If I were prudent I would save these last few photos of Mabel Watson Payne until later in the week, because there almost certainly won't be any more for a goodly while. She and her parents are happily settled in midtown Manhattan (the mother of the family on a business trip, with family amusements tucked in around the edges). They will stay there and have adventures all through the coming weekend, not returning to San Francisco until the following week. Which means I probably won't see them until the next weekend -- and that seems very far away indeed.
So I should really save these pictures back, to use farther along in the dry spell to come, but I was never very good at postponing pleasures. The sequence immediately above was taken at lunch time last Saturday. Now, of course it is well known and true that Mabel Watson Payne has not learned to talk in words yet -- but she has lately perfected methods of her own for telling complicated stories with her hands.
Since her first birthday another change is that many of the bottles taken whenever her mother is absent are filled with cow's milk rather than stored-up mother's milk. Both sorts of milk are swallowed with equal gusto and disappear rapidly.
Even though I am glad to think about and vicariously savor the enjoyments of travel (such as the Central Park Zoo, which I know was part of the plan) I will still inevitably be plagued with impatience until Mabel Watson Payne is back in her nest.