Ugly Juice::: Juice Tests Readers' Cuteness Tolerance By Posting Gobs and Gobs of Adorable Niece Photos and Videos

I just returned from a fun and relaxing week of visiting my family up north. I spent much of the time babysitting The Adorable One. I also watched a couple of Mary's volleyball games--she's a freshman and is a setter on JV and B-Team. She is awesome. I would not want to be on the receiving end of her killer serves. Visited my grandparents and aunties, shucked and ate fresh corn on the cob, relaxed by the lake, got a tetanus shot. On Saturday, we celebrated my Grandma Bernadette's 80th birthday. That whole side of my family was in town, and we consumed massive amounts of tasty food and beverages and played one of those epic games of croquet where balls are chased out of the tomato patch and into neighboring properties. (Strangely I won, despite being the least skillful player ever.) That night we played poker at John's place and I lost everything in a high-stakes bluff. All in all it was a swell time.

The Adorable One is crawling all over the place now. And she is a total jabberbox. She isn't using any actual words yet, so she just kind of hollers in her own way, and/or launches a series of mamamamamamamaMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAmamamamamas. I love that; there is this sort of crescendo in the middle, and she speeds up and then kind of runs out of steam and trails off. So far she seems to have one vowel down--"A"--and her vocabulary consists of the above, as well as: dadadaDADADADADADAdadadada, bababababaBABBABABABABABABABABABAB bababa, and my favorite, anananananaNANANANANANANANANANANANAnananana.

Anyway. On to the cuteness:

The Adorable One Reveals Her Politics

Babe in a Blanket

Since the babe has learned to crawl, she sometimes exercises her right to move away from me and play with more exciting things, like paint cans and shoes. This hurts the ego, obviously, plus it bores me. So if she wanders away for too long, I like to catch her, roll her up in her blanket, and watch her try to get out. It's apparent that she loves this game because after her escape, she crawls away from me as fast as she can and chews on the first pair of flipflops she can find.

Sleepy But Devoted Cheerleader

Baby Attack

I hoped to create a nice little video showcasing Natz's new crawling skills. I would soon realize she was charging towards me because she wanted to eat a handful of my hair.