Locomotion

Seth finally taught himself to crawl. He also still scoots around on his back so he can look you in the eye while getting from point A to B.

Thanksgiving, but don't mention the turkey

Here's a photo of our Thanksgiving crowd (minus Aaron, at his usual place behind the camera). Aaron's medical school pal, Jason, and his girlfriend Olivia came. Aaron's parents, his brother Jared, and honorary sister Vania, were here for the weekend. I guess this was the first time my own kitchen hosted such a feast. With one oven, I don't know how people get the meal served all hot at the same time. We were fairly close to accomplishing that feat, but we had a bit of a turkey mishap that Aaron would appreciate me not bringing up. Let's just say Aaron was incredibly excited to cook a perfect bird (like he did last Christmas) but our ghetto oven didn't deliver. Poor Aaron. There was plenty of delicious food though, and the two types of stuffing we made still tasted good for lunch today, 5 days later.




The night after Thanksgiving, we went to Balboa Park with Aaron's family. From there, Rich and Jeannine (his parents) planned to take Seth home and babysit him for the evening/put him to bed, so Aaron and I could go on a date (hooray!). We went to The Darjeeling Limited, a movie we've wanted to see for a while. Halfway through the movie, we got a text message with a picture from Rich of the adjacent photo, with Seth on Santa's lap. It said "locked out and doing fine". It's horrifying to realize you've locked out your babysitters. Rich and Jeannine are really laid back and didn't fret, just showed Seth the time of his life. He stayed up quite late and loved it. Aaron and I couldn't really enjoy the last half of the movie, but we're still grateful for our half-date.

Kristen, Gabriella, Sofia, and Fetus Brighten up San Diego

A visit from my friend, Kristen, was just what I needed. It was wonderful to have her and her girls stay with us. We've been best of friends for the last 16 years and stayed close through a lot of ups and downs in life. I don't know how I would have survived Oak Ridge High without her. While the other kids were passing gossipy notes in class, we'd exchange comic strip drawings of sea cows, a hovering poodle psycho-therapist (too much to explain), and marshmallow jet-puff machinery. We've always understood each other like nobody else quite could. It was great to get together as fellow-moms for the first time and bask in the joys of offspring (and maybe a couple of the woes). Kristen is beautiful to begin with, but her 6 month pregnant belly is glorious. I was reflecting on my pregnancy days and how people tended to gaze at me with this look on their face like "you sweet thing", as if I was the Virgin Mary and could do no wrong. I asked Kristen if she gets those looks. She said that kind of reverence for pregnancy gets a little lost when you're toting two kids along already, so most people look at you like you're crazy instead. (Her 2 year old, Gabriella, referring to the baby as "Mr. Moroni" doesn't help the crazy stereotypes either. She came up with that herself by the way). Oh well. During their visit, Seth discovered his natural affinity for Ratatouille, one of the few foods he's expressed much interest in. (I'm not all that surprised--my breastmilk is probably pretty garlicky). Anyway, it really confused little Sofia, who only knows Ratatouille as a Pixar movie about a rat. Everytime we'd say the word, she'd beg to watch it. I'd keep forgetting, and throw around the term, somewhat torturing Sofia. Anyway, we had a great time visiting together. I only hope I can make it out to Tucson to meet the new baby before Kristen and Richard uproot to Texas this summer.

Sand is grainy

Seth has been to the beach may times, but this week, for the first time, we let him play at the beach (instead of just holding him while we take a walk). As a consequence, he had his first taste of sand. Surprisingly, he didn't think it was that good. (A bit grainy). I wish i had a picture of him with sand all over his mouth, and the look on his face as he tried to chew it. It was cool to see how fascinated he was by this new tactile experience. He kept grabbing handfuls and letting it fall through his fingers. I could just see the dendrites in his little brain developing. It was fun.

Mountain Man Terrorizes Baby Seth

The bearded man in this photo walked into our apartment last week, without knocking, approached Seth, who was on the floor calmly perusing our DVD collection, and terrified him into a screaming fit. The poor little sweety must not have recognized him as our friend Garret, whom he used to know as a newborn. Garret spent the past 6 months hiking the Continental Divide Trail from Mexico to Canada and back again, and continues to flaunt his rugged appearance like a status symbol. During his stay here, Aaron got out the clippers to give himself a haircut and invited Garret to clean up his look and join society again, but he was recalcitrant (not surprising). Anyway, it was great fun having our good old Berkeley pals, Marcus and Garret, stay with us a couple days. Seth even warmed up to Garret a little. While he was holding him, Seth pulled Garret's nasty, sweat-marinated ball cap off his head and started gnawing on it. Garret didn't so much mind, but warned Seth that it was more of a salt-lick than a hat. As for Marcus, he kindly gave us a gift of Halloween trash he picked up outside. It was a piece of a talking balloon, that when you hit it, makes scary Halloween sounds like howling and cackling. Aaron planted it in our bed while I was sleeping, and scared the bejeezers out of me when I rolled over onto it. Then when this thing finally made it to the trash a couple days later, it decided to haunt me again. I had thrown it in Seth's diaper pail, and as I was carrying this bag of poo diapers out to the dumpster, it burst open, spilling all over the ground, to the soundtrack of witch cackles, as if to say--Happy Halloween, here's your poo.

A tooth

This week Seth's first tooth made it's way through his gums. He doesn't think it's that great of an accomplishment--in fact, he's not too happy about it at all. Sleep is a bit of a luxury these days.