Josie turns 1.5 years on Tuesday. No fooling. The big innovation this week: hugs. She’s in a phase. How wonderful is this? It’s wonderful beyond description. It's like what I dreamed it would be having a daughter: super affection, minus the exhaustion. We've also begun a ritual of walking around the block, our daily constitutional. This allows us to go see the birds and to visit our neighbors Bridget and Jim (Bridget gave Josie a bunny slightly larger than her, which she hugs with great ardor) and to visit any stray dogs that might be around, none of which frigthen Josie, unless they bark right in her face. She doesn't scare easy.

    At the same time, Josie is taking a serious interest in the basic girl stuff. She's super into dressing her dolls and giving her dolls bottles, the basic modeling behaviors. She also loves to go run and get the dish rag and wipe up random patches of the floor, which she considers cleaning. And she's got a vacuum fetish that is unrivaled. When Babymamma gets out the vacuum, she goes into a frenzy. And she'll yell out "vacuuuu!" several times a day, no matter where she is. We don't know what to make of this, frankly.

   With boys, it seems more obvious to me, from an evolutionary standpoint. For hundreds of thousands of years -- before the sliver of history that modern man represents -- boys who focused on large, fast-moving objects (i.e. animals) and who engaged in physical combat behaviors generally did better, survived, and passed down their genes. That's why lots of the boys we know are obsessed with cars/trucks/buses/planes/whatevers, and why they tend to get into imaginative play that involves disembowling. I can't quite figure out what evolutionary trait would select for vacuum fetishism. Yes, I know, she's just copying Babymamma. But it's like like Babymamma LOVES vacuuming. It's not like she exudes the attitude: Hey, I was BORN to vacuum. And maybe she vacuums a bit more than other folks, because of cat hair, but we do have wood floors.

    Regardless, we're both delighted with her early interest in domestic stuff, and babies in particular. We're hoping when the time comes for her to have a little brother or sister, that this will bode well. Can anybody out there give us some reassurance on this point? Or will she love the idea of a baby sibling, but hate the actual reality?