Unbelieveable

If ever I wanted to spend $11,250 on a portrait of Lily, today I had that chance. Seriously. There are kids starving here in my own city, but I could be the proud owner of a portrait the price of a car.

We got a letter in the mail several weeks ago for a deal with a local “fine” photographer. I knew that this studio would charge more than, say, JCPenny or Sears, but I checked out the website and was impressed with the work (no prices listed on the website, of course). Little did I know until after the session just how much more. I haven’t given any money yet, so I’m safe so far, though I am terribly curious as to how the photos turned out. He took some of Lily, and of Lily and me together, that I know will be killer—you know, the cute "mom holding the naked baby looking adoringly at each other" bit--but it would be monetary suicide to view the proofs. I even took the time to straighten my hair and bathe the baby beforehand. Poop. And, man, did she pull out the cute for him, too. Sigh. What’s a sucker mom to do? Suck it up and go to JCPenny, that’s what.


After the little snafu with the photo session, we went to Grandma's house. She’d invited over some of her friends for fruit smoothies and cute grandbaby. They were attentive and showed Lily the proper amount of admiration and adoration. Unfortunately it wasn’t until after everyone left that she really pulled out all the stops on the cuteness scale. She’s most always winsome and adorable, but I have rarely seen her displays of giggles, flirty eyes, kicky feet, and coy grins paralleled to this afternoon. Julia and I were melting all over everything in gooey love-sick puddles.

Yesterday a woman told me, “They don’t make ’em cuter than that.” I didn’t do anything but incubate her and provide half the chromosomes, so I don’t think it’s tooting my own horn to say that I whole-heartedly agree.


Afterwards, Julia took us to one of our favorite resturants for dinner. Tiger didn’t arrive until after we were done eating (we were much too ravenous to wait), but it was a nice time anyhow. There was some really great people watching there tonight. Everyone who passed was absolutely fascinating. For a while I felt badly, but then I realized I was just checking everyone out. I mentioned this to Tiger, and he said he’d been doing the very same thing. I was wondering if that is what it is like to be male all the time—completely visual, drawn to look at people—almost autonomic.