Various & Sundry Pics and Vids

From the last couple of weeks. Here's the boy attacking some oat cereal:

Big boy breakfast

Completely napping out in his new Zutano zoot suit:



Visiting with Aunti Keri:



And trying to get a taste of my Smithwicks (down, boy!):

 

Catching Our Breath

As is typically the case these days, it's been quite the busy time around the LemonDrop, and thus my blogging about all things Sofian and parenting has suffered. Heck, just about all extra-curricular writing/creative projects have been dropping, with no updates on my other blogs (Cracks and One Egg), the bare minimum of blogging work done on the Amazon blogs (with just my weekly Apple update on the Electronics blog, and my time with the baby blog pretty much done for), and various and sundry tech/music projects sitting on the furthest back of backburners. It's the same old story -- trying to fit in loads of work in a smaller work schedule due to my Daddy Day Care duties two days a week. Of course, I'm not the only one trying to squeeze a schedule -- Parie's got two full days of work plus occasional meetings on her off days (during which I take over).

So, yes, things have felt a little overwhelming of late. But, the kid's pretty darned cute and pretty fun to hang around (most of the time), so I really can't complain too much.



Some tidbits from the last week or so:

• We've made arrangements for our week of travel during the Thanksgiving holiday, going first to Minnesota on 17 November to visit my Grandfather and Aunt (and anyone else who might be around), and then off to Florida to visit Parie's Grandmother Paps and her Sister's family (including Noah, the newest addition).
  
  
• We had our friends Jeff and Kim over for dinner last week, where we discussed their January Project at great length.
  
  
• Sofian is now eating oat cereal and peas, and we're doing combinations (apple & oats, carrots & peas). This morning for breakfast, we had him in his Tripp Trapp chair at the table while we had French Toast, and he was very curious about what we were munching on.
  
  
• Last weekend, we were down in Portland visiting Tutu (my Mom) and Tomtom (my step-father Tom) at their newish shindigs at the Willamette View retirement community, and had a grand time hanging out with the grandparents and introducing Sofian to the community. Tutu was very happy to see Sofian after not seeing him for a couple of months.
  

 

Quick Stats

Yesterday we took Sofian in to see Doc G for his 6-month well baby check-up, and here's the official tale of the tape:

Weight: 21 pounds (95th percentile)
Height: 29 inches (off the charts... seriously)
Head: 45cm (almost 18 inches; 93rd percentile)

He also had 5 shots, and he did pretty well with them -- some bloody screaming during the injections, but that ended within a couple of minutes being comforted by Mama.

We're rushing around this morning getting ready for our driving adventure to Portland, but I'll post more later.

[UPDATE] Here's two pics I captured on the iPhone -- Dr. Guerra checking Sofian's heart, and then his assistant, Val, measuring his noggin:

 

Pick-Up Skills

Sofian Playing With His New Toys

 

A Trip to Bizarro World and Back

We moved Sofian into his own room this last week (more on that a little later), and sleeping has been great for his Mom and Dad. But Saturday morning, Parie and I both woke up about 6am -- the time he usually wakes (if not a little earlier) -- but we heard nothing coming from the baby monitor. We started getting a little worried when we continued to hear nothing, and Parie even slipped in to check on him. As she crept closer to the crib, she still couldn't get a good view, as his face was obscured by a blanket. But she carefully peeled it away and saw that he was indeed breathing, and then returned to bed. He finally started squawking around quarter to 7. Normal service resumed this morning with a wake up shriek from pterodactyl boy at 6am.

 

Crossing My Fingers

I'm really hoping I'll become a soccer Dad, though I'll happily support him through just about any activity that tickles his fancy (excepting boxing, ultimate fighting, lawn darts, and Society of Creative Anachronism). Here he is practicing his ball handling skills:

Sofian demonstrates his soccer skills with the O-ball

 

The Tripp Trapp

Here are some unboxing photos of Sofian's new highchair, the Tripp Trapp. Parie was amazed that it came in such a small box, but she shouldn't have been too surprised since it was designed in Northern Europe, land of Ikea.







And here's the final product:



So far, he's enjoing it. It's a little tough getting him into the chair right now, as his legs bump up against the baby rail, but we adjusted it a bit today and things will hopefully go a bit smoother. Here he is enjoying dinner (from our fave West Seattle Indian restaurant) with us and Parie's college pal Martha, who stopped in for a quick visit while here in Seattle for a wedding.

 

Big Boy Eating

We've been giving Sofian some rice cereal just about every day for the last few weeks. The early attempts were messy and weird for the boy, and he certainly got constipated from the new food entering his system. But by this last week, his digestive tract seemed to be handling the cereal quite well and he was welcoming the opportunity to eat. Here he his in his new Tripp Trapp highchair:

Rice Cereal in the Big Boy Chair

With his advancements and his curiosity about everything that we're eating these days (see photo below with Sofian trying to grab some of Mamalama's creampuff at Blue C Sushi), we decided to consult several of the baby cookbooks we'd been given (from our pal Cara and my step-sister Maclaren) and push on with some vegetable matter.



We decided to go for a sweet potato, and we mixed in a little bit of breast milk to get it a bit more liquidy as well as add familiarity. So here he is from earlier today--he did pretty darn well:

Sweet Potatoes for the Big Boy

 

I Love It When I'm Predictable

Yepp, I beat Parie's prognostication and got myself an iPhone before her 3-month prediction. And it is sweet. Here's the first official pic of Sofian from it:

 

Sofian on the Lawn

Here's a muddy picture of the boy asleep in the jogging stroller, taken by my Treo (which I subsequently had to download into my laptop and then upload to Flickr).



Here's a better picture taken of Sofian when he and I were on an outing to University Village yesterday:



I snapped it with one of the demo iPhones on display (and sent it to my email account, from which I uploaded it to Flickr). Imagine if I had the power of the iPhone in my own hands, I could take pictures and videos and upload them directly to the blog, while I was still out on the town. Ah, just imagine...

 

First Full Day of Daddy Day Care

I'm typing this on the front stoop (thanks to our Wi-Fi router) as Sofian slumbers in his jogging stroller after a walk. Rather than try to tenderly extricate the boy and try to put him in his crib, I thought I'd just let the sleeping baby lie.

Today is my first full day of hanging with Sofian while Parie is at work. During the last month and a half or so, she's been going to DNDA for a half day, and Sofian and I have handled that pretty well. But now she's going back to 20 hours a week, which means 2 full work days plus a couple extra hours of work from home or off to meetings. And it's still a little dicey because:

a) Sofian is still, for the most part, refusing a bottle from me
b) He's also the boy who would not nap

The bottle problem is really the toughest, as it's required Parie to be on call as the milk supplier every three hours. We got a new bottle this week with a silicone top that mimics the feel of a breast, and yesterday Sofian surprised me by drinking down a short bottle's worth of milk. Alas, that was not to last, as today he just played around with it. When he'd start to get really fussy, I'd pretend to drink from it, and that made him laugh as well as intrigued him enough to try it again... only to start playing with it in his mouth rather than suck from it.

The kid is sleeping pretty well through the night, about 9 hours. But for the last week he's only been getting about a total of 1 hour of napping during the day from mini cat naps. When he's looking tired, Parie has tried to put him down in his co-sleeper crib, only to have him start screaming as soon as he's put on his back. Today, however, he fussed a bit after Parie fed him at our early lunch hour of 11 and put him down, but he actually slept for about 2 hours. And he's been napping after our late afternoon walk for about 45 minutes so far (about 30 minutes of it spent in the front yard).

So, all in all, not a bad start. It's gonna be a little tricky over the next few weeks of transition for me, in trying to figger out what amount of work I can do (I've already had to give up the blogging assignment on the Amazon electronics blog for tomorrow's big Apple iPod announcements). But I'm confident that both Parie and I will find our way. And fingers crossed, the boy will take the boob bottle.

 

Crowded House

In one sense, that refers to the current state of the LemonDrop, as we're still finalizing the movement of rooms -- taking everything out of the office/media room to create Sofian's room. We got the flooring, which will probably start cutting today, and yesterday I constructed the crib that we got handed down from Tina and Ryan. But we're still waiting for the new daybed to replace the old one. Mamalama (Sofian's grandmother from North Carolina) will be coming at the end of this week, and after that we should be able to finalize things. Here's Sofian trying out the new crib:



But yesterday, we took Sofian to one of Seattle's big annual events, the Bumbershoot music festival, to see one of his Papa's very most favorite artists: Neil Finn and his band Crowded House. This wasn't his first concert (that was the intimate coffee house-like performance by Alice Stuart back in early May), but it was his first big time rock'n'roll stadium concert (though I wouldn't really call Crowded House rock'n'roll... it's really more refined melancholic pop music for adults). We met up with our pals Jeff and Kim (Jeff shares with me a fandom for all things Finn) and had a great time. The band was in great form, and the songs from the new album had a more muscular sound that really opened them up (it's taken me awhile to get into Time on Earth, but I think I'm finally there)

Kim and Parie and Sofian stayed up in the bleachers while Jeff and I went down to the stadium floor and had a great time. I went back up to hang with Mama and Sofian about 3/4 of the way through the concert and found that Sofian (much to my relief) was having a great time. He was enjoying the music and making friends with the folks sitting behind and walking by.

Sofian & Mama at Crowded House ("Weather With You" playing in background)

Sofian & Papa at Crowded House ("Locked Out" -- which does rock a bit -- playing in background)

Here's the full set of photos.

 

PEPS Gathering of 31 August

We met at Ellis' swinging pad this last Friday, which was the last official gathering for our PEPS volunteer officiator, Kristina. It was great to get to know her and hear some of her experiences with her two kids, and we look forward to getting occasional unofficial visits from her in the future. Going forward, we're planning on weekly get-togethers on Wednesdays, with various and sundry walks and meet-ups at coffee shops whenever schedules work out. Charlie, Sammy's Dad, is a freelance illustrator/animator and is primarily taking care of Sammy during the week, and Sofian and I will definitely be getting together with the two of them as I take over care duties for Sofian for two full days a week starting after Labor Day.

Here are some pics and vids from the gathering (all pics can be found here at Flickr)



Sammy!



Ellis and Sammy



Ellis snoozing with Dad (Matt)



Sofian and Sammy

PEPS Gang 31 Aug 2007 - Pt 1

PEPS Gang 31 Aug 2007 - Pt 2