more obvious, like being asked to sit on Santa's lap (nothin' doing -- chronicled on the photo page) or getting her hair cut at a shop for the first time (really nothin' doing). On the last score, Alex takes after her Dad as a youngster. While my superior child behavior has been chronicled in song and story (I was born middle-aged), my trips to the barber were something else entirely. I seem to recall being told that my Dad's barber was named Frank, and that he ended up sitting on the floor of his barber shop cutting my hair while I screamed bloody murder. Then he went home for the rest of the day with a flareup of his stomach ulcer. Perhaps we'll have that experience today at "The Nutcracker." And then I will assume a new identity and put the family into the witness-protection program.

I mentioned that Alex was -- how shall we say? -- none too pleased when I denied her the TV remote control this morning. Fortunately, we had TiVoed "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas," which is turning into a favorite. ("Ginch," Alex says, pointing.) She especially likes the theme song ("You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch"), which Daddy can imitate fairly well -- at least in the timbre of the singer's voice. Oh, and for you trivia buffs, that singer is not Boris Karloff. No, Boris Karloff was the narrator (and the voice of the Grinch). The song was sung by the late Thurl Ravenscroft, who you know as the voice of Tony the Tiger ("They're grrrrrrrrrreat!").

Jane is bringing Alex down from her bath now, and it sounds like a bad omen -- she just said, "C'mon, grumpypants, let's show Dad how pretty you look." And Alex does look pretty, but I'll leave that to the picture fairy (my wife). Alex is now off for a nap (no kiss goodnight for Daddy, because Alex was more interested in her milk), which I hope will improve her demeanor before we go off to a holiday lunch and the ballet.

Let's see. What else? Hmmmm. Oh -- whenever Jane or I say something like "Let's see . . . ," or "Let me think . . ., "Alex will put a finger to her mouth and go "Hmmmmmm." The universal sign for "I'm thinking." If I say "Touchdown!" (or Mommy says "Ta-da!"), Alex will put both of her hands up in the air. Also, Alex is in love with our -- or should I say her -- Christmas tree. That was the first thing she wanted to see when I got her up this morning -- "Tree! Tree!" So we had to go plug in the lights and see it. Come to think of it, when we went to the mall last night, she wanted to see every tree in the mall. The ones in the mall itself, the ones in Williams-Sonoma, the ones in Needless-Markup, I mean, Neiman-Marcus. "Tree! Tree!"

She's also become very fond of saying "Uh-oh!" (sometimes even when nothing's wrong), and just "Ohhhhh!" On "Ohhhhh!", inflection is everything. Sometimes it's a wonderous, breathless "Ohhhhh!" (as in "My Christmas tree is so pretty!"), and sometimes it's a variant on "Uh-oh!" (as in "I just dropped my fork on the floor.") When she does the latter, imagine Paulie Walnuts from "The Sopranos" saying "Oh!" in his best New Jersey wise-guy voice (e.g., Tony: "Your mother wears combat boots." Paulie: "Ohhhh!"). That's pretty much what Alex is doing.

Sometimes, though, she'll say "Ohhhh!" or "Uh-oh!" before the event in question. Like "Uh-oh!", followed by Alex dropping her fork on the floor from her highchair. That is funny only about the first seven hundred times.

When Alex is having -- or about to have -- a bit of a fit, Jane has taken to sitting Alex in her lap, facing Jane, so that they can have a "chat." Another word Alex has learned: "Chat." When she threatened a bit of a scene last night at dinner at the Lebanese Taverna (Bug likes the hummus and loves the puffy pita bread), I picked her up from her chair and said, "Let's go have a chat." "Chat?" she said. We took a brief walk outside the restaurant, returned after a minute, and all was better.

"Bug," you ask? Jane has taken to calling Alex "Little Bug" pretty regularly these days. And it fits. She's at the 55th percentile for height (30-3/4 inches) but still only the fifth percentile (with an arrow pointing downward) for weight at 18.8 pounds. As my Dad says, "Long and lean."

Jane reports that the night before Alex's last pediatrician appointment (at which these vital statistics were gathered), Jane laid awake counting the number of words that Alex knows so that she could discuss Alex's verbal development with the doctor. Jane stopped at 100, and that wasn't counting animal noises or the letters of the alphabet. The form that the pediatrician gave Jane at the end of the appointment had these benchmarks for Alex's development:

On that "initiative play" thing, one of the areas where Alex takes a lot of initiative is with books. She'll go out to her playroom and select a book -- this is not random -- and bring it to Dad or Mom to read to her. Recently, she's been especially fond of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" (she asks for it by name -- "Bough Bear") and a couple of Sandra Boynton books ("Moo, Baa, La La La" and "But Not The Hippopotamus"). To my great, heartwarming delight, she also loves -- and asks for -- "Goodnight Moon," which I recall being read to me when I was a wee lad.

Oh, and on that same pediatrician form, next to last -- almost as an "oh, by the way" -- is this bullet:

Really. You don't say.

-- Greg

Friday, November 24, 2007

And a belated Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Tonight, we write from Wichita, Kansas (19 degrees Farenheit this morning . . . brrrrr). Alex is now sound asleep, after a VERY busy day of family.

I tried to sneak upstairs at 5 a.m. to do some final work on the book while everyone else was still asleep. I turned on the coffee in Nana and Papa's kitchen, moved my laptop to the kitchen table, put some sweetener and creamer into my mug, and . . . . "Aah aah aah aah" came wafting up from Alex's room in the basement. So I went downstairs to find my bride holding Alex. Jane asked, "Are you up? Then why don't you take her so I can sleep another hour."

What could I say? (Men, there was only one proper answer to that question.) So Alex and I snuggled in the family room with a baba, which she was not interested in having. Snuggling with Daddy, on the other hand, she was very interested in. Eventually, the sounds of a cute infant made their way into Nana and Papa's room, and they got up and came out to join us. Jane got her hour extra and then some. Completely deserved.

Papa then wanted to take Alex to morning tennis, so the two of them, and Jane, went over to the Racquet Club so that John (Papa) could show her off. Reports are that she enjoyed the tennis, Papa shooting baskets in the gym -- especially when he missed, which was greeted with "Ohhhhhhhh!" every time.

After a lunch break back at Nana and Papa's house, some heavy playing, and a couple of naps, we headed out to the annual Turkey Bowl -- a bowling contest among all the cousins, aunts, uncles, and so on from the extended Hutchinson clan. Yours truly won out with a 136 or something like that, nosing out Papa and fending off a surprising late-frames surge from Aunt Janet (who was bowling with the bumpers, but who also started out with a fairly ignominious zero in the first frame). Alex was at times fascinated, at other times overwhelmed, by all of the noise and the goings-on.

After bowling, we retreated to Nana and Papa's for pizza. Alex now knows how to say "Pizza! Pizza!" (even though our pizza tonight was from Pizza Hut -- founded here in Wichita -- and not Little Caesar's, whatever became of them. We shared dinner with Uncle Joe, Aunt Jaime, and cousins Sam, Noah, and Jill, as well as Aunt Katie and Nana and Papa.

In fact, Alex knows a lot of words. She's pretty solid at all of her letters on sight now, and she can say things like "More!" (usually "Mo-mo-mo-mo-mo!" while bringing her hands together in the sign language for "more"), and a recent addition for when she is done with a meal is "Excuuuuuuuse me!" (That sounds more like "Eeeeeeeeeeee me!" while she shakes her head violently from side to side. Steve Martin would be proud.

Alex also now knows that Santa Claus says "Ho ho." Just ask her. She'll tell you.

And -- oh, my God -- this girl has been eating like they're going to be discontinuing eating next week! Her Thanksgiving was pretty much four full meals -- breakfast of a scrambled egg yolk, Cheerios, and Mandarin oranges. Lunch was pork loin (which she had virtually inhaled the previous night at dinner), green beans, bread, a few tortilla chips, and a cookie. Two hours later, Thanksgiving dinner (at Aunt Anne's and Uncle Keith's house) was turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, creamed corn, more green beans (these cooked by Aunt Jaime with bacon and brown sugar), cranberry relish, and pretty much anything else she could get her hands on, including handfuls of whipped cream that were atop Uncle Keith's excellent homemade cheesecakes. I predicted that after hours of chasing and being chased by her cousins, Alex would fall asleep in the car on the way back to Nana and Papa's and go right to bed without another meal. I was half wrong. Yes, she fell asleep on the way back, but on our return, she had more dinner -- turkey, peas, and something else. She was stuffing it in with both hands, pausing only occasionally to announce, "Yummy!" (Sometimes "Yummy-yum-yum!")

Yet she's below the fifth percentile in weight. Go figure.

-- Greg

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Okay, it is true that I have been "neglectful" (as one correspondent has put it) in adding any news to the Alex Blog. It was a lot easier to do when Alex was not mobile. Now that she's on the move, we're on the move. And she is already honing that radar for when Mom or Dad is doing something contemplative -- say, Dad sitting at his desk at home, trying to type out a blog entry. Her toddler brain must see that I'm not being active enough, and that I need something to do, like read her a book.

(As if on cue, Alex just walked into my office and handed me her copy of "Hello Bee, Hello Me!" I can reproduce the entire text of this book here:

Hello Bee

Hello Me!

Hello Frog

Hello Dog

Hello Bee

Hello Me!

Hello Bat

Hello Cat

Hello Snail

Hello Whale

Hello Bee

Hello Me!

Good Bye!

Each line is the text for a single page, and each page has a picture of the animal in question -- except that the "Hello Me!" pages have mirrors on them, so that Alex can see herself on those pages.)

"Hello Bee, Hello Me" is, of course, a baby book. And Alex is no baby. No, she is way beyond that. Based on last night's multiple readings of "A is for Annabelle," it appears that Alex now knows about 22 letters of the alphabet on sight. She also knows the numbers one through nine on sight, although Jane reports that she still has some difficulties with "seven." Having put her to bed the last couple of nights, I can report that Alex is demanding the reading of alphabet and counting books (sometimes multiple times) at bedtime.

Despite my justifiable paternal pride in her learning, sometimes Alex is even smarter than I give her credit for. The weekend before last, Alex and I went to the supermarket. The store has parking both above ground and underground; we parked in the underground structure. As we pulled into the parking space, Alex said something that to me sounded distinctly like "Duuuuude!" I of course answered her in kind: "Dude!" Then, as I got her out of her car seat, she pointed to the concrete pillar next to where we had parked the car, pointed up to it, and repeated "Duuuude!" Well, it wasn't "Duuuude" that she was saying at all. It was "Twoooooooo." Because what Alex was pointing at was a "2" stenciled on the pillar to indicate which row of parking we were in. Suffice it to say that I did not forget where we had parked the car when we exited the supermarket.

As Jane reported, Alex loved trick-or-treating, being up and around the neighborhood way past dark, and all that. She especially liked being able to reach into the candy bowls at our neighbors' homes, pull out a piece of candy, and put it into her trick-or-treat bucket (which Dad carried, of course). For a couple of our neighbors, Alex even did all of her tricks -- informing them what a ghost says ("Boooo!"), what a witch says ("Eee eee eee!"), and what a veritable menagerie of animals say. Alex can even distinguish between chicken ("Bwaack!"), rooster ("Cock-a-doo!"), and turkey (a throaty "Gobble gobble!").

I'm now working with Alex on "What does Santa Claus say?" in the spirit of the season. Unfortunately, I have to report, St. Nick no longer says "Ho ho ho!" He says "Ssssssssss." Much like a snake. In fact, exactly like a snake. (Consider the "s" sounds at the beginning and end of "Santa Claus" and you begin to understand why Santa is hissing this year.)

In case you haven't noticed, Jane has put up Hallowe'en photos here.

Finally, just so you know, I'm not going to be one of those "competitive Dads" who constantly says "My child is so much smarter than yours."

I'm only going to think that.

-- Greg

Thursday, October 18, 2007 -- Special Hallowe'en Costume Preview Edition

Well, we had an almost-one-week-long visit from Nana and Papa that ended on Tuesday. We celebrated Papa's 67th birthday with dinner on the Alexandria waterfront, and Alex was in Heaven with all the attention she got with Nana and Papa doting on her. Saturday night, Jane and I even got to do dinner (steak, of course, if you know Jane) and a movie ("Michael Clayton" -- the two of us gave it four thumbs up) thanks to Nana and Papa's Free Babysitting Service.

Alex is just running around everywhere and being a generally cheerful child. She's learning more letters (between the letters on her bedroom wall and my Red Sox jersey, she's really getting "X" down). And, thanks in particular to Nana, who was singing songs to Alex all the time during their visit, Alex is now requesting songs using hand signals ("Chicken Dance" by moving her hands like a duck's bill quacking, etc.).

Speaking of "duck," I promised you a Hallowe'en costume preview. Yes, she's going to be a duck.

Compare that (especially and Alex's demeanor) to last year's Hallowe'en costume, the peapod:

And here are a couple of others from Nana and Papa's visit. Here's Alex at dinner:

And the whole gang at the Chart House, celebrating Papa's birthday:

-- Greg

Monday, October 8, 2007

Well, the reasons there haven't been too many updates recently are familiar ones: work, travel, and publications.

Work? You know the story. Travel? Dad's been to Boston, Indiana, Dallas, and Indiana again in the past week and a half, and I'm headed to New York on Friday (but just for the day -- Nana and Papa will be here for several days starting Wednesday). And publications? The aforementioned book took a big chunk of September, and was about all the writing I had time to do.

Last weekend, amidst all of my travel, Jane and Alex went to Dallas to see friends and so that Jane and I could attend the Cattle Baron's Ball at the Southfork Ranch. It was during that trip to Dallas, in our hotel room, that Alex decided she could take more than a few steps at a time -- and she was running all around the room all weekend. Here are a couple of short videos Jane took of the Wee One in motion:

We can really see Alex developing these days. She can recognize the capital letter 'A,' and when she sees it, she'll point and say "aaaaaaay." She's a freak about flags -- whenever she sees one, she points and says "flag" (sometimes the 'L' is silent). She knows what sounds a doggie makes ("uff"), an owl makes ("hoo"), a ghost makes ("boo," or sometimes "ooo"), a witch makes ("eee eee eee"), and she can growl on command like a bear or a lion ("rrrrrr"). At breakfast yesterday, in which quiche was a featured (and favored) dish, Alex learned to say "keeess" to request a bite. Yesterday, I was working with her to say "ecks" so that she could say the second syllable of her name -- "AL-ecks." She got it a few times. Just now, Jane was working with her to get her to say "please." Again, Alex quickly got it.

Speaking of "keeess," Alex also has learned to kiss us. Say "Can I have a kiss?" and you're likely to get measured up for the best way for Alex to approach your mouth, followed quickly by either a pursed-lip peck or an open-mouthed slobber-kiss. Not sure when one gets chosen over the other.

Alex is also very fond of singing. Jane has several songs that she sings with hand motions, and Alex can request a particular song by making the matching hand motions. "In a Cabin in the Woods" and "The Chicken Dance" are two favorites these days, although Jane has Bowdlerized the lyrics to each for Alex's consumption. In the first, "Help me! Help me! Help me!/Before the hunter shoots me dead," which the little rabbit yells as he's knocking at the cabin door, has been changed to "Help me! Help me! Help me!/Before the rain falls on my head." So Alex will grow up thinking rabbits are afraid of the rain. Likewise, the "Chicken Dance" lyrics -- "I don't wanna be a chicken/I don't wanna be a duck/I just wanna shake my butt!" -- have been changed to "I don't wanna be a chicken/I don't wanna be a duck/I just wanna do my dance."

The lyrics to "Ring Around The Rosie" have likewise been sanitized for Alex's protection.

-- Greg

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Hi everybody! Long time no post. I'm 14 months old today, and I decided that I can walk now.

Once I can take more than three steps at a time without grabbing for Mom or Dad, I am OUTTA HERE!

-- Alex

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Today is the day that Holly, Michael, and Daniel -- "Holly and Michael" nevermore, but "Daniel's parents" evermore -- arrive home.

(Pulled that one right off of their website. Go visit it to see more, including Peggy!)

For me, it's been a week of long days, and it's not promising to get any better anytime soon, so I haven't had much time with Wee One. But Jane had a few good stories for me when I got home last night, so I'll try to do them justice.

Apparently, the day before yesterday, Jane and Alex were out shopping, and Alex saw a balloon, and she wanted it. Jane did not buy it for her, and Alex was very sad. But yesterday, they were out, and it turned out that a balloon was on their shopping list. As Jane described it, they walked through the store, with a big smiley-face balloon tied to their shopping cart, and Alex was "Little Miss Personality," looking at the other shoppers with a very mature, sophisticated, matter-of-fact look on her face, as if to say, "Yes, yes. I do have a balloon. Yes, indeed, that is what it is." Of course, she blew the cover of her sophistication when she would occasionally shriek and point, and say "Balloon!" (My guess is that it sounded more like "Buhhhhhh!" -- but I'm just reporting the news as it was reported to me.)

Another story: You've read about Alex's wide, varied, and quite sophisticated diet. Usually, Alex has what we have for dinner. But because I was working so late last night, Jane didn't make dinner in nearly enough time for Alex to eat before her bedtime (which is around 7 p.m. these days). So, for the first time in her life, Alex had chicken nuggets -- the frozen, bagged kind that you "heat and eat." I'm going to get in trouble for writing this, because this is as much a story about my Bride as it is about Alex, but here is how Jane described Alex's first chicken nugget:

"She took a bite, wrinkled up her face, and looked at me as if to say 'What the [universal adjective] is this?'"

That's our girl.

-- Greg

Sunday, September 9, 2007

You want to see how amazing my bride is? Take a look at the recently updated photo page and admire her handiwork. You'll also see a lot of new photos (and a lot of old, but new-to-you photos, too) of the Little Bug.

Also, this just in from Peggy:

Greg & Jane,

I am going to meet Daniel tomorrow afternoon. I spoke with Sharon (his trans
parent) today and enjoyed hearing about him. It sounds as if he has adjusted
very well and is sleeping almost thru the night. Yeah!! She says he is a good
looking fellow. Will update you after my visit.

Kisses to Alex and hugs to you.

Peggy

-- Greg

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Now I have baby tendinitis.

If I twist my right forearm and wrist in the wrong direction, it feels like it's on fire underneath the skin. And I know exactly why this is. It came from carrying Alex to and from the beach last week in my right arm. It was only about five blocks each way, but that was enough.

Anyway.

A report on yet another nickname that Jane has bestowed on Wee One. "Little Bug." It seems to have morphed from one of her old standbys, "Love Bug."

Last night we took lasagna and salad to Holly and Michael's house and shared dinner with them. Contrary to Holly's claim, Alex did not make the lasagna; Wegman's did. And while Holly's recap is pretty much accurate, she left out the part about Alex pulling a full tumbler of ice water off of the dinner table and (mostly) onto Jane's pants. And it sounds like Michael had quite the ordeal last night in trying to get the car-seat base installed into his sporty little car. In the interest of full disclosure, I hate installing those things. In fact, one can go back through this blog and find the story from last September of me trying to install the car-seat base in my sporty little car. Here's that recap, from last September 17, so that Michael doesn't feel as bad:

I'm striving not to be "helpless Dad," but there was an added challenge involved here. This was the first time I had put the car seat in my car. Now, if you don't know this, I drive a convertible. And convertibles are notorious for having small back seats. That was Challenge One. Challenge Two was the fact that the car seat base mounts in an entirely different way than in Jane's Ford Explorer -- in her car, all you do is strap the seat belt really tightly through the base. In my car, there are these metal loops hidden behind the back-seat upholstery on which the clamps on the car seat base fasten.

The operative word here is "hidden." Hidden, that is, if you don't read the instruction manual to your car. Which I didn't. I am, after all, a man. We don't read instruction manuals, and we don't ask for directions. It's in the Man Code. (Not, of course, that I've ever actually read it. I'm a man.) So I was trying to figure out how these weird seat belts in the back seat of my car could possibly hold the car seat down. (Turns out they can't.) Meanwhile, my almost-two-month-old charge is sitting in her car seat on the floor of the garage, while sweat rolls down my face on this close-to-90-degree day, and after a few minutes of my fussing over this car seat, Alex herself began fussing. So I (finally) grabbed the instruction manual to my car from the glove box, and whisked Alex back inside to the air conditioning while I grabbed a paper towel to sop my brow. Eventually I cracked the manual, and found out that there are these secret metal loops. After I sussed that out, installation was a relative breeze.

The only other mistake I made was trying to buckle her into the car seat after I had already snapped it into the back of my car, instead of before. That was a pain.

Speaking of last September and this blog, I went back through the blog and found that exactly a year and a day before we took lasagna and salad to Holly and Michael's, Holly and Michael brought lasagna and salad to our house for their first visit with Baby Alex.

And, speaking of "Alex." Here's today's "Doonesbury" comic strip:

Perhaps when Alex returns to her full first name, she'll figure out something to do with her doofus last name. "Khas-T'Anneas"?

Nah.

-- Greg

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Another day at the beach, and a lot less reticence to go near the water on Alex's part.

It's another beautiful day here on the Delaware coast, but much windier than the last two days. And as a result, the waves were crashing much more loudly and vigorously than before. But this did not get in the way of Alex's increasing curiosity about the water and the waves. We walked down to the water several times, and Alex held on a little tighter as we got closer -- but there was no crying, no screaming (like the last couple of days).

Since word is out on Holly and Michael's own blog, they've chosen the name Daniel Lewis Fudge for their little boy. Michael is such the Baltimore Ravens fan that I know that "Lewis" is either for Ray or Jamal; I just don't know which one.

And, here's a picture of the boy:

September 12 is the day.

Now for a few videos of Alex in our basement, playing with her new "walker" toy (she makes lawnmower noises when she pushes it) and with her new system of tents and tunnels.

-- Greg

Friday, August 31, 2007

Today's Episode: Boo-Boo Goes to the Beach.

Actually, we got here (Dewey Beach, Delaware) last evening, and we walked down to the ocean with Alex before the sun went down. We are the guests of our friend, and Jane's occasional swing-dancing partner, Larry MacDonald, in a great condo overlooking Rehoboth Bay, and just two or three blocks from the Atlantic Ocean.

Alex was fine at bayside (the waters are pretty still, and the most excitement comes from the occasional seagull cry), but the ocean was another story. The closer you get to the ocean, of course, the louder the crash of the waves. And that was not well-received by Alex at all. Even worse were the few times the tide came in and splashed Daddy and Mommy on the legs -- our feet disappearing under the water seemed to upset her most of all.

Today we started with some time by the bay (it's only about 20 feet from Larry's door), which was okay. Just okay. Then a nap for Miss Alex, and we were off to the real beach -- the one at the Atlantic. Alex's reaction? Not a lot different from yesterday's. As long as we were on our beach blanket, under the umbrellas, eating Multi-Grain Cheerios, things were good. But sand? That's messy. No thanks, Dad. The ocean? That's loud and scary. But still, we had a good two hours out by the ocean today, and perhaps the most reportable thing from that experience is that Boo-Boo was doing a lot of standing on her own. No walking yet, but standing. Indeed, it was very important that she have a toy in one of her hands in order to stand successfully.

This was Alex's first time at a beach. Come to think of it, it is Jane's and my first time at any beach since our honeymoon in December 2000. (Jane had come without me to Larry's place here in Delaware last summer, while I was in trial -- pre-Alex.) We'll give it another shot tomorrow and see how it goes.

Now, a note about eating, Alex style: Dinner tonight was at The Big Fish Grill, which Larry reports is one of the better places in town. We went at 4:30 p.m., which (also, per Larry) is about the only time to go that doesn't involve waiting in a long line. And he was right on both scores -- it was a very good dinner, and, by the time we left, at not quite 6 p.m., there were lines of people seated inside and out on benches, waiting for tables.

But I digress. The point is that Alex is not just a macaroni-and-cheese and chicken-fingers sort of gal. Her dinner tonight included tomatoes with bleu cheese dressing, jalapeno lobster bisque, and grilled salmon. She ate the soup off of my spoon, and she could not eat the salmon -- with her fingers -- fast enough for her liking. (Jane and I didn't start eating salmon until we were in our 30s.) She also drank water from Dad's glass -- in fact, that has been a regular thing recently, wanting to drink from Dad's glass or cup. While I've honored Jane's looking-at-me-over-the-tops-of-her-glasses request not to give her coffee, I'll try her out on just about anything else. Recently, Alex has been enjoying Wegmans Sicilian Lemon and Blood Orange Frizzante sodas. Especially the lemonade. It's tart, it's sweet, and the carbonation bubbles tickle her nose.

I asked Jane recently if there was anything Alex has refused to eat. She said "no," even though there are certain things she likes a lot, and some things more than others. This has been a goal of ours since long before Alex came along -- to raise a child who will try different things and have a wide and varied diet. (Oh, and eventually to have a child who eats the same things we do each night at dinner. Jane is already trotting out her mother's line: "I'm not a short-order cook!")

So far, so good.

-- Greg

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Hot damn! It's about time! Holly and Michael have been matched at Gladney!

They just learned today that they will be having a little boy. Well, not so little a boy; he was 8 pounds, 10 ounces at birth -- born two weeks ago -- and they'll be picking him up on September 12.

Jane is on the phone with Peggy now; Holly and Michael's boy (name not disclosed yet) is in transitional care, like Alex was with Peggy, but the new boy is with another transitional care provider, not Peggy -- who has another child right now. (Peggy reports that his provider is almost as good as Peggy is.)

And Jane learned about it when Holly showed up at our door this afternoon for the RESOLVE planning meeting and said, "We've been matched." Jane immediately called me on my cell phone and left a message, shrieking, with Holly shrieking in the background. At the time, I was in downtown DC, on my way to pick Alex up from daycare -- a rare event for her -- but necessary so that I could work and so that Jane could prepare for the meeting.

Interesting fact: Last year's RESOLVE planning meeting was on July 19. The day Alex was born. Make of that what you will.

Yay!

-- Greg

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Alex likes books.

This should not come as a complete surprise, Alex being the child of two serious nerds. But it's really gratifying. Yesterday, while Mom slept and did other human things, Alex and I sat in her playroom and read books.

This is the way reading books works. I sit on the floor, with my legs crossed in what we used to call "Indian-style" when I was in grade school in the pre-p.c. years (what do they call it now?). Alex selects a book from her shelf across the room and brings it to me. She then climbs into my lap, and shuffles her butt backwards into me. We read the book. When I say "The End," and shut the book, Alex gets up and we repeat the process. Saturday, we read about twenty-five books that way before Mercedes, Alex's favorite (and really only) regular babysitter came over so that Jane and I could go see a movie ("Death at a Funeral" -- two thumbs way up), have dinner just the two of us, and stop by an end-of-summer party hosted by Barb and Chris Collura (Barb and Jane serve RESOLVE together in leadership positions).

Today, Sunday, we read about another fifteen books in between my reading sections of the Washington Post, all before Jane got up. This is part of a larger goal we have of trying to let Mom have some sleeping-in time and some alone time on the weekends. Saturday is usually Daddy-Daughter day, and yesterday was no exception. Jane had to travel to Maryland to have lunch with a new RESOLVE volunteer, so Alex and I -- on what may have been the single ugliest day in the Washington area this summer (99 degrees and sauna-like humidity) -- trekked to Tysons Corner Center for a jaunt and lunch. We got a cup of coffee at Starbucks (having to wait behind a woman who was arguing with the barista about whether what she had made was a capuccino or a latte -- and she was one of those people who didn't just want to get what she thought she had ordered; she wanted to be right -- so we had to wait until she was sufficiently victorious before I could get my coffee), picked up a kitchen tool at Williams-Sonoma (a "spider"), and had lunch at Gordon Biersch, where Alex had almost a full jar of turkey and rice, as well as several french fries.

I mentioned Mercedes and called her Alex's "really only" babysitter. I should have said "until recently." On Mondays now, a young woman named Magda comes over and takes care of Alex for the day. This gives Jane the complete freedom to schedule doctor's appointments, do RESOLVE work, do homeowners' association work (did I mention, as though she is not busy enough, that she is the co-president of our homeowners' association?). I just have one job.

Well, that's not entirely true. I'm a lawyer -- that's what it says on my tax forms. I am, also, The Dad -- and while that's not completely a full-time job like being The Mommy -- it's clearly a second job. And I'm sort of turning into an author. Back in February I mentioned the ambitious article I was authoring with three of my colleagues (the final product was published three or so months ago and is available here -- prepare for sleep if you click!). Now I'm smack in the middle of writing a West Nutshell on Appellate Practice and Procedure (with my former colleague, and now Dean of the Lewis & Clark School of Law, Bob Klonoff).

What is it they say? I'll sleep when I'm dead.

-- Greg

Friday, August 17, 2007

Lest you think it's all giggles and grins, this raising a child, my very short conversation with Jane last night (I am on the road, recruiting at Indiana) should say it all:

"I'm too tired to take a shower to get the peas and vegetables out of my hair."

-- Greg

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Quick news flash: The Firscheins (read their adoption blog here) are coming home from China today -- they left as two and are returning as three.

Welcome home, Jennifer Rose Yu Hua Firschein! And congratulations, Rachel and Joseph! Jane and Alex are planning to meet them arriving at Dulles later this morning; for my part, I'm off on a recruiting mission!

-- Greg

Saturday, August 11, 2007

And this just in from Peggy:

Greg,

Suppose you have been busy since returning from Colorado. I miss the
updates on Miss Alex. It appeared that she definitely enjoyed her
cake. Two things I have noticed in your comments during the past
year: Jane ironed on Aug.3,2006 and baked on July 19,2007. Both
seemed to be events that were notable. My best to you and Jane.

Hugs and Kisses for Alex.

Fondly, Peggy

Jane wishes to protest, and says that she has ironed since then.

Still . . . .

-- Greg

Did I tell you that Alex likes clocks? In fact, she's obsessed with them.

This thing started when we were in Colorado. Much like her obsession with the owl painting in the Shenandoah cabin, Alex became fixated on a little plastic clock on the wall of the Estes Park house. I would hold her up to it, point, and say, "Clock?" And pretty soon, she was saying "Cok! Cok!"

(I could have spelled that differently, in a way that is more phonetically accurate, but it'd be unattractive for you to think of my daughter going around the house saying such things.)

Now she's obsessed with our grandfather clock. Especially when it strikes and chimes out the hour (or 15-minute interval), she'll crawl over to it and either stand up against it to watch, or just kneel at the base and give it a hug.

Today, though, she stood up, and promptly bonked her head against the wood. This made her sad. A lot has made her sad today, as she's getting another new tooth, and she has a runny nose and is drooling a lot. She's also got a bit of a fever, so Jane has taken her upstairs (at 1 p.m.) with a baba, and is rocking her, hoping to induce a longer afternoon nap.

For my part, I'm just happy to be home. I was in Dallas Wednesday and Thursday for a series of meetings, and was scheduled to be home Thursday night around 8:30. The operative word there is "scheduled." Here's what actually happened.

1. US Airways #3388 was scheduled to depart DFW at 4:25 p.m. CST on Thursday, August 9, and scheduled to arrive in Washington at 8:26 p.m.

2. We loaded the plane, went out to the tarmac, and waited. There was a weather-related ground stop in DC (owing to some severe weather on the East Coast), but this was a strategic call on the part of the pilot, because he wanted us to be in line for takeoff when the ground stop lifted in another 15-30 minutes.

3. The ground stop extended to two hours, so he returned to the gate and unloaded us.

4. A second effort to take off resulted in a trip back out to the runway, and a trip back to the gate.

5. US Airways flight #3388 was cancelled.

6. We unlucky souls were rebooked on American Airlines. Specifically, flight #1710. Scheduled to depart DFW at 8:10 p.m. and to arrive at Dulles at 11:59 p.m.

(I know at this point you're asking what this has to do with Alex. Besides the fact that I AM THE DAD, there is a tie-in later.)

7. The departure of flight #1710 was pushed from 8:10 p.m. to 10:00, then to 11:00, then to 11:45, then to 2:15 a.m. At 1:50 p.m., I went to the gate attendant and asked if we were really going to leave. He said, "Yes. The crew just got here. We're waiting for them to make their way to the gate."

8. At 2:14 a.m., another gate attendant got on the public-address system and announced that the crew had called in "exhausted," and the flight would now not take off until noon on Friday. I waited in a line for over half an hour to get a hotel and meal voucher from the American Airlines gate attendants, but the line did not move. After a half an hour, they announced that they were having problems finding a hotel that could accommodate us. Since I had a meeting (which I would now be doing by telephone) at 9:30 a.m. EST on Friday (ironically, this client had traveled to DC from the West Coast to have an in-person meeting), and it was now almost 4:00 a.m. Eastern time, I realized that if I was going to get any sleep at all, I was going to have to take hotel arrangements into my own hands. So instead of waiting for a meal voucher and a BUS to take the doomed souls of flight #1710 to some Motel 6 in Louisiana, I went up to the Skylink train and took it from terminal A (also known as the Island of Doomed Travelers) over to terminal D, where there is, connected to the terminals, a Grand Hyatt hotel. If you have been reading this for awhile, you might recall that this is the same Grand Hyatt where Jane, Greg, and baby Alexandra (we had not yet settled on "Alex" as her nickname) spent their first night as a family on August 3 of last year. The irony is that I got more sleep in the Grand Hyatt last year. (This is the promised tie-in.)

9. I wind up my client call, grab a quick shower, check out, and head for the security line with an hour before my flight leaves. The line drags, and drags, and drags. Why? Because I am apparently behind a bunch of people who have never gone on one of the "big metal birds" (as they probably call airplanes back in their aboriginal huts of mud and straw), and don't understand that you can't walk through the "beeping thingy" wearing a big metal belt buckle, and you can't have ten big bottles of perfume in your carry-on luggage. The guy in front of me can't clear the "beeping thingy" without making it beep (he also balked at having to remove his cowboy hat to go through said beeping thingy), so he gets put in the corral for personal screening, and that screening is to be done by a very, very, very big man. I think I saw this scene once in a prison movie. It ends badly. But I digress. As reward for my bad attitude (which I kept in my brain and didn't share with the public or with my friends at TSA), I got to join the new inmate in the corral. Turns out that, because of my transfer from one airline to another, my ticket had a "SSSS" printed at the bottom -- meaning "selected for supplemental screening." (It's four "S"s because it's actually short for "selected for supplemental screening -- sh*t!") Fortunately, Big Fella didn't want to dance with my date, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, so I only had my two bags unloaded, swabbed, screened, sensed, probed, prodded, and reloaded, and all by a TSA woman who wanted to make conversation ("So, do you like this Dell laptop? I just ordered one for myself. They're awfully expensive, and our employee discount program really doesn't offer much of a discount." And so on.) Now, you can't get short-tempered with a TSA employee, because they'll just set their speed from "slow" to "mosey" if you do, and if you're really bad, they'll call Big Fella over for more supplemental screening, so I just nodded and smiled (actually, I was gritting my teeth and looking down at my watch about every 15 seconds, but I tried to make it look like smiling and nodding). Eventually, I was on my way, and, thanks to the Skylink train, I walked on the plane about five minutes before they closed the door.

10. Never mind that I hadn't been given enough time to stop at Starbucks or to grab a sandwich for lunch. I had an aisle seat (praise be to the deity of your choice), and was seated (with a free seat between us) with Anna, a very friendly 30-year-old United flight attendant (yes, United -- on an American flight) who had been one of the doomed souls of flight #1710, and who was returning home after having helped a friend and her husband move from Lubbock (where her friend had just gotten her Ph.D. at Texas Tech) to Dallas (where the friend's husband was pursuing the Ph.D. at SMU). I learned that Anna had a masters' in teaching and taught inner-city youth in Boston after graduating from Georgia College & State University ("a Tiffany education at Target prices") before becoming a flight attendant. She was stationed in Boston on 9/11/01 but was fortunate not to have been on one of those flights. Now with this level of detail about Anna, you may think that I -- who generally shares his wife's disdain for chatty passengers -- had been cursed by my seat assignment. But Anna was actually very pleasant and solicitous of the possibility that she might be bothering or interrupting me. It would have taken a lot to irritate me at this point -- sure, I was sleep-deprived, and sure, I was wearing yesterday's clothes (which had already spent twelve sweaty hours in an airport yesterday). Still, nothing could ruin my good mood at this point -- I was finally going home, and would be at Dulles by about 3:45 p.m. Jane and Alex were going to pick me up, and we were going to go for an early dinner.

11. Operative words: "were going." As in "those 'were going' to be our plans, but something else happened." The reference to "the doomed souls of flight #1710" was meant to be foreshadowing. About an hour and a half into flight #1710, the pilot (the same cautious woman who had called her crew in "exhausted" at 2:14 a.m.) announced that the fans and blowers on the plane were not working right, and so we were going to have to make a diverted landing. First it was going to be Memphis; then it turned out to be Nashville. The hope was that the landing at Nashville, where American has mechanics, would allow for a quick fix, and back off we would go to Dulles. At this point, Lord Vader might have found my lack of faith disturbing, but it should have surprised no one. I called US Airways to find out what they had going from Nashville to DC, and found that they had a 4:40 p.m. flight (#4040) which was full, and a 5:45 p.m. flight (#3580) which had about ten seats on it. I had the operator, Mary, hold a seat for me on the 5:45, and then I went back to the line of no longer disgruntled -- just stunned -- passengers, who had just been told that American wasn't able to find but a few seats to Washington for these stranded passengers. When I heard that, and saw the line in front of me, I called US Airways back and bought the seat on the 5:45. Then I went to the gate for the 4:40 and put myself on the standby list.

And you know what? Mirabile dictu, I got one of the last standby seats on the 4:40. Between a short further delay on the tarmac in Nashville, and a taxi ride home from the airport, I finally arrived home last night at 9:30 p.m., Alex long since abed, and Jane barely awake, a mere 30 hours after my journey home had started in Dallas on Thursday.

Still, somewhere in a specially reserved circle of hell, a woman, wearing her America West sweater even though she now works for US Airways, and a nametag that says "Joyce," smiled a black and toothy smile.

-- Greg

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Alex's one-year pediatrician's appointment. All good news, nothing surprising. She's still small (under the 5th percentile for weight -- 17 pounds, six ounces -- and about the 25th percentile for height, at 29 inches), but her growth has been steady, and her head size is just right.

But look at these pictures from one year ago:

Nana and Papa measuring Alex during their first visit last August.

Alex's first jammies. That is a ruler to the left. They measured twelve inches from neck to ankle.

It wasn't necessarily a red-letter day today, but it was sort of a yellow-letter day, because for the first time in one year and one day with Alex, while we were waiting for the pediatrician, I was holding Alex in the examining room, sans diaper, and she peed all over me. All over. Soaked. Dressed for less than an hour, and she inundated the entire right side of my polo shirt. But Jane says urine is sterile, so I just rinsed my shirt (and t-shirt -- but really, they were both p-shirts at that point), and off we went for the rest of our day.

While we were on vacation, ABC News' "Primetime" show did a story on adoption, featuring two birth mothers from the Gladney agency. We haven't seen it yet, but we have ordered a DVD. You can read the web excerpt of the story here.

-- Greg

Friday, August 3, 2007

Another red-letter day: the first anniversary of Alex's "Adoption Day."

Since it was a work day for Daddy, we just celebrated at home with a quiet -- okay, as quiet as it gets these days -- dinner and a cake (this one storebought, since we're back home and Jane isn't forced into baking.

Here are a few pictures from Adoption Day:

Alex has learned "cheers" with her sippy cup, and here the two of us (in matching pink and white polka dots) toast her first year with us.

And here we are after dinner, courtesy of Jane's tripod and remote control for her camera (in her right hand), posing with Alex's cake.

The cake was cheesecake from Wegman's, with sliced peaches on top. But they were a bit unripe and bitter, so Jane carved up a ripe peach from the Farmer's Market, which Alex LOOOOOVES. Here she is eating that peach, by herself ("I am a BIG girl, Daddy -- I'm one, so I'm not a baby any more.").

While I'm at it, some more photos from Colorado:

Here are a couple of Alex and me making our way up a rock. (I was not as adventurous of a rock climber this year, with a baby on my back.)

Here are a couple at a waterfall -- one of all the girls (Megan, Alex, Jane, and Libby), and one of the three of us (thanks for the smile, Alex).

And one of Nana with Alex, Johnny, Libby (partially obscured by Nana's hat), Megan, and Aunt Katie.

Here we are at Alberta Falls -- in the one where Alex decided to smile, after all.

Waiting for the bus to Bear Lake -- after a stop at the Estes Park Starbucks (Alex has the "java jacket" from the cup in her hand, as she points to show me something VERY important in the parking lot.)

I can't hike if I haven't had my coffee. Alex can't hike without a 'baba.'

I love this photo. Alex loves being thrown in the air (almost as much as her Mother hates it), and here she's coming down for a hug.

Here, Alex is geting a bath from Nana in the kitchen sink at the Estes Park house.

Note that Alex is doing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" with her hands. She loves this song, and requests it by putting her fingers together like the spider part of that song. Personally, I think it's a power trip on her part -- by doing that she can get Mom to sing it, Dad to sing it, Nana or Papa (or both) to sing it, pretty much anyone in the family to sing it. But that's not all. She's gotten park rangers, security guards, waiters and waitresses, the mechanics at the Jiffy Lube at Sears, and on and on -- all of them singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider."

Finally, befitting such a "red letter day," I'd encourage you to re-read last August 3rd's entry (you can get it by clicking here and scrolling down almost to the bottom). In looking at those photos, I think Alex is right -- she isn't a baby any more. She's a big girl!

-- Greg

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Happy birthday, Alexandra Rachel Castanias!

We had Alex's birthday party here at about 10:30 a.m. so that Uncle Joe, Aunt Jaime, and cousins Sam, Noah, and Jill could join us, Nana and Papa, and Aunt Kate before the Wichita Hutchinson clan left for Colorado Springs. Jane made a cake and cupcakes (which is, I believe, the first time in our eight-plus years together that she has baked cakes).

Without further ado, here are the pictures:

Here's Alex, awaiting the opening of the birthday presents.

Still waiting . . .

Finally! Here Alex gets a silver cup with Peter Rabbit on it -- and the cup once belonged to Jane when she was a little girl!

Here, Dad and Mom pose with Alex and the tea party set that they ("they") insisted on buying for Alex.

Alex starts playing with the tea set immediately.

And Noah gets in on the tea-party action with Alex.

Dad opens the bug-jar toy that Mom and Dad got for Alex. This thing was basically sewn into the box, apparently as a security measure.

But the most fun of all was this colored ribbon!

Then it was time for the cake. You know how this ends.

Before the carnage.

The carnage begins. Slowly at first, because Alex is not too excited about having sticky hands.

So Mom helps matters with a finger (of hers) of frosting.

And away we go. (How can I tell this is Jane? I don't have French nails.)

"I do believe I'll have some more of this -- what do you call it? -- frosting?"

"If I actually unhinge my jaw, Mom, do you think you can you get MORE frosting in there?"

"I'm ONE! And soon, I'll be crashing from this sugar high."

We're still finding frosting on the bottom of the dining table and chairs.

Now, before I leave here, let me add some pictures from our hike on the 18th.

You can see that Alex is very curious about water. She loves it so that she had her morning snack by the lake. Dining al fresco.

One of my favorites. Stopping for a snack with Daddy.

At the end of our hike, there is a nice little stroll around a lake, and the lake is populated by a number of very friendly ducks. You can see here that Alex was about to go in after them. (Note the little hiking boots -- yes, they are Timberlands -- and guess who bought those for her.)

In case you didn't guess correctly -- and if you've ever seen her shoe collection, you have no excuse for not guessing correctly -- here she is, with Alex in the carrier.

Anyway, the lake is so lovely that we thought we'd get a family Christmas card photo there, with the Rockies in the background. But --

-- this will not be our Christmas card photo. Alex was not cooperating.

Why was she so uncooperative? Becaused she was tired. She crashed in Daddy's arms a few minutes later . . .

. . . as did almost all the kid hikers (L to R: Jill, Noah, Alex).

-- Greg

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Another beautiful day in Colorado, and another hike. Nothing too strenuous; something that a contingent including a six-year-old, a three-year-old, and a 42-year-old Dad with an 11.9+ month old in a Baby Bjorn could do.

Wee One has a vigorous independent streak to her. She may still be under one year old, but she thinks she can do things like walk, drink out of a glass (or a water bottle -- not one with a nipple). Witnesseth:

This was taken during one of our water breaks today. We left her bottle in the car, but she wanted what Dad was having. And she handles it surprisingly well, this whole drinking like a grownup thing. She also seemed very interested in having some of Dad's coffee from Starbucks today. Jane said something like "You give her coffee, she's yours tonight. And from ages 1 to 2."

Jane was understandably interested in making sure our daughter didn't have her first taste of caffeine today. Alex had a tough night sleeping last night, for some unidentifiable reason. And so Jane and I have been sucking wind today, given the minimal amount of sleep we got last night. But that meant that about halfway through our hike, Alex and I held back a few steps, and I sang a few songs to her ("Itsy Bitsy Spider," "The Alphabet Song," "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," and "Eighteen Wheels on a Big Rig." By the time I started doing the verse with Roman numerals, Wee One was out like a light.

Getting tired; rubbing her eyes:

Yawning:

Out:

Still out (with Mom):

After the hike, Jane and I decamped for downtown Estes Park, sans bebe, for some birthday shopping, the oh-so-rare lunch for just the two of us, and some grocery shopping for tomorrow's dinner (we're in charge) and for Alex's Thursday cake.

Last night, just after posting yesterday's entry, I revisited our first posts from last July and early August. It was a lot of fun. In case you're interested, you can find it by clicking here, scrolling to the bottom, and reading upward.

But here's a neat little contrast -- Alex at 15 days, and Alex yesterday, at almost one year:

-- Greg

Monday, July 16, 2007

It's proving darned difficult to buy a birthday cake in Estes Park, Colorado.

How hard? This is how hard: The Estes Park Bakery doesn't bake cakes. Only pies.

Face it: That makes you a pie shop, not a bakery. Change your name.

The only other cake option in Estes Park is the Safeway. They're the only game in town. And they demand a three-day advance order before they'll make you a birthday cake. So it looks like we'll be baking Wee One her first birthday cake ourselves. And that should be fun, even though we'll have to follow the high-altitude baking directions on the side of the Betty Crocker box.

Yesterday we took Alex on her first Colorado hike, a relatively unstressful "walk" around the Alluvial Fan. Alex was in the backpack carrier on my back. And while she was still getting adjusted to the new time zone, and the new altitude, we did get some smiles out of her -- particularly when I would lean over sideways to give her a better view of the water rolling down the rocks.

Check out the teeth! Three (and a fourth on the way) on top; two on the bottom.

I'm trying to think about what we missed in the several weeks in between posts. There was the Kansas City trip for the joint 40th birthday party. There's been some teething (you see the results up top). There's been a lot of swimming (Alex LOVES the pool), especially because it's been typically nasty Washington, D.C. in June and July. And beyond that, it's been pretty uneventful -- by the standards of having an almost-one-year-old hanging around the house, cruising around using all the furniture.

As we think back to a year ago -- I can't remember if I've written about this before, but if I can't remember, it's worth revisiting -- it's pretty astonishing how we got here from there. Last year, we left for Colorado on Saturday, July 22. And we needed the vacation. Over the two months prior to our trip, we had been actively "in the adoption game," having our profile (our "book") shown to a number of birth parents. None of whom picked us. At one point early last July, our "book" was being considered by what I remember to have been five different sets of birth parents. One by one, each set of birth parents decided not to pick us -- one birth mother decided to parent rather than make an adoption plan; the others just picked other adoptive parents. It happens. But we thought the odds were so good, but on July 19 of last year, we got the final call that the fifth of five sets of birth parents had not picked us. So it was like we were starting over again. And as I recall, July 19 of last year was not a particularly good day.

Or so we thought.

As it turns out, our daughter had been born that day. We just didn't know it yet.

-- Greg

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Greetings from Estes Park, Colorado. Yes, Colorado. Which means that it's been almost a full year with Alex, and almost a full year since "Raising Alexandra" (formerly known as "Colorado Update") got its start on July 31 of last year.

Yesterday, we flew from Washington to Phoenix, and then on to Denver, departing at the ungodly hour of 7:20 a.m. (which meant that Jane and I were up at 4 a.m.). Our air tickets were virtually free, in some sort of Karmic justice, because they were paid for by courtesy vouchers that US Airways sent us in response to my letter complaining about Joyce. You remember Joyce, don't you? She was the hateful woman who made Jane cry last year when we were trying to fly from here to Dallas to pick up Alex at The Gladney Center for Adoption in Ft. Worth. Well, one particularly detailed complaint letter later, and we were the proud holders of two rather generous travel vouchers. I had to smile as I was exchanging them for our Colorado air tickets this year.

So here we are, back in the same house where we first learned that Alex was our daughter. We're here with Jane's folks, Jane's sister Kate, Jane's brother Joe, his wife Jaime, and their kids Sam, Noah, and Jill -- who was three months old last summer when she was here, and who will undoubtedly be teaching Alex how to walk by the time we're out of here.

Not that Alex is going to need a lot of help there. She is using pretty much anything she can to stand up, and using pretty much anything else to cruise around on -- such as our coffee table at home. One morning about a week or two ago, Alex did seven laps walking around the coffee table, sending all of the coasters to the floor, and by the time she was done with the "Alex 500," she was ready for a nap. And nap she did -- for about two and a half hours.

We went to Kansas City a couple of weeks ago (just before the Fourth of July holiday) for a joint 40th birthday party for Jane and all of her college friends. Alex came with us -- of course -- and Nana and Papa came over from Wichita to be Alex's keepers while we went out with all of Jane's friends. We also got some time with John, Pam, Libby, Megan, and Johnny -- at their new house in Kansas City -- where Alex first learned to crawl up stairs. And on that score, oh, brother, are we in trouble now. When we were back home, I turned my back FOR A SECOND, and Alex had crawled from the family room to the back stairway (at least 25 feet) and was already three steps up the stairs. Since she isn't quite as talented at getting DOWN the stairs, this can be somewhat of a concern. We'll be childproofing the house for a much more mobile Alex very soon.

We'll almost certainly have more posts this week and next, as the time out here in Colorado should give us more time to provide updates -- including on a certain special event scheduled for this Thursday. Stay tuned. But for now, we're off to the Alluvial Fan.

-- Greg

Monday, June 18, 2007

Yesterday was my first Father's Day as a father. So happy Father's Day to me!

Alex gave me two ties, and a book called "I Love my Daddy Because . . . ." Jane and Alex took me to brunch, and we all pretty much ate the same thing. Alex loves scrambled eggs and potatoes, fruit, and cinnamon-sugar-dusted biscuits. (In fact, when she had her first taste of cinnamon sugar, she got a look on her face that said to me something like "Dad, what is this? This is good! You've been holding out on me!")

When we got back from brunch, we had a message on the answering machine from our friend Cason, who reported that his wife, Tonia, had given birth to their first child, a son, on Saturday. So Cason and I both celebrated our first Father's Day yesterday. Congratulations to you!

Finally, here are a couple of photos of Alex (one with me -- the same one linked to below) taken by my friend and college classmate Jim Amidon. Check out the hair -- it seems to be coming in auburn!

-- Greg

Saturday, June 16, 2007

We're back. Our web host, Lazy Lizard, suffered an attack of some sort. And castanias.com was down for several weeks. Finally, we're back on line. Thank you for your patience.

So where were we? Let's see . . . over the Memorial Day weekend, we met up with Nana and Papa, who were on a cross-country driving trip. We spent the long weekend (and a few extra days) in Luray, Virginia, hiking the Shenandoah Mountains. Because I had a pressing matter for a client that had popped up just before we left, I was supervising the preparation of a set of Supreme Court briefs from the mountains, where BlackBerry coverage was virtually nonexistent, and wireless internet access meant driving 25 minutes from the cabin into the town to set up at the Luray McDonald's, the only place I could find with wireless access. It had been a long time since I had sat in a McDonald's. A very long time. When I wasn't managing work, we hiked different trails, with Alex in a hiking backpack (usually) on my back. I felt like a horse. She would grab two handfuls of my hair and "drive" me left or right. At one point, I changed her diaper on a big, flat rock.

As for Alex herself, our first night in the cabin was a tough one sleeping for her. So I sat up with her. She was doing a lot of pointing, and eventually I figured out what it was that she was pointing to: On the wall was a piece of rustic art -- a cross-section cut from a tree, with a knothole in it. Painted on the flat part was an owl sitting on a tree branch; inside the knothole was painted a nest with a baby owl in it; and on another tree branch was painted a tiny cardinal. Alex wanted to see the art, and specifically she wanted to point to the owl. By the end of our time at this cabin, Alex could accurately point to the parts of the wall hanging when we asked "Where's the owl?" (or "Hoo-hoo"), "Where's the baby owl?", and "Where's the birdie?" (or "Tweet-tweet"). We think she was so interested in this wall hanging because "Owl Babies" is one of her bedtime books, which one or the other of us reads to her every night.

Clearly, she is a genius.

Next up: Over the weekend of June 1-3, we were back in Indiana for my 20th college reunion, but Alex was the star of the show. Lest you had any doubts, there is proof here and here.

It was great to catch up with so many friends and classmates. Because Wabash reunions are now following the path of so many other schools, and being held in the summer after classes have ended, there were lots of classes having reunions with us -- every five years. My younger fraternity brothers Joe Emmick (1992) and Craig Miller (1997), both of them recent adoptive dads, were there with their sons. Will Emmick, whose story has paralleled Alex's in so many ways, crawled right up to Alex and planted a kiss on her. We had a talk. He is going to be trouble. But he is a cute boy, as you can see here.

Since we are not at all shy about telling Alex's adoption story, one of the other really nice things that happened over the weekend was the opportunity to talk to other couples in various stages of the process. One of my classmates and his wife are thinking about adoption, and so I was able to tell them some things about our experience, about Gladney, and so on. Another of my classmates and his wife will be going to China soon to pick up their first child. (Congratulations, Tom and Jennifer.) We also got to spend some quality time with my classmate Jim Amidon, his wife Chris, and their daughter Samantha (Sammie), all of whom are delightful in their very own special ways. Jim has been employed by our alma mater since a couple of days before we graduated; he is now the College's Director of Public Affairs and Marketing, and the Secretary of the College. There is much to be said about Jim, much of it even nice, but for now I'll tell you that he has not only a true talent with the written word, but an amazing photographic eye. He took the photo of Alex and me that is linked above, as well as another photo of Alex that is my new and current favorite.

I also gave a colloquium on having appeared before the Supreme Court, and about other Wabash graduates who have argued before the highest court in the land. Should you have nothing better to do, you can read about it here or listen to it here.

Last weekend Jane and I left Alex in the capable hands of Mercedes, our regular and stalwart babysitter, to attend (on Saturday night) a fundraiser for RESOLVE. We got the marvelous news that evening that our friends Rachel and Joseph were matched with a baby daughter (yay!) and will be going to China, probably in August, to pick her up. I think it's fair to say that we toasted that happy event all night. How fortunate that the fundraising event was a wine tasting! Sunday we again deployed Mercedes so that Jane and I could go to dinner and a movie; we went with our readers Lauren and Scott Medsker for dinner at the Lebanese Taverna, and then Jane and I went to see "Ocean's 13." (Eh. Just "Eh.")

Tonight we're replicating that experience, with plans for dinner and another movie ("Pirates of the Carribbean: At World's End," probably).

Alex is VERY chatty these days. She's saying a lot of Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma and Da-da-da-da-da, but she's not quite associating them directly with Jane and me. But that's coming really soon.

I'm sure I'm leaving something else out. But in keeping with the holiday that is tomorrow, this week I received my very first Father's Day cards ever.

-- Greg

Monday, May 21, 2007

Where in the world have we been? To the court of appeals, to federal district court, to Dallas and Tyler, Texas, to Wichita, Kansas. And so it goes.

On May 8, I had an argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; really bored people can listen here. On May 9, one of my partners gave the argument in another case I was involved in, and in the same court. And on May 10, I headed to Dallas and then Tyler, Texas to help try Forgent Networks, Inc. v. EchoStar Communications Corp. and DIRECTV Group, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (today's jury verdict: we win, and Forgent's patent was invalidated on all grounds).

One of the unfortunate byproducts of this harried schedule was that we did not get to spend our very first Mother's Day (May 13) together. (Remember, Jane's and my first date was on Mother's Day -- and ironically, it was a 1999 trial in the very same court -- the Eastern District of Texas -- that made it possible for me to be in Dallas, where Jane then lived, for that date.) So we sent Jane and Alex to Wichita, Kansas, so that Jane and Alex could spend Jane's first Mother's Day as a mother with her mother.

I'm very fortunate. A lesser wife might have 'guilted' me about this situation. My wife? She said, "This is what I signed up for. I know what you do for a living -- I used to do it myself." Which made me feel even more guilty. So guilty about missing our first "official" Mother's Day together that I FedExed $50 worth of Mother's Day cards (at a similar price for shipping) to make sure that Mom and Nana had their Mother's Day cards in a timely way.

And Alex picked the time I was away to finally learn how to crawl.

You really should watch this video: You'll laugh; you'll cry' you'll swear it was better than 'Cats.' There are a couple of false starts, but eventually she crawls to Nana while Jane's Dad ("Papa") films the event.

In case you can't quite make out the audio, that's Jane's Mom singing a Hutchinson grandkids' favorite: "Five Little Monkeys." The lyrics to this song are a little disturbing: "Five little monkeys/swinging in a tree/'Ah-ah-ah, you can't catch me'/Along comes Mr. Alligator/Quiet as can be . . . /SNAP!/Four little monkeys/swinging in a tree." And so on, until "No more monkeys/Swinging in a tree." Alternate lyrics, no less disturbing, here.

That won't give a kid nightmares. Noooooooo.

Here's another video from Alex's trip to Wichita. She's playing ball. Already a genius. But the giggles are what are worth the price of admission.

Good day, and may the good news be yours.

-- Greg

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

On Sunday, the three of us went to church. We sat in the upstairs portion of Christ Church, where the choir and the pipe organ are also located.

And Wee One sang along.

As I was holding her, while standing for the hymns, Alex would 'hum' ("mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm") while the choir was singing. Not during the organ music, and not during any of the spoken portions of the service -- just during the singing portions. Her Mom and I tried very hard not to laugh during the service. On occasion, we succeeded.

After church, we strolled down to the waterfront in Alexandria and had lunch at the Chart House, mostly for the views of the Potomac River. Then, we decided to put the top down on the convertible for the drive home. Jane sat in the back seat and took a couple of videos to memorialize the occasion.

Depending on how your browser is configured, you may have to click something to allow an "ActiveX control." Go ahead; the content is safe -- safe for your computer, and safe for viewing. Also, depending on how your system is set up, these videos may both start playing at once. If that happens, just let them both run through (they're each only about 11 seconds long), and then double-click on the image to restart each video.

For the most part, she liked the wind and the new views. Occasionally, she felt overloaded and cried, but all in all, it was a fun "Sunday Drive" for all concerned.

-- Greg

Monday, April 23, 2007

Intrepid reader Suzy Fischer writes (we believe, though we aren't entirely sure) from Germany about the difference between 'christening' and 'baptism', adding a comment about our latest photos:

Another version that we were told was that the baptism is the bit with the water and the christening was the bit with the oil so no matter which term you choose to use, they are both taking place during that ritual. Just a little note after having read about Alex's.

She is stunning by the way! Have you started constructing a very tall tower yet where she can be locked up with very short hair when she is a teenager?

As I wrote back, we are planning to retrofit the basement as a dungeon, once we get the moat finished.

As for the etymology of the words, I've done a little more research (my clients are no doubt pleased to know what I spend my time doing). "The bit with the oil" is sometimes called 'chrismation' because of the perfumed holy oil, myrrh, or chrism (always olive oil), consecrated by a bishop, with which the recipient of the sacrament is anointed, while the priest speaks the words sealing the initiate with the gift of the Holy Spirit. But I haven't yet found any confirmation (get it? confirmation) that the oil bit and the water bit represent the distinction between 'christening' and 'baptism.'

After all, everyone knows oil and water don't mix.

But what may support Suzy's version is this distinction: "Christening" seems to be understood as "naming" (like with a boat), or "claiming," because the ritual involves "sealing" the initiate with the oil (applied in the sign of the cross) with words such as "Alexandra Rachel, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own forever. Amen." (Book of Common Prayer, page 308.) That follows "The Baptism" (page 307), which takes place with the water. So there's the support for the notion that 'baptism' is the bit with the water, and 'christening' the bit with the oil (and the naming, and the marking as Christ's own -- which is apparently why it's called 'Christening').

Enough of that.

Wee One is eating like a champ. In fact, there seems to be virtually nothing in the solid-food department that she won't eat. Recently, she's shown that she loves egg yolk (Jane scrambled one this morning, and Alex ate it all -- with her hands). Yesterday, we went to a late lunch/early dinner, and (as new parents are wont to do), we left the jars of baby food on the kitchen counter. So we were seated at the restaurant (outdoors, on the patio -- it was a beautiful 82-degree spring day yesterday) with a hungry baby and only a bottle (a/k/a 'baba').

Never fear. Mom-Gyver improvised a baby dinner. She ordered a salad featuring some avocado, and two side dishes -- one of cauliflower mash, another of unsweetened applesauce from the kids' menu -- and Alex had a three-course dinner of mashed avocado, creamed cauliflower, and applesauce.

Despite eating like a champ, the Wee One weighed in at Friday's pediatrician visit at 15 pounds (fifth percentile), 26 inches (tenth percentile), and some sort of head circumference putting her in the twenty-fifth percentile. And, in case you haven't counted, Alex is nine months old as of last Thursday. Other than earning her nickname of "Wee One" with these figures, she's in great health, and happy as the happiest of clams.

New pictures are available at the photo page (things have been so hectic here that I learned that Jane had posted new photos Sunday when Anne, my mother-in-law, e-mailed to say how much she liked the new photos). Baptism photos, Easter dress photos, swimming-lesson photos . . . .

Oh, one last thing. I've chronicled the various names Jane has given to Alex over the months. The latest seems to be "Love Bug."

-- Greg

Thursday, April 12, 2007

We had a successful baptism (some call it a "christening") of the Wee One on Saturday. (Spoiler alert: photos at the end of this post.)

(Apparently, the difference between "baptism" and "christening" is that "christening" is not limited to people -- a ship, for example, can be christened.)

The Wee One was the star of the show. After the ceremony, the five babies who were baptized were each picked up by a member of the church's clergy, and paraded around the church. Alex demonstrated one of her tricks, waving to the crowd with her "Queen of England wave." Parishoners and other clergy alike waved back at her.

For the event, we did indeed receive a home invasion. Last Wednesday (April 4), we received my brother, Rich, and two of his three kids, Cleo (8) and Jack (6). Thursday, Jane's parents came. Friday, my Dad arrived around noon, followed by Jane's brother and his family (John, his wife Pam, and their kids Libby (8), Megan (6), and Johnny (a/k/a "Nephew Duck," age 2), and Nelle, Rich's wife. After the baptism on Saturday, we had about 30 grown-ups and 15 children (maximum age 8) at our house. There was lots of good playing and scarcely any crying at all. (The kids also did pretty well, too.)

Sunday, we all (except my Dad -- he bowed out in favor of a restful day back at the ranch) went into D.C. to go to a couple of museums. Rich and his family went to the National Air and Space Museum with everyone, but then they had to head home (they were driving back to Indiana). With John and Pam and Libby and Megan and Johnny and John and Anne, we went on to the National Museum of Natural History to see dinosaurs and a few other things. When the Hutchinson clan got back to our house, they found that Cleo and Jack had left their kids some museum-quality (okay, museum-gift-shop-quality) gifts, with a card that Cleo had plainly authored saying "BFF." I'm presuming that means "best friends forever."

The Kansas City Hutchinsons (John, Pam and kids) left Monday afternoon, but not before another museum trip on Monday. I took the day off to spend with them, and with my Dad, who was also leaving that afternoon. Jane, Alex, and I took Papou to lunch at Central Michel Richard, where you can get the best $16 corned beef sandwich in history. (My Dad properly recalled the Miller High Life beer commercial that ends with the delivery guy extracting all the Miller Beer from the bistro while telling the maitre d' "$11.50 for a hamburger? Y'all must be crazy.") Jane's folks (Nana and Papa) left on Tuesday.

Oh, yes -- this was in today's paper:

Funny stuff.

Alex continues to be a master of sitting up. She is also learning how to arch her back in an effort to get out of our arms, off the changing table, etc. And it's fairly apparent that she's getting new teeth on the upper level.

Here's your photo fix:

In case you're really interested, the white dress in the top photos was Alex's baptismal gown. It was also Jane's baptismal gown in 1967. (The lace hat was also originally Jane's, also from her own baptism.)

And to all of you who have been asking us, "Who's your photographer?", the answer is that Jane took these in the sitting room outside our bedroom. She credits the new camera we got her for Christmas, but I just say, "She's really good."

-- Greg

One additional post today, mostly to make a historical note for Alex.

Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. He was 84. He was from Indianapolis, like I am, and was the first "Indiana author" I really identified with. (Vonnegut's Hardware, which is no longer, was a store of my youth in Indianapolis.)

Just last month, I bought his final book, "A Man Without a Country." It was classic Vonnegut: Laugh-out-loud funny, sad, hopeful, dispirited, and above all illustrated by Vonnegut himself with his lousy drawings. I read the entire thing (it's relatively short, but I was really engaged in it) on a flight from LaGuardia to DC.

(Speaking of his lousy drawings: Did you know that Kurt Vonnegut always signed his name with a "self-portrait"? If you don't offend easily, learn about it here under "Not so vital fact.")

When I was in high school, International Paper put out a series of educational publications. One was Kurt Vonnegut's "How to Write With Style." It had a great influence on me, and I still remember its observation about the standard Indianapolis accent: "I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin." If you're interested, I found it on the Internet, and you can read it here. (International Paper removed the "self-portrait" from Vonnegut's signature.)

The news of his death also made me wonder: Why is it that the writers and observers who can cut through the fog to get to truth and insight are the ones who do it with humor? Twain, Vonnegut, and today comedians like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher. (Given how much Alex laughs these days, I have little doubt she'll grow up to appreciate humor like her Mom and Dad do.)

Here is what you find on Kurt Vonnegut's website this morning. I'm fairly certain he drew it himself.

-- Greg

Monday, April 2, 2007

We survived April Fool's Day with nary a prank. But that's probably because no one in the house had the energy to be Punk'd.

The latest news from the Petri Dish that is our home: Dad's getting better; Alex is getting better; Mom is sick as a dog.

So Sunday, Alex and I got the heck out of this virus incubator and spent the day doing errands. That meant taking Mom's car to get an oil change, an air filter change, and incidentally to get a loose fuel line tightened up. In the course of the rest of the day we got Mom's and Dad's cell phones' software updated at the Verizon Wireless store, ran into Aunt Holly at the mall, filled up Mom's car with gas, got Mom's car washed, went grocery shopping, came home and made Mom some comfort food (meat loaf and mashed potatoes), and generally fleshed out my dossier for Dad/Husband of the Year.

Or at least the weekend. Dad du Jour, anybody?

It was my pleasure. As knocked on my behind as I've felt the last couple of weeks, it was a lot of fun to have a whole day with Alex. And Mom got the added benefit of a quiet day to sleep.

And she has to get better, because the home invasion will be commencing later this week, as family and friends descend upon us to celebrate the baptism of Wee One.

But the U.S. Government has already blessed Alex -- with a Social Security Number. While I can't responsibly disclose it here, let's just say that she got a real 'rock-star' number.

Baseball season is back. And the Nationals lost, 9-2. The President of the United States was "too busy" to throw out the first pitch today. I'll refrain from stating here why I think he really didn't show up (okay, I won't refrain -- it was the concern of his p.r. folks over the scene of him having 40,000 people's boos raining down on him, being played over and over and over on TV, then being circulated by YouTube to everyone with an e-mail address).

I am so getting audited this year, aren't I?

-- Greg

Friday, March 30, 2007

So what's been going on? A whole lot of bronchitis in the Castanias house. (That's why no posts.)

First me, then Wee One. As Jane says, "Daddy's cough sounds like a seal, and Alex sounds like a baby seal."

For me, it's been an exhausting ordeal. I'd fall asleep around 8:30 or 9:00 at night, only to awaken a couple of hours later with a coughing fit. Until I got the cough medication with codeine. Then I slept straight through, ten to twelve hours at a clip.

Alex, who is basically on the same beta-agonist I am (albuterol), except hers is an orange-flavored syrup while mine is an inhaler, has a different reaction to that stuff. For her, it's baby crack. It keeps her awake, and buzzing. Mom, who so far has escaped bronchitis, is the most exhausted of all of us, because she spends all day as the major caretaker of a hyperactive, non-napping baby.

So Wednesday, I came home (relatively) early from work so Jane could go out to dinner and out swing dancing with one of her dance partners (I call them her 'boyfriends'), Larry MacDonald. When I got home around 6 p.m., Alex had just fallen asleep, and I prepared myself for her to wake up shortly so I could commence hand-to-hand combat with a sick, hyperactive baby. Jane kissed me, expressed her gratitude for 'spelling' her, and ran -- RAN -- out the door. Even money that I was going to see her again.

(Kidding.)

But the anticipated hyper-baby battle never came to pass. Non-napping, blitzing Alex slept for almost four hours. And when she woke up, we had a bottle of Pedialyte (to take care of some, um, side effects that have left her dehydrated), we played, and Mom came home around 11:30 to find us sitting up in the big bed, playing with Alex's drum set. Calm, no fuss, low-maintenance evening.

Daddy rules.

Speaking of "Daddy rules," this time as in "rules for Daddy to live (or die) by," Jane bought the "Wheel of Responsibility" for me at Christmas. What, you ask, is the "Wheel of Responsibility"? It's this:

In case you can't read everything on the Wheel, it says:

THE WHEEL

of

RESPONSIBILITY

"Put Parenting in the Hands of Fate"

LET THE WHEEL DECIDE WHO WILL . . .

Change that Dirty Diaper! - Handle the 3 am Feeding!

Read Boring Baby Books! - Beg the In-Laws for Help! . . . and More!

HAVE FUN! STAY UN-DIVORCED!

Funny stuff, brought to you by the folks at Wry Baby. (Their trademarked slogan: "Raise funny people.")

Here's what's not funny. I spun the wheel 100 times. It came up 'Dad' 81 times. I'm not kidding. My wife is evil. I mean that in the best way possible, but she's evil. That's why I love her more and more every day.

Last Sunday, we bought Wee One a new stroller. The Britax Vigour. (I think the extra, pretentious, British 'u' in 'Vigour' added $100 to the price.) Even so, I was pretty astonished that Buy Buy Baby was offering what were called 'stroller systems,' many of which were priced at over $900. That is more than my first car cost. Here is a selection of places you can throw that extra money, if you're interested in a 'stroller system' (if it gets to over $1,000, I think they have to call it a 'stroller solution'): $759.99; $789.88; $799.99; $899.99; $1,089.99 (marked down from $1,204.99); $1,995.00 (a 'pram'); and $2,995.00 (a really nice 'pram'). But here's the most outrageous one: A $995.00 'pram' stroller for a doll. For a doll.

For a friggin' doll.

We clearly have insufficient love for our daughter, as we only ponied up 300-some dollars for the 'Vigour.' And the chances of her ever having a $1,000 doll stroller are about the same as my chances of batting cleanup for the Washington Nationals this year.

Scratch that. The Nationals just called.

-- Greg

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Wee One had her first Indian food last night. She liked it. Really.

We've had a spate of bad luck with our Indian restaurants recently. Our old standby favorite, The Connaught Place, closed because its building was razed in the reconstruction of Old Town Fairfax. Fortunately, the same owners had another place, at Tysons Corner, called InFusion. Unfortunately, it, too, recently closed. (Rumor has it the owner relocated to Hawaii.)

But fortunately, Sam Santosh, the guy at the front of the house at The Connaught Place, has landed at Rangoli. A lovely and comfortable space, about 20 minutes away from our house, and every bit as good as (maybe better than, although that seems heretical to say) The Connaught Place.

So Mom ordered Chicken Malai Khorma, which was cubed chicken in a creamy yogurt sauce flavored with spinach. Alex had some of the sauce and liked it quite a bit. Meanwhile, Sam was quite surprised to see us, and gave Jane a big hug -- we hadn't seen him since September 2005, when The Connaught Place closed.

And that means that he hadn't ever met the third member of our party. He immediately picked Alex up off of my lap, and held her up in his arms. That was fine -- for a minute or so.

While we're on the subject of food, Alex's diet is changing somewhat as we introduce more "solid" food into her diet. Not only is she having the old standbys of what Gerber et al. offer in the "pureed foods" department; she is also getting "Baby Superfoods," or "Super Baby Food." A brief explanation is in order: Some years ago, Jane picked up the book "Superfoods," which is subtitled "Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life." In case you're interested, the 14 are, in alphabetical order: beans, blueberries, broccoli, oats, oranges, pumpkin, salmon (wild), soy, spinach, tea, tomatoes, turkey, walnuts, and yogurt. We eat a lot off of that list, in our renewed effort to live forever.

There are some things that it's still too early for Alex to have, such as tomatoes and salmon. But she's been having yogurt, spinach, blueberries, oats, etc. -- and there's a block of tofu in the fridge with her name on it. (Oh, boy!)

Other developments (especially since it's been a while since I wrote anything here): Alex sits up about all the time now -- only occasionally does she fall over. She's quite talkative -- though still no words yet. More hair (you can barely see her strawberry patch now), and with all the whining she is doing with her lips closed, we think there are more teeth a'coming.

On a cross-country flight last week, I read Calvin Trillin's "Family Man." (Amazon.com tells me I bought this in December, so that tells you where I am on my reading list.) He's written at least 21 books, and I've probably read half of them. Some are about food, others are novels, still others are ruminations or collections of essays on one subject or another. "Family Man" is described by the back of the book as "ruminations on family." To be more specific, his ruminations are on being a father and a husband (the Trillin book I read just prior, "About Alice," is the very definition of "poignant" -- his wife Alice, the love of his life, died on September 11, 2001, but not in the attacks that day, and it took him almost five years before he could write about her again in "About Alice").

Anyway, to give you an idea about why I like Trillin so much -- besides the fact that he occupied the "raconteur" chair on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show on a regular basis, and besides the fact that he writes about food -- here are the first few sentences of "Family Man":

Handing out advice on family matters is not my game. When I'm asked by new parents for tips on child rearing -- this happens regularly to anyone whose children have managed to grow up without doing any jail time -- I've usually said, "Try to get one that doesn't spit up. Otherwise, you're on your own."

I'm happy to report that we have followed Trillin's advice, as about the only time Alex is prone to spit up is when she's crying uncontrollably. (Now that gets our attention.)

Finally, apropos of absolutely nothing, please enjoy Heywood Banks' performance of his classic, "Toast."

-- Greg

Monday, March 5, 2007

Good day. Fun day. Any day that starts with a telephone call from the Supreme Court telling you you've won your case, 9-0, is a good day.

I had a suspicion this decision was coming today, and I had grand plans to go into the city early this morning so I could go over to the Supreme Court and hear the reading of the opinion in case it did come down. (They have retained this quaint tradition of reading distilled versions of their opinions from the bench.) But Alex was being awfully cute this morning, and so I stayed home too late and played with her instead. I don't regret that, and I never will.

But enough about that. Here's what I want to write about tonight: One of the things we've chronicled here is the evolution of Alex's nicknames.

For example, "Boo-Boo."

"Doodle."

"Wee One."

"Princess."

Now we have a few new ones, all courtesy of my bride.

"Little Alex Picklebutt." (No relation to Petunia Pickle Bottom.) And this is reserved for those times when, as Jane announces to Alex in a high-pitched voice, we have a "Soggy bottom!"

"Honeybunny." (Or is that "Hunnybunny"? And is that one word or two?)

And occasionally, "Funny Bunny."

We are also on a new schedule, which is necessitating a bit of an alteration in my work schedule, and I occasionally screw that up by getting home later than I should (or, as with tonight, getting stuck in ugly D.C.-area traffic). Dinner by 7:30, in bed by 8:30. Usually this means Alex in bed by 8:30, but sometimes that's "Alex in bed by 8:30; Mom and Dad in bed by 8:35." It is causing certain positive benefits here at home, like a more normalized sleep and nap schedule for Alex, but as a guy who needs 5-6 hours of sleep a night (at most), this also can have the less-positive side effect of waking up at 4 a.m. (or earlier), having gotten my full night's sleep. And so it was last night. Thank god for TiVo and old black-and-white game shows.

Hello, too, to Malinda and Harold Medsker, Scott's parents, who added their pin to the map while I wasn't looking. One of these days we'll meet you in person! We were supposed to be their guests after Lauren and Scott's wedding in Charlotte, but Lauren and Scott had the terrible judgment to schedule that wedding for the Saturday after we picked Alex up from Texas. So, as the kids say, we "bailed" on their wedding. But right now, Scott is holding down the Wabash representation in Lincoln, Nebraska, and occasionally reviewing restaurants there. Given my familiar bemusement at the whole "Alpha-Chef" battle between husband and wife that has materialized in the first six months of their marriage, I have an idea for when Lauren and Scott return to DC. We'll have them over for dinner, except that Jane and I will surrender our kitchen to them, and Jane and I will sit at the kitchen table, getting popped on a bottle of good wine, while we watch them navigate our kitchen and marital politics at the same time.

Dinner and a show.

We know whereof we speak. We built this house two and a half years before Alex showed up, but the imperative of moving was not a bigger house. It was a bigger kitchen. With a warming drawer. A pot filler. Insta-hot. Bigger refrigerator and freezer.

A good kitchen, and a little patience, can save marriages where both spouses cook!

-- Greg

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

That's been the story of our lives since the last post. As you know from the February 21 post, we were in Indiana where I was judging the final round of the Sherman Minton Moot Court competition on February 23. But on February 22, it was Daddy's birthday! And we (Jane, Alex, and I) celebrated it back home again in Indiana with my Dad, and my brother's wife (Nelle) and children (Amber, Cleo, and Jack), and an old-fashioned, family-style, chicken dinner.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

What about my brother, you ask? Why, he was in Africa, fighting terrorism.

Seriously.

Yes, Uncle Rich, occasionally known as "Ricardo," "Rico," and "Bargainopoulos" (the latter for his propensity for finding "deals" everywhere he goes -- you know that friend of yours who always "knows a guy who knows a guy who can set you up"? Rich is the guy who knows the guy) was in Algeria as an assistant basketball coach with his good friend Kent Benson, who was named as the head coach of a special USPORT (Unity Through Sports) mission to Algeria. USPORT is funded by the U.S. Department of State, and apparently, Rich, Kent, and the rest of the boys and girls were hanging around with Karen Hughes, who is presently the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

A press release describes USPORT in this way: "USport's mission is to use its resources in ambitious initiatives in public diplomacy, sports diplomacy, cultural exchange, in-country projects, and international cooperation, tolerance, and peace through sport." Translated, this means: If we can get young Muslim men onto the basketball court, they're less likely to become terrorists.

Pretty impressive stuff. We're very proud of him.

Your Alex update: Two teeth on the bottom, still a very good traveler -- even though our stay in Indiana last week was extended by over a day thanks to weather-related cancellations -- cute as ever, and very, very communicative (just check out the new video of her in her bouncy jumper). Since I turned right back around and went on the road about 18 hours after we got back from Indiana (Chicago, then Indiana again), I haven't seen Wee One (or Jane, for that matter) since Monday evening. And I won't be back home until Saturday afternoon. But I talked to Mom and Alex on speakerphone this morning while Alex was having some applesauce, and (obviously) thoroughly enjoying it.

I think we'll stay home for a while.

-- Greg

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Happy Birthday, Nana (Hutchinson)!

And cousin Noah Hutchinson, too!

If you visited castanias.com earlier today, you might have found a page full of advertisements for services like "dating." No, we haven't gone commercial on you. It turns out that my ownership of the domain name castanias.com expired yesterday, but because of a snafu in the computers at register.com, they never notified me and offered me the opportunity to renew. But fortunately, enough of our loyal readers alerted me to the situation, and a five-minute call to Ali at register.com, and an $85.00 charge on my American Express card, and we're back up and running. So thank you, loyal readers.

Here are some updates:

(1) Alex weighed in (in clothes and diaper) last Monday at the pediatrician's at 14 pounds, 10 ounces.

(2) We have our first tooth (lower front, left side).

We write tonight from Indianapolis, where we'll be until the weekend. I'll be judging the final round of the Sherman Minton Moot Court Competition at my alma mater, the Indiana University (Bloomington) School of Law. I was privileged to judge last year, and we have connections with all of my fellow judges this year. (In fact, all of my fellow judges are judges; I'm the only non-judge among the five.) I judged last year with Judge Diane Wood of the Seventh Circuit and Judge Edward Najam of the Indiana Court of Appeals. Judge Jeff Sutton of the Sixth Circuit was my law partner, and we were law clerks together back at the Second Circuit (we were the Big Ten representatives among the Ivies -- Jeff is Ohio State Law '90, while I am Indiana Law '90). And though I haven't yet met Judge Deanell Tacha of the Tenth Circuit, two of our closest friends were her law clerks -- Eric Hiser, my fraternity brother from Wabash ('86 and Duke Law '89), and Martie Ross (Kansas Law '90). Pretty humbling company for this Indiana boy.

So the reason there haven't been more posts since Valentine's Day is pretty simple: travel and influenza. I actually stayed home from work Tuesday, not so much to do work, but mostly to lie on the sofa and groan in discomfort while watching hearings about the disposition of Anna Nicole Smith's body. The way I felt Tuesday morning, I thought they should start the proceedings regarding my corpse.

But, in the immortal words of Villager #3, who had been turned into a newt in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "I got better."

Back to Sunday, because that was my last good pre-flu moment. We went to church at Historic Christ Church, Alexandria. The Rector there, Pierce Klemmt, is a friend of mine from the local Wabash alumni organization. We went to see him, and it turned out that the sermon that day was being preached not by him, but by Tim Kaine, the Governor of Virginia. We briefly saw Pierce's wife Tuke, and we stayed around for coffee and fellowship afterward, and had a chat with a number of the parishoners and with Pierce himself, who got to meet Alexandra for the first time. We told him the story (abridged) of how Alex came to our lives, and when we were done, he smiled with joy and said "Let's have a prayer." And so we bowed our heads while Pierce said a prayer of thanks and blessing for Alexandra and for us.

I'm not ashamed to admit that both Jane and I had tears in our eyes afterward.

Later this week, I got an e-mail from one of my fellow members of the Indiana Law Alumni Board, Nancy Vozar Knapp of the IRS, who said she thought she had seen us at the service (she heads the church's Sudan ministry) but had to run. Yet another welcoming and familiar face.

And since I started with an Indiana Law connection, I will end there for now.

Gong Hay Fat Choy.

And congratulations to our friend Megyn Kelly on her promotion to Anchor of "America's Newsroom." Too bad it's on FOX News.

-- Greg

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

And Happy Valentine's Day!

To celebrate and honor St. Valentine, we have declared a snow day. Well, really, a snow-and-ice day. The office wasn't closed, but it might as well have been.

Last night, after I got back on the train from Delaware, Washington was in the beginning stages of a snow-and-ice storm. My original plan was to take a taxi home, but the cab line at Washington's Union Station was so long, my car was parked only a block away, and the streets didn't seem too bad. So I drove home instead. And the drive wasn't too bad, even though the roads got progressively worse as I got farther west, out of the city and nearer to home.

I made two tactical mistakes, only one of which I regret.

One was owing to the realization that today is Valentine's Day, and while I had gotten Jane her gift (the cat is now out of the bag -- it was an iPod and a car adapter), I had not gotten her any cards. So I stopped by the CVS drugstore near home to raid their Hallmark section (including a card that plays Barry White's "You're The First, The Last, My Everything"), and headed back on the roads for the 1.7 miles remaining in my drive home. I didn't regret that stop, even though it was probably a mistake in hindsight, because the roads had gotten progressively worse with ice the ten minutes I was inside the CVS.

The tactical mistake I do regret was stopping at the foot of our driveway to get the day's mail, which Jane had informed me she hadn't gotten. That was a mistake because I stopped the forward motion of my rear-wheel-drive car, and because we live on a hill. To put it bluntly, it took me over 20 minutes to navigate up our driveway, because there was already a layer of ice underneath the snow on the ground (on which more ice was falling). I really didn't want to leave my car along the side of our street with half an inch to an inch of ice predicted overnight, and with the inevitable snow plow coming the next morning. Eventually I was able to get enough traction to get up to the crest of our driveway and roll the rest of the way into our garage -- and not down into our front yard.

Global warming, my eye. Tom Toles, in tomorrow's Washington Post:

But this isn't "traffic and weather together on the eights." This is "Raising Alexandra." And you come here for two reasons: pictures (new ones here) and stories about Alex. So here are a couple.

Story Number One: "The Jumper." Recently, we've acquired and installed a "jumper" that hangs in doorways. Alex loves this. She will jump up and down in this thing until she passes out from exhaustion (and since we put it up, she's been sleeping eight to ten hours (or more) straight through the night -- wonder if there's any cause-and-effect there). As I was cooking Valentine's Day dinner, I had her in the jumper, and even if I wasn't looking at her, I could hear the "squeaky-squeaky-squeaky" of the jumper's internal spring, as Alex bounced up and down. Then the "squeaky-squeaky-squeaky" stopped. Turns out that Wee One had face-planted herself into the front of the jumper seat, and was sound asleep, dangling from the doorway. I called Jane down from her office to see this, and like the loving parents that we are, we took photos. I'm sure they'll appear here soon.

Story Number Two: "The Ferberizer." Noooooooo, not the Ferberizer! I mentioned "Ferberizing" in my February 8 post (scroll down), but got a few e-mails asking what it was. It's a method of getting a young child into healthy sleep patterns, and is called "Ferberizing" because it originated in Dr. Richard Ferber's book, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. Originally published in 1985, a chart on page 78 of that book was quite controversial, because it laid out a seven-day timetable for how long to leave a baby alone when he or she is crying at night, before "going in to visit your child briefly" to comfort him or her. By day seven, according to the chart, the baby is crying for as long as 45 minutes before being reassured. Dr. Ferber is Director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Boston's Children's Hospital. According to Dr. Ferber, the method was only controversial because it was misunderstood. So we've "Ferberized" Alex the last couple of nights, and though it was painful (for us) at first, she's now learning to put herself back to sleep. This makes us very happy. Of course, she started out as a great sleeper, but once she outgrew the Miracle Blanket, we had some hiccups. Now we're back to "straight through the night" sleeping.

Thank goodness.

-- Greg

Sunday, February 11, 2007

It's late on Sunday night, Boo-Boo is abed, as is her Mom. As usual, I'm the last one awake. So, while Desperate Housewives plays on TiVo in the background, I'm just recapping the weekend in my mind.

Saturday was definitely a daddy-daughter day. We took Mom out to lunch, and then dropped her back home so she could catch up on some things, baby-free. Alex and I then decamped for Tysons Corner Center, where we spent the afternoon doing some Valentine's Day shopping. We dropped some cash on Mom's Valentine's Day gift (neither Alex nor I are telling), and then hung out in some upholstered chairs in the middle of the mall so we could have a bottle and a Starbucks. As we sat there, I was fairly astonished just how many people came up to us to "chat." I'm not actually a "people person -- I like the people I like, and the rest can go to h*ll -- so this is a particularly difficult phenomenon for me. (Seriously, though, I was painfully shy as a kid, and I've overcome it -- such as I have -- only by a lot of work. It's harder with strangers.) We get a lot of the basic questions -- What's her (or his) name? How old is she? -- and a lot of unsolicited advice, the most frequent of which seems to be "Enjoy her -- it goes by so fast!"

One woman engaged me in a lengthy conversation about Alex. So lengthy, in fact, that her husband and children had tried to get her to come into the restaurant where they had been seated, yet she went on for what seemed like ten more minutes. When I mentioned that Alex was adopted, she wanted information, because her brother or sister or someone in her family has been considering adoption. And while my general shyness around strangers would ordinarily leave me to smile and nod, I was more than happy to preach the gospel of adoption in general, and of Gladney in particular. (I do not get a commission or finder's fee from Gladney.) So she got an earful.

Maybe I should start wearing a t-shirt or a button that says "Ask me about my daughter -- at your own risk."

We also stopped by a furniture store to check out their going-out-of-business sale, and I bought another desk (a floor model, at a deep discount price) for my home office (I need a second flat surface for all the crap that piles up in there), and every one of the salespeople just doted on Wee One while we were in the store.

Oh, and the Princess has a new trick. She waves at people. Here's the best part, befitting her title of 'Princess': It's not one of those goofy up-and-down, "fan your hand" waves -- no, it's the pivoting side-to-side Queen of England wave. "Hellooooooooooooooo!"

-- Greg

Thursday, February 8, 2007

What a strange and hectic last couple of days it has been.

I've been under the gun lately, trying to get an initial draft of a law-review article out to the American University Law Review. Finally, that has been accomplished -- and it's 172 pages (in typeset form), with 1303 footnotes. I was up Wednesday night until 6 a.m. Thursday morning working on the article, and spent all but three hours or so today at home working on it as well. Deadlines will do that to you.

Plus, I have had some real quality time with Alex over these past two days -- what hasn't been writing has been Daddy-ing. Last night, Jane had a RESOLVE dinner here at the house, so I had Alex duty; today she had more RESOLVE duties at lunchtime, so I took Alex into the office and she came to my section lunch. (She was quiet and all but perfectly behaved, impressing her old friends and making a few new ones.)

It's now 2 a.m. (which means it's actually early Friday morning, but I'm posting under Thursday -- sue me). The draft finally went to the editors at about 1:20 a.m. this morning. And since I'm completely loopy at this point, and wired on adrenaline and caffeine, I'm not quite ready for bed. So here I sit, in the family room, drinking the last of my cup of coffee and watching a car wreck of a TV show, "The Insider" with that coke-sniffing, obscene-phone-call making celebrity "journalist" Pat O'Brien. Why do I have this on? There is no good explanation. It's certainly not to get news about today's untimely death of 39-year-old "Anna Nicole Smith," whose real name was Vicki Lynn Marshall (nee Hogan), though there's plenty of that.

(His co-host, Lara Spencer, whose only redeeming quality appears to be her single stint as a judge on Iron Chef America, specifically Flay v. Burke, has just said to O'Brien, "Pat, I know you were the last reporter to talk to Anna Nicole alive . . . ." One gets the sense he may be headed to Florida to try to be the first to talk to her dead. And O'Brien signed off his show with "Rest in peace, Anna Nicole." Gag.)

Ms. "Smith" will be remembered by Civil Procedure dorks like me not for her role in popular culture, but for her role in a U.S. Supreme Court case that brought a little clarity to the so-called "domestic relations" and "probate" exceptions to federal jurisdiction.

Enough of pop culture. After I sent off the article this evening, I finally got around to checking out the blog that our friend Scott Medsker has started, called "The Portly Chef." Despite the fact that I've known Scott for years, I hadn't fully appreciated the depth of his interest in cooking and food until now. I was particularly interested in his recent experiment with lamb neck, suggesting (a) that Scott is an adventurous eater; (b) that Lauren is similarly adventurous (or perhaps just particularly eager to please Scott in their first year of marriage); and (c) that any long braising recipe, and perhaps a Crock Pot, would work well for lamb neck recipes. In fact, from the way Scott describes lamb neck, it sounds as though any recipe for lamb shanks, osso bucco, beef short ribs, etc. (all favorite braising subjects of mine, especially in the winter) could be translated into a lamb neck recipe. For now, though, I'll stick with shanks.

Since we're on the subject of food, and Iron Chef, I know that one of my regular readers rolled her eyes at the thought that I might prefer Iron Chef America to the original Japanese (Fuji Network) Iron Chef. I have an appreciation for both shows. Chairman Kaga from the original Japanese show has it all over his alleged "nephew," but Alton Brown is a huge improvement over the "sideline reporter," Ota Shinichiro, on the Japanese version -- Brown knows his kitchen techniques, his kitchen tools, and he is in possession of a great, and sometimes silly, sense of humor.

Now I'm going to bed. It's 2:45 a.m., and there hasn't been a peep from Alex. I guess it was Jane's mere mention of the possibility of Ferberizing her that did the trick.

-- Greg

Monday, February 5, 2007

There is an expression, "Red-Letter Day," which our friends at Wikipedia define thusly:

A red letter day (sometimes hyphenated as red-letter day) is any day of special significance.

The term originates from Medieval church calendars. Illuminated manuscripts often marked initial capitals and highlighted words in red ink, known as rubrics. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed the saint's days, feasts and other holy days, which came to be printed on church calendars in red. The term came into wider usage with the appearance in 1549 of the first Book of Common Prayer in which the calendar showed special holy days in red ink.

Many current calendars have special dates and holidays such as Sundays, Christmas Day and Midsummer Day rendered in red colour instead of black.

On red letter days, judges of the English High Court (Queen's Bench Division) wear, at sittings of the Court of Law, their scarlet robes (See court dress). Also in the United Kingdom, other civil dates have been added to the original religious dates. These include anniversaries of the Monarch's birthday, official birthday, accession and coronation.

The term "red letter day" is colloquially used to indicate any date of personal significance.

And that is why today's date is in red. For today, the law has made official what we all have known since last July: Alexandra Rachel Castanias is our daughter.

We write from the Renaissance Worthington Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas. At about 9:00 this morning (Central Time), we appeared before the Honorable Randy Catterton in Tarrant County District Court, whereupon (under oath) we answered several questions from our lawyer, Michael J. Moore, regarding ourselves, and our intent to adopt Alex. And then he signed the "Final Adoption Decree," which, in operative part, states:

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED, ADJUDGED, and DECREED that the petition for adoption be and the same hereby is granted; that the written report of the Investigator be filed with the records of this proceeding; that the rights of all other persons, if any they have, to the care, control and custody of said child be, and the same are, hereby forever and finally terminated; that said child shall henceforth be known as ALEXANDRA RACHEL CASTANIAS and is hereby declared adopted by said Petitioners in accordance with the laws of the State of Texas; that therefore, and henceforth, and for all intents and purposes whatsoever, the said child is and is hereby declared to be, in the same relationship to the Petitioners as if born to them by natural birth, and remaining in said relationship as if the child were their own; and said Petitioners are hereby charged with the duties and responsibilities for the care, support, and maintenance of said child in the same manner, to the same extent, and in the same relationship as if the child were their own by natural birth, all as provided for by and in accordance with the laws of the State of Texas.

There's a neat little turn of phrase there in the middle. It says that Alex "is and is hereby declared to be, in the same relationship to the Petitioners as if born to them by natural birth." The neat part can be found in the first two words: "is and . . . ." The reason I find it to be of special significance is that the Decree pronounces that Alex both "is" and "is hereby declared to be" the same "as if born by natural birth." The Decree could have simply said that the Court "declared" her to be no different than if she had been born to us, which would have been all that was necessary to give the necessary legal effect to the Adoption Decree. But it went a step further, and declared her, in fact, to be the same as though naturally born to us. "[I]s [factually] and is hereby declared to be [legally]" our daughter.

After Judge Catterton signed the Decree, he came down from the bench and posed for some pictures with us. The bailiff gave Alex a little bear, and afterward, we decamped (with our special guest, Peggy, who came to the hearing with us) for a celebratory brunch back at the Worthington.

We're off to check out from the Worthington now, and heading for Dallas for the rest of today and tomorrow.

-- Greg, Jane, and Alex Castanias

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Colts 29, Bears 17! Can you believe that the Vince Lombardi Trophy will reside in my place of birth this year?

-- Greg

Saturday, February 3, 2007

edfrtbn rrvghbjnrrgvvr uimm hy567h.,

That was Alex typing. She's very interested in the computer.

This afternoon is Daddy-daughter day, as Mom is working on her computer, which (she claims) has been running poorly and explains why there haven't been any pictures posted recently. So now I'm administering a bottle and holding Wee One in my left arm, while I type with my right hand.

First topic: A disclaimer. We are not "those people" who let their children sleep in their bed all the time.

Second topic: Catching up on "The Princess's Progress." A WAaA Az

(There she goes again, this time with her feet.)

I mentioned three or four weeks ago that we had started Alex on solid foods. What I didn't mention is that she insists on feeding herself. We put the rice cereal (or sweet potatoes, or peas) into a bowl, and we get a small spoonful into her plastic baby spoon. (She likes the red ladybug spoon.) At that point, she insists on taking the spoon herself, by the handle, and putting the food into her mouth herself. She's actually quite good at this, and obviously a genius.

This is part of a broader theme of "reaching and grabbing" that has defined the last four weeks or so for us. If, for example, we are sitting at the table having a meal, with one of us (let's just say me) holding her on our lap, she'll make a lighning-quick grab for whatever dish or silverware is within reach. At lunch the other day, I was surprised at her reach, as she almost ended up with a full Caesar salad all over herself.

Reading the newspaper with her is also a lot of fun. Not only does she love the sound of the crinkling of the paper; she also likes to grab it and put whatever corner she can into her mouth. The end result of this is a soggy paper for Dad, and oftentimes a newsprint-smeared face and hands for Baby. She also likes paper coasters (those cardboard doohickeys you get sometimes in restaurants) -- she'll chew those until they're soft and pliable enough to bite off a big-enough hunk to get caught in her windpipe.

And wait until you see the set of kitchen knives we store in her crib. And the Bag O' Broken Glass.

There is Nothing Like a Dame. And these days, around here, there is nothing like a Mom. If anything is troubling Alex, being picked up and hugged by Mom -- not Dad, just Mom -- seems to be the only cure. Jane is loving this.

Except at 3 a.m.

I'll let Alex have the last word today: /., njnmmmmg yym,p x

-- Greg (with Alex)

Thursday, February 1, 2007

You probably thought I was dead or something.

No, it's just been one of those "life gets in the way" fortnights -- several out-of-town trips, a sinus infection that just about knocked Daddy on his [Eeyore!], and a baby girl, going through teething, who has not been all that interested in sleeping in her own bed. On that last point, the only thing that has worked to pacify her has been for her to sleep in our bed, between Mommy and Daddy. I'm willing to indulge her here and there -- I mean, after all, I am Schmucky the Clown, so it's a matter of public record that I'll do anything to make her happy or keep her happy -- but my heavens to Betsy, this girl can crowd a bed.

Take last night, for example. On the occasions when Alex is allowed access to the parental bed, I am a studiously light sleeper, lest I turn over in my sleep and pulverize her. On top of that, she seems to maximize the square footage of available bed space reserved for one Alexandra Rachel Castanias. And for a little girl, she takes up a surprising amount of square footage. She manages this by sleeping with her arms straight out to her side, extended as far as they will go, and by splaying her legs enough to take up even more room below her waist level. Consequently, I was evicted from the bed at 3 a.m. by a sleeping baby who had relegated me to sleeping on my side, actually on the edge of the mattress. And when I say "edge," I mean the actual edge -- the line defined by the two intersecting planes of mattress top and mattress side.

Finding the razor's edge no place to get any useful sleep, I arose to face a choice. I could take this blissfully sleeping tot and move her to her room, and her crib. Or I could decamp for the family room, the leather sectional, and the television. I thought long and hard, and ultimately I chose the option that was second best for me, because I am a hell of a father and husband.

You see, Jane hasn't been getting a lot of sleep thanks to Alex -- she usually wakes up in the early morning hours when Alex awakens with teething pain. For my part, I have developed a knack for sleeping through these awakenings, so I end up better-rested than Jane. And last night, Jane was finally getting some sleep. So I thought that if I tried to move Sleeping Beauty and somehow woke her up, there would be two awake parents and a crying baby. The status quo, by contrast, was one awake parent, one sleeping parent, and one sleeping baby.

So off I went to the family room, and a couple of TiVo-ed episodes of "What's My Line?" Those who know me may know that I have a thing for black-and-white TV game shows of the 1950s: "What's My Line?", "I've Got a Secret," "To Tell The Truth," and some lesser known ones like "The Name's The Same" (hosted by Robert Q. Lewis, a man who would probably never be on television today, mostly because he was a sort of dorky-looking fellow). But why am I nostalgic for an era that was before my time? In part, because these shows -- particularly "What's My Line?", which was hosted by newscaster John Charles Daly (he later became Chief Justice Earl Warren's son-in-law) and featured panelists like the witty Bennett Cerf (the co-founder and publisher of Random House), the elegant and sometimes risque (by 1950s standards) Arlene Francis, and the columnist and investigative reporter Dorothy Kilgallen (it's rumored that she was "offed" by nefarious forces when she was going to crack the real story of the JFK assassination). Watching an episode is like being thrown into an era of wit, style (the panelists wore dinner jackets and bow ties or evening gowns, as appropriate for their gender), and repartee -- it's like a cocktail party with some of the most interesting people you could imagine.

If you ever find yourself watching people eat worms on "Fear Factor," just think about the fact that "What's My Line?" used to be "event television" in the United States. It'll be enough to make you cry.

Arlene Francis, who passed away a few years ago from complications of Alzheimer's disease, has a little place in our lives today. She was famous for wearing a heart-shaped diamond necklace that her husband, Martin Gabel, had given her on their anniversary. My mother, who passed away a bit more than three years ago, also had a heart-shaped diamond necklace that my father had given her, because my mother (like so many women of the 1950s and 1960s) had openly admired Arlene Francis's necklace on television. So my wedding gift to Jane was a heart-shaped diamond necklace. She wears it only on "special occasions," which is just fine with me.

Since I haven't written for awhile, I'll add one more thought before signing off. And that thought is on the subject of change. I am not of the view, expressed by one of my friends, that "change is bad. Change is always bad." (Now that's a real conservative. And he is.) And no one has been through more change over the last year than Alex's parents -- your sporadically faithful correspondent and his beautiful bride -- who had their world turned upside down in such a good way when Wee One rolled into our lives in July of last year.

But it feels like there's a lot of change going on with the wonderful people who surround us. One friend is taking a new job and moving from Kansas City to Portland, Oregon. Come to think of it, a second good friend is moving to Portland, Oregon, too -- he from New York City. Another good friend has gone through a divorce over the last year and is herself moving from Washington to New York City. Two other of our friends, a longtime couple, broke up late last year. I got an e-mail today from one (two) of our most faithful readers letting me know that they're relocating from outside Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany. (Make sure to change your pin on the map, kids!) I just went to a farewell party this evening for one of our associates, who is transferring to our Atlanta office. Two of my mentors in the Firm retired this year. Our friends Chris and Colleen moved from this area to Central Ohio. And round and round the wheel of fortune spins.

In almost all of these cases, perhaps even all of them, the changes our friends are experiencing are good ones for them. But golly gee, could we slow down the rate of change in 2007, just a little bit? Not stop, just slow down. I feel a little emotional vertigo with all this movement taking place around me.

Perhaps that's why I like the old black and white game shows. John, Bennett, Arlene, and Dorothy are always there, always witty, always elegant. Never mind that the show's been off the air for 40 years, and all four of them have been dead for quite a while now. But as long as there are video tapes and TiVo, nothing changes.

-- Greg

Friday, January 19, 2007

I'm six months old today!

It seems like I just got here, but it really has been half a year. I'm almost three times as big as I was when I was born, which I get reminded of every morning when Mom changes my diaper -- she's got my first jammies on a hanger displayed over the changing table in my room, and it's hard to believe that any human being could have fit into those tiny things.

There are other changes too. I'm eating solid foods (Dad told you about my first rice cereal, and Wednesday I had my first sweet potatoes, mixed in with some of that rice cereal. Yum! I ate a whole jar of sweet potatoes on Thursday, and then my full belly and I passed out for a nap.

Another thing that's going on is something Mom and Dad call "teething." I haven't seen a tooth yet, but man, oh man, do I ever get mad when my mouth hurts. A dropper full of Tylenol and a cuddle from Mom and Dad, and that usually makes it all better.

Oh, yeah, another change: Mom removed the bassinet from my crib, so I'm just sleeping on the mattress in the crib. Well, sometimes I'm sleeping -- Tuesday, I was not at all interested in sleeping in the crib, so I ended up sleeping sitting on Dad's leg, in my rocking chair, with a blanket over us all night. He was probably pretty grouchy at work the next day.

Also, he snores.

-- Alex

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

It is finally done!

And I'd like to thank everyone for their supportive e-mails and calls -- Peggy, Holly, Rich (my brother) and my Dad especially -- but no one gets more thanks for their support than the two girls in my life. In fact, Jane and Alex were there today to support me. Although Alex was a little too young to attend the argument, she suffered through a couple of hours downtown at an executive day-care center while Jane attended the argument, then Alex joined us all for lunch at Charlie Palmer Steak.

And when I say Alex "suffered," I do mean that she suffered. Word was that when she woke up at this day-care place, and no Mommy or Daddy were to be found, she cried pretty much nonstop for the two hours until Jane picked her up to take her to lunch.

I came home early for a lovely, even decadent, two-hour nap. Then we went to dinner with Jane's folks, who were using the excuse of my argument to pay another visit to Princess A. (Seriously, though -- they've been great support, too.) Now I'm back, sitting in the home office typing with my right hand while holding Alex in my left. And by 8:00, I will be in bed for the night.

Good night.

-- Greg

Sunday, January 7, 2007

Just a quick note to mark a red-letter day for Princess Alexandra: Her first solid food ever.

Today at breakfast, and again at dinner, the Princess sat at her new highchair and had some rice cereal (made with formula) from a spoon while we were having dinner. She seemed to like it, and she had a very happy day (or so it was reported -- I was at the office all day getting ready for Tuesday's argument). At dinner tonight, she seemed to be fussing about it a bit, so I decided to make the ultimate sacrifice: I got a spoon and took a bite of it myself. Yum!

(That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

Let's see the pros on Iron Chef America keep smiles on their face when The Chairman unveils the "secret ingredient": Gerber Rice Cereal.

Allez cuisine!

-- Greg

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Happy New Year!

And Boo-Boo has an ear infection. Her first. She's on antibiotics and Infants' Tylenol (which she likes better than the antibiotic, even though both are pink and sweet), but she occasionally has these fits of crying, as if to say, "Dad (or Mom), what is happening to me?"

As Jane said recently, now she understands where the expression "Poor Baby" comes from.

I thought I had written about this, but in looking back, it appears I only thought about writing it. I have found that there is one, virtually sure-fire way to stop The Princess from crying, and that is to take her outside. Let's use last night as an example. Jane had to attend a meeting and dinner yesterday afternoon and evening, and so Alex stayed for awhile with one of our neighbors (thanks, Reeva!). I came home as soon as I could to pick her up from Reeva's, and we went back to our home. Alex was fine for awhile, through the diaper change and through the first four ounces of her bottle, but then she started crying. Alternatively "sad" and "mad" crying. We sang, we danced, we even thought about putting seltzer in our pants. Nothing.

Then we opened the front door and stood out on the porch.

Stopped.

Alex gazed in wide wonder at the world outside her front door. We quietly listened to the coyotes (yes, we have coyotes here in Northern Virginia) baying at one another, we walked a little bit in the slight mist that was falling on this unseasonably warm (62 degrees) January evening, and then we went back inside.

And the crying started again, almost instantly.

So we went back outside.

Lather, rinse, repeat. About four times, with exactly the same results.

Until Mom got home, anyway. That solved all the problems.

Anyway, the posts have been few the last couple of weeks, as I get ready for an argument on Tuesday, Thanks to Nikki and Peggy for your nice e-mails. Perhaps I can goad (or shame -- I'm not beyond shaming) the webmistress into uploading some new pictures. You know, pictures from the nice new camera that Schmucky the Clown got her for Christmas.

About that argument: Alex got me a card yesterday that has this image on the outside:

And the note inside said this:

Dear Daddy --

I know it is tough balancing me AND a Supreme Court argument, but you are doing a great job.

I love you!

ALEX

Jane later told me that the scribbles on the message came from Alex grabbing the pen while Jane was writing. She's "making her mark" early, I guess.

-- Greg

Saturday, December 30, 2006

You'll recall that my bride nicknamed our daughter "Boo-Boo" and "Doodle" back a few months. And those names have certainly stuck -- Alex's Nana and Papa call her "Boo-Boo," without fail, and our nephew Jack calls her "Doodle."

But Jane has changed course, and given Alex a new nickname that really fits.

"Princess."

And, as befitting a princess, Nana and Papa's longtime friend Arlene came over to Nana and Papa's house last evening to bring her a gift of a pearl bracelet. As Arlene said, "When I met her, she just seemed like a jewelry girl."

Great. Now I have two of them. I'm going to have to get a second job.

You would think that having a Queen as a wife and a Princess as a daughter would make me a King. You would be wrong. I'm not even a Prince Consort. I am Schmucky the Clown, doing pretty much whatever it takes to get my daughter to giggle. Still, it's a pretty rewarding job, even though the shoes are too big.

We think, by the way, that we are on the verge of teething. That's the Royal 'We,' of course. So close, in fact, that we're going to buy some Orajel® at the drugstore before we head back home from the holidays, just in case tooth #1 decides to emerge on the plane.

Speaking of planes, on the plane out here (which some passengers surely called "the Baby Plane," or worse, in view of the number of babies that were on it), we were seated behind a couple with two eight-month-old twins taking their second air flight (it was Alex's thirteenth). The twins' mom and Alex's Mom had a running conversation, which included the twins' mom asking which of us Alex "favored" -- meaning which one of us did she look more like. She was a bit surprised to hear that we had adopted Alex, but then asked us a lot of questions about the process, all of which we were quite happy to answer.

In case you're interested, and of course you are -- otherwise, why are you still reading this thing? -- the most common question we're asked these days is "How long did the adoption process take?" And honestly, the answer to that is complicated, but there are basically three different answers: From the time we went to our first orientation with Gladney (i.e., from the time we decided to adopt), it took nineteen months. From the time we submitted our application, a little over ten months. From the time we were actually approved by the Texas authorities, three and a half months.

On a more basic level, we'd been waiting all our lives.

But back to who she looks like. We're actually getting a lot of comments suggesting that she looks like me. Which I'm flattered by hearing, because Alex is about the only baby who doesn't look like Winston Churchill to me.

(You know the origin of that quote, right? A friend of Churchill's said to him, "Winston! How wonderfully your new grandson resembles you!" And Churchill replied, "All babies look like me. But then, I look like all babies.")

Many, many holiday pictures were taken with Jane's new camera. When we get back home, I'm sure the webmistress will be uploading them.

-- Greg

Saturday, December 23, 2006

An exchange tonight between my eight-year-old niece, Libby, and me, at the conclusion of an early family Christmas gift exchange. I had picked her up to give her a hug and kiss goodbye, so that we were at eye level, and she pointed to the mostly grey hair at my temples.

Libby: "Your hair is white."

Me: "I know it is. That's what happens when you get old."

Libby: "You're not old."

Me: "I really am."

Libby: "No you're not. You can't be old. You're a new Dad."

And you know what? She's right. I've spent most of my life saying I was born middle-aged, but this year, I actually feel young for the first time.

(And Libby's younger brother Johnny came up to me and said "Do duck!" So I did duck. "Quack, quack." I also did a throaty "Ho! Ho! Ho!" (for the season, of course), and Johnny now also points at me and says "Ho Ho!")

-- Greg

Friday, December 22, 2006

An early Christmas -- just the three of us -- before we have a family Christmas with part of our extended family.

Predictably, Alex was uninterested in most of her gifts, with one exception: The Lamaze Flower Chime Garden. She was very happy with that, and tried to eat it.

For me, a Slingbox. Now I can watch TV on the road over my computer. (Great. Just what I need. More distractions from work.) And some other stuff, including a digital photo album so I can carry around digital pictures of Alex and Jane, and some cool new clothes, courtesy of my stylish and stylin' wife.

For Jane, a new Hermes scarf (I consider the cost of that, which I bought in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, to be my gambling losses -- since I don't really gamble). (It's this one, except with a red background instead of blue.) And the gift she really wanted, which is a Sony digital SLR camera.

For us: A new family room coffee table (delivery in 8-12 weeks), and a new coffee maker to replace the current one, which is acting up (and may be consigned either to the basement or to the sitting room outside our bedroom so it can leak on those counters instead of on the kitchen counter).

For Alex: The aforementioned Flower Chime Garden, lots of other toys, some new pants, and a little Sugar-Plum Fairy ballerina doll and a little mouse -- the last two from the gift shop at The Nutcracker last weekend.

Speaking of mice: Don't. I'll be calling the exterminator when we get back home. Grrrrrr.

And this thank-you note from one-year-old Nicholas Christopher Nanna, in the mail today amidst the Christmas cards:

Mr. and Mrs. Castanias,

I just wanted to thank you for all of the great cowboy presents you gave me for my birthday. The giant stuffed horse is my favorite gift from the whole party. I spend a good deal of my free time hugging him and pressing my face against his handsome fur. He is probably my best friend right now and my parents even let him live in the open range they call the "family room," where he can munch on the shag carpeting and has easy access to the liquor cabinet. My folks have taken lots of pictures of me with my horse and will send you one. Seriously . . . I love the horse. Thanks.

Love,

Nicholas

And then this, on the other half of the notecard:

My darling Alex,

I caught your eyes from across the banquet room as you entered the party. You looked simply radiant in your Christmas dress and inescapable shoes. You shone so bright that three wise men followed you into the room. As you can see, I have developed a seasonally appropriate sense of humor at an early age.

As the party raged on, I could feel you stealing glances at me as our fathers and mothers crossed paths. Are they blind to our love? Can they not foresee our destiny? Why must we always be discrete? One of these days, I will tell the world about us. I might even have to hack into your father's blog to do so.

By the way . . . I have written this in invisible ink so your parents won't hunt me down and kill me.

Your love,

Nick

Assuming that these two grow up knowing each other, I can see just how this plays out. "Ewww, gross," they both think, all throughout their teens. And then they get married as adults.

That is, of course, if Will Emmick or one of Alex's several other suitors doesn't get there first.

-- Greg

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

TIME Magazine has named "You" (meaning me, or you, or whoever is reading TIME at the time) as its "Person of the Year."

Why? Because --

Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, . . . I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you.

To be rigorously accurate, TIME doesn't have it quite right. In my case, I have neither the time nor the energy to be doing this. But I do have the passion.

And she shall be called "Alex."

And she who shall be called Alex has changed her sleeping habits recently, to the great misfortune of her mother, and to the great ignorance of her father. To the point, she's been waking up in the middle of the night, for a bottle. And, God bless her, Jane has been getting up to take care of that business while I sleep away in blissful, snoring ignorance.

When I suggested that it might be almost time to start adding some cereal to her last bottle of the day in order to get her to sleep through the night once again, without waking, I was dismissed with a wave and a glance, as though "It's so cute that the Dad thinks he knows anything about child-raising." That was when I learned that "they say" babies have to be 13 pounds before you start them on cereal, and Alex (even though I described her as "13 pounds" a couple of days ago) is only 12 pounds, 11 ounces.

Then, having been dismissed and relegated to my laptop, I found that my wife was pretty much right. Right, right, right.

(That's a little early Christmas gift for her. We have a little joke, Jane and I do: I'll say, "Say those three little words you know I love to hear," and she'll say "You were right." So for her, four "rights.")

Even though I didn't see a single reference to "13 pounds" on any of those websites. I did see "four to six months," "six months," and "double the birthweight" as milestones for when mixing in some cereal is okay. Under any of those except "six months," Alex is ready.

But we will wait for six months and 13 pounds. Why? Because I'm neither the pediatrician nor the Mommy.

I just work here.

-- Greg

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Alex is five months old today. Can you believe it?

And, just for Peggy: TCU 37, Northern Illinois 7 in the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl.

(Seriously: The San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl? The San Diego County Credit Union has 23 locations throughout San Diego and Riverside Counties. That's enough to get you a bowl game?)

-- Greg

Monday, December 18, 2006

My, how December has gotten away from us. However did that happen?

Oh, I don't know. Perhaps it is the year-end press of work, Christmas shopping, Christmas cards, Christmas letters, Christmas parties, making sure Alex has Christmas jammies to wear every day of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Take this past weekend (please!) as an example. Let's not even mention the three sets of legal briefs that rotted in my briefcase, unread and unloved. No, let's start with Saturday, when my Dearly Beloved decided that the three of us should go see The Nutcracker. Because five-month-old babies love ballet.

Actually, we went because certain Mommies want to start "Christmas traditions." I had gently suggested that we might want our "traditions" to start a bit more organically, but I don't think Jane could hear me over the orchestra playing "Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy." We also had lunch at the Old Ebbitt Grill, one of Jane's favorite places from her days when she only visited DC, and then we headed home, where I made vegetable soup and we watched "Raising Arizona," the movie that gave its name to this "blog."

This was the first time that we had watched "Raising Arizona" since we got Alex, and I've got to say -- it was hysterically funny in some places, and a bit too on the nose in others. And it is filled with memorable quotes. Allow me a few:

"Biology and the prejudices of others conspired to keep us childless."

Ed: "You mean you busted out of jail."
Evelle: "No, ma'am. We released ourselves on our own recognizance."
Gale: "What my brother here means to say is that we felt that the institution no longer had anything to offer us."

"And this here's the TV. Two hours a day, either educational or football, so you don't ruin your appreciation of the finer things."

"Edwina's insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase."

"Now you take that diaper off your head and you put it back on your sister!"

Policeman: "Do you have any disgruntled employees?"
Nathan Arizona Sr.: "Hell, they're all disgruntled. I aint running no damn daisy farm. My motto is 'Do it my way or watch your butt!' "
Policeman: "Well, do you think any of them could've done it?"
Nathan Arizona Sr.: "Oh, don't make me laugh. Without my say-so they wouldn't p*ss with their pants on fire."

"Son, you got a panty on your head."

"I don't know . . . they . . . were jammies . . . they had yodas and sh*t on em'."

and my personal favorite:

"I think I got the best one."

We sure did.

So that brings us to the Sunday of Two Parties. The first one -- the one with kids allowed -- was Nicholas Nanna's first birthday party. Back at the Bushwood, I mean Westwood Country Club, where the Gladney picnic was held last September. That allowed us a few moments of reflection with our friends the Nannas about all the changes that have transpired for us over the last year. Why, it was exactly a year ago yesterday that Nicholas was born in Houston, Christy came down with a nasty case of the hives, and Sir Gregory of Nanna was posting his own hysterical web entries about whatever was on his own twisted mind, whether it be his new son, Christmas in a hotel in Texas, or his quest for a proper cheeseburger.

Speaking of which, Greg let on that the other candidate for the location of Nicholas's first birthday party was Fuddrucker's. Home of The World's Greatest Hamburger. Greg is serious about this hamburger thing. VERY serious. I don't think he actually wants anything else for Christmas now that he's learned that Fudd's is building a branch near his house.

But back to the changes since last year. Just over a year ago, Greg and Christy and Greg and Jane were just a couple'a couples in the RESOLVE adoption group. Now, we have a toddler and a pre-toddler, respectively. How can that be only a year ago? We're patiently -- okay, not patiently at all -- waiting for good news for Holly and Michael, the third of the "Gladney Gang," as Jane has christened us all.

And, in the department of changes, Alex is now 13+ pounds and 24+ inches long. Again, about 50th percentile in height, and now she's up to somewhere between the 20th and 25th percentile in weight. Compare then and now:

The one on the left -- Alex at three weeks. On the right -- Alex at almost five months.

-- Greg

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

I wasn't kidding about Jane having 'baby elbow.'

It's a real malady. It also has different names -- 'New Mom Syndrome,' 'Postpartum-related de Quervain Tendonitis' -- and apparently no one tells new moms about this. So now Jane is wearing an elbow brace, which she says helps out.

Anyway, here is a picture of my injured wife holding our cute but stoic daughter (in their party wear) just before the guests started arriving for our Holiday Open House:

And here is one of a completely unsuspecting Alex with Larry the Lobster, who met his delicious end (in service of the Holiday Party) shortly after this photo was taken:

I believe that Larry's last words were "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." Though I confess that, to me, it sounded more like "glub glub glub."

Now here is Alex sitting on the sofa, wondering where all the guests are:

I think that's some sort of gang sign that Alex is making there.

And finally, a picture of Jane and her Mom, all ready for the party:

OK, I lied. This is really the final one for now -- from a couple of days before our holiday party, when we took Nana and Papa out for dinner at Peking Gourmet. Alex is all ready for her teeth to come in, so she can have dumplings and duck. And use chopsticks.

-- Greg

Monday, December 4, 2006

A new record.

On Saturday, we had about 120 people show up at our home for our Annual Holiday Open House (as it says on the invitation), which is -- in reality -- our anniversary party to our friends and ourselves. This year was the sixth annual Holiday Open House, and it fell on our actual anniversary this year -- December 2.

We attribute the record attendance to some combination of --

-- There are four weekends before Christmas this year instead of three, so less chance of a conflict with other holiday events.

-- The invitation list has expanded over the years.

-- The 'buzz' makes this party a hot ticket.

-- For the first time, Alex was there.

What do you think?

So it's been another break between posts. Blame it on travel, blame it on work, blame it on Holiday Open House preparations, but above all, blame it on me. It's certainly not because Alex hasn't been doing anything cute. Because she sure has.

Take this morning as an example. I got up at 5:30 because I had a car coming to pick me up at 7 (I'm writing from the plane to Dallas, 37,000 feet above somewhere or another). At about 5:45, I heard some light crying coming from Alex's room, so I went in to see what was going on. She had wrestled herself free from the Miracle Blanket, and was wide awake. So I picked her up, and she promptly nuzzled her way into a Baby Hug -- she's big enough now that when she puts her arms out, she can give the semblance of a hug. That immediately stopped the crying. So we went downstairs, and I mixed up a bottle in her presence so that she knew I wasn't going to starve her. Then we had a diaper change -- I swear, her favorite place in the world is the changing table in her playroom. Almost every time I put her down onto the surface of that table, she grins, laughs, gets really chatty, and all that. We had some quality Daddy-daughter time there, me making stupid faces and silly sounds, which she just ate up.

Then, I almost went over to the family room sofa with her and her bottle without getting myself a cup of coffee, which would have been a bad idea in about ten minutes, when I would have been trying to figure out why I couldn't wake up. So we detoured to the coffee maker, and despite being in dire need of her own breakfast, I think Alex is beginning to understand that the coffee pot is the Magic Machine that makes Mommy and Daddy very happy.

After three-fourths of the morning bottle and some small burps, I realized that 7:00 was rapidly approaching, and so I had to hand Alex off to my sleeping beauty of a wife. But first, I had to stop by the Magic Machine and get her a bribe -- her own cup of coffee, which I would place by her bedside as I woke her to take care of an early-rising Wee One. Having handed her off, I went into my closet to get my clothes out, and when I came back, Alex busted out in a hysterical laugh. Which meant that I had to play with her and talk with her for ten more minutes (the car can wait, I figured). We laughed, we chatted, and then I had to get ready for my day in pretty much a dead run.

Perhaps now you have a better understanding of what has kept me from posting more frequently.

Because Alex has been in such good health, she hasn't been to the pediatrician recently, which means I can only wager a guess as to her vitals. I'm guessing she's 24 inches long now, and about 13 pounds. She might be more than 13 pounds, though, because Jane is currently suffering from 'Baby Elbow.' It sure sounds like tendonitis, because her forearm is so sore that it hurts her to twist a doorknob. Having watched, on several occasions, my mere slip of a wife carry Alex in her car seat by bending her elbow and looping the handle of the car seat into the crook of her arm, I think I understand how this might have happened.

Back to the Holiday Open House for a moment. Alex made two appearances during the evening, and when she came down for the first one, the house was only about half full -- and most of the crowd was at the back of the house, by the bar. Jane walked down the front steps, carrying Alex (decked out in her green party dress with red polka dots), and I stopped doing whatever I was doing -- hanging coats, probably -- to listen. As she turned the corner to head to the back of the house, I silently counted off in my head: "Five, four, three, two . . . wait for it . . . ," and then I heard a chorus of "Awwwwwwwww!" (mostly in female voices, I might add) as the crowd spotted the real star of the show. Not that my wife isn't still the prettiest girl in the room, but this year, we're both old news thanks to the arrival of Ye Wee One.

Many of our guests told us this was going to be our best Christmas ever. (Duh -- I mean, "Thank you.") But there is some truth to that -- I'm racking my brain trying to think of what to get Jane for Christmas this year, and all I can think of is things to get Alex. Even the ring that we got for Mom for her birthday -- the platinum, diamond, and ruby ring Alex mentioned in her post immediately below -- had a lot of Alex in it. The rubies are Alex's birthstone.

I will be soliciting Christmas-gift ideas for Jane at the e-mail address listed at the top of the page.

-- Greg

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

I'm off to see Papou (and Uncle Rich, and Aunt Nelle, and my cousins Amber, Cleo, and Jack) for Thanksgiving!

And I'm flying First Class for the first time in my little life. It's pretty cool, with the lady coming by to ask if Mom and Dad want something to drink (she doesn't ask me, because she sees I've already got a bottle -- and probably thinks I don't know words yet), and the leather seats, and all that stuff.

Yesterday, Mom turned 480 months (they measure me in months, so why not her?). She doesn't look a day over 475. So Dad and I took her out to dinner at this place called Marcel's. It's a pretty swanky restaurant, and I particularly like that it's named after the owner-chef's son, Marcel -- and that there's a picture of the owner and his baby son in the entryway. (Seriously, though, what kind of name is "Marcel" for a baby? He's seriously getting his diaper kicked in preschool.) But that was the only baby I saw last night. I suspect they don't see a lot of car seats and babies in there, but they liked me. (I'm just sorry Mom and Dad's favorite waiter, Captain Jonathan, wasn't working last night; he did call to wish Mom a happy birthday, though, which is something no waiter has ever done before.) And I liked them too, except for about 10 minutes before Dad got there (he was late, as usual, because his watch is set on Attorney Standard Time), when I was screaming my little head off.

Mom was turning pink as I was screaming, and tried to send a glass of wine over to the couple at the closest table (some sort of bribe, I think, having something to do with my screaming). Dad thought the couple was one of those May-December sorts of things you find in Washington, where many of the young women subscribe to Margaret Trudeau's axiom. But it turned out that the "couple" was actually an older Daddy and his daughter (she appeared to be about 240 months old; he was at least 600), and they were celebrating the Daddy's birthday, too. They came over to meet me, and talked to Mom, but they pretty much snubbed Dad.

("Snubbed" is a funny word. It makes me giggle because of the 'b' sounds. I especially like to giggle when Mom and Dad make breath sounds -- like loud inhaling and exhaling -- or 'b's and 'p's.)

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Mom's birthday dinner. When Dad got there, he had a couple of cards for Mom, and then he reached into his pocket to get the gift we picked out for Mom on Sunday. It was in a little blue box, and it was a platinum, ruby, and diamond ring. I helped pick it out, because when we were shopping, Dad held up several different things that the nice lady got out of the glass case, and this ring was the shiniest one. It sparkled. And I love things that shine and sparkle. Just like Mom does.

Here's a picture of me as Mom and I were getting ready to drive into the city:

When we got home, Mom put me on her and Dad's bed while she got ready for bed, and Dad and I did some singing. Mom changed the words to an old song called "K-K-K-Katy" to fit me, and now she's got Dad singing the same song to me.

A-A-A-Alex

Beautiful Alex

You're the only little girl that I adore

When the m-m-moon shines

Over the cow shed

I'll be waiting by the k-k-k-kitchen door.

I sang along. There was no doubt that I was singing, even though it probably sounded like "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah" to my parents.

So anyway, I've been having some problems getting to sleep this week -- last night, I fell asleep on Mom's chest, but when Dad picked me up and tried to wrap me up in the Miracle Blanket, I woke up and began screaming. Screaming. To the point that I would stop and cough when I had screamed too much. This was the second night in a row that this happened. Dad was muttering something about a "comeuppance" as he walked the top floor of the house with me.

And speaking of comeuppances, Dad and Mom had to get up at 4 a.m. this morning so they could get us packed, get themselves showered, and out the door by 5 a.m. for our 6:55 a.m. flight. So I showed them who's boss -- I woke up at 3 a.m. Mom came and got me, took me back to their bed (my evil plan worked!), and I went back to sleep for a bit. Mom didn't, and she was muttering too; something about Dad snoring so loudly the paint was peeling off the walls.

We're now at Aunt Nelle and Uncle Rich's house in Indiana, and Mom is napping, so I thought I would write while she was asleep. Oh yeah, we got an invitation to Nicholas's birthday party later in December. He'll be one year (I guess they meant to say "twelve months").

I love older men.

-- Alex

And here are a couple of photos from our recent trip to Kansas City.

One of all seven of the Hutchinson grandchildren:

Left to right: Johnny (with crackers), Noah (with football), Libby (with primogeniture), Sam (with his sister Jill), and Megan (with her cousin Alex).

And here's one of Alex wearing Groucho glasses; Papa calls this one "Alexandra T. Firefly":

-- Greg

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Another week between posts, but much to update everyone on.

First things first: Today, Wee One is four months old. How is that possible? She just got here.

And she is as beautiful as ever. I suspect that sometime, perhaps after Thanksgiving, or after the first weekend in December, the webmistress will upload some more photos. But for now, you'll just have to take my word for it.

We finally got back home from our trip on Wednesday night. The return to Washington was something of a travel nightmare; our 4:00 p.m. plane on U.S. Airways got cancelled, so they moved us to an 8:30 flight on American Airlines. That flight didn't leave Dallas until sometime after 10:30, and we finally rolled in home around 3:00 a.m. Thursday morning.

But before that travel challenge, we had an interesting and quick trip to Dallas. We went to attend the Tate Lecture at SMU sponsored by Jones Day, featuring CNN's Anderson Cooper. He was humorous, if a bit glib, and he might have been more substantive. But it was a fun and interesting evening nevertheless.

The highlight, however, was provided by our hotel, the Crescent Court. At check-in, the desk attendant announced, "Mr. Castanias, we have upgraded your room to the Vice-Presidential Suite. I think you'll like it."

We did.

We knew we were in for something special when the bellman delivering our bags opened the doors to the suite and asked us if we wanted the bags in the downstairs bedroom. The Vice-Presidential Suite is about 1500 square feet, on two levels. It has floor-to-ceiling windows taking up the whole wall in the living room. It had two bedrooms (one on each level), two and a half bathrooms, and took up half of the entire seventh floor of the Crescent Court Hotel.

The other half of the floor was the Presidential Suite. And, while no one explicitly said so, it was quite clear that the Presidential Suite across the hall was being inhabited by one Will Smith, the Fresh Prince himself. He was in Dallas for the opening of a new movie, "The Pursuit of Happyness." And the entire hotel was buzzing about his presence there.

So we got back home, and since we've been back, Alex has been sleeping in her newly painted room. It's a very pale pink (after all, she is a girl), and the color scheme for her room is pink and green. Jane has also adorned the corner of Alex's room with a (fake) ficus benjamin tree which she has adorned with white blinky lights. Alex is mesmerized by them.

Speaking of white blinky lights: Jane has started decorating the house for Christmas. Her motto is "If it doesn't move, throw some tinsel on it." Which is why I don't take naps during Christmas season. Alex was mesmerized by those lights, too. But only for so long, because Tuesday is someone's birthday here at the Castanias house, and it is a big one. One of those "milestone" birthdays. And when you have a milestone birthday in the same year that your first daughter comes into your life, you get a really good birthday gift. Woman Law.

So Alex and I went out shopping for Mom's really good birthday gift. And while I can't disclose it here, I can say that Alex enjoyed the shopping experience and approved of our ultimate purchase, on which we will update you later.

-- Greg

Sunday, November 12, 2006

A whole week between posts, and it's all Alex's fault. She ran away from home.

Okay, not exactly. But Jane and Alex did head for Kansas on Election Day (Tuesday the 7th), leaving me all alone and without my baby girl -- oh, yeah, and my wife -- for over four full days. And in those four days I built in a two-day meeting and a two-day business trip. Add to that a pinched nerve in my neck which caused me to work from home for a day, and you might understand why the posts have been less frequent this week.

So, anyway. Your Intrepid Correspondent writes you tonight from Kansas City, Missouri, and the home of Jane's brother and sister-in-law, John and Pam Hutchinson, who just last night graciously co-hosted the last of what I think were four baby showers in honor of the Wee One. This one was for Kansas/Missouri family and friends, and among those here were the other co-hosts, Linda and Tim Woofter (and their son Jake; there is no 5-1/2-year-old better mannered than Jake anywhere), as well as Jeff and Sally Bloskey, Laura Fay, Julie Richey (and her children Katie and James Richey -- my best non-relative buddies under the age of thirteen), and relatives Mike Connor, Joe (Jane's Wichita brother) and his wife Jaime Hutchinson (and their kids Sam, Noah, and Jill), Katie Hutchinson (Jane's sister), and Nana and Papa. Also present were the real hosts for the evening, Libby, Megan, and Johnny (John and Pam's kids).

This "shower" was particularly neat, like the one Rich and Nelle hosted last month in Indianapolis, because there were, by my count, ten kids here (including Alex). And most of the other kids, at one time or another, had their faces an inch from Alex's face. Johnny (age 2) couldn't walk by her without laying several kisses on her. Alex, as we've come to expect, was nonplussed by it all. She continues to make her mark as an exceedingly easygoing baby, and it's clear she's developing that as part of the several facets of her emerging personality.

For one, in slightly more than three and a half months on earth, Baby Alex (as the kids seem to like to call her) has now been on seven plane rides. By the time the week is out, it will be nine. In the first seven, she's been a dream. For another -- and here, we're not bragging; we fully expect our comeuppance -- she sleeps through the night. Tonight she went down at 10:30, and I suspect she won't be getting up until after 7 a.m.

But the best part about the emerging personality is the giggles. My goodness, that'll melt the iciest heart you know -- watching Alex giggle in response to Daddy blowing his nose (it's loud) or to some other goofy sound he makes. In fact, tonight she made herself giggle -- she was sucking on her hands as she was trying to get herself to sleep, and she made a loud 'slurping' noise. This cracked her up.

Oh, and in case you're thinking about sending us a note telling us how your pediatrician, some book you read somewhere, or the Web tells you that babies shouldn't suck on their hands, we have a request. Lie down until the feeling goes away.

I mentioned two-year-old Johnny above. If you've been with us since the beginning, you might recall the fact that to Johnny, during our Colorado vacation when we learned that Alex was coming into our lives, I was "Uncle Duck." (If you haven't: I quacked like Donald Duck, without actually making words, and Johnny thought that was hysterical, so he would say "More duck! More duck!") So tonight, we were sitting around the table, asking him to name people. " (Pointing) Who's that?" "Aunt Jane." "Who's that?" "La La." (His current name for his sister Libby.) "Who's that? "Al-eh." (He can't make the 'x' sound to say "Alex" yet.) "(Pointing at me) Who's that?" "Duck!"

I must say I was impressed. I hadn't seen Johnny since Colorado, and he still remembered Uncle Duck.

Today we had a get-together at Jane's cousin Kevin's house. Now this is a family house, a madhouse, a crazy hub of kids, fun, love, and patience. Kevin and Sharon have four very active kids -- Jack, Ellie, Danny, and Abby -- and John and Pam brought their three to add to the fun. We were there; Kate was there; and Nana and Papa were there as well. We had chili, hot dogs, and cookies, and watched the Chiefs game against the Dolphins (Miami 13, Kansas City 10) on a JVC hi-def TV that I am now very envious of, and will likely start pricing.

We came back to John and Pam's, and the lot of us -- John, Pam, and their three; Nana and Papa; Aunt Katie; Jane, Greg, and Baby Alex -- had a little birthday party for Libby, who turns eight tomorrow. (Jane's and my third date was Libby's baptism, which was Memorial Day weekend 1999 -- the same weekend Jones Day - DC moved into its current building.) We had eleven of us crammed around the dinner table, and we were quizzing Libby and Megan about things like "How many of the people here are named 'Hutchinson' "? (Answer: Eight -- all but Jane, Greg, and Alex.) How many were born with 'Hutchinson' as their last name? (Answer: Seven -- all but Pam, Anne (Nana), Greg, and Alex.) How many people here have never had 'Hutchinson' as their last name? (Answer: Two -- Greg and Alex.) We also talked a bit about adoption with Libby and Megan.

After Libby opened presents, and the resident Hutchinson children had their baths, Jane, Alex and I headed for a visit at the beautiful home of our friend and my colleague Bob Klonoff, who is now (in addition to being of counsel with Jones Day) a distinguished professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Bob's significant other (we're just too old to have 'girlfriends') Lorri was there, along with her daughter Elizabeth, and Bob's son Josh was there, too, doing what appeared to be his homework.

A word on Josh, who is twelve years old (and shaving!): Back in 1994, I had the privilege of dining out with Bob and his now ex-wife on the evening that they were getting the telephone call about the birth of Joshua, who was, like Alex, adopted. This might have been my closest exposure to the adoption process up to that point in my life, and watching Josh grow up with Bob, into the strapping 12-year-old man that he is, left me no doubt about the fact that Josh is Bob's son. Not his adopted son. Just his son. Period.

-- Greg

Sunday, November 5, 2006

Anyone who says that when a baby smiles, it's 'gas,' doesn't know two basic things about babies.

(1) To babies, gas hurts.

(2) Smiles come in response to parents (and others) smiling at, kissing, talking to, or otherwise interacting with babies.

This observation is offered today as I've had the opportunity to observe our daughter over extended periods of time, by myself, over the last couple of days. Jane has been one of the leaders of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of RESOLVE, the National Infertility Organization, and this weekend was the annual conference, "Road to Resolution: Adoption and Infertility."

I came home early on Friday so that Jane could go up to Rockville, Maryland, and set up for the conference. So it was Daddy and Daughter Day from about 3:45 p.m. to 11, when Jane got home. And then it was Daddy and Daughter Day, take two, on Saturday, because Jane had to leave before 7 a.m. to get to the conference. So, I didn't do anything without Alex for 24 hours, and while I didn't get much done, it was a lot of fun. We had a conference call Friday afternoon with Joan Jarosek, our library director, and Laura Coruzzi, one of my partners, and Alex (who I was holding during the call) participated by cooing at the end of the call. We had dinner together (Mom made Beef Bourguignon in the Crock-Pot for Dad; Dad made a six-ounce bottle for Alex), and watched an uninspired Indiana Pacers squad lose their home opener to the New Orleans-Oklahoma City Hornets.

Saturday, with Jane's early departure, I got to watch some Alex TV, starting around 7:00. And while she rustled about a bit after 8 a.m., she wasn't awake until after 9 a.m. (This pi-, I mean, ticked Jane off a bit when she called to see how things were going with us). In the meantime, I managed to have a couple of cups of coffee and get a tiny amount of work done. I also went out to the curb to get the trash bin, with my Alex TV monitor along for the ride. I learned that I can see her on the video monitor until about the end of our driveway, and the audio stays on until almost the end of the shared driveway, where the trash can was.

When 9:00 rolled around, I checked the video monitor, and Alex was lying there peacefully in her Miracle Blanket, just looking around. Not fussing, not crying . . . just calmly lying there. So I mixed up a bottle (an eight-ouncer, figuring that the extra couple of hours of sleep would make her hungrier), and went upstairs to get her. I immediately got a big "Daddy!" smile; we changed her diaper (plenty wet from ten-plus-straight hours of sleep; I think those things could hold her weight in, um, liquid); and we went downstairs to have that bottle. She had almost seven ounces (the most she's ever taken at once), and after a couple of wall-shaking burps, we played a bit -- mostly with her lying on my chest, smiling, and talking to me.

After playing, I decided I needed more coffee, but I also decided we needed to get out of the house. So I put Alex in one of her Baby Papasans, on the floor of our bathroom, while I got a quick shower. By the time I was out, Alex was asleep. She slept through the electric toothbrush and the hair dryer, and once I was dressed, I got her dressed (a cute purple and sage green outfit that Mom had picked out for her), we started another bottle, and then we loaded ourselves into my car and went to Starbucks.

As with so many babies (including me, I'm told, back in the 1960s), car rides for Alex are immediately sleep-inducing. So by the time we arrived at Oakton Plaza, she was out. She woke up briefly while I filled up my car at the Sunoco station, but by the time I had parked at the Starbucks, she was out again. I took her into the Starbucks in her car seat, where she slept the entire time I was there -- which was long enough to have another cup of coffee, eat a piece of Lemon Pound Cake, and read the Washington Post. (We would have been there longer, but I neglected to bring a pen to struggle with the Saturday Sudoku puzzle.)

(By the way, if anyone else has puzzled over the reason that a "Tall" coffee is the smallest Starbucks offers; a "Grande" is the medium, and a "Venti" is the large, click here.)

We went on to do some grocery shopping so that Dad could make Sunday dinner, and came back home around 1. Shortly thereafter, Alex was awake and inconsolable. Diaper? Changed and dry. Burp? None forthcoming (still, we had a dropperful of Mylicon® -- a/k/a "Baby Ecstasy" -- just in case). Bottle? Mixed one up, but nothin' doing: She was rejecting the bottle with her tongue. So after a few minutes of wailing, I took Alex over to her changing table in the sunroom -- putting her on that seems to calm her down, even when the problem isn't a soggy diaper. And after I played with her and her stuffed "ABCD" blocks, she calmed down. THEN she took that bottle, which I rested on the stuffed blocks for a couple of minutes so she could feed herself while I made a quick sandwich for my lunch. By the time we each finished our lunches, and had some burps (I'm being purposely vague as to who burped here), Alex was asleep in the crook of my arm.

At about 2:55 p.m., Mercedes, our babysitter, showed up; I had to leave to join Jane at the RESOLVE conference so we could speak about our adoption experience. We had a great crowd -- 30 or so prospective adoptive parents -- and Jane and I got to re-tell the story of how Alex came into our lives. We were on the panel with Joe and Margaret, parents of Nora, who arrived in their lives right after Alex arrived in ours, and another couple, who have two older children they adopted from Kazakhstan. However, we were the only ones who didn't bring our child with us, so I was forced to show photos of Alex. Forced. As in "Twist my arm." "Put a gun to my head." "Waterboard me."

After a bit of post-conference cleanup, off we went to Washington for grown-up-night with Thomas and Leah, and their friends from New Jersey, Chris and Stacy. Courtesy of Thomas and Leah's generosity, we attended Cirque du Soleil's "Corteo", with the "Rock-Star" VIP tickets called "Tapis Rouge" (translated, "red carpet"). We were spent by the time the show ended, and so we headed home, Jane head-bobbing in the passenger seat just to stay awake, occasionally waking up to comment that this was the longest time she had gone away from Alex, and that she really hadn't seen Alex at all since Friday afternoon when Jane left for Maryland.

One last comment on this already-overlong post. This morning, the Cutest Baby Ever also proved she may be the Smartest Baby Ever. Jane put her on the World's Softest Baby Blanket, face-down, and she immediately rolled over onto her back. She did it a second, third, and fourth time, and Jane even got one on video, which will undoubtedly be the next video post. Coupled with yesterday, when I was successful in getting Alex to hold her own bottle for a few moments at a time, we are witnessing one of the greatest moments ever in the history of hand-eye coordination.

Jane has just changed Alex on the sunroom changing table, and is doing her "Who needs kisses? Meeeeeeeeeee!" routine with Alex. And now she's trying to do Daddy work, putting together a new toy for Alex. (Actual quote from Jane's "monologue" as she's doing this: "Goodness sakes! 'Attach lower leg front to lower leg back with four screws.' Mom thought this was going to be 'take it out of the box and fold it up.' Miss Alex, I had no idea this was going to be so involved. Tell Dad that it's standard operating procedure to get something 95% done and then start screeching.")

I assume that Jane means that Alex will start screeching, but I suppose there's a 5% chance that she means "Mommy will start screeching." So I had best go over and take over Daddy Duty before something gets broken. Like Daddy.

-- Greg

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Boo!

So as I write, Wee One is again in her Hallowe'en jammies (see them here), lying on our bed. Jane is doing some sort of breathy noise which is making Alex giggle. So now I'm doing it -- as best as I can spell it, I'm saying "Ha-BAY. Ha-BEE. Ha-BYE. Ha-BOW. Ha-BOU." And she thinks it's the funniest thing ever.

And just as soon as it was the funniest thing ever, it's no longer funny. Now she's lying in my lap, crying -- probably because she wants a bottle. And indeed it is a bottle that has cured what ails her. Just a little bit of a bottle (a mere one ounce out of the six-ouncer Jane just mixed up), and now she's sitting on my lap as I type this, staring at the screen (but not too much of that).

Not a lot of trick-or-treaters tonight; just a few from the neighborhood. A skeleton in a cape, Batman (with a bat-logo that lit up), and a green Power Ranger.

I forgot this story: Sunday night, we went to dinner at Coastal Flats -- our regular neighborhood haunt. As usual, we brought Alex in in her car seat. After awhile, she wanted to be held, and so I put her on my lap, facing Jane, with her arms hanging over my right arm (which was wrapped around her). Quickly, Alex fell asleep, head slumped over onto my arm. This was a sight to behold for the waiters and waitresses, as well as departing patrons of the restaurant, who got a good head-on glimpse of the sleeping beauty as they departed. One matronly patron paused, and then offered this unsolicited advice: "You should move her face so that she doesn't get a flat spot."

I wish I had thought to say, "Oh? Is that what happened to you, lady?" But I didn't. I smiled, and nodded -- as if to say, "Thanks. Now leave."

Jane put it better after the helpful woman had left the premises: "Just tell us how cute she is and get the hell away." Fortunately, most of the gawkers had the good sense to do just that.

I hope you've seen the photos Jane put up today here -- at the photo page. In particular, check out the ones of Alex in her peapod costume, and in her pumpkin sweater.

Finally, Alex's nursery furniture arrived today -- crib, dresser with changing table, and rocker-recliner for storytime. But, as Jane put it this evening, "it seems too soon to move her to her own room." So it'll be another night of Alex TV, live from the sitting room outside our bedroom, 20 feet away from our bed. Right now, she's asleep, face down on Jane's chest.

Another night of the cutest baby ever.

-- Greg

Monday, October 30, 2006

Jane's just left to go swing dancing, and I was home today, recuperating from the last vestiges of a cold or virus of some sort, so now it's Daddy and Daughter night. The extended period between posts is owing to a couple of back-to-back work trips on my part, and the earlier stages of this whatever-it-is-that-I-got, which has sapped about all the energy that I have.

Anyway, the other thing that happened between Wednesday and Sunday was a visit from Alex's cousins, Cleo and Jack, and their Mom, Nelle. I was lucky enough that my trip allowed me to see them at the beginning and the end of their trip here. Saturday, when I got back, we all went out to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum near our house (nearer to Dulles Airport), which hosted the second annual "Air and Scare." Cleo went as the spider princess; Jack went as a knight (complete with helmet); Jane and Nelle went as witches; and I went as a Dad just back from a business trip.

Oh, and Alex? She went as a peapod. (You'll just have to wait for the pictures.)

Anyway, have you seen the new video of Alex giggling? Her cousins had her in stitches when they were visiting last week. Visit the video page here.

-- Greg

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

The three of us had dinner last night with Mamaw Peggy, who is in town for a genealogy conference.

Jane made reservations at I Ricchi, a more old-line DC Italian restaurant (it's so old-line that I remember being taken there for lunch when I was interviewing in DC in 1991 or 1992). I got there late, owing to cross-town traffic from Capitol Hill. When I got there, Jane reported that two sets of people had declined to be seated next to our table when they saw that a baby was sitting there. The joke, of course, was on them -- Alex was probably the best-behaved human being in the restaurant last night.

When she began to fuss for a bit, I took her for a short walk to the front door. As we came back, two women who were seated at the large adjoining table just went batty over Alex, raving about how beautiful and how well-dressed she was.

Duh.

I mean, "thank you."

Interesting conversation with Peggy last night as I learned more about all the things she does for Gladney. As she was waiting for state approval to be a transitional caregiver, she worked with the birth mothers there at Gladney -- since she is licensed to drive a 15-person van, she would take the in-residence birth mothers to movies, to lunch, and so on. Unsurprisingly (to us), several of the birth mothers specifically requested Peggy be the transitional caregiver assigned to their babies. We'll request her too if we need transitional care for our next one -- a topic we also discussed.

Jane and Alex are now off to a doctor's appointment (for Jane, not Alex). Alex is starting out today with a big appetite -- she had a six-ounce bottle at 7 a.m., and another four-ouncer at 9 a.m.

Oh, there's also some news on Alex's long-anticipated nursery furniture: It'll be delivered on October 31. And to begin the transition, Alex's bassinet was moved to the sitting room outside our bedroom. It's a weaning process; first we establish a comfort level there, and then we establish a comfort level with Alex sleeping in another room entirely.

It'll be a difficult transition, and there might be more crying -- but I think Jane will survive.

Alex, on the other hand, was completely nonplussed by sleeping in the sitting room last night. (Jane, by contrast, kept the video monitor on, on her nightstand, all night.) The webcam has a "night-vision" capability, so we can watch Alex on screen even though it's almost pitch-dark in the sitting room.

More visitors tonight!

-- Greg

Monday, October 23, 2006

I'm watching Alex on TV right now.

Actually, we now have a video baby monitor. Alex got up at 7 this morning with her Mom, came downstairs, had a bottle from Dad, played a little with her orange bunny, and is now napping in her bed in the sunroom. Jane quickly snapped on the video baby monitor, which operates over our wireless network, handed me the monitor unit (it's a little more cumbersome than, but appears similar to, the new video iPods), and announced that she was going to get into the shower. So I have about a 2 x 2 picture (really good quality, too) of Wee One napping in her Hallowe'en jammies.

So, beyond that: At about Midnight Friday night, Dad got back from a two-day business trip to, of all places, St. Maarten, N.A. The N.A. stands for "Netherlands Antilles," by the way. It was an interesting experience. It's a 37-square-mile island with over 100,000 inhabitants over two countries (the northern "half" of the island is French St. Martin, and we drove there for dinner Thursday night; the currency there is Euros; the Dutch side is the southern part, and the currency there is U.S. Dollars. I can't go into much greater detail here, but one of the most interesting parts of the experience was learning first-hand how very different civil-law jurisdictions are from common-law ones like the United States (with respect to their legal systems, that is; the people look mostly the same). And we were in a colonial courthouse built in 1793 for part of our work down there. Fascinating place. Not at all interested in going back.

Other news from the weekend: Alex took in her second movie with Mom and Dad; we saw "The Queen" with Helen Mirren and James Cromwell (as Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, respectively). This is a good movie. Go see it. In fact, given the production that movie attendance is these days for us, our movie choices are even more selective, and between this one and "Hollywoodland," the other avec infant movie we have taken in, we're doing pretty well. Our next one may be "Flags of our Fathers" or maybe "Marie Antoinette." It won't be "Saw II" or "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning." (And it sure as heck won't be "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.")

Thanks for adding the pins to get us up to 19 -- but we know there are other readers out there who haven't dropped their locations onto the Frappr! map. (Don't make me call you out by name, cousins in Indianapolis.) Now that Nana and Papa are back from their autumn trek around Colorado, I'm sure they'll be dropping in pin #20 any minute now.

I should now hit the shower, as Wee One is still asleep on TV. I suspect (given their recent massive budget cuts on the entertainment side) we'll be getting a development deal from NBC soon for an hourlong drama of Alex sleeping -- it can be shot with one webcam and the talent works for Lactose-Free Similac. (Wouldn't be the first "formulaic drama" on TV.)

I'd watch that. And so would you. You know you would.

-- Greg

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

And then there were fourteen.

Peggy (no surprise) has the distance award so far at 1344 miles. And the pins keep on dropping.

I realize that I didn't provide this important update last week: As of last Monday, Alex is now 9 and a half pounds. And growing.

There are other recent developments. For one, the sunset hours (the 5 and 6 p.m. hours) are pretty tough on Wee One -- she's arguably at her fussiest at those times. Not that I'd know first-hand -- I get home after 7 p.m. But what I do get to experience is her pre-bedtime fussiness: The last few nights, she's been completely inconsolable for about 45 minutes before she falls off -- and I mean falls off -- to sleep. I've found that wrapping her really tight in her "Miracle Blanket" tends to do the trick, eventually.

When I do that, Jane calls her "My Little Larva." That's a more apt visual description than "papoose," which is what I'd been thinking.

Since I typed "larva," I've been thinking -- you just know that someone, sometime, named their kid "Larva." Come to think of it, that would be a good idea for a "Sesame Street" sketch. The CTW writers are fond of giving their characters parody names. Like when they did a bit called "Monsterpiece Theatre," which was hosted by "Alastair Cookie." They could do a whole insect-related skit, and one of the characters could be "Larva Flynn Boyle."

I'd watch that.

Anyway, I also wanted to say to our many, many friends that we know we are woefully behind on our thank-you notes, but it is our goal to write one to each and every one of you. If I stopped writing this thing and pitched in more, we'd make more of a dent, but -- naaah.

I'm off on a short (two-day) but quite interesting trip tomorrow. Can't say much about it until after I get back late on Friday.

-- Greg

Monday, October 16, 2006

Seven pins in the Frappr! map so far (link above -- add yourselves!).

So far, the Medskers and Aunt Katie are ahead for the distance award (Aunt Katie's technically ahead, as she's 1298 miles away in Wichita, according to Yahoo! Maps, while the Medskers are a mere 1205 miles away in Lincoln, Nebraska). Strangely enough, Aunt Katie is the only one so far from either of our home states, despite the allegations of broad readership in both Kansas and Indiana. Of course, Nana and Papa are tooling around in Colorado -- the last e-mail was from Telluride, I think -- and Papou doesn't use a computer and depends on Rich and Nelle for the updates, so there are excuses (at least temporary ones) there.

Also a pin from Natalie and Bret (Jane's cousin and her husband) in Brookline, Massachusetts. A "shout-out" to the two of you from this hip-lingo-using, if decidedly distinguished, gentleman who's married to your cousin and cousin-in-law. Since the Sox didn't make the playoffs, I can't imagine what there is to do there. So here's a reminder that the US Airways Shuttle departs hourly for Washington, if you ever want to get away from the buzz of the Hub and see your little second cousin and her parents.

Or is that first cousin, once removed? I can never get that straight.

But none of that matters, really, does it? Here's your Alex update for the day: Since I got home (at 8:45 p.m.), she has been asleep on the sofa; it's now 10:20. Occasionally, she rustles around and stretches, and when she does, she inhales, stretches her arms and arches her back, and then exhales the same way that Jane does in the morning. It's apparently a very primal reaction. I'm sitting on the family room sofa with Alex next to me, and she's got her hands up over her head, still asleep. (I call that her "French sleeping posture," as it appears that she's surrendering. Apologies to the French. Love your toast!) And in the 30 minutes or so that I've been sitting here, she hasn't earned yesterday's "biscuit" nickname.

As I was typing that, Alex dropped her right hand so she could rest it on my arm. You're getting a pony for that, babe.

Additional shout-outs to the Fischers of Illinois, and Holly (congratulations on the new job!) of Holly-and-Michael fame. I've already "shouted-out" to Lisa and Dan by linking to their new blog.

But, aside from the MIA family members, one must ask: Where's Peggy? Where's Bloomington?

Represent, yo!

-- Greg

Sunday, October 15, 2006

It's funny what little nicknames we come up with for Alexandra.

You know that Jane first christened her "Boo-Boo." Then, on occasion, "Doodle." More recently, she's been calling her "Doodle" much more often than she's been calling her "Boo-Boo." And, despite having no earthly idea what "Doodle" means (at least "Boo-Boo" is a cartoon character from my childhood), even I find myself calling her "Doodle" from time to time.

But today, I've taken to calling her "Biscuit."

Why, you ask?

Simple, really. We were sitting together in the family room, watching some football and editing a brief or two, and I had Alex sitting on my leg. As she sat there, dandled on my knee, I had a distinct sensation (right there on the knee) that Wee One was floating air biscuits. "Air biscuit" begat "Biscuit."

Like I said, simple.

So, let's see -- what else is new? Well, the blog was down for a couple of days, owing to a bug in the Adobe Dreamweaver MX program that we use to run this website. (The webmistress has now fixed it.) And the absence of the blog occasioned about as many e-mails as my request for e-mails (see above). So now I have a request that, in addition to (or in lieu of) sending me that e-mail, put a "pin" on the map showing us where you are if you're reading this thing.

Yesterday was Daddy day. Alex and I went to Friendship House in southeast DC. It's a community settlement house, and the house itself -- once known as The Maples -- has quite a history. It was built in 1798 by architect-builder William Lovering, and was later owned by Francis Scott Key. Anyway, the National Capital Association of Wabash Men took it upon themselves -- ourselves -- to do a clean-up and restoration project there, and Alex and I went, took some yard tools, and met up with other local alumni. (Including Alex's "Aunt Chad," which will remain an inside joke.) Some painted inside, but most of us worked outside on a spectacular autumn day. Alex was great -- she peacefully watched from her stroller while Chad and I trimmed overgrown vines from the fence surrounding the basketball court.

Then we had a little party in Wee One's honor at the Rosenbergs' home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Out of many highlights, one that is worthy of mention was the decision of our dear, dear friends Jane Smith Stewart and Dave Stewart to drive from Carlisle, Pennsylvania to Silver Spring for the party. Jane's been my friend since our time together in England, at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, in 1985. (The British pronounce it "Re-NAY-sahns," not ren-uh-SAHNS" as we do here in 'merica. Two countries divided by a common language.) With Jane, Chad, and Adam Price all there, we were blessed with the attendance of three people who have been my friends for over 20 years.

Today, it's been another one of those Lazy Sundays. Mommy wanted brunch, and so we accommodated her and went out. We did a little baby shopping, and came back home. A little work, a little football-watching, and a lot of Alex.

-- Greg

Inspiration, or competition? Read our friends Lisa and Dan Reichmann's blog here.

-- Greg

Thursday, October 12, 2006

We know you want pictures. And I've made clear that the webmistress is the only one who really knows how to do that. If only Alex hadn't had a cold the last couple of days, Jane might even have had some pictures up from our weekend. But, since Wee One has been under the weather, she has -- as she was with her last cold -- demanded to be held. Demanded.

That tends to interfere with downloading photos to the computer. If Jane is faced with a choice of showering and downloading pictures, I'll pick showering for her six out of seven days.

Nonetheless, I've attempted to load a few pictures of Alex and her Papou from the Sunday evening festivities at Rich and Nelle's house in Indiana. These are really cute because Alex immediately got all 'smiley' when Papou was holding her. So here goes:

I especially like this one:

I like it because it looks like Alex is laughing at a joke only she and my Dad heard. Maybe my Dad was telling his famous story about Goldilocks, the three bears, and the baked beans. ("Who's been eating all of my baked beans?" You can guess how they figured out that Baby Bear had eaten all the baked beans.)

Oh, and in connection with Alex's cold, I have drawn as much "snot sucking duty" as I can handle when I'm home. As Jane will coo to Alex while I'm performing this most unglamorous of Daddy tasks, "Daddy is the best snot-sucker ever!"

Jane's right about that, by the way. When I use the snot-sucking bulb on Alex's nose, she rarely cries, and it's quite the productive enterprise. If you know what I mean. And I know you do.

But, oh, the glamour.

And in that vein comes a note from Mamaw Peggy, who writes: "Please keep the news coming as I not only want to hear of Alex but do enjoy your 'warped' sense of humor."

"Warped." I've been fed a lot of backhanded compliments this week (including one from my colleague Vicky, who while remarking that it seemed astonishing that Jane is turning 40 this year, added that I looked like a "distinguished gentleman" -- even though I'm only 21 months older than my trophy wife). And Peggy's comment about my sense of humor is another one of those backhanded compliments.

"Warped," per The American Heritage Dictionary: "A mental or moral twist, aberration, or deviation."

Perhaps my Dad's "Goldilocks, the Three Bears, and the Baked Beans" story explains just a little bit where that warped sense of humor originated.

-- Greg

Oh, in addition to all that, a "shout-out" (like how I used that cool, "hip" expression?) to friend, former summer associate, future colleague, and fellow Wabash man Scott Medsker, who (with his new wife Lauren) is one of our regular readers: Today, he sent the news that he has passed the bar. Completely unsurprising (indeed, expected), but still, as I know from personal experience, a huge relief.

So congratulations, Scott! You have passed the test of minimum competence for lawyers! It's all uphill from here!

-- Greg

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Hi there. It's been a few days.

So what have you been up to, Doodle? Why, I've been visiting my Papou, Uncle Rich and Aunt Nelle, cousins Amber, Cleopatra, and Jack, and assorted other family and friends in Indiana. We just got back early this morning, thanks to US Airways.

So here's a bit more detail about what we've been doing since Dad last wrote something in this space.

Thursday (10/5): Flew to Indianapolis on the 8:30 a.m. flight. Had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to make sure we had enough time to get packed and loaded for the drive to the airport. Landed around 10:15 a.m. Drove to Rich and Nelle's house in Carmel-By-The-Fields, where, after we got unpacked, Papou came over and met his granddaughter for the first time. What a nice moment.

Otherwise, it was a pretty slow day at the Northwesterly Castanias home. Jack (age 6) was very excited to hold his baby cousin, and was very quick to offer his advice. ("Uncle Greg, I don't think she's very happy. I think she needs a pat on the back." "Uncle Greg, I think she wants to play on the floor. With me." And so on.) Dad went over to Crawfordsville for a dinner with the pre-law students at Wabash; Mom and Alex had a quiet dinner in with Rich and Nelle and the kids; Dad came back late and everyone sacked out for the night in Rich and Nelle's guest room.

Friday (10/6): Dad had meetings of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Wabash Men which started pretty early, so he went back over to Crawfordsville in the morning. Jane, Alex, and Nelle spent the day shopping and having lunch, and then Nelle brought my girls over to Crawfordsville to meet me for a reception and dinner. Unfortunately, they got there early enough to shop at the Wabash College Bookstore, where they spent more on baby clothes than I did on four years of tuition. Then we went to a reception to welcome the new President of Wabash College, Pat White, and his wife Chris; the new Dean of the Faculty, Gary Phillips (whose daughter is a singer and Broadway actress); and the new College CFO, Larry Griffith, and his wife Susan. Though the evening was a bit more exciting than we bargained for, we wound it up with dinner with Sara Emmick and their new boy (born August 4) Will; Will's Dad, Joe, was held up and couldn't join us. Alex and Will slept next to each other in their matching car seats on the top of the table at Rancho Bravo. As I later told Daddy Joe, his son and my daughter slept together on their first date . . . and I blame Will, that silver-tongued devil.

Saturday (10/7): More meetings for Dad, then a luncheon and a football game. Saw lots of old friends -- Jim Amidon, Clint Gasaway, Greg Redding, Greg Estell, Eric Hiser, Craig Miller (and his wife and their newly adopted son), Pfenne Cantrell and his wife, Mike Laudick, Joe Folkening and Lisa and their son, Warren Rosenberg, Todd McDorman, and others I'm forgetting at the moment. Wabash defeated the Allegheny Gators, 41-27. Back over to the Indianapolis area, where Jane, Alex and I had dinner -- just us -- at Ted's Montana Grill, a small chain owned by Ted Turner.

Sunday (10/8): Big day. Rich, Amber, and Amber's boyfriend Bobby went to the Colts game at the 'Dome -- Colts beat a very bad Tennessee Titans team, 14-13. A win is a win; Any Given Sunday; and all that, but the only two impressive things about the Colts' performance were (a) their running game by committee (Dominic Rhodes and Joseph Addai), and (b) the way Peyton Manning can turn it on when he really has to. If you like 6'5", 235-pound quarterbacks with a laser rocket arm. Then back to Rich and Nelle's for a party honoring theior new house and their new niece, You Know Who. Among those in attendance were our friends Tom and Cathy Fisher and their brood; Joe, Sara and Will made a return appearance; our friend Beth Kramer stopped by on her way back into town; and one of Rich's work colleagues, Kent Benson, and his girlfriend Erin, were also there. In case you vaguely recognize the name, Kent was the center on the undefeated 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, and was the #1 overall draft pick in the 1976 NBA Draft. Alex had a great time meeting all the new people, and was particularly smiley when Papou held her. Pictures coming later.

Monday (10/9): One more day in Indianapolis, and then home. Unfortunately, US Airways cancelled our direct flight (on which we had first-class seats, darn it), and instead sent us home through Philadelphia on two puddle-jumpers. Then, on top of that, our luggage didn't make it back. Someone will be getting a letter.

-- Greg

Wednesday, October 4, 2006

Okay, how cool is it that the webmistress -- Jane -- has figured out how to post video to the website? In case you haven't figured this out yet, click here, scroll down, and double-click on what looks like the big picture of Alex. If you have an application that plays .mov files -- on my computer it's QuickTime -- you can watch Alex take her first convertible ride. Watch her try to lick and eat the air as it whooshes by.

In fact, let me take you on a little tour of the improvements Jane made to the family web page over the past weekend.

First, there's a new navigation bar to the left that says "Alexandra." Put your cursor over the black-and-white photo of Alex saying "I'm here!" for the first photo I took of her, and watch it turn to color. Then click on that, and you're at Alex's Page. The page is done in the same color scheme that her room (nursery) will be painted in.

Then, from Alex's page, you currently have two choices (even though it looks like four). It's "Daddy's Blog" (where you are now) or "Photos." Eventually, when you click on "Adoption Story," you'll get the full story behind Alex and how we came to be we three.

Now, I have a favor to ask of you, our readers. We keep getting reports that lots of folks are reading this. Some of you may not even know us. So, whether you know us or not, if you're reading this, send me a brief note at gcastanias (at) aol.com. Tell me who you are, and if we don't know you directly, tell us how you came to find this website. If you want, tell us what you like, what you dislike, what you want to see more of, what you want to see less of, and so on. Bonus points if you're funny. The best e-mail wins a no-expenses-paid shopping spree at Babies 'R' Us.

Anyway, off we go tomorrow to Indiana for a long weekend. Alex gets to meet her Papou, her Uncle Rich and Aunt Nelle, her cousins Amber, Cleo, and Jack, and assorted other family members and friends. Plus, her first Wabash Homecoming and first football game.

You think there'll be photos? Hmmm, let me think . . . .

-- Greg

Tuesday, October 3, 2006

As you can see, my going out of town on a business trip freed up the webmistress to exercise her talents and creativity. We finally have a new, Alex-specific portion of the family webpage, and this has now officially been christened as a "blog" (in fact, I think she named it "Daddy's Blog" on the entry page, though it's really always been intended to be re-named "Raising Alexandra").

Why "Raising Alexandra"? Lots of reasons. For one, it ("Raising Arizona") has been Jane's favorite movie for a long time. For another, as we made our trek through the world of infertility treatments and into the world of adoption, Jane managed to keep her sense of humor intact (mostly, and most of the time) -- sometimes, she would say (to me), quoting a favorite line from that movie, "You go in there and get me a baby!"

So anyway -- what's been going on? Well, since the last post, I was in Louisville, KY and various spots in Indiana; I came back home Saturday, and Jane and Alex picked me up from the airport and took me to the Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington for lunch (that's Jane's favorite spot in D.C., dating back to her days at Jones Day when she was detailed to Washington from the Dallas office for a big case). Sunday, we went out to a local park and had a picnic, and on the way back, Alex had her first convertible ride. Jane sat in the back seat and took photos and a short video of Alex on her camera; if we can figure out how to post the video, we'll do that -- but what you'll see is a very happy little girl trying to "eat" the wind as it blows over her face.

I have to head to Charlottesville, VA today for business. So I have to stop now. Perhaps the webstrix will upload the contents of her camera so we can have more photos?

-- Greg

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Alex is feeling better today, although still a little sad from her shots. Greg is out of town, so we are having a girls night here at home. Below, we are entertaining ourselves by making funny faces. At last, a few of her smiling!

The above were taken on my lap, where she had no choice but to look at me. Below, she is sitting in the "big chair" by the window, and as you can see, Mom is a lot less interesting...

A few "naked baby" pics: smiling, finally got that hand in her mouth, and a sneer for Mommy.

Alex and our friend Lauren:

This week we started taking walks most days with our neighbor, Maria, and her little daughter, Isabelle, who is just 3 weeks younger than Alex.

Finally, Alex at her first movie.

-- Jane

Find the archives to "Raising Alexandra" (July 31 to September 27, 2006) here.