(no subject)

Technically, Benjamin has been babbling for weeks. (The production of consonants is babbling.) Today, however, he is suddenly exhibiting the classic babbling behavior of putting together long strings of alternating vowels and consonants. It's rather adorable. And rather loud.

(no subject)

Ugh. The temperature is just, very, very barely above freezing. There is now a nasty mix of rain and snow falling, and the top layer of the snow on the sidewalks and streets is turning to slush. It's likely to re-freeze in a few hours into a coat of ice all over the uncleared streets and sidewalks. (We shoveled this morning, as did many of our neighbors, but a lot of snow fell after that. And snowplows have been rather conspicuously absent so far.)

Local folks: Pretty, pretty please to be careful out there in a few hours, especially crossing streets. Looking at the mess around here, there's liable to be *a lot* of cars skidding out of control.

(no subject)

Weather (and local roads) update:

Still no snowplows. Thunder and lightning, which appears to be almost on top of us at the moment. Very heavy snow, very windy. I saw a car struggle down our street a few minutes ago, going very slowly and not looking like it was having an easy time getting through at all.