November 11

This is part of an e-mail about Remembrance Day that I wrote to my uncle, who is a veteran.

"In Australia, November 11 is called Remembrance Day. At eleven o'clock in the morning, everybody in the country observes a moment of silence for those lost in wars, and to honor the veterans of those wars. All of the news anchors, politicians and plenty of everyday folks wear a red poppy on their left lapel (as close to their heart as possible) all day because poppies bloomed on many of the worst WWI battlefields in Europe. Nobody gets a day off from work, and nobody says, 'Happy Remembrance Day.' It's a relatively solemn day and wreaths of poppies are placed at memorials and veterans gather to remember their fallen mates."

In other news...

Roxanne turned 11 months old on November 11. There's an old wives' tale that babies get cranky and grizzly right before a big developmental milestone. Well, she cranked to no end on Saturday and Monday and then all of the sudden, she started scooting deliberately all around the place.

Crankenstein Lives!!!

I shot the following video earlier today. She thinks it's a lot of fun to scoot into the bathroom and then scoot away as fast as she can when I try to get her. Sometimes she gets so excited that she just turns around in a circle before she figures which direction she wants to go. Tonight before her bath, she scooted as fast as she could to the edge of the tub and pulled herself up! Uh oh. We're installing the baby gate this weekend and keeping the bathroom door closed from now on.

[This video doesn't seem to work on Safari - anyone else having that problem? It plays in Firefox just fine.]