Dare I post without a picture? I'm going to try. Leave a comment if you have an opinion.

Being out and about with Ruby is fun. She loves looking at everything and everyone. Unsocialized as she is she will happily stare at someone pointedly and make them uncomfortable. That's fun in turn for me to watch.

But what is most interesting is that having Ruby is a conversation opener. Most of the time people exclaim how gorgeous she is and I leave it at a thank you. A lot of times people assume she's a boy because her winter jacket is blue, her winter hat is blue and her clothes aren't pink. Sometimes I will correct folks and tell them that "we don't stick to the proper colors and doesn't she look great in blue, because it matches her eyes?"

And then, less often, but much more often than when I am just someone else in line at the coffeeshop, Ruby allows me to get to know the people around us--and not just the people with other small babies. The other day a conversation about my working mom status ended up focused on labor law and turns out that mr. labor lawyer and I know some of the same labor lawyers in NYC.

But the most memorable conversation so far that Ruby started happened yesterday. The weather was gorgeous and David was off work unexpectedly, so we biked to Coney Island and sat in a playground for a while once we got there. I bought us some icecreams from a guy who had a few pictures of Che in his icecream truck and agreed with me that we could use a few more revolutionaries like Che these days (this conversation I started without Ruby).

Later, while David was on the phone with some Atlanta Teamster guy, Ruby grinned at me from her swing. Two girls, maybe eight years old, came over and asked me a bunch of questions about Ruby. How old was he, what was her name (once corrected), who was the dad ("can't you tell, they have the same hair?!") and was she jewish? That last question took me by surprise, but by then Luba, Isabella and I were on a roll, so I took the plunge and told them she was being raised atheist.

- "Athe-what?"
- "Athe-ist. You know, someone who doesn't follow any one religion." (I carefully steered away from using the word "believe." Who knows, maybe one of their parents was lurking?)
- "So Ruby won't have any holidays at all?"
- "Sure she will. She'll love having a break from school, just like you guys."
- "So she doesn't believe in christmas or hannakuh or, what's that other one, kwanzaa-something?"
- "Well, maybe she will, one day. She can choose when she's older."
- "Does that mean she won't watch the ball drop on new years eve either?"
- "Of course she can watch the ball drop. That isn't religious."

-- Marsha