Lately Simone has eschewed all her toys and has been fascinated by her feet. You can leave her forever in her papasan with only her bare tootsies to amuse herself. Thank goodness, because our house is already overrun with plastic geegaws and rattley whirlimagigs. The nice thing about feet as a toy is I never need to pick them up off the floor
or forget to pack them in the diaper bag.











The weather has been warming up lately and the challenge is taking her outside but protected from the sun. Here she is taking her "Baby Banz" sunglasses for a test drive at the block party we went to a few weekends ago. Food was from the Chicken Hut which has been in Durham over 50 years (collard greens, fried chicken, potato salad and sweet tea) and there was dancing in the street. It was a reminder that it's not SO bad living here...









...a reminder we also get when we hang out on our front porch in the evenings, perhaps sipping a beer and enjoying the evening sun. Here's Simone and Papa on our new (to us) wicker settee. You can't be a proper southerner without white wicker porch furniture it seems.

We're off to Albuquerque to meet the Chavez side of the family and we can 't wait to have a giant cousin meet-up. We'll be back with green chile soon!