Progress?

The family presence up here exceeded my wildest hopes. The babies were happy little campers for most of their 26 hours here, despite the absence of baby provisions. The few sqwaks and squabbles they issued were short-lived and easily handled. I hold babies as the most reliable emotion barometers in existance. Their response to ambient emotions is as immediate as a police siren and as reliable as the police officers only wish they could be.

The fact that no long-term decisions were made while short-term decisions were being made and executed with casual ease feels like the progress part. Long-term absolutes and ultimatums are on my strictly personal radar as our family's most urgent warning flags of our most destructive family dysfunctions. By my just-a-patient measure, we have a well demonstrated track record of attempting to force long-term solutions while our emotional monitors (the babies) are crying frantically at our knees, "Stop! Stop!" I doesn't know, I only believe, that their demands to "Stop" were the greatest wisdom to ever emerge from the Absolute and Ultimatum skirmishes.

Whichever way the survey here evolves, I feel hopeful that the day of family bonding is an evolution each and every one of us can take wherever life leads us, whether together or separately. Even the MIL/DIL faction enjoyed some private conversation without squeezing husbands or children into the uncomfortable spots. I think. I pray. Those in-laws are just plain hard to read. The most invasive body of laws on the planet. . .

I sure am enjoying the echoes off the walls of my lonely and remote base camp this morning. My support dog is still sleeping in the baby pee left on the carpet and sniffing the kid trails for crumbs she might have missed.