There Will Be Poop

(Next year's top Oscar contender perhaps?)

Zachary's newest baffy time trend has replaced his previous cute and at least moderately sterile tradition of peeing to signal the end of bath time. Now he, er, goes number two in the tub instead. This is pretty challenging -- with only two hands (or even four if we're both bathing him), it's pretty tough to get him out of the tub, empty the tub, rinse the tub, refill the tub, and get him back in as quickly as possible. But this doesn't bother him, he's just as happy as can be. (In fact, we're starting to learn that when he's particularly happy and vocal, that may be what the professionals call a "late cue" that pooping is imminent or has already occurred.)

I could bore and/or gross you out with the, er, changing characteristics as he transitions into more 'solid' foods (well, they're all still a variety of pureed goos; he's now eating organic whole grain rice cereal in addition to a variety of fruits and veggies), but I'll spare our readers the details. Did I ever think there would be so much focus on bowel movements? Well, Meh and I have for years always similarly checked with each other on Korby's status after walking him, and debated/told stories of the size, smell, and/or location of his latest accomplishment, so I'd say we had an inkling this topic wouldn't be going away.

Tonight we're attempting another travelling bedtime, as friends S and S have invited us over for dinner - here's hoping that he sleeps through all of the transitions, and that he has (and we have) a restful night!

Music man

One of the cutest ways that Zachary shows his love of music is in his reaction to his current favorite CD. Whenever it first comes on, he gets a giant smile on his face. And when the soprano starts singing, he coos and laughs and turns his head toward the speakers that her voice is coming out of. I tried to grab a video of this tonight, but of course the 30-second movies our camera takes landed us right at the singer's entrance. Still, hopefully you get the idea even with the mild disruption. He also smiles and laughs as every subsequent song starts, and if he's in his jumperoo, he'll bounce in rhythm to the music.

Early to bed...

The aphorism certainly seems to hold for Zachary; while he goes to bed by 6:30 or 7 pm, he's often awake at any or all of the following times: 11 pm, 1 am, 3 am, 5:30 am, 7 am. We haven't yet had a return to that one magical night when he slept 12 hours (or another occasion when he got 10 hours). Granted, 7 pm to 3 am is still an 8 hour stretch, just not necessarily a really restful one for Meh. I do try to get him away from Meh in the early morning hours so she can get a little bit of quality sleep, but it's often still a pretty sparse amount.

Last night was a rare travelling bedtime for Zachary; Meh was working late, and I had orchestra rehearsal and had of course neglected to find a babysitter before heading to my conference the previous week (or when I got back for that matter). Our friends D & D extremely generously saved the day at the last minute by offering to watch him at their place, which is all of 5 minutes from the rehearsal venue. He and I did the whole bedtime ritual at home, and again I managed to get through it without crying - hooray! But then... we've secretly replaced his crib with his car seat -- let's see if he notices... Thankfully, not so much, and he slept soundly all the way into the city. The eyes cracked open a bit when we went into D & D's house, but he was back out in minutes, and when I returned from rehearsal several hours later, he was still asleep. Yes, it can be done! Unfortunately, this translated into a rough night when we got home - the transfer woke him up, and he was frequently waking back up for most of the rest of the night.

Zachary is starting to outgrow his car seat (just in time for him to feel comfortable enough in it to sleep for longer periods), so we've of course been doing the usual madness-inducing research to find his next seat. After infant seats, you move up to convertibles - no sunroofs here (though some do have those adjustable sun guard things), just seats that can face backward initially and then forward later on. The seat we chose goes one further, turning into a booster seat down the road that works for kids up to 100 pounds. Could this perhaps be the last car seat purchase? Well, until Consumer Reports, the FDA, and Greenpeace all find some new environmental/toxic/safety hazard that's going to put all children who come within 15 feet of someone who's touched the car seat at risk.

Not that price should really matter for a safety device like a car seat (though of course there are some outrageously expensive ones), but I've got to compliment Froogle (sorry, now the much less catchy-named "Google Product Search Beta"), which found us an incredible deal. And then a quick online search for coupon codes got us free shipping as well. Hooray for them internets!

A fleeting glimpse of spring

And that's all it was, a glimpse. No, I'm not talking about the weather, which continues to hover in the 50s and occasionally hits 60. I'm talking about these pretty flower bulbs in our backyard (Meh says they're crocuses, and I tend to trust her flower identifying skills). The other day, they started to bloom, and we got to enjoy them for perhaps 24 hours. Then Korby noticed them, decided they fell into the close-enough-to-food classification (his criteria are widening every day), and they were all devoured in an afternoon. Silly dog.

We've struck back somewhat by annexing some downstairs territory for ourselves and Zachary; Korby has been getting more and more attention-seeking (despite me trying to sit with him and pet him more frequently than ever), to the point where at times we'd have to put him to bed just to be able to sit and relax in the evening without getting pawed to death. And Zachary spending time on the floor while Korby was indoors was out of the question, since Korby would want to be right in on the action. We'd always been a bit envious of friends who had nice blankets and toys spread out everywhere for their babies to play. So we finally picked up a few more gates, Meh installed them while I was out of town, and now Korby is restricted to the (still quite spacious) kitchen/dining room/mud room area for most of the day. Zachary loves sitting (and only occasionally falling backwards) on the puffy comforter and playing with his toys, including his new favorite, a plush soccer ball thing with the hebrew alef-bet on it.

The first 200 days

(Incidentally, if you're wondering about the extra weight stat that just showed up, Zachary was clearly under the weather two days before I left town - so while Meh was at work, mima and I took him to the doctor last Saturday to get him checked out. Mima got to meet Zachary's very fun doctor and gave her the Mima Seal of Approval. And of course Zachary walked into the doctor's office and his symptoms had vanished - our doctor agreed that most baby's get 50% better the second they enter the door, and she guessed that he'd fought off some kind of bug from the previous day. He weighed a whole ounce more than at the previous weighing, but he proceeded to pee while on the scale; perhaps 1 ounce of pee? Lovely thought, I know.)

While the changes are often too subtle to detect when I see him every day, my return from a six-day absence showed that Zachary continues to gain skills and pass milestones all the time. Speaking of milestones, he's 200 days old today! Zachary is now passing objects from hand to hand, and getting surer about grabbing them in the first place. He's more successfully sitting up on his own - though he still falls backwards from time to time, and if one of us isn't right there, he sometimes bonks his head a bit in the process. He's happy and very interactive. And last night when I put him to bed (Meh was at book club), we had our very first entire night-time ritual with zero crying! Yes, from bath (baff?) to towel to hair brushing to dressing to story to bottle to bed, and all went smoothly, without a single complaint. He was even still awake when I put him in bed, but content and happy, and fell asleep soon afterwards on his own.

Earlier in the day, we drove out to the mall; the plan had been to grab lunch and then maybe take Zachary to the zoo for his first visit. But the best laid plans... Zachary fell asleep on the way, so we decided to wait in the car until he woke up. 90 minutes later he was still sleeping and our stomaches were rumbling, so we eventually started making more and more noise until eventually we just had to exit the car with him kind of sort of waking up. We had a tasty lunch at one of our favorite kaiten sushi places. The nap did wonders, as Zachary sat in a regular high chair (with the excellent plush insert we'd gotten from friends S and D) for just the second time, and loved every minute of it. He smiled at us, his Mr. Whoozit, the waiters, the pretty lights, and most frequently the multi-colored sushi dishes as they scooted by on the conveyor belt. We walked around the outdoor mall a bit more, enjoying the balmy 60-degree weather, a frappacino (me), and ice cream (Meh), and Zachary apparently made friends with a bunch of ladies while waiting in line at the restroom for a diaper change.

Home Sweet Home

After a week of game conference-related activities, it's so good to be back home! Don't get me wrong, the conference was wonderful; I ran a two-day "Audio Boot Camp" with many colleagues from the industry contributing their time to present excellent lectures to students and young composers/sound designers/audio programmers just getting into the game audio industry. And I got to attend some excellent lectures (both technical and creative) and game 'post-mortems' (talking about their audio after the project is completed), and had a typically crazy schedule of overlapping meetings, events, dinners, random meetups with folks, lectures, panels, etc. Yup, that day of work meetings last Friday was pretty tame by comparison.

A brief, random sampling of fun things I saw/heard at the conference:

• The Independent Game Festival - student and small studio games compete for recognition. Three of the games were really neat audio-related games (one from a group of Seattle college students that one of my coworkers had taught), and two of them came away with major awards. Very cool!
• The new Pleo robotic dinosaur was on display. Looks like geeky fun for kids and adults alike. A few coworkers were already talking about grabbing one and hacking it.
• The elevators in my hotel had computer screens promoting their restaurant, events, and so on. A few of them were in varying states of crashes throughout the conference, including one displaying a text-only screen warning of a fan failure warning and telling the user to press any key to reboot. I wonder if any attendees offered to fix these displays; I doubt if there's actually a keyboard attached to the mini-PC likely sitting on top of the elevator car...
• Among the variety of swag at the exhibition hall (there were the usual pencils, pens, t-shirts, etc., along with less likely items including small energy drink bottles, a deck of customized playing cards, and slinky's), I picked up a stress ball shaped like the THX robot, which Zachary already seems to love. We'll just have to keep it under supervision to avoid possible future choking hazards and such.
• At one of the parties, a player from the band came up to me at their break and thanked me -- he'd been an attendee at the tutorial I'd run, and didn't realize his band was booked to play one of the corporate-sponsored conference parties.

Got back home last night to a major weather-sweap; San Francisco had significant downpours through most of the conference (I got a bit soaked on several occasions, refusing to encourage the opportunistic hawkers of overpriced umbrellas; Seattle-ites don't really believe in the things anyway) and brisk evenings in the upper 30s. Meanwhile, Seattle has been pretty dry and is pushing 60 degrees today. We're hoping to take advantage of the weather to do some kind of outdoor activity, perhaps even Zachary's first trip to the zoo!

While I was gone, Mima and Zachary got to spend a day together while Meh was at work, which sounds like it went really well. Here's a fab picture of the two of them reading together. Mima went home on on Monday, so most of the week Meh was on her own with Zachary. I checked in and tried to stay caught up at any opportunity that I could, but I know I still missed out on things, and I wish I could've stepped into some kind of teleporter at the end of the day's events to come home, play with Zachary, and help Meh out. And maybe get out of the rain for a bit.

Take my meetings, please

Ever had a day like this?

8:30 am: Conference call on the way into work
9-11 am: Meeting
11-12 pm: Meeting
12-12:15 pm: Grab a quick lunch, then...
12:15-1 pm: Meeting
1-2 pm: Meeting
2-4:30 pm: Meeting, which I had to leave early in order to drive to...
4:30 pm: Out-of-office meeting with a financial planner

Needless to say, I think I forgot what my office looked like today. But I remembered all too well the limited battery life on my laptop. And right before the weekend when I was heading out of town for a week-long conference. Good times!

Episode VI: Return of the Mima

Zachary's mima arrived for a visit late last night, and today she got to sample many of his favorite daily activities: after morning playtime, Meh, mima, and Zachary took a trip to the mommy-and-me movies (I miss those!). They then went to lunch (which I believe all three of them enjoyed in various formats) at the traditional post-movie Cheesecake Factory, before visiting friend T and son T (very nearly Zachary's age) at their home. They had an evening of dancing (here's where I joined back in from work), followed with a very happy naked baffy time (featuring my first experience with him making a diaper in the tub; the experience was preceded by happy cooing, and followed by laughter).

Once we'd put Zachary down for the night, mima generously allowed Meh and me to go out to dinner for Valentine's day! We picked the local Italian restaurant, which is just this side of kitsch, complete with those red textured-glass candle holders, brick walls, ambient opera music, Tuscan scenes on the walls, and I think they used to have the red and white checkerboard tableclothes as well. I laughed at their menu's claim of an incongruous "authentic taste of Italy in Kenmore". But you can't mess with the food, including amazing homemade bread (Meh says it's the best bread she's ever had - quickly adding "well, second only to your challah"), excellent pizza that we order for take out every week or two, and yummy pastas. We enjoyed a dinner of fettucine (me) and lasagne (Meh), as well as a yummy pie-shaped slice of tiramisu. It was so nice to just have a quiet and relaxing evening out - thank you mima!

Someone's got a case of the Mondays

Monday nights tend to be our most challenging schedule-wise with Zachary; I've got orchestra rehearsal and Meh has to work until late. The search for an actual paid babysitter is on, but friends have been very generously offering to watch him during the interim. Hopefully most of their baby-sitting has involved sitting in front of our television, reading a book, or otherwise hanging out in a mellow manner. I feel bad that they don't get to really play with Zachary (or often even see him, since I'm putting him to bed by the time folks can arrive after work), but at the same time, late night interactions with him generally involve him being angry and/or crying, so no news is good news.

Timing for the exit to orchestra is particularly tough, since he goes to bed in that grey zone when I really should be heading out the door to get there on time. Last night was the most difficult yet; though we started the bedtime ritual (bath, PJs, now reading a book [more on that in a sec], then his go-to-bed snack) at 5:45, he was apparently not quite ready for sleep an hour later when I had to leave. After several attempts to calm him down, in the end I did have to leave him crying. Our friends R and B later reported that he conked out as my car left the garage, so in retrospect I feel a bit better. But it was still so hard to leave him unhappy!

Backing up to the bedtime ritual itself, bath time was as happy as always - smiles and laughs at his Big Bird towel/sponge thing, kicking and splashing, and the traditional end-of-bathtime-signalling peeing in the tub. I'm even getting better at keeping him non-mad during drying and getting dressed for bed, though he was still hollering by the end. And my new favorite part of the ritual, which Meh had introduced a few days earlier, is the reading of a bedtime book. He calms down and gets all quiet as we sit down and read through a colorful board book - sometimes he gently touches the pages or will try to turn them, super cute! I wasn't sure if she usually read him one or two books, but Zachary answered that for me when he got angry about halfway through the attempted second book. I'll stick with Meh's ritual of one for now, and maybe just extend the length of the book itself as he gets more into reading; by the time he's 8, maybe we can get cracking on War and Peace.

Earlier yesterday (jeez, this is the most chronologically backwards posting yet), we made a slight alteration to the usual Monday schedule (well, if 'usual' can be used when it's been in effect for all of three weeks now): Meh dropped Zachary off with me at the office on her way into her own work. I was reminded of the time during my parental leave when Zachary and I hung out at work while the house was getting cleaned; the experience this time was pretty similar: he had a giant blowout (this time from every possible diaper exit); we got all cleaned up; we danced a little; he fell asleep; I did a little work with him sleeping on me (he refuses the carseat, at least for me); he woke up smling; I gave him some lunch; and we headed out. It was actually nice to be able to get a little bit of work done somewhere in there, so I think we'll keep doing this in the future when practical.

Shaken, not stirred

We ended up staying very busy over Meh's four day weekend, meeting up with friends, welcoming a family's new addition, shopping, and wrapping things up with an unexpected, harrowing, and thoroughly unnerving escape.

First, the happy activities! Friends J and S invited us to share a tasty Saturday morning brunch at a little cafe we'd never been to before, where the food is always "on fresh" according to the sign outside. English may not be the proprietor's first language, but the food (and fresh squeezed OJ) was plentiful and excellent. Zachary was looking around with his big blue eyes and smiling at everyone.

Next we stopped by a local synagogue to congratulate friends M and A on their new daughter S. (They had a baby naming ceremony at services; though we arrived after services had completed, I still felt a little sheepish showing up in jeans. Hopefully Zachary deflected the attention of any fashionistas who might've been in attendance.) S is super tiny, with her head easily fitting in a grown-up's palm. Meh and I were having a hard time remembering that at some point, Zachary had been even smaller! Anyway, after an afternoon at home, we headed back out in the early evening to meet up with friends M and K for dinner at a tasty vegetarian thai restaurant, followed up of course by a trip to the nearby legendary Trophy Cupcakes. A very full day for the little man!

Today started off somewhat more leisurely, with a return to that outlet mall we'd taken Zachary to back in the days of his earliest happy baby bjorn experiences. He was again mostly happy and talkative, which made me immediately suspicious that he was covering for a nasty diaper. Sure enough, when we stopped in a family-friendly restroom, it was blowout city. No worries - a change of clothes later, we were back in the shopping mood. All three of us got things -- Zachary supplemented his collection of hedgehog-themed wear with a cute new hat, socks, and onesie.

Exhausted from a day of shopping, we headed home. And here's where things went surreally wrong: once we got off the freeway, we were driving down the 5-lane street heading towards our house. We approached a major intersection and the light was green - but a pedestrian was darting across the street on the far side of the intersection. Okay, so I slowed down to let him cross. He then followed an aberrant path right towards our car with a wild-eyed menacing look on his face. Before I knew what had happened, he'd reached the car, slammed his fists down on the front hood, and then came bounding around to the driver's side door. It was when he pulled it halfway open (why wasn't it locked?) that I grabbed onto the door handle and just gunned it through the intersection (don't worry, the light was still green). Well, "gunning it" in a hybrid doesn't exactly involve peeling out or anything, but you get the gist. Meh and I were both quite shaken up (Zachary was thankfully blissfully asleep through the whole experience).

And while there are of course disturbed violent people in any city (or really anywhere), here was the true Seattle moment: at the next red traffic light (maybe 10 minutes later), a guy who'd witnessed the event pulled up next to us to make sure that we were okay, and we had a nice car-to-car conversation that helped calm us down.

The beginning of a beautiful friendship?

Of course, after extolling the virtues of public transportation yesterday, serves me right that I nearly missed my flight back due to underestimating the amount of time it takes to wait for and get through the BART, Air BART, into the airport, and through airport security. I arrived at the airport 25 minutes before takeoff and somehow thankfully still caught the plane (needless to say, I was the last one on board) - thank goodness for carry-ons and short security lines at Oakland. Incidentally, this is pretty interesting -- the TSA has started up a blog (using this same Blogger service no less, though somehow they're at least able to hide the advertising logos for it), which helps answer questions from curious / incredulous / disgruntled passengers, and also provides a venue for TSA employees to share their own feedback (generally thanking those few polite passengers who make up for the unhappy ones they have to confront each day). Some interesting reads on there already.

Today is Zachary's six month birthday based on, er, months. He continues to astound us with his increasing awareness of and joy in participating in life and its many events. Meh reported that she gave him some more bananas today (we've done this fairly frequently since starting last week, though he often isn't totally interested yet), his hand went into his mouth, and when it came out, the always attentive Korby started assisting with the meal by licking Zachary's fingers. We knew it was only a matter of time before Korby started recognizing this new potential food donation source!

A very merry half-birthday

Though by months he's got another day before any official celebration, by sheer number-of-days-old reckoning, Zachary is 1/2 year old today! Well, I guess half-way through yesterday was the point when he was actually 182.5 days old. Or would that be at 10 am this morning, since he was born at 10 pm? Anyway, happy half birthday to Zachary! Today was appropriately enough his 6-month old appointment, and we got his latest statistics:

Weight: 18 lbs. even (50th-75th percentile)
Height: 27" (50th-75th percentile)
Head circumference: 44.5 cm (50th-75th percentile)

How's that for consistency? And he continues to certainly kick daddy's butt in all of the vital stats. (As grandma has reminded us, I myself was always way below the whole chart, let alone even the 10th percentile.)

From the doctor, we headed to the airport; today I'm off to San Francisco for a super-brief less-than-24-hour trip. I actually attempted to find a ticket that would even get me back home tonight, but between the various airports' curfews and the event I'm flying down for not ending until 10:30 pm at the earliest, I had to grab a flight back the next day.

Allow me to briefly extol the virtues of the excellent public transportation in the Bay Area - I'm a big fan of the BART, which allows me to fly into the less hectic (and less frequently fogged-in) Oakland airport, and for like $6 and under a mile of walking get me all the way to my event's venue in the heart of San Francisco. I plan to take it back to the airport tomorrow as well. Meh always makes fun of me eagerly checking out the progress of SeaTac airport's own light rail project every time we head to the airport, but good public transit is just something that appeals to me for some weird unexplainable reasons. (I know, this is practically blasphemous for someone growing up in the Detroit area.) Granted, Seattle's busses have served me well, but there's something about taking a magical alternative form of transportation on its own dedicated transit lines deep under the ground that just seems satisfying to use, even if it's stifling in the summers (New York), has creepy male and female synthesized voices announcing train arrivals (Bay Area), has a creepily sterile industrial aesthetic (DC), has way too many line names with color schemes that are treacherously overlapping (Tokyo), involves insane passenger-packing at rush hour (most cities), or seems like a bit of overkill given the city's layout and usage (Toronto and Athens). I know, I can't explain the appeal either, but I love it anyway.

Meh and Zachary dropped me off at the airport just a few minutes ago, where I'm enjoying a quick cocoa and blog entry that I'm, whoops, going to have to finish on the tail end of this flight - sounds like they're boarding!

The *real* talking baby

Apparently the big buzz advertisement-wise from the Super Bowl was an E*Trade ad featuring a talking baby. I can't speak for that, as Zachary and I only caught a bit under a quarter of the game, and maybe a handful of fairly underwhelming ads, but a talking baby created by computer-generated trickery can't compete with Zachary, whose baby babbling continues to progress. Yesterday he started repeating sounds other than 'bah-wah-wah-wah' (still his favorite with hand firmly in mouth), and one of them was 'da-da'. No, he's not saying my name yet or anything, though Meh was a little despondent that the 'm' sound doesn't appear to be in sight yet.

Zachary and I spent the little of the Super Bowl we saw at a party featuring quite a few 2- and 3-year olds. It was interesting to see the household changes that accompany kids once they're mobile; in place of matts/blankets and exersaucers/jumperoos, there were gates surrounding all dangerous climbing/running surfaces (fireplace, counters, etc.). I'm already starting to take mental notes on the many different elements we'll have to childproof down the road - dreading the hundreds of baby-accessible cabinets in the kitchen, maybe we should just gate the whole thing off?

Anyway, friends D & D had brought their famous homemade pizza crusts to make custom pizzas for everyone at the party, and generously put in a to-go order for Zachary and me to bring to Meh at work. I realized I'd never gotten a proper picture of Zachary and mommy at work during my parental leave, so the camera came along this time. As usual, his face lit up when he saw mommy, and he was smiley and giggly during our whole visit. Even though we only get to see Meh briefly at work (and now only a few times there each week), I know it's a favorite part of both Zachary's and my days.

The rain in Spain

Zachary's verbal development has certainly been taking off in the past few days. Previously it was oohs and aahs, and maybe 'w' sounds the hard way (namely, having his hand in his mouth, particularly when he was getting fussy). But in the last few days, he's started more and more consistently to add other sounds. First it was 'd's, 'g's, and 'n's. Then yesterday he made the 'ee' sound a few times. And last night he started making some more complex phonemes, with 'bla', 'gra' and 'droo', among others. I feel like I go should find some giant phoneme chart and start checking off sounds as he makes him to see if we can get a Bingo/Connect Four-style game going to keep things interesting.

It's not at all consistent yet, so I don't know if this qualifies as true baby 'babbling' or just general speech development, but it's always fun to hear him trying out a new sound, and to echo it back at him, which often leads to a smile.

Play games, all sorts...

Today was Zachary's first day with his new nanny! Meh and she had met several months before at that parent-baby class we've been taking; J is a SAHM whose son T is about a month older than Zachary. We'd actually attempted a few previous short nannying "dry runs", but the first was cancelled due to a snow and ice storm, and the other due to Zachary's new playmate being under the weather. So nannying ended up starting off with a full day, as both Meh and I were working. (Of course, we'd visited J's lovely home before, and she and Zachary and T all get along wonderfully!)

Meh checked in by phone at her lunch break, and it sounded like everyone had been having a good day - Zachary had already taken a nap, the three of them had gone for a nice walk, and had all played together too. I headed over to pick Zachary up after work, and caught the three of them on the tail end of another walk. My first view was of the two boys both conked out in the stroller as it came up the driveway, looking extremely cute indeed!

Zachary had a fabulous time, adding exersaucer, jumperoo, and more play time to the morning's activities. Oh, and he even had 3 successful naps, including a long one in his previously dreaded carseat! I'll have to get tips from J on how she does it. J and T were introduced to some of Zachary's favorite tunes (yup, I made up his very first mix CD), which everyone seemed to (hopefully? :) enjoy as well. From the sound of it, the primary challenge was figuring out the cryptic series of levers, snaps, and handles one needs to click/twist/push in a specific order to get the pack-n-play to open up. I hopefully sorted it out when I came to pick up Zachary.

It'll be interesting to see if Zachary starts emulating some of T's behaviors - T already rolls over, sits up, and is fairly talkative. One great piece of advice we got from friends of ours when they started having their daughter nannied (does that word work as a verb there?) was to avoid the fear of your child reaching major milestones when you're not present; their advice (which we are adopting ourselves) is that J should wait for us to tell her about new things that Zachary has been doing, rather than her telling us about new developments - that way, we can experience the joy of seeing him do things for the "first" time, even if he does something when we're not present. Granted, at one to two days a week of nannying, the odds are pretty good we'll catch new activities at home, though with a slightly older friend to start emulating, who knows if he'll be more inspired to try things to impress baby T?

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho

Yes, today it was back to work I go -- er, went. After briefly playing with Zachary and Meh in the morning, I was off to the office. I started off the day with around 400 unread e-mails. After beginning the process of reengaging on many different topics I'd been working on before (and occasionally during) my parental leave, and actively cleaning out my inbox, I finished the day with close to 450 unread e-mails. Hm, wrong direction. Maybe more progress tomorrow?

The final countdown

It's not much of a countdown when the counter reads "zero", but anyway, today was my last day of parental leave. As with Meh about seven weeks ago, it's going to definitely be a difficult adjustment to head back to work and only get to see Zachary in the mornings and evenings. Granted, it's not so terrible; I'll be with him on weekends and one afternoon a week, but it's still going to be hard not taking daily walks with him and Korby, singing and dancing with him in the afternoons, and seeing him smile and laugh when he looks at me at random moments throughout the day.

This morning we went to what may be my final parent-child class with Zachary; in a few weeks he transitions up to the 6-month-old sessions anyway, which occur on a day Meh has off work. But there were lots of wistful goodbyes -- oh, and finally another dad to briefly chat with after class! Next week's class involves music for babies, so I'd still like to attend if my work schedule will allow...

We popped over to Costco to grab lunch first for daddy and then to bring to mommy, and then headed over to visit mommy for lunch. As before, it was bittersweet to realize that this will be our last lunchtime visit -- though again, in retrospect, I don't see why we wouldn't visit her on weekends and maybe even Monday afternoons. Then we headed home and read, played, and danced the afternoon away, as we had done so many times over the past 6 weeks. (The CD from one of Zachary's first favorite movies arrived in the mail, and he kept laughing and smiling as we danced to it.) I've noticed that he's become talkative and happy more and more as the weeks progress, becoming such a little boy! Well, other than that whole mobility thing, which I'm sure will come soon enough, particularly once he's spending time with another fairly mobile baby at his new nanny's.

Quickly enough though, it was time for his bath and bedtime ritual. Meh got home, put him to sleep, and that basically concluded my parental leave. I know, it's good for everyone to get into more of a routine, and for Zachary to be with other grown ups, and for the two of us to have our professional lives outside of our family life. And I am supremely grateful that I got this extended opportunity to be with and care for our son. But I'm sure going to miss all of the time we spent together dancing, reading, walking, rocking him to sleep, and otherwise playing. I'll just have to cherish those early mornings and weekends that much more!

I like to ite...

Zachary has watched with increasing interest over the past few weeks when mommy and daddy are sitting/standing at the table eating, so we decided that this morning (for posterity, that's at 172 days of age) it was time to try his first solid food. Well, 'solid' isn't really an accurate term when you puree a banana to about a step beyond a smoothie, but you get the idea.

As with everything else about raising a baby, the advice comes fast, furious, and completely contradictory when talking about first foods. Some say to start with rice cereal, since it's easy to digest and is a pretty smooth transition when started as basically breast milk with bits o' rice in it. Others say that's lame and was only used because when they tried to feed newborn infants, that was one of the few things that wouldn't cause them digestive distress. Yet others say you should start right in with the core foods that you eat.

We decided to bypass the whole first argument by starting with the aforementioned banana, which seems to be almost universally okayed as a first food. (Though there's another argument that if you start with fruits, the kids will never eat veggies. Jeez, people!) We get a nice bunch of organic bananas in our bi-weekly fruit/veggie order, so 1/2 banana went into the Cuisinart, and a few tablespoons of banana puree came out a few minutes later.

Zachary also got to try out his new high chair for the first time, which already seems in some ways a little cramped for him, but I'm hoping once he's fully upright it will be all good. As to the banana, he seemed to like it, though lately he's all giggly when you tickle his tongue with your finger, so maybe he didn't even notice there was banana paste on our fingers. Still, everything we offered seemed to go down (though some of it came back up later in the morning), even if 'everything' comprised maybe a teaspoon of what we'd blended.

Hooray for Zachary's first culinary introduction! Next up, what do folks think of a lovely blending of peanuts, shellfish, kiwi, honey, whole grain, lactose, and maybe some MSG, caffeine, and taurine, just to spice things up a bit?

Zachary's Ferry Tale

Zachary's already got planes (10 flights) and automobiles (countless trips -- and thankfully they're more and more frequently crying-free) covered, so we figured it was time to move onto more exotic forms of transportation - namely, the Washington State Ferry system. Meh's women's choir is in the midst of producing a CD, which is being recorded out in Port Orchard at a very unique home/recording studio/work shed.

We met up at the ferry about an hour before it was scheduled to depart. The gate attendant teased us for showing up earlier than the ferry ride itself takes (about 40 minutes), and recommended we check out the excellent bakery a few blocks away if we wanted to kill some time. First we got in line (we were car #2 mind you), and Meh noticed a large flying shape alight on the dock tower -- a beautiful bald eagle. Alas, my camera's zoom is pretty lame, but the bird itself was spectacular, and hung around for a long time on the left, um, spire?

Next we met up with most of the rest of the choir and set off on foot for that highly recommended bakery. It didn't disappoint, with a wide array of tasty goodies on display, including (I kid you not) a giant doughnut cut in half and filled with buttercream. Perhaps a little heavy duty for brunch, so we settled on a bear claw for Meh and a blueberry turnover thing for me. Then back to the ferry in time to load 'em up and head out.

I'm always impressed with how they're able to pack so many cars into these things; one of the advantages/disadvantages to being the #2 car in line was that we got to drive most of the way through the boat and get one of the front-most spots. "Disadvantage" because the ferries use raised ramps along the sides to fit more cars, and we ended up on the treacherously steep incline back down to the deck of the ship. With our e-brake, ferry-supplied parking blocks, and prayers for no big waves to tip our car into the sound all firmly in place, we headed up to the passenger area for the short trip.

Zachary didn't seem to notice/mind any chop, though he later spotted a few following seagulls coasting alongside us, and appeared to get a little afraid of them for a moment. But other than that, he and fellow baby E had a nice time on the ferry. We docked, drove off, and headed to the recording studio/house.

The building is large but very cozy, with a wide-open floor plan and even a guest 'room'/loft that's reached via a ladder bolted to a back wall. Of course, the wide-open floor plan means that visitors to recording sessions have to remain quiet, which Zachary and E were likely going to occasionally disagree with. So our entourage, consisting of E (with her dad and grandmother) and Zachary (with me), headed out to a coffee shop a few miles away to hang out for a few hours. I was expecting a small quaint little coffee shop, but of course it was a Tully's; even out on the peninsula, the chains have made their presence known. Zachary napped for a bit, then we walked around the shop looking at what to me looked like a large number of left-over Christmas coffee flavors and paraphernalia. (I guess some of them still qualify as 'winter'?)

Back to the recording studio for Zachary's lunch (though he delayed that by sleeping for a good 45+ minutes in the parked car; there was a steady drizzle of rain that I think perhaps simulated his rain-on-the-roof CD), then we headed back out once more to let the group get some more recording in. This time I aimed for 'downtown' Port Orchard, which has a cute little strip of shops and of course a waterfront (hence the name 'port'); I stopped in front of a cute promising-looking bakery, and we all went in and checked out more goodies, plus some impressively decorated cakes that I know Meh and other Ace of Cakes fans would appreciate. I ended up picking up a tasty fresh loaf of rosemary bread. Zachary also got to meet another young boy who I eventually determined was the 4-month-old son of two of the employees (owners?) of the bakery. While I'm sure it's not always ideal, it sounds so appealing to be able to take your infant to work with you every day and just have them around; a few folks at Meh's work have jokingly suggested that we do the same - would patrons really mind a cute little boy smiling (or even sticking out his tongue) at them while receiving excellent service?

A series of nearly unfortunate events

(With apologies to Lemony Snicket, whose new short book is incidentally excellent - thanks again to B and J for it!)

Today was almost my first absolute parental meltdown. (Here the word "meltdown" means "it's-too-much-for-one-parent-to-possibly-handle".) And no, it wasn't caused by the child you might think...

Everything started off well enough; a typically full schedule of day's activities, plus planning for a Friday night dinner we were hosting for friends. Meh was working, so she had prepared several yummy desserts ahead of time, and I was of course on the books for making the always-demanded challah bread. The first glitch of the day was that the morning got off to a bit of a slow start and Meh had to cruise to work, so the brisket was left in my (capable?) hands to make.

Meh and I have philosophically different cooking styles; I prefer detailed recipes (even if I adjust ingredients or improvise a few extra spices). Meh is happy enough to often make it up as she goes along, eyeball some ingredients, substitute others, and it always comes out incredibly tasty. We thankfully balance each other quite well, with her being the amazing pastry chef and me painstakingly following through recipes for cooking and bread-making. (Yes, I do keep my challah recipe out and in front of me even though I likely have it memorized by now. Once I didn't use it, and I forgot to add salt -- you see?)

Anyway, back to the brisket, no prob, I found a recipe online that called for the ingredients Meh has used before -- chuck them all (including an unlikely but surprisingly effective can of soda pop) into the crock pot for 8 hours, and you're good to go with an excellently tender brisket. I checked on it through the morning and it seemed to be doing well. Zachary watched happily as I discussed the preparation; I often do a little cooking show for him and he seems enthralled.

Next, he and I went off to run some errands and then to meet mommy for lunch. He gave her a big smile and again was back to sticking his tongue out with happiness, and cooing with delight. Zachary said 'ooooh!', which here means something like "I'm making a super poopy diaper", and sure enough, we found out one of the reasons for the happy noises when something started to leak through his outfit. Yup, a blowout - Meh thinks this was his first, er, solid event in several days, and boy did he make the most of it. Then while Meh was changing him, there were multiple angles of, ehm, counterattack, and we exhausted our portable wipe supply (along with his outfit of course) in the free-for-all that ensued.

Zachary and I headed home with an increasing laundry list (a literal one), plus I had to finish up the dinner prep, and try to get Zachary to take a nap, and take care of the dog... First things first - nap time. Upstairs we went, and he was getting mellowed out and heavy-lidded when I heard an enormous crash. At first I thought another tree or power line had come down, some kind of delayed windstorm or ice-induced branch snapping off. Then I realized in horror what else might cause that kind of crash on a smaller and closer scale.

I dashed downstairs with Zachary still in hand to find my fears realized; Korby had somehow managed to pull the entire crock pot down from the counter, where it had crashed onto the floor and sprayed brisket and juices everywhere. I think the initial noise had startled even our selectively deaf dog, as he was just now starting to lick up the corner of a giant steaming pool of gravy and tomatoes. This was where the conundrum started -- Zachary sensed I was slightly upset, and started crying. Korby ignored my scolding and one-handed attempts to pry him away from the gravy. I ended up having to half-drag him across the kitchen and into his house, then soothe Zachary for a few minutes, before depositing the latter in his jumperoo and the former outside on his leash to try to salvage the mess that was our dinner for four.

Thankfully, the brisket itself seemed intact, and we'd just had the floors cleaned a few days earlier in the week. Plus it was still going to be cooking for a few more hours, so I logicked that the cooking would implicitly resterilize it or something. I then had a go at cleaning the floors, though I knew that no matter how thorough I was, Korby would still get a second go at it when he came in. Sure enough, despite multiple passes with mops, paper towels, and yes, cleaning agents, Korby spent the rest of the day licking various surfaces of our kitchen. I later found drops sprayed on our refrigerator, on the opposite wall of the kitchen. Oh, and the crock pot now has a nice dent in one side (with a matching one in the kitchen floor), though it still seems perfectly functional.

Somehow I did manage to find the time to finish Zachary's washloads, set the table, run the dishwasher, bake the challah, keep the dog at least somewhat in check, and keep Zachary entertained, but I was definitely pretty frazzled by the end of the day. This stay-at-home parenting stuff is hard! Anyway, I did warn our guests, but the brisket came out tasting pretty decent -- though I think the interruption (and the loss/recreation of sauce I had to create) made it a little drier than intended.

Note to self: always barricade all sources of food (and even the most far-fetched questionably food-like substances) when Korby will be around.