It's a curious age, twenty-four: still young enough to snicker when you get carded, not really old enough to be taken seriously by smug boomer types. And it's an age where things tend to happen, even if it's only waiting for another couple of years to go by so your car-insurance premiums will drop to a bearable level. I even got married at twenty-four, though I would seriously question the sanity of anyone seeing me as a role model.

And now my daughter is twenty-four. She's not getting married or anything like that, but she definitely buys into the idea that this is an age where things tend to happen: she's getting ready to move to a larger apartment, and she retains a back-burner plan to buy a house when she gets a few more dollars together. (On this latter item, she is way ahead of her old man, whose financial planning is dubious at best.)

The mathematics of all this started to sink in a few years ago. When she was two, I was twenty-seven, a ratio of 13.5. When she was ten, I was thirty-five, dropping the ratio to 3.5. Next year she'll be twenty-five and I'll be fifty, bringing it down to 2. "At what point do you start treating your children like adults?" asks every parent. I think the process becomes automatic, once you get to the point where you realize that you're not all that much older than they are anymore, a point that was underscored when last I visited my father (current ratio approximately 1.5) and one bald fact — "This man has a son pushing fifty, fercrissake" — stared me in the face.

Oh, well. Enough of my pointless noodling.

Happy birthday, Becky.

Grandchildren, that is.

Well, technically, not until April 15 or so, but the groundwork has been laid, so to speak.

For Russell and Alicia, it's their first child, and the mixture of delirium and fear and wonder that comes with being a first-time parent is going to be a constant companion for the next eight months.

And they'll love every minute of it. Just you watch.

Please welcome Laney Paige Marie Hill, about six pounds, about nineteen inches, and about two and a half weeks early, to the Big Wide Occasionally-Wonderful World.

Photographs when I can get them. For now, Russ and Alicia are getting some sleep, and it's a good thing, because they won't be getting much sleep for the next year or so.

Please amend all previous utterances of "But I'm too young to have a grandchild" to read "But I'm too young to have two grandchildren."

Thank you.

For all of you demanding a picture of the new granddaughter — well, here's a picture of the new granddaughter.

(If you missed the original intro, this is Laney Paige-Marie Hill, born 29 March at around three in the morning, six pounds thirteen ounces, and 18.5 inches tall. God forbid I should ever have to relearn these statistics in metric.)

(This was edited at 9:50 am Saturday to add the second paragraph and to reshuffle the formatting slightly.)

I figure, I'm a Baltic Avenue sort of guy; I'd like to stay away from Mediterranean if possible — been there, didn't like it — but my aspirations don't rise much beyond Oriental or Vermont or Connecticut.

My daughter recently bought in on St. Charles Place, and while she was here in town this weekend, we somehow wound up doing a brisk impromptu tour of some of the higher colors on the board. We didn't get to Boardwalk, what with the big metal gates and all, but we did spend a few minutes on Park Place, and we hit some of the newer developments on the far side of Free Parking.

"When I see one of these places," she said somewhere around Ventnor Avenue, "I want to go up to the door and ask them, 'What in the world do you do for a living? How can you afford a place like this?'"

I said something like "You never know. Maybe the meth lab finally paid off."

We passed a teardown, where a grand old house from the Twenties was being replaced with something maybe more modern, certainly twice the size, and I pointed out that this was a small but annoying trend: "You'll find this sort of thing in new developments also: houses about twice as big as they ought to be for the lot. There's a whole subdivision full of McMansions that way." I gestured in the general direction of the Water Works.

"They have no yard," she complained. "I gripe about my yard, but at least I have one."

On the far reaches of town, we passed a new development going up. Gated, of course, and the sign contained the following requirement: Minimum 3200 sf.

"Thirty-two hundred!? That's three times the size of my house!"

"Fairly standard for new construction in this area," I said. "You live in 1067 square feet?"

"About twelve hundred. How could you possibly keep a place like that clean?"

"If you can afford the mortgage, you can probably also afford to have someone come in three times a week and cycle the dust."

"I wouldn't have it," she declared. "Seventeen hundred is big enough for me."

"Especially since you don't actually have it, huh?"

"Exactly." This child is way too much like me for her own good.

We took a run to the opposite end of town, to a development called Rivendell, mostly because I figured she'd be amused by the very concept, and somewhere east of Lorien Way (very much in the spirit of Marvin Gardens) I introduced the very same Monopoly metaphor I've been abusing here.

"I love these places," she admitted, "but I really don't want to live in something like this. It would be nice, though, to get a house up on St. James Place."

"It might at that," I agreed, and we turned around and headed back towards the railroad tracks.

I figure it's just a matter of time before someone asks "Didn't you have a granddaughter a couple of months ago?" Nice to know the archives still work. In the meantime, here's a more current shot of the young lady with stars in her eyes. I should have such a facial expression; it borders on beatific. Unfortunately, I do have the hairline.

Elijah, if you're wondering, is the son of Dan and Angi Lovejoy, Oklahoma bloggers, and the story of how he got here is the stuff of legend, with perhaps the occasional miracle.

If you want to read that story, it's not exactly organized into neat little segments, but this is a good place to start.

Nicholas Cole Havlik, first of two grandchildren — let there be no more, at least for a while — reaches the ripe old age of four today.

My daughter is hoping that this doesn't mean he'll be twice the pill he was at two. :)

Yes, it's time for another Gratuitous Granddaughter Picture, as Laney creeps (or maybe hops) up towards eight months. (This undoubtedly serves as a harbinger of my eventual descent from Large Mammal to Crawly Amphibian or Frosted Toaster Pastry or whatever in the TTLB Ecosystem.)

My daughter (twenty-six this year) complains occasionally of boredom: if you're a certain age, which is to say around her age, there's not as much to do as you might expect in a city the size of Kansas City.

I have tended to dismiss this as an adolescent rant on a delay cycle, but then I started to see complaints in blogdom, some of them similar, some of them hitting quite a bit harder. Here's Bruce:

And in Kansas City specifically, from Christine:

We're starting to hear about a "creative class," a group of people, largely single, probably around Christine's or Bruce's age, who demand both reasonable employment and reasonable enjoyment. And indeed there are cities where they tend to accumulate, none of which looks particularly like Tulsa or Kansas City. Dr. Richard Florida, guru presumptive to this demographic cohort, says that this sort of thing is inevitable:

I don't think I'm too old to recognize the validity of this observation, but I do think I'm probably too old to just pack up and move, the way Bruce might like to, the way Christine is going to. Part of this is the sensation that I've probably gotten all the career nurture I'm ever going to get, and I'm disinclined to start at the bottom somewhere else. But some of it is the fact that if I'm bored, I tend to assume that it's because of me, not because of where I live or what I think I'd like to do. Then again, I'm writing this while doing a load of laundry.

Laney celebrated her first birthday yesterday in grand style. (Well, actually, I don't think anyone spent a grand or anything, but she seems content, and a lot less spoiled than some grownups I know, if you know what I mean.) At this point, she's walking (if you hold her hand), and she's drinking out of an actual cup; tooth count, says proud mom, is three. My kids, of course, are decently cute, so it's only fair that their kids should be decently cute. I'm still wondering what happened to me.

1)  She's engaged.

2)  I suspect it was her idea to have her fiancé request my blessing, so to speak.

3)  She owns what she says is the only house in the county that doesn't have a basement.

4)  She wears a size-ten shoe — when she's not wearing an eleven.

5)  Her profile at one of those portal sites, under "Hobbies and Interests," lists the following: "Home improvement and death metal."

6)  Her sense of humor is generally described as "warped." (Gee, I wonder where she got that?)

7)  She had been given up for dead a couple of hours before she was born.

8)  Which was on this date, twenty-six years ago.

Happy birthday, baby girl, you... you grownup, you.

(Addendum: Well, yeah, it's this guy's birthday, too.)

Say hello to Sadie Rose Ellis, not quite one day old but already capturing hearts and minds.

It's really hard to maintain Standard Blogger Grumpiness when you gaze into a face like that. (Awwww....)

Congratulations to Jay and Deb. The fun is just beginning.

In lower case, for now, because he's only one day old.

Say hello to Baby Xrlq, of whom pictures are promised Real Soon Now. (Of course, the proud parents are no doubt, um, otherwise occupied right this minute.)

A year and a half, and already she breaks hearts.

(Question from a reader: "The title of this post — did you rip it off from Susanna Cornett ["Gratuitous Niece Photo"] or Kim du Toit ["Gratuitous Gun Pic"]?" Answer: Yes.)

About five years and six and a half months ago, I let it be known that First Grandchild was on the way, and She Who Is Not To Be Named took it upon herself to predict the child's birthday: "November 10th. Same as mine."

She was, of course, accurate: Nicholas Cole Havlik indeed arrived on the tenth, to the amazement of the attending physician, who had predicted some other date. And while she doesn't go out of her way to remind me about how accurate she is, this is one of those times when she doesn't have to.

(No, I'm not telling you how old she is. Sheesh.)

Lileks provides one of his classic rhetorical wedgies:

Grateful am I that except in the minor areas of mannerisms and quirk level, my children are nothing like me.

Make it a couple of Slurpees.

Congratulations to Rosemary and Dean Esmay. He's a beaut.

Meet Ella Hope Holtsberry, born Friday afternoon.

Let there be cheers and celebration.

And another door opens.

Say hello to James Peter and Catherine Marie.

And Cam? Forget about sleeping for the next couple of years. Then again, you already know this.

When you're in love, the whole world is two-ish. This girl is apparently as camera-happy as a Congressman, and with a whole lot more justification. (And she doesn't know it yet, but some time next spring she's gonna be someone's big sister. I thought I warned my son about that sort of thing. Then again, I'm not particularly mindful of stuff like that either; if I had been — well, never mind. Don't go there. In fact, don't even acknowledge that there's a "there" there. If you must say something, remind my daughter that she, too, has a child, and she doesn't send me anywhere near as many pictures, hint, hint.)

"Hey, I know! Let's take the kids to see Rocky Horror!"

Oh, lucky them.

These two pictures (there were others, but I liked these two) were taken on the Fourth of July at my daughter's house in Independence, Missouri, the first night of the World Tour. In the first shot, Nicholas (my daughter's son) wields a sparkler with as much élan as is humanly possible for a child of five and a half, mainly because he's already been informed that the bottle rockets are off limits, thank you very much. (He accepted this judgment with only minor complaint, which tells me that either he's actually maturing a bit, or he didn't hear it all.)

Meanwhile, Laney (my son's daughter) is only two and isn't allowed such scary devices; she'd like you to know that she missed out by this much. And if she had ever been fearful of loud noises before, which I kind of doubt — her father plays the drums, fercryingoutloud — this experience surely cured her of the phobia.

My daughter's "alternative" credentials are just this side of impeccable — she once managed a death-metal band, fercryingoutloud — but there are tell-tale cracks in the façade.

Last night she told me about her new favorite track, which turns out to be "Tired of Being Sorry" by Ringside. I gave it a listen, and it's indeed compulsively listenable, but it's also about as "alternative" as, God help me, "Reach Out of the Darkness".

Seduced by pop, and by the light side of pop at that. It could happen to you.

I have a great deal of trouble with the idea that I now have a grandchild six years old; it just seems so impossible, you know? And yet he was five years old a year ago, four years old two years ago, and so on down the line, in strict compliance with the laws of mathematics.

Oh, well. Happy birthday, Nick. Now cool it for a moment so your mom can get some sleep, okay?

(Aside to someone else born on this date: How is it that he ages one year every twelve months and you age one year every twelve years?)

Wayward Daughter occasionally coughs up a picture of her one and only, who turned six earlier this month. And when she does, well, it's time to warm up the scanner, and so I did. At least the lad isn't developing Dumbo-esque ears like his grandfather (seen here at the age of 8, maybe 9 at the outside), which would be a catastrophe.

Well, maybe Day 150 or so.

On the downside, this presumes a level of dryness which may not always be realizable, or perhaps a level of wetness you might not wish to have distributed.

The Man from F.U.N.K.L.E. addresses his remarks to the contents of Angelina Jolie's womb:

It occurs to me that this might be worthwhile advice to the future children of normal people as well.

Just arrived (well, not just, but in the last few hours): Jackson Marshall Hill, height 20¾ inches, weight 8 lb 8 oz, and, uncharacteristic of my clan, four weeks early.

Photo to follow when I get one; Russ and Alicia are fine, and Laney is mesmerized by this sibling business.

As promised, an early picture of Jackson Marshall Hill, firmly established as Grandchild #3, and presumably not fazed by an abundance of bloodwork in his first week, motivated by suspicions of jaundice. (It did drag him back into the hospital for overnight observation, but he's out and about; this being Russ and Alicia's second child, they've learned to outfit him with generic overalls instead of paying through the nose for OshKosh, b'gosh.) He has no idea what he's in for, of course, but how many of us did at the age of 0.7 week? I've got 2700-odd weeks to my credit, and I still don't know what's waiting around the bend. (A larger version of this photo, in which he doesn't look especially yellow to me anyway, can be had by clicking on the smaller one; sensibly, he's not fond of flash.)

What's going on here? Laney, still two years old for two or three more days, and Jackson, still creeping up on two months, apparently have figured out this brother/sister thing just fine. Meanwhile, offscreen, Dad looks over at Mom, then looks up and offers a silent prayer of thanks that the kids got her hair rather than his (and, in accordance with those genealogical schemes you've been hearing about, rather than mine). Feel free to click here to embiggen.

You don't have to ask: Monty has heard them all before, and it's starting to get her goat (which, incidentally, is on the pole):

And "third base" won't suffice as an answer. Not this time.

Having children buys you no social status these days, says the Professor:

How did we get to this parlous state? There are plenty of obvious answers, most of them wrong. In terms of cultural phenomena, I'd think the most likely might be the general refusal of my generation (yes, Virginia, I am one of those hated baby-boomers) to let go of its adolescence, thereby providing a Bad Example for the generations to come. But it might be as simple as this:

Think of that high-zoot car seat (which you'll have to replace two or three times as the youngster grows) as an unfunded mandate.

Something told me it's all happening at the zoo, but Jax and Laney, it appears, are calling a temporary halt to the proceedings. (Embiggened version here.) Try not to notice that the three-year-old seems to have pierced ears, fercrissake.

"Call me Dad," says Chuck Cohen to his progeny:

I harrumph a lot, but getting me into a coat and tie usually requires a funeral. And I'm all in favor of that level of informality that stops just short of "breezy."

Still, there are times when "Dad" doesn't seem to fit:

But if they ever come out with a pain reliever specifically for men — women have Midol and Pamprin and such — I hope they have the temerity to call it "Dadvil."

Congratulations to Heather and Brian W. J.

(Photo here.)

So I figure the least I can do is plug my son's band, right?

Warning: Link is sorta loud.

"My friends," said my daughter, "are trying to talk me into one of those online-dating services."

There are a number of reasons why this might not work, but this one stands out:

She has no computer and no Net access.

I would consider these major obstacles, but then, I'm just the parental unit.

At left, Nicholas is given the Tickle Torture by his mom; meanwhile, Laney assumes the position at dance recital.