My poor bald baby

Jack celebrated his four week birthday by going bald. It seems to have happened overnight. I woke up this morning and asked Danny, "Does it seem like he has less hair than yesterday?" and Danny said, "No, he's always had that receding hairline." He did, in fact, comment on how his son looked like an insurance salesman just moments after his birth. But then we looked at photos and realized the hairline hadn't always been quite that receding. So it looks like my baby's beautiful hair is going to go away and who knows what will come back in its place. I had recently learned that neither Danny nor I had lost our baby hair, so I thought there might be a chance that Jack would keep his velvety locks, but no such luck. I am going to miss them.

While hair may be on the way out, SMILES are on their way in. All day long, I tried to get a picture of one, but the little stinker got very serious whenever I got my camera out. I spent 15 minutes lying on the bed with him at one point, having a little conversation in which he would say "GAWHRRPH!" and I would say "Oh, really? What else do you have to say about that?" and he would answer, "EHHRMEH!" and I would reply, "You don't say!" and then he would flash me a big gummy grin. I kept thinking to myself, if I go get the camera now he will stop doing this and this is just so cute, I want to soak it up. I finally did go get the camera, and just as I suspected, the conversation was then terminated and he just stared at me.

I forgot, or rather, failed to post about our second annual Jack Chaplin memorial hike last weekend. Seeing as how my grandpa was our little Jack's namesake, it felt very appropriate to take Jack on a hike to Marsh Creek. My grandpa had told me a few days before he died that this place was the most beautiful place he'd ever been and if he ever got out of the hospital, he'd like to go back there. Last year we went to the part of the creek that empties into the bay, which is rather industrial and kind of depressing so we didn't really understand what grandpa had been talking about. But this year, we found the real deal, up by the headwaters of the creek, nestled in rolling oak woodland beautiful enough to be worthy of his description. We took Alison, my grandma, and my uncle Pete, aunt Lori and cousin Jack (now Big Jack!).

And our Jack, of course! (He's hiding under Danny's coat.) I think I will have to take Jack back there on at least an annual basis. Maybe even more often than that, because this might be where Danny and I start our farm! There is some absolutely beautiful farmland abutting the open space preserve we went hiking in. This got us thinking about how cool it would be to have an operation that would be part production, part agritourism so that we could play off both our strengths-- Danny would oversee the business side of things and I would do the biology, Danny would fix the machinery that breaks down, I would find inventive and non-toxic way of killing our pests, Danny would hoe and reap and sow, I would design curriculum for schools and/or farmers market frequenters that would pay us money to come stay at the bed and breakfast part of our farm and learn about sustainable agriculture... My sister sat in the backseat of the car with Jack on the ride home and listened to us spin these fantasies and if they sounded implausible or a little idealistic to her, she kept her mouth shut. Maybe we will look back on this and laugh at how naive we once were to have such foolish dreams. Or maybe by the time Jack is his big cousin Jack's age, he will be living on a farm, running around the same creek so loved by his great grandpa.