Anna's Soapbox

Another day older and deeper in debt...

We're here in Philly, adjusting to both the time change and the weather: cool and cloudy. Haven't seen any of that since... oh my, since May 20, actually, the day Lazarus was born. It rained that morning and was unseasonably cool all day, and all day and into the night, I couldn't get this line out of my head:

I was born one day when the sun wouldn't shine/I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine/I loaded 16 tons of number-nine coal/and the foreman said, Well bless my soul...

That's from a lullaby my dear dad used to sing to us kids to help us sleep snug and happy all night... Yeah, I'm serious. That and stuff about poor starving waifs fainting on rich men's doorsteps, their cries muffled in the falling snow - and my second favorite ("16 Tons" beats all), "Daddy, don't go to the mines today..."

Anyhoo, Laz is an absolute champion traveler. He did save up his poops for three days and gave me one shot in the airport, another on the plane an hour or so after takeoff, but the terminal's nursery section and the plane's pull-down changing table in the restroom helped me take care of that. Other than poop, he slept, looked around, cooed, fussed just a bit when he got hungry, ate, chomped on the pacifier, and slept some more. When we landed, I managed to talk him through the scary THUMP of the plane hitting the tarmac and the cacophony of the jet engines reversing - his eyes got wide, but he gazed at me and I held his tiny hand and talked, and he was okay. And then, the big moment: meeting Grandma and Grandpa! The Philly airport has a bunch of rocking chairs right at the terminal's exit, and of course Mom was in the very first chair, rocking like mad waiting for da baby! Laz recognized her and gave her a big smile, and then while Dad and I picked up my bag, he regaled her with stories of his first big trip. He's such a little talker now... time to get out the video camera...

I'll get some new photos up tomorrow... we're going to see my grandmother and aunt so I expect to take lots of pictures...