Adorable, terrifying, and cute

When uttered by my princess, "Up" means, "Pick me up and hold me in your arms." On average, she says this twenty-five times a day. (Bear in mind that her mom and I carry her around most of the time, voluntarily, happily.) There is no need to communicate up's antithesis, because letting her body go completely slack communicates the same thing a lot more effectively. And I don't just mean slack the way passive-resistance protesters go when they're being hauled off someplace by the police. I mean slack like water is slack. Holding on to Annalee, when she has decided that you are done holding her, at any time and for any reason, means you are going to have do some thinking, fast. You're going to have to think through how to hold a gallon of water in your arms, while, for instance, opening up the minivan door (even if this only involves pushing a button). You're going to have to consider how to control the effect of gravity if, as happens, it turns out that you won't be able to completely stop her downward progress but instead can only shape it. I hope this is not an awkard time to brag, but the way my daughter converts herself into a study in fluid dynamics is genius! And adorable, and terrifying, and cute.

Reality Check

Annalee spent a couple of days with a fever, a runny nose, and seemingly more teething pain than ever. We think, but don't definitively know, that she cut one of her two-year-old molars. (She won't let us look or feel, but past episodes of this sort did coincide with the appearance of new teeth.) During part of her low-level ordeal she was more childlike, or simply younger, than usual, visibly thinking less, adventuring less, and letting us do more for her. It's not as though her mom and I needed a reality-check about how much we adore our princess, but we got one, nonetheless.

One of the highlights of the baby-is-sick episode was watching "The Price Is Right" as a family, which both baby's mom and dad had done when they were kids home sick from school. Sickness gives about the only free pass I've ever had to watch TV without guilt about wasting brain cells, and it is a priceless experience. I don't think Annalee took much from watching a gameshow about being a comparison (and effective) shopper, but she probably did gain something from being around her two parents when they were about as relaxed as they get, tickling her, wiping her nose, and just being a family.