When I came out of the escalator at Capitol South, there was a larger crowd than usual standing around. They were looking across the river at a plume of smoke in Virginia, but nobody was saying much of anything. There was no shouting or crying. Nobody seemed to know what was going on. I walked to the Cannon House Office Building and the cops inside didn’t say anything unusual when I went through security. I walked downstairs to the basement to cross over the Capitol – this was about 9:35 now – and didn’t see anybody until I arrived at the last security checkpoint before the tunnel to the House side. The Capitol Police officer waved me through, and as I was picking up my stuff I heard a garbled voice from his radio. It said something about a plane being possibly headed to the Capitol.

I looked up at the officer, but I don’t remember his response. My attention was grabbed by a staffer who worked for then Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the House Republican leader. He was running, flat-out, in his suit, down the gentle slope away from the Capitol. “Hey, what’s going on?” I yelled. “I’m getting out of here!!” was his reply. And he sped past me. It was the first time I had seen any panic that morning, and this particular guy was somebody who didn’t seem to scare easily.

I turned around and walked over to the House Clerk’s office in the basement of Cannon. The television was on, and I saw the WTC burning. I grabbed a phone and called Leslye, who was at work in Columbia Heights. “Where are you?”, she asked. I told her I was in the basement of a House office building. “What are you still doing there? Get out!”. I told her I would. Then the first tower fell, and I ran outside.

I saw my colleague Bill Swindell outside of Cannon, and he told me that he had been on the Blue line at the Pentagon station just before a plane hit that building. He was nervous – we both were now – and after standing around for a few minutes we decided to head to CQ’s offices in Dupont Circle (the one time the location ever made sense, I guess). We walked past the Capitol, heading north, where we saw a police officer standing on the roof of the Supreme Court building. He was looking east – for oncoming planes. The rumors were flying now: there was a plane headed to the Capitol, or the White House.

It took us a long time to walk back to Dupont, as we took in a changed city. There was an anti-aircraft battery set up along Massachusetts Avenue. People were ushering school children out of a building behind Union Station. Nobody had cell phone reception. We were paralyzed. What I really remember, more than anything that morning, is how quiet it was on the streets. Unlike New York, unlike the Pentagon, we were rendered helpless without much of a sound.

Anyway, since my last post, Carolyne’s world (and various body parts) has expanded into new things: more talking, facing forwards in the car seat and self-propulsion of a kind (more on that later). The eating has been a constant; her mother rightfully says that she’ll try anything once, and usually likes what she tries. Enjoyment of the water, too, has continued, especially pools. And in the bath she has enhanced her previous routine by turning herself around and interacting with an ever-wider range of toys and bathing accessories.

Which brings us to Elmo, or rather, to the Elmo hand-washcloth puppet we have. (I should mention here how much I admire the marketing folks at PBS, because while Carolyne has had limited exposure to Elmo, she sure seems to know who he is.) Last night in the bath, I grabbed the Elmo cloth and offered it to Carolyne. She quickly seized it, as she does most things you offer her, and started twisting it in her hands.

Then, she plunged Elmo under the water and pressed down on his face for several seconds. She did this repeatedly.

The several times I asked her if she was drowning Elmo, she usually said, “Nooooo.” (Oh yes, she knows that one quite well.) But it sure looked like it to me.

• A blueberry pancake
• American cheese
• Guacamole
• Half a veggie burger
• Hummos and baba ganouj
• Organic shells and cheese
• Mandarin orange slices
• and lots of Cheerios

Ok, so the Cheerios are a staple food for Carolyne. But she has shown a remarkable range of tastes, including a spicy black bean burger on Thursday evening. Now, her apparent liking for a variety of foods doesn’t mean that our girl is a reckless eater. When confronted with a new food or set of foods, she’ll often study her options for several moments before digging in. Once she starts, however, said meal has little chance of survival.

Eventually I sent Leslye back to bed and took a seat with Carolyne, who was still crying. And the Lill was still crying, too. And then – and this is very unusual for the Lill – she bit me on the leg. I swear she thought that we were hurting Carolyne somehow, and there wasn’t anything else she could do but fight back on Carolyne’s behalf. I called to Leslye, who came and got the Lill and tried to calm her down.

Back to the bath tonight. The Lill isn’t one for spending time in the bathroom – that’s Tuna’s territory – but when Carolyne first touched the water and started to cry, the Lill came right in, jumped up on the toilet seat and started crying, too. She craned her neck to try and see Carolyne and I thought for a moment that she might try to jump on one of us in order to help her. That didn’t happen, but after the bath she followed us into Carolyne’s room to make sure that she was ok, and the Lill was very displeased to be asked to leave when it was time for bed. Let’s hope that Carolyne adjusts to her new bath routine, or we might have to deal with her big sister.

But any transition is risky, so when we placed Carolyne in about 2 inches of water she didn’t seem to enjoy it. This wasn’t full-out screeching, mind you, so I’m optimistic she’ll make her peace with the tub. But it was fairly consistent unhappiness throughout, until the time we hauled her out and toweled her off. She loves the towel and usually greets it with lots of her fake spitting and some joyful squeals.

Whatever the effect of the bath, she has eaten like a champ up in North Central Pa.; must be something about the mountain air, I suppose. She weighed in at 16 pounds and nearly 7 ounces back on Monday. Today she feels like 25 or so.

At home this pattern does not always hold. Dinner, for example, can be an adventure, especially now that we’ve introduced “puffs,” these tasty tiny treats that seem to be the fewest molecules that will stick together and be visible. Carolyne always wants her puffs, even if she’s refusing her other food. And she’d like you to feed them to her, even though she can pick them up just fine. Service economy and all that. The best way I can describe what it’s like to offer her some food with my finger is the way Tim Bray did last month: “The tiny lips, no teeth behind them, are amazingly warm and soft and alive; it occurs to me that this is what it feels like to be a sea anemone’s meal.”

But really, my words don’t do her performances justice. I’m preparing some video that will show you some her usual stuff, but in the meantime we’ll begin with something she also likes: swinging at the park. For those of you who have witnessed this before, note that this time there is no supporting material holding her in the swing!

It was hard enough to know what she was thinking even when you’d spend all day with her, but now it’s impossible. It’s not that I think she’s living some kind of double life at daycare, but who knows? There must be some side of her we haven’t seen simply because she hasn’t been around many other kids at home.

This much we can report: our girl is now the Texturizer. Everything must be touched, scratched even, to gain a measure of its roughness or smoothness or bumpiness. Nothing is spared, be it her high-chair tray, couch cushions, necklaces or the cats. Especially the cats, who have remained remarkably patient as they are lovingly mauled. At least she doesn’t have enormous hands. Even her daycare mates get this treatment: this morning one approached her car seat and, almost by reflex she thrust out her arm, like a tentacle.

Some people learn by sight or ear. Carolyne, it seems, prefers touch.

But today was an anomaly – a warm November day, Carolyne’s six-month day and the final day of my leave at home. Next week, I’ll be in Florida visiting my dad, who is recovering from surgery, so Carolyne gets her Grandma as a more-than-capable stand-in. And then, like Leslye already has, I return to work.

When people told me how lucky I was to have this time, they weren’t kidding. Add in the fact that Carolyne has been pretty much the easiest baby to deal with – surely a ploy to bring about a brother or sister – and my time off was an incredible gift. It would have been a gift no matter Carolyne’s disposition, but somehow I feel pretty lucky to have had as many good days with her as I got. And it would have been impossible without the support of my family and, especially, Leslye.

So tonight we went out – got a friend to babysit (not that that involves much as far as Carolyne is concerned) and had a meal out alone. Carolyne slept soundly tonight, six months after she was born. In two weeks she starts daycare, and the adventure begins again. Stay tuned.

Food update: green beans are clearly not a favorite, probably ranking below peas and certainly below sweet potatoes. And then there’s bananas, or as we’ve come to know them, “baby crack.” I think she’d eat anything mixed with her bananas. She’s also getting steadier at sitting up, particularly when you prop her up against something. She’ll start to lean forward a little, and you’ll think she’s tipping over, but then (sometimes) she catches herself and stops. I don’t think she realizes what she’s done, but just the same it’s amazing to watch.

When Leslye got home we all went back to the precinct so she could vote. Both times we had Carolyne in the Baby Bjorn, so she got a good look at those scary voting machines (not actually scary). And both times she got an “I Voted” sticker, so that was something. She was less clear on her preferences – all I got out of her today was that given the choice between green beans and bananas, she’s going for bananas every time. I’m not sure what the political ramifications are.

She seems to enjoy church, and we’ve been leaving her in the nursery for the past couple of weeks in order to get her used to that sort of thing (and so that she doesn’t continue to “comment” on the sermons). But even after a good nap this afternoon, she decided that solid foods were too much of a problem for her dinner, and rather forcefully declined our attempts and called it an evening. The really strange thing is, by most measures she’s fine on Mondays.

Carolyne has no history with peas; I do, and my mother will gladly tell you of it. How I spent hours dividing and sub-dividing peas on my plate in the apparent belief that they would cease to be visible and thus would be considered as eaten. This is what passes for family lore, I guess.

But let the record show that not only did I approve of making peas the first green vegetable for Carolyne, but that I willingly fed them to her without cutting them up. This last point is somewhat weakened by the fact that they were already mush. No matter. She enjoyed her peas, particularly when Leslye fed them to her. I tried to be encouraging, but old habits die hard.

You’ll excuse the excitement of the narrator, of course. I guess we’ll have to start watching her now that she’s really moving…