I'm posting this from my daughter's house, which is as yet unnamed. I'm babysitting Eitan the Monkey Boy while his Mommy and Daddy are out for the afternoon. Yesterday this house was filled with people for Eitan's first birthday party; now it's clean and tidy and only the pile of new toys lets you know that anything ever happened. My house would still be in woozy recovery mode, but they are in their 20's and Energetic.

Eitan looks like such a little boy now that his hair's cut, and he's acting more and more like a toddler instead of an infant. He walks fearlessly on his own, squats comfortably to pick things up from the ground, plays on his toy piano, claps hands and sings.

He loves the Kenya song. I've decided to make it one of my signature things for him: when he's with Baba, he knows he's going to hear "Where can you see lions? Only in Kenya!" Today, though, he didn't want to dance to the music. He wanted to sit on my lap, right up close to the computer screen, pat the picture of the dancing lion, clap his hands, and sing along. "LA LA LIAH!", he sang, over and over again. And over and over again. Was the song over? Oh nooooooooooooooooooez! The world was coming to an end! We must hear the song! Lions! Again! Again!

After about 15 iterations, he was ready for a bottle and a nap. Or, at least, I was. But I don't know where my daughter keeps the Scotch. Heh.

Eitan drank his bottle pretty well, but wasn't too into that "nap" thingie. Finally I stopped rocking him and set him down on the floor to play. But he was tired and crabby and not really wanting to play either. He finally fell asleep after a good 45 minutes of rocking, getting down and fussing, then rocking some more, rinse, repeat.

But now I can hardly wait for him to wake up. He has such an amazingly cute smile! And he's so much fun to play with!