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…in which I talk about not only my hectic life, but the great achievements of my little one.

So even though we were on vacation last week, I feel like things have been crazy all over. With the very appreciated assistance of Angela, we flew out to Indiana Thursday to visit my brother and his micro family. We had a great time. My parents were in town to visit for the first few days, so it was nice to see everyone all at once. We got to go to Christy’s mom’s house for a nice Independence Day “meat and munitions extravaganza,” which was really fun and I got, what I think, are some really good fireworks photos (though, I’ve kind of decided most fireworks photos all look pretty much the same). All told, however, we had a good time. We ate good food, got out and walked around, shopped, relaxed, helped with errands and chores.

Ansel was pretty darned good on both flights. He wasn’t quite as good as he was when he was only 3 months old, but he was still a good kid and handled the flight well. He still had people complimenting him at the end of the flight, saying he was a very good baby on the airplane.

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He’s learned so much in the past couple of weeks, its pretty overwhelming. In the past two weeks, he’s learned to pull himself up from sitting to standing, he’s learned to walk with us holding his hands; he’s learned to clap, wave, and high five; he’s started playing the “drop it” game and the “throw it” game (but I’d sure love for him to figure out the “put it down gently” game); he’s added another “word” to his vocabulary (he now says “ggg,” “dah,” “bah,” “bwa,” and “doo”). We expect him to be cruising soon as he’s got the pull-up thing going, and the “one foot in front of the other” thing down pat. He’s so cute and wonderful and smart. I understand, now, how people say your life changes so much with a child. I know everyone else’s child is equally special, but our is definitely the best baby in the world!

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When we got home from our trip, we realized how much nicer it is to clean your house before you leave. Our house was a stye and neither of us has had any time to clean up at all since getting back from the trip. Its driving us both crazy. We’re hoping to get at least the living room picked up and the dining room a little tidier before people come over for the movie tonight. Heck, I vacuumed almost as soon as we got home because there was so much dog hair on the floor I almost didn’t want to put Ansel down. It also didn’t help that one of our cats decided to puke all over the house while we were gone. Thank god “Urinal Cat” was being boarded and we didn’t have to worry about that at all.

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And finally, big wonderful thanks to Angela and Matt for taking care of the animals and giving us rides to and from the airport. You guys are great and there’s no way we can ever balance out the karma. No one should ever be expected to clean up chicken carcasses when dog-sitting!