I am going to bed at 8:30. Seriously.

I will turn on the TV, but will probably be asleep by 9. I spent the day with Miss D. I had to get up at insane o'clock to get the critters tended and get some coffee into my system, walk the dogs, and get to my daughter's by 7. Fortunately, it's a five minute drive, but the prep stuff took quite a while.

Miss D is a joy - she really is. She's mobile and fast as a rocket. She's moved beyond the belly-down combat crawl and was up and crawling on all fours until she did an unfortunate faceplant on the tile floor and screamed bloody murder - I scooped her up and checked for bloody nose, bitten lip, anything serious. There was no blood and no egg rising on her forehead. she had a pink spot on her cheek so I'm guessing that's what hit the floor.

She wailed like a siren, more from the experience than actual pain, I think, and I distracted her by pointing to Dudley and telling her how Dudley was all worried because she was crying. Dudley was standing in front of us, looking Extremely Worried, an expression he does very, very well. Here he is, looking Extremely Worried at the guy mowing the lawn:

Note the expression in his eyes, and his furrowed brow. Delaney studied him as her screams faded to whimpers and then to a couple of shuddering sighs, and silence. She didn't want to worry Dudley. She resumed playing a minute later, but stuck to the combat crawl for the rest of the day.

She is into everything - serious babyproofing is needed. It was a great workout for me, as I scooped up and hefted a 20 lb. baby every five minutes, hour after hour.

At one point in the afternoon, she began yelling - not crying yelling, but just yelling, "AAAAAHHHHH!" So I did it back to her. She thought this was AWESOME, and we spent quite a while just yelling at each other and laughing. She took two decent naps and actually consumed some nourishment this time. Then it was after 4 and Mommy was home, followed a couple of minutes later by Daddy, and I gathered my stuff to get home to my own little dogs, who had by now been Holding It for 9 hours. At least I think they were - Murphy took a very long pee indeed, but Sophie didn't seem to have that much to do. Hmmm....

My daughter has a "regular" teacher's schedule now and will be off this summer, so this was probably my last exhausting marathon with Miss D for quite a while. By the next round she will be walking and probably talking, too!