Alex has had a great week. He's over his cold and is becoming more fun to be with every day. He is so much more aware of his surroundings now -- it's really quite amazing. He follows us with his eyes as we walk around, which is new this week. He gets a little more vocal each day, too. We really wish we knew exactly what he was saying. He looks at us with such serious eyes as he's "talking," sometimes. There's definitely a message there. We just hope we're correctly interpreting it. Or are even close.

No luck with the bottle, yet, so we're giving it a break for a while. I guess Alex just has very definite opinions about where food should come from.

It was a big week in Seattle, too. The Kingdome, our domed stadium once used by the Mariners and Seahawks, was torn down on Sunday, 3/26. There were parties and live TV coverage (on all channels, starting as early as 6am) of the implosion. Since Seattle's New Year's celebration was cancelled, I think a lot of people looked at the demolition as the replacement spectacle. It was sort of interesting to watch (and hear -- we could hear the detonation from our house). Since it was impossible to get close enough to see on the day of the demolition -- thousands and thousands of people got there the night before-- we drove down with Alex on Monday morning. Wow, what a mess. But a very interesting mess. The crew did such a good job with the explosives, the dome pretty much collapsed right in its own footprint. Alex loved the trucks and the noise, even though he's still pretty little. Here are before/after pictures, taken from a local TV station's website:

We did have a few minutes of guilt, wondering what we're teaching Alex by being so interested in blowing things up. I guess we'll just appreciate the precise work of the demolition crew and not think about the destruction or the $206 million we taxpayers still owe on the newly flattened dome ...

J.