Obama gets elected president. Mere days later, our baby smiles for the first time. COINCIDENCE?? You be the judge.

In other news, babies are kind of boring.

Seriously. Once you get over the fact that they’re really tiny and cute, and that their fingers and toes are even tinier and cuter, and that sometimes they wave them around in tiny cute ways, there’s not a whole lot of entertainment value to be had.

There are only so many times you can sit there and watch your kid intently try to stuff his hand in his mouth and miss and poke his eye with his elbow instead and then flail around in frustration a little bit and then try sort of nudging that arm towards the mouth using the other hand except that the other hand isn’t any more coordinated than the first one was so he flails around in frustration again and screams once or twice for good measure and then accidentally whacks the hand into his mouth and is so obviously startled that he immediately drops it again, which is admittedly all kinds of funny the first six or seven times it happens.

But I am seriously ready for the guy to learn English already, so we can have a decent conversation.

Or at least so I can tell him to be quiet already, because I heard him screaming and I’m getting the bottle out now, it’s on the way, message received, so there is no need to keep complaining so loudly because it’s early and I haven’t had my coffee yet either. Actually I can tell him that, and often do. But it doesn’t seem to make much difference. Other than making me feel stupid for arguing with someone who’s only six weeks old.

Some more milestones, while we’re at it:

• I got some work done. Actual thinky-type work, of the paid variety.
• I read a book. This is probably the longest I’ve gone without reading something since I learned to read. It (Consider the Lobster) was a very good book, and made me feel a tiny bit sorry for John McCain. I’m also about halfway through Anathem, which is nowhere near as complex — nor as good — as I’d heard it would be.
• Last night was my first bout of insomnia since Stellan’s birth. This is good news, because it’s a result of the fact that he now routinely sleeps about 8 hours a night, which everyone except my mother-in-law tells me is bizarre and unheard of at this age. But it’s bad news because it means I haven’t been cured of my chronic insomnia. But it’s good news because it was only up-till-1am insomnia, not up-till-dawn insomnia.

So these are all getting-back-to-normal kinds of milestones. Which is good. Because I’m kind of starting to think about being ready for that to happen.