So here we're back with Brooklyn-based pictures. Can you tell that relaxed Ruby is glad to be back home and to have her flimsy plastic hardhat (anyone know where I can get a real kid-sized hardhat?)?! Plus she's so much more deliberately responsive these days--I asked her to wave and she did!

Here is, by the way, a funny and slightly nonsensical record of a conversation that we recently had at the dinner table. Yup, we have conversations with Ruby these days. She's talking up a storm and I just can't get enough of it (yet)!

--Marsha: "Ruby, ca c'est du saumon. Essaies."
--Ruby: "Saumon."
Ruby takes a piece, eats it, then takes another and drops it on the floor. Meanwhile Dreyfus the cat jumps up on the dinner table.
--David: "Dreyfus loves salmon."
--Marsha: "Dreyfus: there is some salmon on the floor."
--Ruby: "Dreyfus: saumon, floor."
Dreyfus, mesmerized by the remaining salmon on our plates, ignores everyone.
--Ruby, louder: "Dreyfus, it's Ruby."