The best way to spend a warm spring holiday: barbecuing meat and veggies with friends on their back porch. Thanks to Mike and Jenny for hosting us this year.

Our desire to own a grill has both increased and diminished. We want to have BBQs on our own porch, but after such a great time it’s hard to do anything that would give a reason to not repeat it.

That’s right. Bacon. Chocolate. A merging of two holy substances brought to earth by god-kings of culinary alchemical magnificence.

Well, kind of.

Blackbird turned three months old last week. She’s matured a great deal in one month, in many small ways that are coalescing into the first bits of her personality. She’s still a baby, no doubt: crying, eating, pooping, fussing, sleeping, repeat. But her looks and responses are becoming more complex and her preferences are starting to surface. I admit, I’m more excited by what this all means for the future than right now, but I’m trying to drink it all in as it happens, because I know these days will be memories very soon.

This is probably my favorite photo of Blackbird so far. In many photos, she looks kind of freaked out. Honestly, most of the time she does. Here she has the appraising look that I’m fascinated by. I suspect this look will come out quite a bit when she’s older. Also, notice the KISS t-shirt. Add all that to the great sunlight in her room and you get prime photo-taking situations.

The rest of this post contains quite a few photos, so if you’re on a low-bandwidth connection, beware.