Over the river and through the woods . . . and over the river . . . and over the river . . . and still no grandma's house. Or, in this case, St. Benedict the Abbot's church. Yesterday, we all piled into our trusty Honda Civic and headed to the city of three rivers (better known as Pittsburgh, previously Fort Pitt, previously something else that I can't remember . . . ). Our goal was IKEA (well, my goal anyway), a fabulous shopping icon with cheap furniture, houseware, and kids "crap" (Dan's term), which we made in a timely fashion. Actually, we were heading down for the wedding of Tracy Paxon (a former Ewing lab member) to James Gibson. However, since we arrived in Pittsburgh around 1 o'clock and the wedding wasn't until 3, we thought we'd while away the time shopping. We left IKEA around 2:20ish, with just enough time to get us to our destination (or so mapquest suggested). Our directions, however, turned out to be somewhat lacking (although it's entirely possible that the whole thing was the navigator's fault). At any rate, when we were told to merge onto US 19 from US 51, we didn't realize that 19 almost immediately diverged from US 51. About ten miles down the road we finally realized that we were no longer seeing signs for 19--however, this being the outskirts of Pittsburgh with horrible little intersections and lots of traffic and a grand tradition of crappy roadsigns (meaning you can't read the sign until you're driving past it), it had taken us over twenty minutes to navigate these ten miles. By the time we had corrected our error, gotten back on US 19 and driven a few miles down the road, we realized that, since it was 3:40, we had most likely missed most of the wedding, and it seemed more sensible to go find our hotel and put Andrew down for a nap (who, incidentally, was less than pleased with this unexpected hour and a half confinement in the car, after being in the car most of the morning). At least we made it to the reception, where Andrew was a big hit. During the toasts, about 75% of the people in the surrounding tables were watching us trying to feed Andrew his mush instead of watching the toast-givers. (We must say, Andrew was much less dry--in more ways than one!--than Uncle Arty). Another highlight of the evening was watching Dan's advisor Andy's little girl, Selma. At first, she reminded one forcibly of Elmira, from Tiny Toons (I'm going to love him and squeeze him . . .) as she grabbed any young male in her vicinity in a big bear hug. Her mom told us that she's going through a hugging phase, but it looked to us more like she was boning up for a career in professional wrestling. As the evening wore on, however, she became a little more gentle. In fact, Dan tells me that she reminded him of me, when I get tired--in other words, she started to do the "limpet" thing, clinging to her chosen host until he was forced to drag her across the room.

At any rate, we enjoyed the reception. But we did get lost on the way back to the hotel. (Of course, at this point we had driven up and down this road four times by now--since this was the route we'd been lost on initially--and everything looked familiar!). We eventually made it, not just to our hotel, but back to State College, to Andrew's infinite relief. He will not soon allow us to put him placidly into his car seat! His new m.o. consists of arching his back resistently if we even sit down in the car with him. The one thing we did learn from our excursion is that Andrew is infinitely more adaptable than his mother. (Infer into this what you will.)

Other highlights (or lowlights, as you wish) from the week. Andrew seems to be developing some form of stranger anxiety. He does all right as long as his parents are within eyeshot, but after that, all bets are off. This week, in a spectacular case of scheduling, I had my yearly exam the same day (and approximately the same time) that Dan had an interview. Needless to say, both were fairly important things for us to attend, so, one of Dan's labmates generously pitched in to watch Andrew for the twenty or so minutes that we were both going to be gone. In her words, Andrew was enjoying the party and the attention of a room full of people, until the people (including his father) gradually left the room and he realized that she was the only one there. Then he cried for twenty minutes until Dan came back. During this crying spell, our intreped heroine coerced two of her lab-mates (both similarly unversed in the arts of small children) to help her change Andrew's diaper. We think it says something about the strength and wiles of our little man that it took three grown-ups to put a clean diaper on him--and it was only a wet one! Most surprisingly, Andrew was able to outwrestle a man who is 6'4 and weighs 280 lbs, as Andrew apparently got away from the largest of the three would-be diaper changers. (Not that this is a new event--Andrew routinely gets away from one or both of us. We wonder if maybe he's planning a career as a streak. See previous post on "runaway bum").

All right. Now for the moment you have all been waiting for. (No, not Dan's graduation. Or mine, for that matter). Picture time!

As part of his newfound "separation anxiety," Andrew has also developed a talent for monitoring his parents' actions at all times and in all places. Below, you can get a glimpse of the "all-seeing eye" of Andrew.

Dan says: "Looks like he has the Halloween disease."

We bought the horse for Andrew to ride, but apparently, in this bout, the horsey won. (We're still not entirely sure how Andrew managed to so dextrously insert himself beneath the horse).

This last one is for Trisha. Andrew has recently developed a propensity for occasionally snuggling with blankets, mattresses, anything related to a bed. (Of course, nothign really stops his momentum for long aside from actually going to sleep). Today, as Andrew was crawling around on the floor (and across the blanket Trisha made for him) he would stop every once and a while to put his cheek down on the soft blanket before quickly resuming his explorations.