Saturday is always a welcome arrival, but particularly so today. After everyone’s first week in a household featuring a bona fide working dad, all were glad to have Justin around for some family fun. This was sought downtown at the National Gallery of Art. As we meandered through the gallery we came upon a courtyard with some late-Renaissance and early-Baroque sculptures from Northern Italy. Lia asked Julia to go stand next to her favorite sculpture for a photo. Never one to decline having her picture taken, Julia raced off to a nearby statue of Venus, pronounced it her favorite, then smiled winningly as she waited for Lia to take a picture. The picture taken, Julia raced to another monument—this one a likeness of an obscure Paduan jurist of the sixteenth century (and by now, all Paduan jurists of centuries gone by have waxed obscure)—leaned against it smiling and called out, “Mommy, this is my favorite: take a picture!” This process was repeated twice more. While Julia’s true “favorite” remains a mystery, there can be no question about her favorite object of photographic representation.

We exited the Art Gallery and walked into a mild rain, which quickly coalesced into proportions torrential. We had only one umbrella amongst us—a tiny, pink, ladybug umbrella that belongs to Julia (her “Mary Poppins” umbrella) and which, consequently, was devoted to Julia’s exclusive use. The rest of us were drenched. At length we took shelter in a covered bus stop with an elderly couple of German tourists. Justin volunteered to brave the rain to find the nearest stop on the Metro, but Lia insisted—whether out of genuine solicitude or the desire for a good laugh, we cannot say—that he take the umbrella. He cut quite a figure, this parvenu in the capital, dashing through a river of fallen and falling rain with a diminutive pink umbrella complete with antennae. But the Metro was found, and the rain soon let up. The young family was home in time for dinner.

Justin has become quite adept at cutting a dashing figure in D.C. On Friday afternoon he and his fellow summer associates toured the city’s central features aboard unspeakably stylish Segways—you know, those cynosures of dorkdom, hybrids of a scooter and a pogo stick that leave one wondering who was the more mad, the inventor or the venture capitalist who funded him. Justin’s fellows thought the Segways right bully; Justin did have a little fun, but he’s no great fan of fun in any case. He was, however, very grateful not to have fallen off his motorized mount.

After the Segway adventure, Justin came home to an empty apartment and, rara avis, did some reading. The ladies of the house returned presently, having spent a lazy afternoon in the stylish enjoyment of our residential swimming pool. Lazy for everyone but Eli, that is, who was, in her mother’s words, “a wild woman” in the pool. Eli is a thoroughgoing hydrophile, rather a hydromaniac, and can make havoc of any body of water larger than a bathtub. Earlier in the day, Lia had purchased sunglasses for herself and the girls. Upon reentering the apartment, Julia donned her new shades then walked carefully backwards toward Justin, who sat at the kitchen table. As she drew close to her father, Julia flipped a rapid 180 to reveal her flashy eyeware and to complement it with a brilliant smile. It was one of her cuter modeling improvisations.

On Thursday afternoon the girls were playing in their room when Julia decided she needed maternal assistance. “Mommy!” she roared. “What, Sweetie?” Lia answered. Now Lia, as it happened, was in the bathroom, and Julia, as it happens, likes to make her most important requests face to face. So Julia raced from her bedroom to the living room expecting to find her mother there. Not so finding, she again cried, “Mommy!” To which Lia once more sweetly answered, “Yes Julia?” Julia now raced past the bathroom en route to the master bedroom, expecting to find her mother there. Not so finding, she thundered a frustrated, “Mommy!!!” “Julia, what?” Lia called. Upon which Julia raced once more to the living room, expecting to find her mother there. After a couple more repetitions of this fruitful interlocution, Julia finally asked in desperation, “Mommy, where are you?” “I’m in the bathroom,” came the answer. “Oh,” said Julia. Thus satisfied, Julia returned to her room, joined hands with her puzzled little sister, and set merrily about playing once again.

Lia and the girls have kept quite busy this week, attending zoos and visiting nature parks and swimming and generally painting the town. Justin has been busy at work, though not exactly hard at work (he did get his first real assignment on Thursday and has enjoyed working on that). We’re happy, on the whole, in our new setting. Like New Haven, D.C. and environs is not the safest plot of ground in this broad land, and Lia has had a couple tense moments. Justin has already experienced enough of D.C. to be confirmed in his intuition that his bailiwick lies in the towers of academia rather than the corridors of power. We are all happy to be here; we are all happy we will not be here forever.

[Photo note: This video reflects the girls' true feelings about the art gallery. They warmed up to it after awhile, mostly because they felt so elegant waltzing among the granite pillars and Romanesque sculptures. I have a video of that, too, but it's rather dark.]