How to Wear your Meal

A tutorial in pictures.

Then and Now...

A few hours old...


A few weeks old...



Feeding himself toast at 6 months old...



Standing up (with my invisible hands hovering in the background) at 6 months old...


Why yes, time has flown.

"Banana"

Our local library has a automated check-in/out machine. We thought it was very advanced. You can slide a whole stack of books onto the sensor and it automatically detects all the barcodes at once.

Still, there was that niggling feeling of "not-rightness." I always chalked it up to my feeling of loyalty to the idea of an actual honest-to-God librarian being around. Having worked in libraries for about six years, the idea of a machine replacing a person never sat right with me.

A few days ago, I was... well, semi-vindicated.

Bruno placed his book onto the sensor, pressed the requisite buttons, and the machine obediently spat out the receipt.

Banana, said the receipt.

Bruno looked at the book, which was not only unpeelable and non-yellow, but also had nothing whatsoever to do with bananas.

Banana? He wound up going to the front desk... to the human librarian... to inquire about the oddity.

Three cheers for real librarians!

SNOW etc

Sorry for the lack of updates! Both Elijah and I came down with bad colds this week... perfect timing, because London got about 8 inches of snow on Monday! Proper, actual, fluffy, snowbally snow...


And guess who couldn't enjoy it?!

Well, I did venture out for about five minutes... enough to get a few snaps of our street and Bruno's car.


Since the trains were majorly affected by the weather, Bruno worked from home via laptop/Blackberry... leaving me pure untouched snow to make footprints in!

I guess the only downside to it all (apart from being sick and not feeling up to walking around a lot) was the grouchy attitude of some folks. Granted, we're in a credit crunch and work is important, but I saw a guy being interviewed on television who wouldn't stop going on about how he was losing money. In the background his children were pelting each other with snowballs and squealing with delight.

I couldn't help thinking that in twenty years' time that man would give anything for one more snow day with his young children. Priorities, eh?

Elijah has discovered that sitting atop his daddy's shoulders is one of the most wondrous things in the world. B is looking grouchy because a) it took me a long time to find the camera and b) well... there was a slight drool issue. (Really though, he smiled the first four times I took the picture, until I realized I was shooting in video mode... oops.)

A special thank-you goes out to Chris O in WA for poking me for an update... and everyone should congratulate her on her new grand-nephew born December 12th!

I'll update soon on Elijah's 6 month milestone (it was Thursday!)

Random Photos and Update

Elijah's got his first tooth - the lower right incisor. He's been pretty chill throughought the whole thing, but the poor little guy has been suffering from acid reflux (heartburn, basically). Until we figured it out (and bought him the right medicine) he was getting up every 2 hours or so at night being miserable.

He's still got problems, but he slept 12 hours for the first time ever a few days ago, and has only been waking up once or twice most nights, which is a major improvement over 4+ times. Still, his weight gain is a little slow because he's been upchucking so much, so we're keeping an eye on the situation.

Here's a few random pictures I found on the laptop....

Bruno on McClure's Beach near Pt. Reyes, California in 2007. We never meant to go to this beach. We were just out for a nice country drive and wound up at the hike to the beach and figured we'd go for a walk. This beach is at one of the northernmost points of the area and so was pretty wild and windswept (and cold!).

On the same trip, we hiked out to the beach at the end of Tennessee Valley trail with a picnic of bread, cheese and salami. Once we got to the beach we found that the waves were really ginormous, probably 4+ feet average, but with some "sleeper" waves that were bigger. The beach had a lowlying part that was flooded with brackish water running into a nearby lagoon, but we went ahead and crossed it (the water deterred a lot of the regular hikers). Once we did, we found a safeish place to watch the waves... but the wave-watching soon turned into people-watching.

A lot of the random folks weren't paying a lot of respect to the ocean and were walking right up to the surf. It was all right for about 80% of the waves, but the sleepers would sneak up pretty quickly, and the people would find themselves scurrying hastily to higher sand in order to escape the surf, which came in hard, fast, and deep, carrying a layer of sea foam on its crest.

Soon, more and more people were people-watching, and there was a slight tinge of excitement every time a new person or couple would approach. Everyone would quit watching the ocean and surreptitiously watch the new folks walk blithely down the dune toward the water. Often, when the surf chased them, they had to turn tail and run instead of simply getting away with dancing backward. Otherwise, they'd be drenched with a mile+ hike back to civilization and dry clothes.

Anyhow, that's all for now.

It's Freezing!

Literally.

Woke up a few mornings ago to this... (excuse the blurriness, it was like 6am or something)


The pond we like to walk to has been freezing over on a regular basis! I went up there today and the ice in some parts was about 2 inches thick. These pictures were taken earlier this week when the ice wasn't quite so thick. Tonight it's down to 25F, apparently. Brr. Someone remind me why I moved here, again? Well, I guess true love is worth a bit of icy weather....!



Elijah is rightly suspicious of the cold weather. Fortunately, he's wrapped up warm here in a nice toasty winter coat that his great-aunt gave him for Christmas.


Well, off to huddle under some blankets and dream of hot chocolate... for as long as Elijah will let me sleep, that is!

The Most Dreaded Sound...

So you're lying there at 5am wondering what woke you up. The crib is swaying slightly, the brightly-colored animals of its mobile now monochrome in the moonlight. You do a quick, yet weary mental calculation of when you last fed the baby.

Then it happens. The sound.

Not a crying sound, not a whimper, but something far, far worse.

A soft "Geeee," rises from the crib and hovers in the still night air. Just as you think it might be a one-off, it rises again. "Geeee."

On an unlucky night, the Geeing is followed by "aaaaa," and "oooo," and sometimes, "ayayaya."

This does not mean he wants food, whereupon I can take him to bed and doze while he eats. This does not mean he wants to be burped, after which I can settle him again, or that he has butt pain, which means the same again.

Oh no, it means something far, far worse. It means he's playful and wants to have a nice... long... morning conversation. At 5am.