baby island, arizona

As a kid, I owned a book called "Baby Island".

The things I remember about this book include the cover, which featured a drawing of two befrocked young girls cavorting amidst large tropical leaves while playing with no less than four babies, and...well, not the actual plot, assuming there was one. Although I'm pretty sure I remember a twist wherein a coconut entered the scene at one point.

What I have retained is a vague notion of a shipwreck (in which, not to give too much away, everybody ultimately turned out to have survived) and the ensuing frivolity of unchaperoned and befrocked young girls playing with babies on a tropical island. But that's pretty much it. I don't remember large cats or cannibals or anything. I'm pretty sure the inclusion of those things would have strengthened the plot and probably jogged my memory. But of course, you can't rewrite history - or cause it to be retroactively removed from bookstore shelves.

So here we are, and thus we segue inelegantly into:

The Tucson archaeology scene. Which has lately morphed into my very own personal Baby Island.

Except that I'm not often as befrocked as I'd like to be, and technically I've never actually been shipwrecked...although I did fall out of a canoe during a church trip once and also into some very scary cataracts during a whitewater rafting excursion in college - not winding up on an island loaded with babies on either occasion. Also, although I am currently surrounded by babies, their mothers do not sustain them on coconut milk, as far as I know, and also would be unlikely to let me expose them to large cats or cannibals, no matter what the nature of the situation.

So...yes, you astute readers you, this whole thing has been nothing more than a clever lead-up to more pictures of babies.
Sara +
Joe =
Baby Elliott

Welcome to Baby Island, Eli! Watch out for crocs!