Since my brother is just a couple hours’ drive away in Charlotte, he came over yesterday to spend the night. Yay, our first houseguest at the new place! We had Cat, Tony & Elizabeth come over for a cookout, and we broke in our grill by making some burgers. (We bought the grill back in Washington, but I think we only used it maybe twice. So it’s basically new, even though I think it’s over three years old.)

After Cat, Tony and Elizabeth left, my brother and Dave stayed up late drinking and talking about guitars and women who’ve broken their hearts. I know, it sounds like they should write a country music song together. There was some serious male bonding going on – kind of funny to be the only sober female observer in the room. I was fine until they started looking up YouTube clips of classic rock performances, then I decided that it was past my bedtime. I think they finally crashed around 3 or 4 in the morning, and they’re both more than a little hungover today.

Cate hasn’t seen my brother since Christmas, so I knew she wouldn’t remember him. I talked him up a lot beforehand, showing her pictures of him and saying, “this is Chris and he’s coming to visit us,” stuff like that. She still doesn’t quite know what to make of him. I think it’s because she spends so much time around women (other than Dave), she’s just a little iffy around men in general. She’s fine around Tony because she identifies him as a daddy, and my dad is an old guy who dotes all over her, so he’s ok… but Chris is just kind of a mystery. I know she’ll get used to him quickly, since she’s going to be seeing him a lot more often now that we live so much closer to each other. It’s just funny that when he talks to her, she won’t make eye contact with him, she’ll only look at him out of the corner of her eye.

Oh, and a quick sleep update: things are getting better and better. Cate’s gone from 45-minute screamfests down to just a few minutes of gratuitous fussing before she settles down and goes to sleep. But she’s downgraded from panicked screeching to some minor “I really don’t like this and I’m going to let you know I’m not happy” fussing, so that’s an amazing improvement in just a few days. I stay with her (sitting on the floor next to her crib) until she’s all the way asleep, and that seems to help. I’m hoping that this sleep transition won’t take more than a few weeks, but we’ll see how it goes.

P.S. On the Gustav subject: it sounds like all of my Louisiana relatives have safely evacuated, and I’m thankful for that. Now I’m just praying that it doesn’t cause any major damage to the area.