Really, really, I would like Penny to sleep through the night again...

Of course, the doctor told us last week that we'd almost certainly have some teeth within the next couple of months, so for all I know, she'll be two before she ever sleeps through the night again.

Yep, feeling a little pessimistic this morning.

On the other hand, she not only ate the squash we offered her on Friday, but she liked it so much that she ate the whole jar - everything else we've given her, including applesauce, she loses interest about halfway through.

But we're trying to get her used to eating solids. Today I sent a jar of applesauce with her to daycare, and they'll start giving her solids twice a day - cereal in the mornings, and something else (applesauce today) at lunch. I hope that will help; she does usually have more of an appetite earlier in the day.

(To be honest, I don't even think she's actually hungry when she wakes up at night anymore, at least not usually. I think she's just used to getting the bottle. We tried increasing the amount in the bottle, to see if that would make her sleep longer, but it hasn't helped - with four ounces or six, she sleeps another four or five hours. We may have to figure out how to start weaning her from that bottle, though to be honest, at 1am, we don't want to teach her anything - we just want to make her be quiet.)

The weather is starting to get nicer here. It was perfect on Saturday, with bright, sunny skies and temperatures in the mid/high 60s. I took Penny out for a stroll.

It was too cold to go out with her again Sunday, but I'm hoping to take her for walks more frequently as the weather gets nicer. She loves being outside. She gets very quiet, and her eyes get big, and she just looks at everything.

When I'd talked to my mom Thursday night, she hinted that it had been a little too long since she'd seen Penny. And while Matt and I get time away from the baby at work every day, we haven't had time together away from Penny since December.

So Saturday afternoon, we dropped Penny off with my mom and went to the movies. We went to see Big Fish, which turned out to be very good, if slightly weepy toward the end.

We even ran some errands while we were out. We may do that again next week, too - by then, it'll be time to make another run to Sam's Club for formula and diapers.

I'd wanted to get a picture of Mom and Penny together, but Mom resisted. So I just have one of Matt playing with Penny at their house.

I like playing with her there; they have a nice, large open area in the center of the living room.

We'll have something like it eventually. We plan to move our coffee table upstairs, into our bedroom, at least temporarily. It'll make room for the playmat and maybe even the saucer, so we can keep an eye on Penny a little more comfortably.

Matt wants to wait until we've taken Colleen's bassinet back to her before we move the coffee table - just to keep the amount of clutter in the bedroom to a minimum. But given how much trouble we have just getting her on the phone, never mind finding her at home, we may just disassemble the thing and dump it in the spare bedroom. Or, better yet, just take it over to her house and leave it on the porch.

Certainly, we need to get the table moved before Penny becomes mobile. And she's getting ever closer. Yesterday, she realized that she could roll from her back to her stomach by rolling to the left as well as to the right. And she's this close to having figured out the stomach-to-back roll. She gets about halfway there and can't quite figure out how to get her legs where she needs them.

At the grocery store yesterday, as I made my way through the produce section, I noted an old man in a dark suit who was looking over the bananas. We exchanged polite smiles and I went on my way.

I ran into him again at the end of the next aisle, and he said, "I'm not really following you."

I smiled and said, "Oh, no, I understand."

"It's just all so confusing. My wife is gone, you see, and I haven't been in a grocery store since we were married fifty years ago."

I asked if he needed any help, but he just said he reckoned he'd find everything eventually.

A few aisles later, he said, "When we got married, I told my wife to give her notice, at her job. She said, 'What if you don't make enough money to keep us?' and I said, 'Well, I'll get a part time job, then.' That was fifty years ago, and I never did have to get a part time job. But she sure had a job anyhow, doing this shopping!"

We met again by the cereal. He asked me to help him interperet the store's sale tag, and pointed at a box that showed cereal with strawberries on it. "It would be fine, if it wasn't for that fruit in there!"

"Oh, no, sir," I said, "the fruit is just on the picture. There isn't any in the box."

"Really?" he said, and put the box in his basket. "Have you lived in Williamsburg long?"

"Since I was in college. But I only lived about fifteen miles from here before that."

"I came here after the war. I lived in Virginia before that, but it was after the war that we came to Williamsburg. I volunteered. I got my notice, see, but didn't want to go in the Army, so I went and volunteered in the Navy. I was there for five years, and then when I got out, we came to Williamsburg. I like it here."

When he saw me picking out jars of baby food, he said, "Do you have little ones?"

"Just one. She's about six months old now."

"Oh, that's nice," he said. "My daughter, she had three girls. She wanted a boy, but she went to the doctor and he said if she really wanted a boy, she should just adopt one and not risk having a fourth girl. So they went to Russia and came home with a little boy. I guess that was about two years ago, now. He's the nicest little boy you'd ever want to meet."

I didn't run into him again after that. I hope he managed to navigate the vagaries of the frozen foods section all right. He was a sweet little old man. I keep wondering if I might run into him again, and thinking it would be nice if I do.

--Liz