What happens when...

...a two-year old gets caught between an irresistible force (Mommy at one end of the hall, getting the kids ready for bed) and an immovable object (Daddy at the other end of the hall, preventing the child from fleeing)? Judging from Rebecca's behavior, the only solution is to sit down in the middle of the hall and have a temper tantrum.

Because Amber asked me to...

Here's one of my favorite Princess Bride quotes: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

That line is used in offices more frequently than I would have expected, mostly in response to some kind of new corporate term. For instance:

"initiative" really means "useless time-wasting event to make management feel better",
"employee empowerment" really means "you can choose to do your job any way you like... as long as it's like THIS",
and a "suggestion" by the corporation really means "do this or die".

I finally photographed Becca smiling

I have never seen a child look more "serious" than Becca does when we're trying to take her picture. If we catch her unawares we might capture a smile, but more often she switches to concentration mode whenever we snap the picture. Maybe it's the flash. Maybe she's just trying to figure out why we're taking pictures instead of playing with her. I don't know what it is. But we recently captured a couple pictures of Becca where she's actually smiling.

I added some new pictures to our Facebook page here. I included some new "serious" ones to illustrate how hard it is to capture a good picture of Becca. Believe me, there are lots more. But my favorite is the last one in the blue swing. It's a bit blurry because I had to take it with my camera phone while the swing was moving. Given the constraints, I think it turned out fairly well.