Last week in Santa Fe, CP started holding her head up by herself and she's been improving her fine motor control ever since. She no longer bounces as bad as she did when she started and can hold her head up while she's prone on the blankets. She's growing fast and just this week started throwing out random smiles, creating enormous joy for her parents. Yesterday was a big day. She was awake and not really screaming for most of the day. She had little catnaps, but no real long periods of sleep. When we put her down last night at around 9pm, she was out until about 2am. This was HUGE!! The LW and I got some much-needed contiguous sleep and well, it just made us really happy. I hope that this will continue.....

The first planting of corn turned out to be a bust. I got about 7 half ears out of two 8' long rows. Now, if I'd been raising earworms, it would have been a bumper crop! Most of the ears not only had worms, but hadn't been pollenated and the kernels were unformed, so I dropped about a dozen empty, worm riddled ears into the compost heap. This is a definitely a learning year. I also, had to get rid of my "Black Beauty" zucchini this week. I saw it slumping during the day, but didn't think much of it. I should have been inspecting the vine closer because a few days later it REALLY slumped over and the leaves wilted. When I went to pull it up, the squash vine borers had eaten completely through all three vines and they just snapped off at ground level. Sad to see a productive heirloom variety of plant cut down like that. I got a little bit of revenge by putting the caterpillar and the grubs out in the water bowls that we keep in the front yard for the birds. Cucumbers are on the vine, as are the tomatoes, peas, and okra. A dozen or so red peppers currently hang from our 3 year old "Anaheim" plant in the mid morning sun.