Best dinner ever

I guess the proper format would actually be: Best. Dinner. Ever. And that's a bold statement, even if I limit it to just my dinners. Tonight was clearly #1 for me (and Joanne as well)...

I tried something different with the pork chops tonight. Rather than using my two standard rubs (either a pork rub or one with a lot of sage), I tried something a little different. Along with the normal salt and pepper, I went looking for something different (but not too different) and loaded them up with some rosemary. I asked Joanne what would be a good, different spice and she suggested cinnamon, so I added that as well. We had three ears of corn left, which is a bonus ear. Still, that's a fairly mundane preparation for what was to become the best dinner ever.

I brought everything in around 7. Joanne put Owen in the high chair and we cut into the chops. They were fairly thick, but they were cooked without the exterior being overcooked. That's good. The cinnamon, though, didn't quite work--it was too distinct, maybe burnt, and too separate from the meat. The corn, though, mmm mmm good.

Then it started. Owen was smiley and giggley when I got home. He took a little nap in the middle of his dinner and when we started, he was fairly happy. I started making faces at him, with a little dash of baby talk, and he started laughing. As you probably know, there's nothing quite like a baby's laugh, and, for us, nothing tops Owen's. When he starts laughing we try to keep it going because we enjoy it. We weren't quite ready for this display: about 30 minutes of pure Owen happiness--all smiles, giggles and laughs.



We didn't capture any of it because we were too transfixed to get either of the cameras (the pic above was from yesterday). Joanne even got a little emotional in the middle because of the realization that Owen wasn't an infant any more--he is a person with his own distinct personality. This isn't to say we haven't thought of him as having a personality--he definitely has that. Over the past couple of weeks or so, we have watched him reacting more to us, doing more reaching for things, paying more attention to toys, starting to show signs of mimicking us, and getting closer to sitting up on his own.

I think the better way to describe it is being parents just keeps getting better and better.