hotel life

Well, Im sort of losing my appetite for writing about my vacation, even though there's a whole big story about this carnival thing that emma went to, with lots of new pictures. But I keep feeling guilty because I have NEW stuff to write about, I don't want to rehash old stuff. But the truth is, these pictures of samantha that I took in our hotel room are just TOO cute to leave sitting the draft black hole.

So there they are. Cheers to samantha, who by the way now crawls at moderate to high speed all through the house, deftly navigating her way up and down the step in our home. Whenever she hears emma laughing at some unseen location, she kicks it in high gear and belts out a little shriek to let emma know she is coming.

Her favorite pasttime, as I mentioned before, is pulling all the books off the shelf, though that just barely edges out "crawling around chasing emma on the floor" for first prize. She has officially mastered "more" in sign language, and is really good at waving "hi" and "bye" to people when instructed, and sometimes, just whenever she feels like it.

All my grandest efforts - and they truly feel grand, I must say - seem to leave me a little more confused than ever about exactly what is making my child's skin so nasty and eczematous (yes, that is a word). I've now gone over a week without chocolate or coke, my two previous closest companions, and almost a week with no dairy - cheese, butter, cream, milk or anything containing those ingredients. We have made our first batch of free-of-this, free-of-that laundry soap, but so far, that doesn't seem to have helped much either. She's such an enigma, that little gal. But, at least she's cute, huh?