No journal entry last Friday. Sorry. I was busy getting my employee settled in.

That still sounds so weird. I mean, I could accept being a manager - that was really just an excuse to dump all the QA work on my head so that the guy who was QA before me could take on other work.

But now I have someone to supervise. I have to put together a goals and requirements form for her to sign sometime in the next week or so. I have to make sure that she's always got a charge number, and approve her timesheet every two weeks. I have to make sure that she's always got work to do, though that part won't be too difficult for the next few weeks while she's settling in.

She's also demonstrating initiative and resourcefulness, whoo!

But this is kind of like parenting - I'm trying to keep examples in mind of things I want to emulate and things I want to avoid.

As it turns out, Penny's fever was due to - go on, guess - another ear infection. While she was on the preventative medicine.

So we're going to have to take her to an Ear/Nose/Throat specialist, who will probably recommend that she get tubes.

Whee.

But at least she wasn't contagious, so we got to visit with everyone over the weekend without guilt.

A moment of unexpected beauty:

I was taking my shower this morning when I noticed the light sparkling as it shone through the droplets of water on the inside of the shower curtain. It was like the sun shining on the dew, or at least close enough to make me smile.

There are worse ways to begin the day.

We had our cookout/deckwarming this weekend. I think we had a really good time, though weather and bugs kept us indoors for most of it, which seemed kind of absurd. But really, the whole point was the good time. Which we had.

Naturally, as there were two babies and one toddler present, the kids became the stars of the show.

Elizabeth seems to have a natural "baby-love" aura. Penny's at a stage now where she takes about half an hour to warm up to people she doesn't know very well, but as soon as Elizabeth came into the house, Penny beelined straight for her.

Penny and Jess still aren't quite sure what to do with each other, though Jess's experience with other babies is limited enough that she's completely fascinated by Penny. Penny, who sees other babies frequently at daycare, is less impressed, but still fairly curious, if only because she needs to know where they are, relatively speaking, in the pecking order.

Answer: Penny weighs almost half again as much as Jess, and is far more mobile. She is, therefore, capable of asserting her dominance. At least, she is when Dad isn't being a pest and making her give Jess's toy back. Babies are utterly egocentric and amoral. Watching them interact is - if you keep that in mind and don't take it personally - funny as hell.

Penny would drop a toy. Jess would pick it up. Penny would realize she wanted that toy after all. Someone would hand her with a different toy. She would wave the new toy in Jess's face until Jess took it, and then Penny would take her original toy back.

Jess, not having the mass to push Penny around, would watch Penny playing without blinking until Penny dropped a toy. Then she would lunge and grab it and, I swear, look smug when Penny looked for the toy again.

You never see this in the wild, but sometimes domesticated males can be convinced to share their meals.

The first rule of Baby Fight Club is: Do not babble incoherently about Baby Fight Club!

It's okay, Jess. Braz confuses the rest of us, too.

All in all, a very good weekend. We ate well (a little too well, as I gained back the pound that I'd lost last week... maybe I should have scheduled my monthly weigh-in at the gym for before the party...) and had a good time hanging out and talking and playing with the babies and generally just being goofs.

--Liz