Visiting Baby Steals Heart from "Heart of the Valley"

Yes, indeed. Cor-vallis means "Heart of the Valley" and Ruby Alice came to town and stole the hearts of all that met her. And here's the cutest-ever little baby signaling that dinner is nearing an end. One foot on the table means "almost done" and two feet up there means "all done". She's an excellent communicator, besides being a talented stealer of hearts.




Immediately there goes Poppi's heart...



...and Mimi's. And Ruby melted Aaron right away by giving him the big doe-eyed look and then a toothy grin of approval. That's all it took. He was there the minute that Ruby put out the call for anything. He was a splendid uncle and was willing to help with everything, short of changing diapers. Well, there's only so much that you can expect from a 13-year-old.




It's a good thing that Ruby works her magic so quickly because we didn't have much time with them. Jer, Pamela and Ruby arrived on Friday evening and left on Sunday morning. Boooo hoooo! Way too short. But they are major football fans (Ruby's already been to four games and has the complete Cal cheerleader outfit) and Berkeley was playing OSU, so that was the perfect excuse for them to come visit for the weekend.

Aaron and Jer and Pamela instantly bonded through their shared love of music and electronics. Below Aaron and Jer are comparing and contrasting Aaron's new cell phone with Jer's Google phone (he works for Google).




Saturday morning before the game was lots of fun. The deeply communal side of me is so blissed out when there's a house full of guests, especially ones as fun and easy as these guys. We spent so much time telling stories and laughing. And of course Ruby provided endless entertainment.



Many times during this busy and fun-filled weekend I thought about what a lucky girl Ruby is. She's landed in a family I would wish for every child to have. So much love and attention and laughter and creativity and just pure joy. If every child had this for a childhood, what a different world we'd live in.




Ruby's only 8&1/2 months old, and only 15 lbs, but that's not slowing her down at all. She's trying to walk (and doing quite well at it), wants to check out everything, watches and listens intently, and verbally communicates and makes herself understood. It's not all because of her own brilliance (of which there is plenty), but also because of the encouragement and stimulation she gets from Jer and Pamela. She sees that life is interesting.




Below is Pamela on Saturday morning busy whipping up breakfast for the gang before they headed off to the game. One small glitch in the weekend was that they couldn't get tickets to the game. Dang! Never did we think to mention to them ahead of time that this was Dad's Weekend at OSU. That means that everything about the weekend--hotel rooms, restaurant reservations, football tickets--were already nabbed by dads coming to spend it with their college student. The game was a sell-out--all 45,000 seats were taken! (As someone who organizes events and fundraisers regularly, I always wonder, what would it take to get 45,000 people to show up?!)




So that sounds like a disaster, huh!? They've come all the way from Berkeley for the game and can't get in. But, taaa daaa--Maya to the rescue!

It just so happens that her place of employment, the Hilton Garden Inn, is right across the street from the stadium and actually on the OSU campus. And for games they have widescreen TVs in the bar and restaurant, plus VIP passes for beer and hotdogs.

So Maya set them (Jer, Pamela and Aaron) up with a front row seat in the restaurant, made sure they got excellent service and all they could eat and drink. Meanwhile Courtney and I drove around with Ruby until she dropped off for a nap and then we parked and read and napped ourselves. Everyone was happy (except that Cal lost, but nothing we could do about that).

That night we had my mom, Maya, Eder and Ben over for dinner. It was admittedly tough on Ben to be so suddenly displaced as the object of all our attention--and by an out-of-towner at that! But he too loved Ruby and played sweetly with her--even shared his toys.

This was the first time my family had met Jer and his family, so it was really special. Everyone enjoyed each other so much and, though it was too brief, it was really good.



Then off they went on Sunday morning, and along with them went...you guessed it, our hearts.

Stay tuned. There'll be more soon,

Valori