Mommy and I are staying at Grandma Lolo’s house all this week. Today, Mommy put me in her sling and took me into Grandma’s pool. It was a lot of fun moving around in the warm water. Mommy says next summer she’s going to start teaching me how to swim for real.

Grandma Lolo came to visit again this weekend.

We all went to the baby store and I got an exersaucer. It’s so much fun! There’s so much stuff to do on it, I think it’s so neat!

Well, I was going to gripe about how Sammy has suddenly stopped sleeping through the night reliably (teething? growth spurt? milestone achievement? I dunno), but that’s kinda been there done that by now. Really, there are other things important in this world (and to me) than JUST my baby. Really. I used to believe that.

Take, for example, the quagmire in Iraq. First off, I didn’t agree with the war, but believe that now we’re there we should stay until we’ve finished the job. But that’s not really what I want to talk about.

The Iraqi legislature missed its deadline yesterday of coming up with a new, permanent constitution. They’re giving themselves one more week to get all the kinks worked out. However, this is in violation of their existing interim constitution which stated that if a new constitution was not completed by August 15, parliament was to be dissolved and new elections held. What bothers me is if they’re willing to ignore this provision in the constitution, what faith can anyone have that any provisions in a permanent constitution will be honored? I mean, if you can pick and choose which provisions are important and which can be fudged, well, where do you draw the line? This view might sound a little harsh, but forgive me if I hold a constitution a bit more sacred than just words on paper. A constitution is established to define the boundaries and responsibilities of government, and a government cannot nor should not violate its mandates. Period. To do so sets a very dangerous precedent, a slippery slope where only the “convenient” provisions are followed and those that are more onerous, well, we didn’t really mean that when we wrote it.

This brings me to point 2 of the situation in Iraq. Mr. Bush (sigh) is expecting, in a period of two or three short years, to establish in Iraq a democracy the likes of which took the United States (and Great Britain, for that matter) over 500 years to establish. There is no Arab equivalent of the Magna Carta, nor any tradition in the Middle East of constitutional authority. What started in England in 1215 started a long, arduous process of defining individual rights and governmental boundaries, culminating in the Age of Enlightenment during which our nation was born. Iraq has never had any such concept among its citizens. They, like most Arab nations, has gone from one authoritarian government to another until the fall of Saddam Hussein, after which they had no government of their own at all.

And now we’re expecting to snap our fingers and turn Iraq into a mini-U.S., where Kurds and Sunnis and Shiites live happily ever after in a system of democratic majorities, protected minorities, checks and balances? Puh-leaze.

Today Mommy and Daddy took me to the mall. I was a good baby and hardly cried at all. They took me to a toy store and got me some new toys. Yay!

Until now, the only thing Mommy and Daddy ever fed me was breastmilk and some formula when I was really, really little. But today, they gave me something new. They called it “rice cereal.” It was really creamy, but still I guess it was my first solid food. Daddy fed me with a baby spoon, but I didn’t quite know what to do with it so I pushed a lot of it out with my tongue. It was really weird!

I’m getting good at rolling over. I can roll over from my back onto my tummy now. It takes me awhile because I always have to figure out what to do with my arm that gets stuck underneath me, but eventually I figure it out. But then I’m not sure what to do once I get on my tummy.

The last couple of nights I’ve been freaking out Mommy and Daddy doing this in my crib when they put me to bed. They keep having to come back in my room and flip me back over.

Also, I’m getting better at sitting up. I can use my arms to hold myself up and stay there for almost a whole minute which is like forever! And today, Mommy changed my diaper and put me in my playpen. When Daddy walked by he saw that I was sitting up. He asked Mommy if she had put me like that and she said “no.” Hah hah! I sat up all by myself. Cool, eh?

I stick my tongue out at you!

I’m four months old today!

Mommy took me to the doctor for a checkup. I weighed 17 lbs 3 oz. I’m also very tall — 26 1/4 in. Mommy says she knows I’m tall because of all the NBA scouts that came to our Mommy & Me exercise class. I think she was joking about that.

I also got more shots. They hurt and made me cranky for the rest of the day.

It’s amazing how our bedtime ritual can turn Mr. Spaz (a.k.a. Sammy) into sleepy baby in 15 minutes. Most nights it works like a charm, and he’ll be out cold for precisely 8 hours.

Other nights, sigh, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night, usually 20 minutes after I’ve fallen asleep. Then, it’s usually check the diaper, schlep him downstairs, nurse him on the recliner, and hope that we can both fall asleep again. If I’m really lucky, he’ll fall asleep enough that I can put him in the pack & play and I can sleep the rest of the night on the couch. As if that kind of arrangement were lucky.

So today Mommy gave me a bath and I was all neat and clean. But then I spat up. That’s okay, because she wiped the spit up off of me. Then she put me in my crib so I could take a nap. I only slept for a few minutes, but then I started fussing. When Daddy came upstairs to check on me, he saw that I had pooped all over the place. Daddy cleaned my sheets while Mommy gave me another bath. Then we went for a walk around the neighborhood and I saw a bunny rabbit.