River continues to be a perfect angel, pretty much. He can be a little fussy for no apparent reason during the day, but the flip side of that is that he tends to sleep well at night, for nice long stretches. Nowhere close to really sleeping through the night yet, but a feeding at midnight followed by a feeding at 4 a.m. is not really so onerous, compared to the every-hour-and-a-half schedule we were on for a while there.

Saturday our friends Scott and Lynne came to visit, and to meet the kid, so that was a lot of fun. He charmed them utterly. (And they brought us lunch!) We hung out and talked all day, and it was awesome. I've missed them. We'll put up some photos at some point.

Sunday Heather went to do the grocery shopping and other errands while I entertained the kid (or, more properly, while he entertained me). I bundled him up a bit against the autumn chill and we went for a nice long walk through the neighborhood -- the same walk I used to do all the time by myself or with Heather, and you know what? It's a much better workout when you're pushing a stroller! After about five minutes of crying -- Why are you taking me out of the house? Waily waily! -- and ten minutes of cooing and looking around at all the interesting new sights, he promptly conked out and snoozed for the rest of the walk, which didn't stop me from telling him about everything we passed. Then we came home, he woke up, and started cooing some more, which is so sweet. He's just started doing that in the past few days, making these delighted or interested or joyful little noises. I gave him a bath, which has pissed him off in the past, but after the initial ass-in-the-water surprise wore off he was pretty happy about it, and especially likes having warm water poured over him. Well, who doesn't? It was a good weekend. For the first month he was lovable and all that, but he was basically a living hunger in baby form -- now we can tell he's starting to be aware of us as something other than food-dispensers and poop-cleansers, and it's so awesome, looking at him and seeing him really look back.

I managed to get a bit of writing done Sunday as well. Did 1300 words on Grift Sense, which is good, since I blew off working on Saturday in favor of social-ness. (That was the right choice.) Also did a bit of freelance work. I'd like to get sufficiently ahead that I won't have to do any work at all on Wednesday, which is my day off, and also my birthday! Not that we'll have crazy birthday funtime -- a newborn in the house sort of cuts down on the mad drunken hedonistic possibilities -- but I'll do my best within my limits...