For those of you who know that this is my century, you won't be surprised to hear that today was not my day. Well, I should qualify that. In some ways, today was a very wonderful day: we got to listen to general conference (and were only mildly distracted by Andrew's propensity to use us as human jungle gyms), and a dear friend of mine, Cory Holding, was in town and came by to brunch. (Even if I hadn't liked her before, it's very hard to resist someone who find your child as "joyful" as she did!). So I suppose it would be more accurate to say that today was not my day only in the sense that it was rather hard on my clothing. I started out this morning by pouring nearly half a cup of mixed berries down my skirt (they stained the floor--I'm not yet sure what they will have done to my skirt, which, luckily was old and black). To cap this off, Andrew ended the day by puking all over me, which necessitated, yet again, a change of clothes.

We enjoyed conference, particularly the repeated theme of finding healing and comfort through the atonement of Christ, and the admonition to "do all things in wisdom" (necessary advice when sometimes I'm tempted to try to do everything, which may be ambitious but certainly is not wise). Since we listened to conference via the internet, Andrew didn't seem terribly fazed by any of it--except, of course, for a few disturbances during the Saturday afternoon session. Something seemed to frighten him--perhaps the disembodied voices, but more likely the missionary choir. Every time the choir sang, Andrew turned his big eyes on me and his lower lip started to tremble just as tears began to pool in his eyes. One time, he was so distraught that he actually started crawling away from me, crying out for comfort. (It was actually pretty funny--someone ought to tell Brother Brenchley that his choir frightened our baby!)

Saturday seems to have been Andrew's day for being terrified by innocuous music (although some could take issue with this term in the present application). Not only did the MTC choir scare him, he exhibited the same reaction earlier in the day when, in a misguided attempt to carry out one of the suggestions in our Baby Prodigy book, I turned on some ABBA and tried to dance with him. (I probably shouldn't make confessions like this--I know that some of you are thinking that it was probably my dancing that scared him; the rest of you are thinking that ABBA itself is scary enough. But hey, we have a limited selection of danceable music. Our other options were nursery rhymes or a random assortment of musicals, like The Scarlet Pimpernel, Jekyll and Hyde, or Into the Woods. And much as I love these musicals, I suspect that Andrew may have inherited his father's more discerning musical taste.)

Besides random moments of terror, Andrew has made another developmental leap: he has learned to follow simple commands from his mother. Not "no,"which tends to cause Andrew to stop temporarily whatever he is doing, look at me, grin, and go back to whatever mischief he is currently engaged in. Distractions are much more effective in this respect. He has, however, figured out that the correct response to "give mama kisses" is to put his open mouth on my cheek, slobber on it profusely and try to suck it. A few times he's even tried to gnaw on my cheek (putting into use his only two teeth). But whatever--he's rather proud of himself and I'll take whatever misguided shows of affection I can get!