A Growler and a Lover (and a Visit with Patients)

In the last month and a half or so, the Wee One has mastered crawling and growling, as well as simultaneous performance of both skills.

Sometimes her growl gets very guttural, and she sounds possessed.  This happened during one of the prayers at church last Sunday. 

Dolly has also gotten very good at pulling to stand.  I'm glad we took Ann Marie's advice and lowered the crib, as she's always standing up in there these days.

The other day she snuggled in close to Jim's face, kind of laughed, and then - we think - "kissed" him.  It was adorable.  She has been working on both closed-mouth kissing...

and the make-out variety...

During the making of this video, saliva was streaming down the dishwasher.  Her future boyfriends are hoping for improvement. 

I know I'm not supposed to talk about anything but Dolly here, but for journal-keeping purposes, allow me to digress.  Jim called from work today and said he has two patients, an elderly married couple (87 and 91 years old, he thinks).  They were in today, and they were telling him about how the wife has painted all these pictures of horses, and they wish Jim could see them, and they want to see Ever.  Jim called from work and asked me if we could go to their house when he got off work today.  I thought that was the cutest thing I'd ever heard.  So we went for a visit.  They are the nicest, most adorable couple.  They've been married 66 years and won't leave each other's side (even so the wife can exercise without the husband, who has heart problems).  They've had a really interesting life.  The husband used to do sound editing or something in Hollywood and worked with all sorts of famous people.  He spent long hours in the studio, so the wife taught herself to paint.  She's amazing.  They told us about how they met and married.  They were dirt poor, so the husband made furniture for them.  They showed us a dresser and a grandfather clock he built.  They never had any kids together, so they have to "adopt" kids/grandkids, I think.  We want to adopt them. 

Del Mar Races

The Del Mar racetrack is about a half an hour or so from Oceanside, and I've always thought it sounded fun to go to the races.  I got half-price tickets through Living Social, as did my friend Deb Moffat.  Sadly, we couldn't find a day that we could all go together, so Jim, Dolly and I went alone yesterday.  We saw three of the races before Dolly started to lose it from nap-deprivation.  It was fun, especially once we started reading about the horses and their chances of winning and picking ones to root for.  We decided it would be more fun if we could sit down close where you can hear the horses go by and if we had money riding on it.  The whole gambling thing seems (not only evil but) super-complicated, though, and if we'd bet on the horses we were rooting for, we would've lost.

Dolly got to practice one of her new tricks, clapping:

(The other trick she's learned of late is waving.  Sometimes she combines the two - a couple of claps, a brief wave, a couple of claps, some waving, etc.  We're still trying to teach her the finer points about when each action is appropriate.)

We think she's going to be a dentist, as she does this a lot:

The starting gates were placed on our side of the track for one of the races we saw.  Binoculars would've been helpful.

Reading up:

Sick attempt at a family photo, at the insistence of a (drunk?) girl sitting in front of us who thought we were cute:

The infamous tongue:

Note the hat in the background.  Not many hats there, but some.

On our way out, we stumbled upon this place where the horses are walked around before they race, and people look and evaluate and decide which horses to bet on.  Jim tried to get Everest interested in the horses, to no avail.

Dean got a short nap in the car, and then we stopped at Las Olas in Carlsbad for a quick dinner before heading home.  Miss Chavez was totally hyperactive.  The waiter commented, "She's a grabber, huh?"  Then, "She's a handful, huh?"  The food wasn't great, either, but it was nice to be out together. 

We had to stop by the grocery store on the way home to pick up a few things.  Tired Dolly insisted on lounging sideways in the cart the whole time.

A Haircut

Last month before we left for the family reunion (about which I will someday blog, once Bags sends me the compilation of everyone's photos), I cut Jim's hair.  His last haircut?  Nine months prior.  The secret to such haircut longevity?  Very slow-growing hair and periodic self-cuts around the ears (which result in more of a mullet look). 

I get so little practice cutting his hair that every time feels like the first time.  Nonetheless, I think this was my best work.  Unwilling photo subject:

No, this is not blog-worthy.  But one must blog about something while waiting for one's super-busy sister to send photos from one's Idaho trip, since one was incapable of dealing with the organization of all the photos taken by one and one's family during said Idaho trip and must therefore rely on one's sister to do the dirty work.