The Redirect

My blog decided to marry Kenny's blog.  And on our son's birthday no less.  Please visit the new home:

http://kodkagels.blogspot.com/

A Big First and True Love

My mama is in town.  This evening she, Eli and I were playing in his room when he stood up unassisted and clapped for a bit.  Standing unassisted has happened previously, but it usually only lasts until Eli realizes he's not holding onto anything.  I was pretty excited.

It was my* turn to host book club** tonight.  Our friends Patrick, Amy and baby Stella arrived first.  Amy had set Stella on the chair and Eli was standing holding onto the coffee table.  Overcome by the arrival of his betrothed, he went to her--taking his first steps!  

And I saw it!  Actually, Kenny, Amy, my mom, and I all saw it.  I had semi-resigned myself that he would likely take his first steps while I was at work and I would miss it.  Instead, Eli was kind enough to do it while we were all staring straight at him!

And it means that if Eli likes girls and Stella likes boys they totally have to get married now!  

*My turn to host, but of course Kenny did all of the cooking.  Everybody should have a Kenny.

**Book club used to be 3 to 4 of us girls getting together to actually talk about books.  Of course wine was always a big part of the club too.  Then some of us got pregnant and had babies and it became difficult to read books and also to drink wine.  

DIY Kenny

So.  This is happening.

We're in weekend three of ye' old bathroom remodel.  I miss my husband.  

He's taken down white tile (and walls) so that he can put up new (walls and) white tile.  It's like HGTV right in my own house.

No place I'd rather be

1. We've got 18ish inches of snow and it's still coming down.  Naturally, I am working from home today. I hope to use my lunch break to build a snow structure of some sort.

2.  I'm currently sitting in my PJs, drinking coffee and Kenny is making oatmeal.  Am cozy and happy.

3.  Eli is eating roughly 50% of his cheerios and giving 25% to Leroy and 25% to Jack.  That's only fair because...

4.  I took 4 pieces of dog food out of Eli's mouth this morning.  He somehow got Leroy to abandon his food and then kept putting another piece in after I got one out.  May not have been on my A game this morning.

5.  Eli is now standing and taking the cheerios out of his high chair seat to give to the puppies and eat himself.  

6.  How do people have babies without puppies?

7.  Life is very good. 

Baby is disappearing...

...and being replaced by a boy!  He is eleven months old.  

My little baby who used to go to bed at 6:30 is now busy taking apart our house until 8 or 9.  He plays hard and he sleeps hard.  If he wants to get up before us, he wiggles his little body out of the bed and onto the floor feet first.  Then he takes off and does his rounds.  Rounds in the bedroom consist of inspecting the mushroom nightlight. scratching the lamp shade, cruising around the bed, moving the alarm clock onto the floor, and then crawling out into the hallway to see if there is any danger to be had out there.  

Rounds in the living room consist of spreading out the Everyday Food magazines on the floor, spreading out the coasters, taking coasters off of another shelf and chewing on them, crawling over to his exercauser and hitting the buttons until a song plays (much prefers the songs over the animal noises), and so on.  He's just always very busy.  Much as we think he makes messes, he must think we're always moving his things.  

He loves the dogs' water bowl, daddy's beer bottle, and everything in the refrigerator and everything in my bathroom.  He throws big fits when we take these things away from him.  

This month he's started taking these monster 1.5 to 2 hour naps.  He never ever did that before.  And though it's probably more information than you'd like to know, he's also pooping all by himself--free of any and all medicinal intervention.  We are very proud parents.  

He's still fairly bald but is beginning to have enough hair that it can get messy.  

We've decided to go ahead and declare him left-handed.  He's seemed to favor his left for months now, but it's become really undeniable.  I guess that means we'll have to get some of those green handled scissors for him one day.  

Since I went back to work after New Year's, he's been taking fewer ounces of breast milk during the day.  I will not be sad when I can stop pumping at work (not stop nursing at home). 

He used to take pacifiers with Kenny when he slept.  He's lost interest in those--except for using them as the occasional chew toy.  He does often suck on his thumb--particularly after being picked up.  Really, he uses his thumb as Sherlock Holmes used his pipe--in a contemplative manner.

His vocabulary (if you can calls sounds that aren't really words a vocabulary) has exploded this month. Until recently he was seeming pretty content with the grunts and squeals.  He's begun to have entire conversations in gibberish though.  You never know when he's going to start yammering, but I love it when he does.  There was definitely a "ma" sound somewhere in his monologue yesterday.

In his opinion, the funniest thing we do is tell him "un uh."  He cackles and tosses his head back--but half the time he will stop doing what we're trying to get him to stop doing, so that's something. 

My baby boy fell asleep on me about an hour and a half ago.  I should probably take us both to bed now.

My Jewish son's first Christmas

Okay, maybe I'm a few weeks late in posting this but better late than never.  We went to Kansas City to spend Christmas with my family and stopped in St. Louis going and coming.  Road trips are always soooo much fun, what with the two adults, two puppies, and angry baby in the little Corolla.  There is always much singing of Old MacDonald and listening to a CD of baby dance tunes.  The baby dance tunes is basically techno/polka instrumental versions of kid songs.  It's horrible, and Eli loves it.  Even the baby techno was not working on the way to St. Louis so we broke out the laptop and Baby Einstein DVD.  Eli watched it for a few minutes and then finally passed out.

Meanwhile this is going on in the front passenger seat.

And this on backseat passenger's lap.

We spent a night in St. Louis, visited Kenny's grandparents and had lunch with his parents.  Then we headed to Columbia for a quick visit with some friends.  I discovered they had a stock pot bigger than ours so I of course had to put Eli in it and take about 40 pictures.

I just love babies in stock pots.  For dinner, we went to the 'Berg.  It's a bar that's been in Columbia for a million years.  It burnt down while we were seniors and they rebuilt it to look exactly the same, only cleaner.  Love to take the baby to bars.

 That night we drove the rest of the way to Kansas City.  Apparently Eli wanted to stay in Columbia because he screamed non-stop for about 75% of that drive.  We stopped at Stuckey's for a diaper check and to see if nursing him would help.  We'd stopped at the Stuckey's a bajillion times while we were in school and driving back and forth.  It was funny to think of what a different place we are in our lives now.

When we got to my mom's house, she immediately began unleashing the stash of garage sale goodies she'd been amassing for him.

The spoiling continued the next night at my Dad's house.

Grandma is smiling so big in this picture because Eli is actually letting her hold him.  He's just working on coming out of a big stranger/separation anxiety phase.

He wasn't too happy while his Uncle Zack tried to hold him.  We even tried placating him with Kenny's glasses (his all-time favorite object).

On Christmas Day Eli agreed to be happy in my dad's lap too.   

No trip to KC is complete without some barbecue.  Since he loves meat so much, we didn't feel right eating it in front of him and not letting him partake.  Questionable parental judgement?  Maybe.

We also went to Winstead's and had lunch with his cousin Harrison and Harrison's mom, Erin.  Eli went on to eat half of Harrison's lunch.  Apparently we need to start ordering him kids' meals when we go out.

When we got back to Chicago, we unloaded all our bags and such into the living room.  Eli spotted his box of Cheerios and decided to help himself.

While in Kansas City, Eli picked up a cold which he was kind enough to share with me.  We ended up canceling our NYE plans with our friends who have an itty bitty baby.  Eli did not stay awake to see the ball drop.

Better luck next year.

Ten months going on two years

This little boy has very little in common with the one we brought home 10 months ago.  He's become crazy, danger-seeking, crawling everywhere, pulling up on everything baby.  He's mastering the temper tantrum--when upset will arch his back and flail like a madman while screaming.  If he had an online profile, it would read something like this:

Hobbies: playing in dirt if he can find it, putting anything related to the dogs in his mouth, playing tug of war with Leroy, sneaking up on Jack, banging on things, giving toothy grins when you tell him "un uh", making door stops make the boing noise,  biting/sucking/pulling electrical cords, tipping over the dogs' water bowl, latching onto any and all plastic bags

Food: mashed potatoes, beef, turkey, cheese, whatever it is that you're eating (particularly if there is a limited quantity and you are really hungry and really want to eat it)

Literature: anything by Dr. Seus, Brown Bear, the first half of most books but not usually the second half

Film: Baby Einstein (only when nothing else will work ;-)

Heroes: Leroy (seriously, if Leroy is doing something interesting--he will totally take Leroy over Mommy)

Hates: the car (with a furious  passion, still)

His sleep has changed a lot this month.  He's dropped the 3rd nap and in Kansas City, for some reason, he only thinks he needs one.  Hopefully that's a fluke.  

He tolerates the high chair pretty well and is a pretty good eater.  He eats comically large portions of food and will grunt and reach for more--particularly if we're talking about mashed potatoes or meat.  The boy loves steak.  

Overall, he's become a much more independent boy.  A few months ago, you couldn't really put him down.  Now, he goes on little journeys around the house by himself for 20-30 minutes at a time.  Of course, he still often crawls to our legs where he pulls himself up and reaches to be picked up--but that's just adorable.  And of course, he spends most of his independent time seeking danger.  We have taken to putting him in a cardboard box every now and then.  What?  He likes it.  

Note the intense sorrow that befell him when the toy was taken away.

Trying to pull it together.

Okay, you can have it back.

Space

That is a king-sized bed.  It improves the quality of our life by a factor of 10 or so.  We finally have room for the two adults, two pups and one baby who sleep in our bed, and it's just lovely.

A crib was one of the first things we got when we began the nesting process.  I really thought you needed a crib for a baby.  Who knew?  When he was younger we did transfer him to the crib a few times.  Grandmas love to try to get a baby to sleep in a crib.  They've each been successful a time or two.  I very much like our cuddling time though.  And I like the amount of sleep I get.

The king-sized bed is part of our bedroom makeover.  We decorated every other room in the house before Eli showed up.  We hadn't been able to decide what to do with the room.  Finally, a few weeks ago we decided to sell all of the existing furniture (mostly antiques with sustained value) and buy crap from Ikea (sure to be worth half what we paid for it in a year).  The trade down in furniture has helped to fund the makeover and Ikea stuff is really more functional and space efficient.

I've always hated white walls, but Kenny came up with this idea.

White walls with a mint green ceiling.  It's ridiculously peaceful.  

The condition of my space is very important to me.  I can't relax if things are cluttered.  In the process of redecorating we've managed to clean out everything in the bedroom, and it makes me so happy.  A few months ago everything at home was a mess and work was fairly calm.  For months, baby juggling left no time for getting the laundry done, much less keeping anything organized.  We've finally figured out how to occasionally accomplish things around the house (or Eli has gotten to an age where it has become possible).  Right now work is chaotic and home is very smooth.  Maybe I should clean out my cube.  

9 months in, 9 months out

It's official.  Eli has been alive long enough to gestate a whole other person.  We know this for sure as he's been alive for pretty much exactly our friend Amy's entire pregnancy and now we have little Stella on the outside.  

I'm a week late in posting this update, but he had his 9-month check-up this morning so it still counts.  He was 17 lb, 11 oz and 27inches.  This makes him itty bitty if you look at the CDC's growth chart which has a majority of formula-fed babies or fairly awesome if you look at the WHO's breastfed baby only chart.  His head remains in the 75th percentile, which I take to mean he's really smart.

He first pulled himself up around Halloween.  I feel like he's figured out how to do a ton of things in the last week.  His room has a mattress on the floor where he takes most of his naps.  Yesterday, while we were playing, he figured out how to climb off the mattress (feet first) then got himself over to his play table/toy thingy and pulled himself up to play on it.  He played for a while before cruising (walking while holding onto the mattress) over to his daddy.  When properly motivated (by say, his daddy's glasses) he can even climb back up onto the mattress.  A few minutes ago he stood unassisted.  He can definitely go from laying to sitting to standing to sitting to laying.  His crawl isn't exactly textbook or beautiful.  It's mostly a series of thrashes that accomplish the goal of getting from A to B.  I hear there are no medals for crawling really well though, so we should be good.  Ooh and he can problem solve.  As you would expect, he's not a fan of the gloves we make him wear.  Yesterday, he figured out how to do something about it.  He bit off one glove and used the free hand to remove the other glove.  

Now that he's figured out how to move, it is all he wants to do.  Must stand! Must get to dangerous and/or expensive thing over there!  Must have total disregard for the safety of my head!  I know it's only going to get more exciting from here on.  And more challenging to change his diaper.  

We've also made the transition from pureed food to finger food.  This works well for him since he has SIX teeth.  What baby needs six teeth?  Mostly, he really wants to eat whatever we are eating and we accomodate when we can.  While we were in St. Louis with Kenny's parents last week, I'm pretty sure he consumed his weight in turkey.  The boy loves meat.  One night we ate steak and made the mistake of giving him his first taste.  I'm pretty sure Kenny basically split his with Eli.  After each bite he would grunt and reach for more.  

Baby boy is turning into a little person.  Maybe next month he'll be potty trained :-).

This last picture is best if you imagine him talking with a New York accent.

Four

4 years ago today, I talked about how much I love Kenny in front of about 200 of our closest friends and family members.  Second best day of my life.

3 years ago today, Kenny surprised me and took me out to the nicest restaurant we will ever go to and spent the most on a meal we will ever spend.

2 years ago today, we went to a cute BYOB restaurant near our first apartment in Chicago. We had moved to Chicago a few months before and had just gotten jobs.

1 year ago today, Kenny came home with the sad news about having lost his job.  We decided to keep our dinner reservations because I was pregnant, and we knew this would be the last time we’d be able to go out on our anniversary without arranging for babysitters and such for a long time.

Today, I’m going to go home after work and try to get Eli to go to sleep before his wonderful babysitters come. Then we’re going to go out to somewhere special Kenny has picked out.  This will be the 4th date (if you count two weddings) since Eli was born. Those other years he was just my husband.  This year I watched him become a father.
 

Crazy 8

This last month has been a busy one, as evidenced by my lack of posting.  My mom visited, we went to DC for Molly's wedding, we had our big annual conference at work, and this weekend we are in St. Louis to celebrate Eli's great grandfather's 90th birthday.  I was generally swamped with work and spent many nights in weird positions attempting to get Eli back to sleep and work on work at the same time.  

My 8-month-old baby is a big mama's boy.  He's been weary of anybody who is not mom or dad.  It makes us feel loved but makes it very difficult to share him.

He expresses joy with his entire body.  He opens his mouth for big, big smiles, flaps his arms and legs, and squeals.  When he sees me, he often starts panting.  It's possible he hangs out with puppies too much.  We kiss him lots and he's started returning the favor.  At least I think he's trying to return the favor.  He puts his open wet mouth on our faces and holds it there for a moment or two.

Speaking of his mouth, he is up to 4 teeth--his bottom middle two and the two next to the top middles ones.  We're pretty sure he's working on about 4 more.

We've more fully committed to this whole solid food eating business.  We kept forgetting for a while.  Does that make us bad parents?  His favorite is plums.  On the train ride back from St. Louis on Sunday we  let him try a wee piece of his first cheese--Tillamook cheddar.  He approached it with much wonder, as one would expect.  He also had his first meat this weekend, chicken with apple compote.  We make most of his food but opted to purchase the liquid meat.  

He has become increasingly mobile.  He crawls backwards, can rotate himself 360 degrees, roll, and generally lunge and slither in the direction he wants to go.  If he could figure out that he needs to put his knees down, he'd be crawling.  Instead he sort of puts his feet and head on the ground, butt in the air and tries to will himself forward.  He's finally over standing and become a much bigger fan of sitting than he used to be.  Mostly he likes to sit and lean forward and lunge his head forward for face plants.  

It's so exciting seeing the person that he is becoming.

Boobs

My boobs took over my life about 7 months ago and have not relented.  I often wish life were more compatible with my need to feed a baby.  Every 2 to 3 hours (sometimes every 20 minutes) I stop what I am doing to work on that baby feeding thing.  That means I don't do anything (except maybe feed a baby) for longer than 3 hours anymore.  It’s all rather odd, really—though completely natural as well.  This is the part of motherhood I did not fully expect/understand/appreciate beforehand.  I also feel like it’s my most important job though and one of my biggest accomplishments.  It’s not a burden.  It’s not easy.  It is pretty magical.

Seven months, oh my

My seven-month-old baby boy.  He breaks my heart.  

We've now been experimenting with the solids for a month.  We've had mixed results.  Once he's into a food, he's really into it--but it usually takes a few introductions.  At this point he's had sweet potatoes, rice cereal, bananas, peas, and pears--and in that order.  Despite my deep seeded aversion, he totally likes peas.  We've had to take a few breaks from the solids because of another first.  This month he got sick for the first time.  I have no use for sickness in babies, no use at all.  He's had three vomiting spells and they were each the saddest thing you could ever seen.  Some crappy advice from our former doctor to not nurse him for 12 hours and feed him Pedialyte instead sealed the deal for me in making her our "former" doctor.  We followed that crappy advice (well at least for 6 hours) the first time, and great unhappiness was had by all.  The event did reinforce to me that I should always follow my instincts--they are there for a reason.  We have a new doctor who wears Garfield ties and is a delight.  

And it turns out separation anxiety is not just something puppies get.  Two mornings this week he has broken down in tears when I left him.  This of course caused me to do the same shortly thereafter.  I have, however, figured out how to squeeze in a few extra baby minutes into the day.  It turns out there is a stop for the higher speed/fewer stop Metra trains one mile from our house.  The train ride is only 13 minutes and Eli (and his daddy and puppies) can walk the mile from our house--so my non-Eli-having commute time has been cut from 45 minutes to about 20.  

He's also started to look a bit like me, finally.  More specifically, I think he's started to look like my dad.  It's been funny to look at him and recognize a bit of myself in him.  I think his Aunt Robin was right when she assured me shortly after he was born that babies usually look like their fathers at first so that their fathers will know they are theirs and won't kill them. 

He has come to tolerate sitting quite a bit more and can mostly do it on his own and would totally be allowed to do so on his own if we had a helmet for him.  He can stand with the smallest amount of assistance.  No progress to speak of on the crawling front.  Mostly he gets part of the way there and melts down.  He has discovered that rolling can be a very effective means of both transport and entertainment.  

People often ask me if he is sleeping through the night.  The short answer is pretty much.  The long answer involves my explaining that we co-sleep so any awakenings are  not very long or disruptive.  The long answer usually also involves my having to defend co-sleeping--but that's a whole other post ;-).  Nighttimes for us though are A-OK.

We are finally maybe easing out of swaddling him for naps. We're experimenting with letting him have an arm or two. 

Eli is madly in love with his puppies.  Jack remains his semi-tolerant keeper who enjoys the occasional petting Eli loves to dole out.  He is not as much a fan of the ear pulling.  Eli thinks Leroy is hilarious. Kenny has taken to putting Eli in the Bjorn and chasing Leroy around the house.  This results in great baby giggles.  Baby will also giggle if a dog or person barks at him.  He giggled today when a one-eyed dog came and snatched his sock off of his foot at the dog park.

And finally, this has been the great month of songs.  Singing to him has proven to be an often effective means of curing a crying jag.  It depends on his mood.  Sometimes he needs "Hush Little Baby," and sometimes he needs "Old MacDonald."

Our friends Ben and Julie just had a baby this week, and our friends Patrick and Amy will be doing the same in a couple of months.  I am so excited for them because I know how really awesome it is to have one of these.  

Redefining okay

As is the case with many monkeys of his age, Eli likes to put anything and everything into his mouth.  As the weeks go by, we find ourselves adopting a more and more lax attitude about what is and is not okay for him to suck on.  Kenny dropped Eli off with me at work over lunch today so that he could run a not-baby-friendly errand.  I was just telling him how Eli grabbed several things off my desk and put them directly into his mouth.   Some coworkers brought over toys for him to play with, and they of course had the same fate.  We feel a bit conflicted--we should probably not let him do that, right?  We should protect him from germs and whatnot?  His contact with germs just seems so inevitable.  Kenny and I both agreed that we do have some standards.  We're not letting him near feces or meat juices.  Ah, parenting.

These are the people in your neighborhood

I can't go for walks without being teased by the whole neighborhood.  It started a few weeks ago.  I was walking Eli, Leroy and Jack.  We came upon a group of teenage boys with their pants belted around their knees.  I heard one of them say to the other, "Look, the wife's got the baby."  He said to me, "It's about time you gave your husband a day off."  Yesterday, I obliged Kenny's request for a family walk.  I wore Eli in the Bjorn and Kenny had the two dogs.  We were walking down the street when I heard a guy shouting at us from his second floor balcony.  "I've never seen you with the baby."  In all fairness, I always do Sunday mornings, but it continued today. Kenny decided to go for an 80-mile bike ride without training today (yep).  A man with a Green Bay shirt and a stroller and a homeless woman both commented on their unfamiliarity with me in the dog/baby walking context. The homeless woman went so far as to stop me a second time and say, "I know why you're walking them!  He's watching football."

Kenny got to try out my wrap last week (pictured above). The Bjorn was closed for repairs after a vomiting episode.  He walks the crew first thing in the morning while I shower, once around noon, and again before I get home from work.  If the neighborhood were a bar, he would be a regular.  A very conspicuous regular, surrounded in adorable.

Pride

Many of our friends do races.  Our friend, Lisa, recently did a triathlon.  This triggered Kenny to make the sort of comment that he often makes in these circumstances.  "Oh yeah, I could definitely do that tomorrow if I wanted to."  I'm pretty sure he in fact made this comment to her.  I laugh at him when he says things like this because of all things, running?  Running is not his strong suit.  The last time he went for a run was eight years ago when he went accepted an invitation to go on a run with my roommate at the time so he could get permission to date me.*  I think his comments belittle/underestimate the work people do to get ready for these races.  So.  When he made this comment in regards to Lisa's triathlon I called his bluff.  Incredulous that I had no faith in his abilities, he agreed to run 10K** to prove me wrong.  Saturday night he created his running play list.  He put a scrap of paper with his name and my phone number in his shoe (should he keel over with a heart attack halfway through somebody might be able to call me and let me know where to pick up the body).  After considerable stretching and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he took off Sunday morning.  He returned 65 minutes later looking surprisingly alive.  For the rest of the morning he made passive agressive comments to Eli about how you should never let anybody tell you you can't do something.  

Around noon he took the dogs on a two-block walk that lasted about 40 minutes.  We were meeting another friend Lisa at the zoo later.  The train is about a mile from the zoo.  There was much limping and there were many, many breaks.  He trailed us by about 20 feet for much of the walk.

I guess the lesson we all learned from this is that yes, it is possible to run a 10K with no training.  Yes, Kenny in particular can run a 10K with no training. But no, it is not a good idea to run a 10K with no training.

*Why did he have to ask permission you ask.  It's a long story.  

** Was this a 10K as in an organized event wherein people compete or run for charity or such?  No.  This was the 10K Kenny.

The next 8 years.

Eight years ago this evening I was on a first date with the love of my life.  Over the last eight years, we have (in no particular order)

1. Graduated from college.
2. Moved to Washington, DC.
3. Survived my going to grad school.
4. Had our first and second and maybe even third real jobs.
5. Traveled to Las Vegas, Chicago, NYC, Philly, Costa Rica, Spain, Williamsburg, Breckenridge, and Portland.
6. Gotten married.
7. Taken planes, trains, buses, and automobiles to Kansas City and St. Louis one million times.
8. Adopted Jack.
9. Moved to Chicago.
10. Adopted Leroy.
11. Bought a loft and a condo.
12. Evicted a tenant.
13. Had a baby!
14. Lost two of my grandparents.
15. Seen Megan and Andrew, Carri and Derek, Sutton and John, Amy and Patrick, and Lindsey and TJ get married.
16. Hosted six seders.
17. Consumed approximately 500 bottles of wine.

To celebrate the occasion, we went out for Chinese and are now sipping on a bottle of pinot we brought back from Oregon and contemplating the next eight years.  Do you know that we will have a second grader eight years from now?  I've decided we should make a list of things we want to do in the next eight years, and so that we won't lose that list--we're putting it here on the interweb.  Maybe it will make us more accountable too.  During the next eight years, let's

1. Take (swing) dance lessons.
2. Travel to the south of France.
3. Take Eli to a water park.
4. Have another baby.
5. Start canning.
6. Make cheese.
7. Remodel two bathrooms.
8. At least one of us get their dream job.
9. Take Eli to the Magic House and Grant's Farm in St. Louis.
10. Take Eli to Kaleidoscope in KC.
11. Go on a weekend getaway leaving munchkin(s) with a grandparent.
12. Make friends with people who own a boat.
13. Sell a loft and a condo.

Anything critical you think we're forgetting here?  The list is open for suggestions.

1/2 Year Old!

My baby boy turned 6 months this week! 

He still thinks sitting is dumb and is not quite crawling.  If allowed to, he would stand all day.

He got TWO teeth, which is two more than he needs in my opinion.  His overall mood has improved greatly since they finally cut through though.  We’re done with that now, right?

He had his first taste of “solids” (otherwise known as fairly liquid food that just happens to not be breastmilk) yesterday.  He was initially curious though suspicious of our motives.  We debuted with sweet potatoes.  Some made it into his mouth.  Some made it all over his face and hands and diaper and chair.  We believe a small amount made it into his tummy.  Curiosity quickly transitioned to sorrow, anger, and all-out crying. We’ve tried several more times and I believe he and Kenny finally had a positive experience this afternoon. 

He’s become a bit more attached to Kenny and I and a bit wearier of outsiders.  He’s generally happy to grin at people across the room while in our arms, but hand him over and he often makes them feel like they smell bad or something.  We did test him in that area quite a bit though this month.  He’s seen all of his grandparents and even made it to the West coast. 

I, on the other hand, am beginning to feel increasingly like I am losing my mind.  My memory is virtually non-existent.  I don’t know if it’s the weird sleep or the constant changing focus of my attention.  At work, I basically get up every two hours to pump.  At home, I drop whatever I’m doing when he cries.  Maybe pregnancy was just preparing me for this phase.  The other day I stopped a coworker and asked her where she had gotten her shoes because they are exactly what I need for my friend Molly’s wedding.  Apparently I had stopped her on a previous occasion and we had discussed my borrowing them.   I had no memory of this.  Oh well.  Who needs clarity anyway?  Especially when you have a little monkey like this.

Let's all move to Oregon

We spent most of last weekend in Portland, Oregon for our friend Lindsey's wedding and wedding-related activities. I was last there 10 years ago and it's even more beautiful and wonderful than I remembered it. Our friend Wayne's parents were kind enough to allow us to invade their home. They even got some of Wayne's things down from the attic for Eli to play with. This is his first ride in a highchair, and perhaps the longest length of time he's put up with sitting (generally prefers to stand).

On the second day we were there, Lindsey and TJ planned a wine tour complete with bus for a group of about 40 of us. Oregon pinot noirs are among my favorite wines. Splitting and skipping many of the tastings was a bit rough, but the outing was awesome nonetheless. Views like this were around every corner:

We learned that Eli has an embarrassingly accurate knowledge of what to do with glasses of alcohol. Regretfully, I do not have the picture wherein he attempted to fit his whole head in the glass.

Later that week, we visited a few microbreweries (breweries and wineries are just like museums, only tastier). I guess Eli is just in that grab everything and put it in your mouth stage.

After partying all week, some of us found it hard to stay awake for the wedding. There was a live band playing a few feet from him, but he remained fairly dead to the world throughout. He even allowed himself to be passed from lap to lap so mama and daddy could get a few dances in. This is Eli in one of his brief moments of wakefulness during the reception. I believe he awoke to express surprise or disgust with the band's song choice.

As we were leaving, the bride even let him chew on her French-manicured finger tip. That's love.

While waiting for our flight in the Portland airport, Kenny finally did it. He ate a Baconator.

So, let's do it. Let's all move to Portland. Part of the reason we moved to Chicago was to be closer to family so we can't just pick up and move to Portland--but we can if you all come with us!