I hate it when you get a filling in the upper back of your mouth and your eye and nose go numb.

Evelyn was making out with herself in the mirror this morning. No kidding. Yesterday afternoon she laid her head on my stomach and hissed at the baby like a little snake or opossum. Then she tried to teach him how to say dada. Today she is with her greatgrandparents Poulsen. I am glad for the rest.

Does anyone know of to get orange Asiatic Lilly pollen out of a white shirt?

EVELYN
We took her to
the beach last night.
She is so little.
The beach is so big.

Evelyn had her five month check-up yesterday at the pediatrician’s. I decided to take her a month late because when I took her for the two month (for which they had me come in when she was only one and a half months old) they gave her the two month vaccinations. And of course, if you look at her adjusted age, she was only half a month old when she went in. And those are, according to my very sensible feelings, way too many needles for a baby.

She had so much fun playing on the examination table. Her new thing is sticking her tongue out. All the way. It’s this soft little, thin, pink tongue that, for some reason, is very triangular. It looks like a spearhead. She needs to join the KISS reunion.

She did admirably. It seemed like it took the nurse forever to complete the shots. Four injections, and in-between she’s taking the paper wrapping and cap after the next syringe, and Evelyn’s eyes are getting wetter and wetter and her face redder and redder. Her ears filled up with tears. Afterwards I nursed her to sleep and she and I drove back home. She then went out shopping with us to look for formal dresses for Nathanael’s work’s Christmas party this weekend. She smiled and rode around in her stroller. What a sport.

Our daughter is petite, the doctor says. At five months she weighs 14 pounds 4 ounces which is the 30th percentile and is 25 1/2 inches long (Evelyn prefers that we say ‘tall’) which is the 60th percentile.

She’s awake!

Today is the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s (the Beatle, not the chaplin) assassination and the eight anniversary of my car wreck in which I spun out on a left exit ramp, jumped an embankment, rolled down a hill back onto the interstate and was broadsided and stuck under a semi owned by the dubious Sam Walton, et al, suffered a traumatic brain injury and was unconscious in the hospital for three days. So sayeth the police report. My first words in the hospital and my first memory? Awaking while the nurse was shoving a potassium IV into my arm and I telling her that the chemical symbol for potassium was K, a fact which I only remember as it is an integral componet of the narrative. We shall be sure to toast this and the Sure Swift Hand at dinner tonight with Jon and Michael at the Cayene Cafe.

Our orchid decided to die last night, though that isn’t entirely true. The four blooms, which were in their height of regality, chose to wilt at the same time, as if in protest to the broken air conditioner, Michael Bolton’s nomination, or perhaps in deference to Cannes, what-have-you. However, I should think heat wouldn’t be an obstacle for orchids. Just poachers, screenwriters, and journalists.

The night before last N. and I were hanging out on the couch after supper — myself staring at the ceiling and he reading an article in The Atlantic — and the baby started to jump around with much gusto. I eventually noted how rhythmic and centred its kicks were and pointed it out to N. who was quite bemused. We decided that we must immediately buy the infant a percussion set that he might get an early start. A few minutes later I realised it was our baby’s first case of the hiccups. Hic c u p. Hiccccuuuppp. 27 weeks 5 days.

Saw this new, electronic side project of David Bazan’s reviewed the other day on Pitchfork. Hadn’t, I don’t think, really heard anything about it until reading this, although I’m pretty sure I heard Pedro the Lion perform a number of these songs at First Ave last spring.

N.’s sister graduates from Rocky Bayou’s high school tonight. Congratulations to her.

My father bought us a Baby Jogger. It arrived in the mail a couple days ago. It’s pretty neat.

I’m currently reading Salman Rushdie’s Fury. It’s pretty great so far. Postmodern absurdism hiding somewhere in New York City in the months before September 11. Somewhat in the vein of White Noise and DeLillo’s other pop culture oriented absurdist works.

Our Roma tomatoes are almost ripe. Much excitement.