This morning Analie woke up at 7:00.

Does the child not know that it’s “Saturday”?!?

Obviously no one passed the memo on to her, because I got her up, changed her diaper and brought her back to our bed to wake up Joey, and she was all shrieking HI! EVERYONE! I! LOVE! MY! LIFE! and flailing her little hands around indiscriminately; her nails are sharp like talons no matter how much I trim them, and I don’t want to have to get an eye replaced.

And then after 20 minutes of extreme baby joy, she got cranky and the fun was over like yesterday’s World Cup match.  I think she realized she woke up 1 1/2 hours early but she wasn’t quite tired enough to go back to sleep, so she just wanted us all to feel as lousy as she was feeling.  Trust me, Internet, her master plan worked.

I was messing around in the kitchen, maybe thawing her a 1/2 ounce chip of mango compote (GET OUT OF THE WAY for her new favorite food, by the way; she’s all about it) when I suddenly noticed that things were unusually quiet.  The kind of quiet that, if I hear three years from now, I will be wondering where she found the permanent markers.  The quiet seemed to be originating from her bedroom, so I immediately went there.

Indeed, Joey had her all surrounded by her ginormous panda, Cecil, and she and Henry were sharing him.

“Look, she can’t fall backwards and bonk her head,” Joey pointed out.

I’m not even going to elaborate on the previous statement made by Joey.

Because if I elaborated I might have to tell you that Analie’s getting a little bit more mobile.

And apparently we have to watch her EVERY SINGLE MINUTE now.

Because if we don’t…

…I don’t know, something really bad could happen.

Like, maybe (this is just conjecture, naturally), she could somehow go from sitting solidly on the floor one moment…

…to, like pitching forward into a wall (that totally came out of nowhere) and getting three goose eggs and a bloody nose.

But, psssh, that would NEVER HAPPEN HERE.

Nosiree.

We are Extremely Careful Parents.

I feel like we got off topic.  Where were we again…?

OH YEAH – huge panda, right?

In other news, the Woestman kitchen sink is suddenly infested with Thief Ants and Terro does not work on them, so I’m trying this crazy ant killing recipe I, cough cough, found on the internet (hi, Homeland Security!), our garbage disposal is clogged and needs to be replumbed because it’s making the dishwasher back up onto kitchen floor, and Joey has poison ivy and kind of looks like he has leprosy.

And we have a huge panda.