And to think it will soon be June!

But no more slogging through the mud or wishing for my old hobbit-hole for me!

Jane's been with us for less than a month and already I can't imagine life without her. She very much belongs, although I'm still not sure I actually feel like a mother or realise that she's our baby. She still almost feels like a cute, adorable baby who's come to live with us. I love this stage (she's starting to smile naturally now, meaning she actually smiles in response to my smile, not merely an unconscious twitch of the mouth in her sleep) and mourn the fact that they grow up so fast, even though I am eager to see the kind of personality she is going to develop. Michael is looking forward to the age when she begins to respond more, such as talking to us and catching the baseball when you toss it to her. 'At this point,' he observed, 'she's more like a really cute pet.'

Her first brush with grandparents is scheduled to occur in four days, when my parents are flying down for the weekend. I think we'll go out and have a picture package made. Thus far not a day has gone by that we haven't taken a picture of her, and we've been emailing updates faithfully to my family every day.

I finally checked out Eats, Shoots and Leaves from the library. Now that the fuss has died down, I can actually get my hands on it (last summer the waiting list exceeded 27 names). I've been reading it in bits and pieces during meal-times (Jane's) and enjoying it immensely, even though it is a bit of a jar to keep stumbling across the British convention of placing the commas outside the quotation marks. ('But aside from that', she acquiesced, 'it's a very jolly book indeed.')