I’m told that at about 5:00 this morning, Harvey busted in to the guestroom, cone around his head and all, and said, “Hey, Mack!  It’s 5:00!  Wanna go play?”  Then Mack jumped up and said, “Yeah!”

At least that’s how Jessica tells the story.  I suspect it’s not far from the truth.

Milly was asleep when the Lambeths got here last night, but she got to see them this morning.  She and Graelyn are a little out of sync with their schedules though, so they haven’t had a whole lot of interaction time, not that either is at an age where they interact a whole awful lot with other babies anyway.  Still, watching them, I couldn’t help but look forward to a time when they’re big enough to play together or hang out together on visits.  Later on we went to meet Ella-Jane Clark, and I thought about Graelyn coming to visit and Milly taking her to hang out with her friends at the beach or something.  It’s just fun to think about the future.

After breakfast and a short trip the Lambeths took to the local branch of the company Ben works for (where he used to work for them) we all went to the mall to grab some food and, mainly, so the ladies could look at baby clothes.  Milly and Graelyn got matching outfits from Baby Gap and are expected to have pictures taken in them tomorrow at the beach.

I was, for the record, checking my email regularly and answered a few calls from clients.  Fortunately, it wasn’t a very busy day.

After the mall we went to the Port City Java on Shipyard, where I used to often go while working when we lived in Sunset Park, just to kill some time before going to see Elliot, Melissa and Ella.  For the record, her name is Ella-Jane Ryan Clark, whereas I though before that Jane was her middle name.  So they did like we did in combining two names to make up the first name, but where we just combined them for Meliamae, they hyphenated.  I still wish we’d capitalized the second M to make it easier for people to figure the name out.  MeliaMae.  Then again, that doesn’t look at good typed out, does it?

We stopped to pick up some dinner for Elliot and Melissa then headed on over.  Ella was born three weeks early, and she’s so tiny!  I saw some pictures of her and thought she looked like a little gnome.  She’s so tiny that premie clothes are loose on her.  We hung out there for a while and caught up with Elliot and Melissa then headed out when Milly started getting a little fussy.

We got back home and the ladies worked on food while I worked on some work then fed Milly after she napped.  She had fallen asleep on the way home and I put her right down when we got in, and she really didn’t seem to want to get up when I did get her up to feed her.  Nick, Amy and Eli came over and all three kids were fed and put to bed before the adults had dinner and played Puerto Rico.  In order to accommodate six players we took a few pieces from Nick and Amy’s game.  I just read that there is a six player setup, and we were pretty close to it.  Amanda won by a good bit, followed by Nick or Amy, me, then Ben or Jessica.

Zach Dotsey