Thumper

We have returned safely from our year-end travels. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Salt Lake City and in Benicia. We even had fun in the car. It turns out Alex is a really good traveler. He was calm and in good spirits for almost all of our journeys. Even on the way home from SLC when it was just the two of us (since Dana and Genevieve flew home) he was a lot of fun. We watched Cars twice through, stopped for hot dogs and milkshakes in Rawlins, and Alex was great at chatting my ear off and keeping me awake and alert.

A highlightof the trip, among so many, was watching Alex race around at my Aunt Jean and Uncle Grove's house one evening - just exactly the way Alison and I used to when we were his age!

In the last two weeks Genevieve has continued to get closer to crawling. She now readily flops from her front to her back, and has also turned back to front several times. She also wiggled a lot and can rotate around on her back on the floor through a full 360 degrees. But one thing she does now completely mystifies me: She loves to lie on her back, raise both of her legs at the same time high above her chest, and THUMP them down together on the floor as hard as she can. I sat next to her tonight in the playroom and watched her for 10 minutes straight doing this little exercise over and over, delighted with herself each time. I can't fathom why this makes her so happy, or why her poor little heels aren't in pain.

She also enjoys, to a lesser extent, raising her fists above her and thumping her chest.