Amazing baby will be back soon

The amazing baby, aka my beautiful little grand-daughter Madison Nicole Kastner, will be returning to the United States in about a month.

I can hardly wait.

Little Maddie is now 8 1/2 months old and she'll be spending the next year or so in the USA. She may not take her first unassisted steps here -- she's pretty close to that now -- but she'll probably do her first talking this summer in Washington state.

After two months up there, Maddie will follow her parents to Washington, D.C., where her mother -- my wonderful daughter Pauline -- will have nine months or so of language training for her next posting.

We're looking forward to spending two weeks with her in August, and we're hoping we can get back east for Christmas as well. We're probably still a year or two from a Christmas that Maddie will actually remember, but it should still be fun.

I never really believed people who said how wonderful it was to be a grandparent, but yes, they were right.

And then some.