[We actually bought her a pacifier and she did not care for it. This is how we keep the car peace ’round our parts.]

We took our first trip for Ronin this past weekend. Also our first trip in our NEW 1984 Volvo! Woo! Both took the drive to Eugene surprisingly well. The car performed flawlessly and Ronin slept the majority of the trip or was amused by me making faces and shaking her bucky-ball. The only ones who suffered were Joshua and I when we and 56,720,572 other vehicles were stopped on the freeway in between exits for over an hour waiting for the authorities to clear an accident; they eventually just closed the freeway and rerouted traffic over surface streets to the next exit. ARGH. We barely survived and by the time all the cars got back to the freeway after the detour, everyone who had not spontaneously combusted out of frustration was all bulgey-eyed with anticipation as they gunned their engines to 100mph, flying away into the void. We enjoyed about ten minutes of this before pulling off to get some food because suddenly Joshua was starving to death. I fretted the entire time thinking that all those cars—the ones who were lined up halfway to Washington waiting on the accident—were coming and they would take up all the precious road space before we could get to it. By the time we got back on the road, I was all in knots and when we came to a screeching halt not 20 miles down the road, I blamed it all on Joshua but it turned out to actually be the fault of the factory outlet malls in Woodburn.

It was a bad day for traffic. I don’t know if it is just our rotten luck or if it is always so nasty. The last time we drove to Eugene was in November and we also got stuck in traffic en route to Eugene.

[Since I get up a million times per night, Joshua gets up with Ronin when she’s ready to rock at 7am. I try to go back to sleep. She usually crashes right back out though after an hour…]

Ronin has been making a ton of cute baby sounds these past three days. Ahhhs, ohhhhs, goooos, etc. She just sits there and babbles. She LOVES to go on walks and I (and my sanity… and my ass) can’t really be more thankful for this. She shrieks with delight as we go along, it is really adorable. Eventually she ‘eh eh eh’s and then about a minute later, she is asleep. There is still no real pattern to her nap schedule except that she takes short naps in the day and long naps at night. She still gets up three+ times per night, which is okay with me I suppose (especially when it is only three times and not, say, five; after three times, getting out of a warm bed is suddenly 1000 times more horrendous) but I keep hearing how every single other baby on the planet by this age sleeps at least 35 hours per night and then brings you coffee in the morning. I know not what to say. I’m hoping that, um, my baby’s genius brilliance is too much to let lie for more than three hours at a go.

Speaking of genius brilliance, Ronin can now grasp things. With mild difficulty, but still. The baby brains, they do astound. We brought back a miniature pair of maracas from Eugene and she’ll grab the handle and try to shove the thing in her mouth. She is less coordinated with tools and tends to rub it all over her face before making it into her mouth so we stuck the pacifier on the pointy end so she wouldn’t put out an eye in her zeal. Let’s just say this kid would not pass the touch-your-nose-with-your-index-finger part of a sobriety test. Well, she wouldn’t pass the walk in a straight line part either.

[The above two photos Jeff took when visiting a couple of weeks ago.]

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