Not man kids can bend to 180 degrees.

This was even more impressive in person. It was absurdly cute, she was just poking at the capri-sun bag (pouch? Sack?) and was tired, so she put her head down. Adorable.

Another diagnosis bites the dust. Sort of. The syndrome du jour upon which Abby's geneticist has lately pounced upon is something called Opitz. If you want to read about it, here's the rather brief wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith-Lemli-Opitz_syndrome

Let me just say what a joy it is to latch onto a new possible syndrome every couple months and have the chance to read all the horrible things it can cause. In this case, it was all for naught, since the test came back negative last week. This means little, though, since the test can very possibly not detect the syndrome but she can still have it. In brief, if it was positive, we'd know; since it was negative, we can be moderately certain that we certainly know nothing. Make sense? Great.

They want to see her again, of course, because that's what doctors do. They see you, usually get it wrong, then they see you again. Or, in Abby's case, they see you 9 times again.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that we get an average of 10 of Medica's incredibly worthless "This is not a bill" notifications per week.

This is not a subject that's really on my mind much, I just wanted to say that we've effectively ruled out yet another syndrome. Hoo-ray Abby! I think we can only know that, if she does truly have something (which is brutally likely), we can take heart in knowing that it's got to be pretty mild.

This morning, it was delightful to bring the girls downstairs and watch them react to Jen's cousin Zach sleeping on our living room floor. (he was on a futon mattress, we're not trolls you know) They were quite stunned. I think they warmed up to him and his friend Mary with whom he was bouncing around the US looking for a PhD school.

The day was nice. Our trot around powderhorn park with them on our backs was enormously sweaty. In the afternoon, we went to a birthday party for Ruby and Henry Downing and they sprung for some very high quality cake, which was awesome of them. I had a very dad moment while swinging Lily in the playground. I was there with two other guys, about my age, all swinging kids about Lily's age. As we chatted idly, I felt so suddenly Dad-like. Daddish. Dadesque. I can't say that it was much more interesting than that, it was just a strong and sudden feeling of self-appraisal.

I have about a thousand kid stories, and I am desperate to put them down here. Unfortunately, it's 11:30, so it's off to bed with this Dad.

Day two hundred and nine.

There was a parachute at the party today. Big hit with Abs.

Lily of the valley.

That cake was stellar. The girl was nice too.