Our (Sun)Rocket has crashed

It would appear that my experiment with VOIP telephone service (i.e. phone service via the internet) using the start-up Sunrocket has ended badly as they have fired most of their staff and appear to be on the verge of bankruptcy. Our phone is working only sporadically at this point. So for those of you who wish to contact us by phone, use our cell phone numbers. Even if we end up eating our most recent charges to Sunrocket - which might not happen if I can dispute the charges with our credit card - we still did better than we would have with Verizon. And it's fascinating to read through some of the tech threads about the demise of this company, something that I would have completely missed had I not been a customer. (It would appear that a "Requiem to Sunrocket" a la that to Martha would be appropriate, but I don't have it in me.)

Now many of you don't care about our phone service or Sunrocket - you want a baby update! This morning began with the dangerous words "I need to get into work early today" spoken by Abby. I noticed an odd smell while getting out of bed and again noted it when I stuck my head into Maggie's room where she was sitting up and grinning at me. Turns out that Maggie barfed during the night and then experienced the misfortune of rolling around in it a bit before she woke up. Lovely. We cleaned her up (two baths) and she didn't seem to be in any discomfort, so we debated whether to take her to daycare, thinking that this could be an isolated event. When she showed little interest in her morning Cheerios (still happy and grinning, though), we decided that she should stay home. Maggie and I ended up napping together from 9:00 until 11:30. Which was quite nice as was the cuddly baby who seems to appear whenever Maggie is feeling blue, but the later runny diapers and one last barfing event sealed the case that we had made the right decision to keep her home. Our friend Rodah is coming tomorrow to watch her.

By the way, while spending the day with her, I've noticed that her verbal skills have improved dramatically. Not in terms of making sense as her actual vocabulary is still limited to Mama, Addie (short for Maddie - and you have to say it in a sing-song way that puts more emphasis on the first syllable), and nana (short for banana.) But her ability to put long runs of non-sensical sounds together, along with nuances in tone that suggest an attempt to communicate something subtle (occasionally accompanied by demonstrative hand gestures and facial expressions), is quite impressive. We had a number of conversations in which she and I went back and forth, her with her general nonsense and me with my nonsense replies given the lack of context.