Gwendolyn meets Benjamin

Our good friends, Chris and Phyllis, and their 21 month old son, Benjamin, came to visit us today. This was Gwen's first attempt at being a hostess to another toddler on her own turf. For the post part, the visit was friendly and (thankfully) bloodless. Everyone shared as best a toddler could. First, Gwen wanted whatever Benjamin was touching. Once she had it, she was no longer interested in it. Then she decided to be overly generous and give everything to him. In the picture to the left, she's giving him one of her coveted "not-a-toy" toys: The baby powder.


Here they are looking adorable and sharing the toy gumball machine. This was a rare photo since both children are actually looking at us. I think the "What kind of freak are you?" look on their faces was due to the antics of Andrew who was making insane monkey noises.

We experimented with various camera lenses and snapped plenty of photos that will end up in the recycle bin. Thank goodness we're not paying $0.33 each for film developing and printing! But it's also a bit sad that some of these duds won't end up in albums. Some are very interesting! I'll share a few....


This one could be from the baby album of Tim (The Tool Man) Taylor's neighbor, Mr Wilson. To the untrained eye, it's a child of anbiguous gender being knocked in the forehead by a disembodied fist. But look closer and you'll see that it's just Gwen being fed some very yummy Trader Joe's Vanilla Bean yogurt by her Daddy. Yummmm!



We'll just call this one "Mommy Dearest".

(I have no memory of what I'm doing here. Saluting? Scratching? Performing the 2nd step of the baby heimlich? We'll just never know.)

We learned about three new things that Gwen loves today:

1. Strawberry flavored milk
2. Raisins (thanks for sharing, Benjamin!)
3. And, Uncle Chris who never got tired of flipping her upside down even after the 60th time!