Day: December 7, 2003

…and so we’ll be at Philcon this weekend, December 12-14. Peter’s a Special Guest of the convention, I’m a not-so-special one. Hope to see you all there.

We had a nice first birthday party planned Saturday for Caroline, right up until the snow started to hit. At that point we started calling anyone coming from outside the immediate area (including my parents and siblings) and told them to stay home. Good thing we did, considering the horrific conditions on the road.

However, with pretty much every other event in the area being canceled or just plain inaccessible, we had a nice turnout from the neighbors. And naturally Caroline wasn’t remotely disappointed, because people say “Happy Birthday” to her and she just says smiles and says “Ma.” (She has three words in her vocabulary: “Ma,” “Mama,” and “Mamamamama.” The first two are directed to Kathleen if Kath is hodling her; the third is what she shouts when she wants Kath to come back into the room. If I’m holding her and say, “Say Dada,” she smiles and then hits me in the face. So I’m taking a different approach and trying to teach her to identify me as “Not the mama.”)

So folks came and Caroline got her own piece of cake which she obligingly smeared all over her face, thus permitting adorable pictures that we can trot out to show her prom date some years hence. That’s part of a parent’s job: Coming up with new and interesting ways to make their children wish they had someone else for parents.

PAD