Lily took her first steps today. She has a little push cart and decided today she’d pull up on it and start trucking around the office. She walked all the way from the office into the living room. All of this excitement happened during what SHOULD be her morning nap - for the last couple of days, she has boycotted the nap and instead spends her time meandering around the house looking for trouble. We are very proud of her, however, and took lots of pictures of her. She looks like a rap star because her one leg of her pants is up and one leg is down, but when the moment strikes - you just go with it. At least she isn’t saying “yo”.

Speaking of, we need to break out the video camera again - we haven’t used it much but it’s always a lot of fun for us when we do. We have some great video of Lily “napping” - which means she was wide awake at the time. She’s always been a great sleeper at night but a feisty, independent thing during the day and wants nothing to do with rest periods. Believe me, if someone gave me a big, warm drink, wrapped me up in a soft blanket, and put me down on a comfy mattress surrounded by stuffed animals and soft music, I’m be out in 2 seconds. Funny how kids just want to be adults and adults dream of the days when they were children. Sleep is still the most precious commodity for Mike and I - we horde it. On the weekends it’s always a battle over who gets to “sleep in”. Sleeping in used to mean noon. Now it means 8 AM.

It’s been a never-ending saga around here. Dad ended up with stomach flu, which then passed to Mike and I. That was Saturday night. We are finally moving around at about half the normal speed we usuall operate. It is a nasty version of the flu - 24 hours where you wish someone would shoot you to put you out of your misery.

Lily thankfully has not gotten it - she’s been cheerful and playing hard as always. Now she is pulling up on everything and sidestepping her way around things - she has taken her first few steps with help from us as long as she has something to support her. The cooler remains one of her favorite toys.

The cleanup from Isabel continues. Our cul-de-sac alone has three huge piles of decaying trees - the one in front of our house is about 8 feet wide and stretches out over 30 feet. It’s going to take a big dump truck to get the garbage out of here. We aren’t holding our breath. Some people here still don’t have power, and I know a few of my friends still don’t have cable (which means they don’t have internet service or e-mail). For those friends of mine who are self-employed, it’s a huge deal to be without cable. Christine still doesn’t have a phone. I guess this stuff will take some time to resolve. I saw on the front page of the Times-Dispatch this morning that the Outer Banks is now cut in half - Isabel opened a new inlet and there is water on top of Highway 12 which is cutting off a whole community. So life could be worse . . .

It’s back to work for me and a few other people. I feel very fortunate - Christine and family are still without power and were told it could be October 7th before they got phone service. Can you imagine living without a phone that long? If you know Christine, you would know that it is a terrible prognosis for her. That woman has permanent cauliflower ear.

As if Richmond hasn’t had enough to deal with we had a tornado go through Amelia and Chesterfield, as well as Mechanicsville yesterday morning. It’s been kinda nutty around here lately. Thankfully we didn’t lose any more trees. Poor Will had a limb come crashing down on his beautiful Saab convertible and dent the hood - this was after it survived Hurricane Isabel. He still has no electricity or phone service. Both he and Laura are supposed to come by today and shower, then have a sales meeting.

We celebrated our third anniversary last night by going out for a dinner we can’t afford at the Melting Pot - we got engaged there and like to visit it every now and then. It was fabulous. Mike also splurged and got me a pedicure and massage - I can’t wait to use it. I of course got him nothing but a card, but he didn’t seem to mind. As I said to him last night, “I thought we were on a budget???” That’s what credit cards are for, I guess.

Mom and dad took care of Lily last night and had a great time with her at Moe’s - apparently the little flirt was batting her eyes at everyone in sight, smiling and cooing, and generally being friendly to everyone. She did the same thing in Wal-mart yesterday (or as my mother says, “Walmarts”). Let’s hope she keeps her sunny disposition and doesn’t turn into her mother!

Things are finally settling down from Isabel and the tornadoes. We’re heading out tonight for a party in honor of some friends of ours, who are crazy enough to want three kids. The Littlest Pilc #3 is due in a couple of weeks.

Lily has been taking her first few steps - dad improvised the use of our cooler. She loves that thing. She uses it to stand up, then pushes it all over the living room. Meanwhile, there are push carts of all shapes and sizes in the house - but she prefers the cooler. Why do parents buy toys for their children when they prefer the everyday objects instead??? By the way, that’s a question I ask myself every time I am in the check out line at Walmart.

We got our new living room coffee table today - no sharp and unsteady glass for the top - just a big slab of dark wood. I LOVE the way new, real wood smells - and looks. It’s the nicest piece of furniture we have in the living room. Looks fabulous next to the K-Mart special end tables I’ve had since college. Oh well.

Lily just woke up - she basically took one nap today so lucky grandma and grandpa are going to have their hands full with a crabby baby tonight. Maybe they’ll luck out. We bought her a new ring for the bathtub so she can sit up in the real tub. She loves it and has been having lots of fun. She also had a raging case of diaper rash yesterday - she was miserable. I do think it’s the formula. Up until I introduced formula, she never once had diaper rash. Now, all of a sudden she is Queen of Burnt Rump.

Last night we went out to dinner and she was Ms. Congenialty. I hope this stage lasts for a while - she smiles and waves at everyone, and for those special few, she lets out a huge, ear-drum-blowing screech. It’s very cute, as long as you’re not right next to her. Current games include 1.) Pulling mommy’s hair as hard as possible while giggling; 2.) Ripping Grandpa’s glasses off his face and licking them; 3.) Pulling grandma’s earrings out of her ears (they are pierced, not clip-ons); 4.) Biting grandma hard on the shoulder or wherever she can sink her fangs; 5.) Sticking her entire hand into her father’s mouth and trying to pull his lips back or his teeth out.

They are all fun games.

Note the long gaps in postings. The Del Bueno clan has been playing Little House in the Far West End. Hurricane Isabel came tearing through here on Thursday and things have been a little . . . medieval since then.

Okay, so there were some major lows and some great highs to this whole experience. Playing Richmondopoly by candlelight, learning to live without Starbucks, spending hours uninterrupted with Lily (no phones, no electricity, no water, no a/c, no e-mail), Matthew’s 5th birthday party with no electricity and still being able to have a lot of fun, spending a night in air-conditioned comfort with a house full of people at the Yeagers (did you guys know Jennifer has a SERIOUS, CERTIFIABLE issue with feet???? She does), and learning to cope with other people while cooped up in increasingly smaller, hotter spaces. It’s all good.

Some of the lows include being rammed while waiting in line for disgusting, bad food by a woman who had no sense of personal space and continued poking me as if that would make the line move more quickly, giving Lily potentially contaminated drinking water because, DUH, we had no power and didn’t realized the water supply had been possibly compromised (who is dumb enough to think that people have radios or televisions when there is no POWER???), throwing a hissy fit because my hair got entirely too greasy entirely too quickly, washing a week’s worth of laundry in my “luxury jetted tub” which became a washtub, only to drop most of the pieces of laundry onto the muddy ground in our backyard, and realizing a generator is probably a good thing to have in an emergency situation.

Thursday night around 9 when the eye showed up in Richmond proper, things started to get crazy. We could hear cracking and thumping. At one point the wind was blowing so hard it actually shook the front wall of our house and knocked a picture off the wall. Our neighbor’s 30-40 foot oak came crashing down, barely missing our house. Fortunately it missed their house as well. Unfortunately, their minivan bought it - it’s totally crushed. We lost some other beautiful trees on the cul-de-sac, including a huge Japanese maple, a ton of leland cypress, and a few dogwoods. We were lucky that the big loblollly pine in the front of the house didn’t crash into us. It is tilting dangerously towards the house as I write this.

However, a trip down memory lane (in other words, riding through our old neighborhood in Westover Hills) was a simultaneous major downer and a sigh of relief that we no longer lived there. I can’t even describe in words how disastrous the hurricane was near the center of Richmond proper. Our old street had 3-4 huge, 100+ year old trees down and in houses, completely blocking the road. Houses and cars were smashed. In beautiful Byrd Park and the Carillon, the trees that Mike and I used to walk under and love looking at were strewn around like pick-up-sticks. You could barely even see the walking trail. I haven’t been in Maymont but I hear it’s just as bad. A couple of huge oaks went down near the sidewalk on the road near Byrd Park, and pulled up huge chunks of pavement with them - and showed off a root ball that looked like it was over 9 feet tall. We saw our old neighbors and they were fine - they missed any major damage, but they were getting the heck out of town because there were still wires and transformers strewn around the streets. In some places, like Wynne’s neighborhood, the utility poles were snapped in half and the transformers lay in the middle of the street. “War Zone”, though cliched, does not do the scene justice. Everyone I know here was affected in one way or another. Many people are still without power - I don’t know why we have it back, but I’m glad.

I also found out some cool stuff about FEMA - they offer, through the SBA, small business loans to people affected by natural disasters at ridiculously low rates. I may also be eligible for some form of unemployment assistance through the regular channels even though I am self-employed. I was impressed with their professionalism and compassion. It’s pretty amazing what FEMA does and how fast they do it.

In addition to those high points, I almost jumped out of my car tonight and embraced all 6 of the Dominion Virginia Power guys working on the line outside on Church Road. I’ve never been so happy to see than damn power truck than I was tonight. So all of our food mostly went bad (our fridge smells like a combination of hot mustard and yeast), my floor is covered in muddy prints and leaves (no vaccuming lately), and Mike and I nearly choked each other and ourselves a few times. It’s amazing what a Monday night football game and a chilly glass of water will do for your spirits.

Lily probably had the best week of her life - what hurricane? She got tons of attention and was all smiles, sweetness and light - we’ll see what happens when reality returns and we’re not all cooped up in the house together. She is cruising around on furniture now and having lots of fun pulling up on everything in sight, especially me.

Anyway, we are all glad to have left Walnut Grove and are enjoying the blasting air conditioning, lava lamps, Monday Night Football, and the internet.