~~~~~

According to the American Weather Service, last Friday in Vegas was supposed to be cloudy and rainy--not precisely what one wants when booking a vacation. But Friday dawned insanely sunny, and it stayed that way all weekend. Beautiful clear skies, wonderful humidity-free temperatures of mid-twenties Celsius/mid-seventies Fahrenheit. Jeans-weather in the morning and evening, shorts-weather the rest of the day. Gorgeous.

Of course, it would figure that the Birthday Boy was still trying to shake that cold and so spent Friday hagard and hoarse, pushing a stroller and talking about how much fun he'd had there *last* time. Not thrilled was I. I was beginning to think evil thoughts, like, "considering the trouble and expense I went to you could at least pretend to have fun and not seem so much like you wish you were here with someone else."

We didn't do much. We ate at the buffet, which is no longer cheap, by the way. We checked out the north end of the strip. Frances had a nap. We checked out the south end of the strip. Frances tried to stop at every blinking light on every bloody slot machine; you can imagine how long it took to cross even the shortest distance. We looked at souveniers and were suitably unimpressed. We discussed what we wanted to do. We came to no conclusions.

Frances, being her preternaturally happy self, found a large square in front of one of the casino hotels where music was playing and flowers were growing, and stopped to run around, denude several plants and shake her groove thang to the funky muzak beat. It was sweet. She was so completely unselfconscious and absorbed in the moment, and passersby stopped to compliment her on her dance-floor stylings. Frances baby, you were the best show on the strip.

We also visited the AdventureDome and found, to our nonexistent surprise, that Frances is too short for all the rides by a good five inches. Poor girl. She found them so fascinating, and I could tell she would have loved to ride.

~~~~~

Saturday we decided to see one of the modern wonders of the world, a.k.a. a lot of concrete placed within the Colorado River. That was nice. The weather was--again--sunny and beautiful; Erik was saying how his throat was feeling better after that bloody phlegm he coughed up; Frances was Frances; I was just happy not feeling like I'd dragged Erik on a vacation when he'd rather be at home in cold Toronto.

Hoover dam was very nice. Erik got a big kick out of teaching Frances to say "big dam!" and we got her a t-shirt and took a lot of pictures, including one of Frances straddling two state lines.

And Frances ran around the parking lot and made friends with everybody.

It's just as well that I was on camera duty for this portion of the day, since just seeing Erik holding Frances close to the edge of the dam so she could see it made me shaky and nauseous and teary. I would have been fine if Erik or I had turned cartwheels on the edge--I'm not normally squeamish about heights--but damn me if my hands aren't shaking just typing about how eagerly she strained to see the very bottom of the Big Dam.

I was so happy nobody died that I bought her a t-shirt.

After the big dam, we were off to Lake Mead where we had a nice lunch in the Marina, and where the waitress made much over Frances's big blue eyes, and Frances made friends with a little baby sitting at a neighbouring table. "Hello little baby!" she said, waving frantically. "Hello!" The little baby stared but was, alas, too young to reply. A little girl with the same family came close to stare at the WBBE, BN and assayed a few greetings herself, but Frances had only eyes for the Little Baby.

We also fed some fish.

Unintentionally, I'll add, since with my luck someone with the Wildlife Service is reading this and preparing a citation. DON'T FEED THE WILDLIFE! Yes, I know, thank you. But there was a very nice lady there with a bag of cheese corn who offered Frances a few kernels to throw into the lake, where teeming hordes of fish swam with gaping mouths and churned the water so that I was quite thoroughly soaked with splashing. Frances found this fascinating and wanted to get right up to the dock edge so she could be as close as possible to all five hundred pounds or so of hungry fish.

After throwing in her first few bits, I asked her, "Frances, can you say thank yoU?"

She turned to the nice lady with the popcorn bag, stretched out one arm and said, "I want more!"

"Frances!" I said.

The nice lady laughed. "Oh, that's ok. Them big blue eyes are thanks enough. Here you go, love. Have the whole bag."

You can imagine how happy that made her. "I want more!" she said again and again, throwing bits of junk food into the lake to feed the monstrous catfish. When Erik asked her if she could open her mouth like the fish, she practically dislocated her jaw.

The ducks were pretty swell, too.

Then we drove around until we found an outlook spot with a nice view of the Lake. A stranger landscape I may never have seen, with the blue water and the red rock right up to the edge and the aqua sky above. I don't think I've ever seen such a large body of water--hell, any body of water--without life teeming around the edges, trees and cattails and shrubs and bullrushes and weeds and wildflowers and grasses and birds and insects so crowded in you can hardly see the water. Yet here it was just stone, and water, and sky, with a few desert plants thrown in for variety.

Frances, true to form, was much more interested in the gravel than in any of that. But the sun was shining, and she was happy, and Erik was happy, and I was happy; and right then I was struck with the thought: I did this. I made this happy moment happen for my family. It made every penny, every moment of planning, worth it.

By the time we got back to the hotel it was well after naptime, and Frances fell into the baby version of a deep coma.

I went out while she was sleeping and bought some souveneirs--I couldn't stand any of the t-shirts so I got myself a very exciting mug, and Frances came away with a $15 magnet toy that is worth its weight in gold and a whack of postcards (a.k.a. "photo insurance").

And Diet Coke. They do not sell Diet Coke in Circus Circus. How uncivilized.

I can't remember what we did after Frances woke up. I don't think it was anything too exciting. We were too afraid of losing our already-marginal parking spot at the Circus Circus on a Saturday night, so instead we just walked around and marvelled in the sheer extravagance of the Strip and the vast quantities of water being used in showy fountains when there is apparently a drought on.

You can see the drought in the photos of the Hoover Dam--the watermark is usually where the white and red stones meet--but moreover, there was an ad on the TV our first day there saying, "If you are letter E, you can water your lawn on Friday. That's today. Three times, for four minutes each. Remember it's up to all of us to do our part during the drought."

I thought--isn't the definition of a desert a more-or-less extended drought? I mean, you know it's bad when it's a drought by desert standards.

~~~~~

Sunday we went to the Red Rock Canyon. It was gorgeous.

Frances, again, was more interested in the gravel.

We started our adventure in the visitor centre, where Frances politely requested that we purchase a stuffed owl for her by repeatedly crying "Owl! Owl! Owl! Owl!" until it was paid for and placed in her little grabby hands. She kept it up all the way into the parking lot--"Owl! Owl!" and as we walked around the tortoise habitat--"Owl! Owl! Owl!"--and after she ran right into the beefy leg of a very friendly Scottish gentleman who stopped to compliment her big blue eyes--"Owl!" and only stopped when she saw a dog.

"DOGGIE!" she bellowed. "DOGGIE!"

This creature was a "doggie" in the same way a T Rex is a "lizard." It was a very, very big dog, accompanied by two college boys with dreadlocks who assured us that she loves kids and was very friendly, so off Frances went to meet the dog. The dog definitely loves kids. She wasn't so fond of stuffed owls, though, and promptly took it from Frances's hands, sending her into heartrending sobs.

The owl was rescued and returned to its rightful owner in one piece, if slightly soggy. The owl then spent the rest of the afternoon safely in the car.

We drove around and stopped at several of the outlook points, and I gave the camera's panorama setting a workout.

Frances played with the gravel. I tried to get good close-up shots of all of the desert plants I could find, as well as broader desert shots. Erik chased her around and tried to keep her from plunging off the mountain in hot pursuit of a particularly pretty stone.

On one outlook point, Frances walked right up to a couple seated on a bench and said, "Hello."

The woman of the couple--young, slim, long straight black hair--was enthralled. "Oh, look at you," she said. "You are just the cutest thing I've ever seen. Look at your big blue eyes! How old are you?"

And so began another instance of Frances working her magic on another unsuspecting bystander. Fifteen minutes later the mutual admiration was complete and we were free to go, but the man of the couple obligingly took a family photo for us first.

We thought we were doing well, heading back at 11:30 in plenty of time for her nap, but the little bugger fell asleep on the way anyway and that was it--twenty minutes in the car. Nap refusal thenceforth.

~~~~~

Monday morning Frances woke up at 4:30 am Vegas time, and I thought it would be futile to try to get her back to sleep, since we were going home that day and we'd have to deal with the time change regardless. So we were all just a bit tired.

And out of ideas. Most things in Vegas don't seem to open until 11:00 am, and we had to leave at 1:00 to get to the airport in time. So for the first several hours, we let Frances run herself ragged outside in the parking lot of the hotel and a few blocks farther down at a plaza, then brought her back for a super-early 9:30 am nap and cruelly woke her up for the 11:00 am checkout.

Our plan was to head over to the Mirage to see the big cats and the dolphins. But as it turns out, the Mirage is aptly named; we couldn't figure out how to get into the damned parking lot no matter what we did. Tried a few different streets and directions and, 45 minutes later for three blocks' distance, gave up and parked at Caesar's Palace. It being almost noon, we gave up on the big cats. Poo.

There's not much to do at Caesar's Palace for the under-two set, so once again we let her loose on the plaza while I took a gazillion photos and Erik attempted to corral her. Then it was time to head back to the airport, where Frances once again entertained herself by flapping her arms to simulate flying and opening her mouth like the fish did at the lake. Then she made a friend--a nice woman who looked to be about my mother's age who has four children of her own, and who was willing and happy to spend the 45 minutes singing to Frances.

No, I'm not kidding. The itsy-bitsy spider, about fifty million times in a row. Ocassionally she'd try another one, but Frances would wriggle her hands together and say, "Itsy bitsy spiiiiider went up waterspout," and who can resist that? Frances wriggled down from her seat with us, walked around to sit on the seat next to her new friend, and kept wriggling her hands and smiling and giving her the big blue eyed stare, and didn't she get the 45 minutes of itsy-bitsy spider she wanted? Yes. Bizarrely, her new friend positively glowed while she was singing to her.

That is a gift: Making someone believe that you are doing them a favour by convincing them to sing a million repititions of a kiddie song with hand movements.

On the plane (where her new friend was conveniently sitting directly behind us, and obliged by playing peekaboo at all the right moments), our seatmate was a new mom with a three month old baby boy--Baby Joe. "Hello baby joe!" Frances would say. "Baby joe having a snack. Baby joe drinking milk from a bottle. Hello baby joe. Baby joe sleeping. Hello baby joe!"

Baby Joe's mother was also captivated by Frances. At first she was simply relieved to see that she did not have the only baby on the plane, but after a few minutes Frances had done her magic tricks again.

"She's just beautiful," Baby Joe's mother said. "She has a light about her. It's amazing."

Don't I know it? Could we walk down a single block, the hallway from our room to the elevator, take a table in the restaurant and eat a meal, through the casino, or around the midway without at least one would-be admirer (and usually several) stop us to make Frances's acquaintance and compliment us on how beautiful and sweet she is? There was the lady from Tennessee who told us all about her own daughter decades ago who was farsighted and had a lazy eye and needed surgery. There was the woman who manned a gamebooth on the midway who told us how amazingly cute she was, and how well she walks for someone so small, and how fabulous and wonderful she is, and we have to come back and see her again. There was the man sitting beside us on the plane down who sat and grinned at Frances more than he looked out the window. There were the people who stopped to clap at Frances' dance moves on the plaza. There were the people who simply stopped and grinned and told their friends how cute she is. There were the grumpy people in the restaurants who scolded other children for running around during their dinner, but smiled and remained silent while Frances giggled and waved her arms and and skipped under their feet. It was like travelling with a minor celebrity, or at any rate, what I imagine travelling with a minor celebrity would be like.

There were so many of these stories the details have run together in my mind, and all I have left are a few outstanding examples and a general impression that Frances may be ending up on a postcard someday soon.

She was--in WBBE, BN fashion--a trooper the whole way home, compliant and happy and cooperative and perfectly content to play with her Winnie the Pooh magnet toy (the one I bought for $15) until we got in the car at 11:30 pm, when she promptly fell asleep and stayed asleep while I transferred her from the carseat to her crib.

What? The Birthday Boy? You mean Erik?

Yes, he had a great time. He's already talking about how he wants to go back. And now he has ten years to save up for my fortieth birthday. ;)