Thanksgiving in Indiana

Thanks to Larry and Galit for hosting the whole family in Indiana. We spent the long weekend hanging around the house, and going for walks.

Rich has gotten the entire photoset up on Flickr, which you can see here. Here are some highlights:

On a walk with Larry, Dorothy, Lorien, Matthew, David, Laura, Steve and Dylan

Dylan and Aunt Laura at Ball State University

Dylan with cousins David and Matthew (Renoir, eat your heart out)

Dylan with Grandmom and Grandpop

All the Fromms (back from left: Larry, Galit, Dorothy, Eli; front: Rich, Lorien, Dylan, Matthew, Laura, David, Steve)

Dylan rides his trike

We have a gazillion pictures from our Thanksgiving trip to Indiana to sort through, but while you wait for those to be posted, here's a video of Dylan on his trike, taken yesterday.

Dylan's second Halloween

I can't believe we're into seconds now!  We carved the pumpkins into shape sorters for Dylan to play with.

 Dylan was a monkey (costume courtesy of Grandmama and Grandpa), and entertained the local trick-or-treaters by butt-scooting around on the sidewalk outside. 

You can find more pictures in our Dylan Y 1 Q 1 photoset.

13 month stats

We had to reschedule Dylan's 1-yr wellness appointment a couple of time, and it ended up getting pushed out until today, when Dylan is actually 13 months. He weighed in at 20 lb 8 oz, was 30.25 inches long and has a head circumference of 48.5 cm.

By the way, Dylan's birthday party pictures are up on Flickr here. There are many babies in pumpkins, like so:

 And here's Dylan trying his first cupcake.  After all our angst that he was going to abandon healthy food and go on an all sugar diet given his first taste, his reaction was more "meh".

Kicking it Toronto-style

Dylan and I took a little mini-break to Toronto to visit the family last week.  We had visions of crisp fall days and bright sunshine (or at least I did), but unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate. However, we did get some breaks in the rain and got outside to make the most of them.  Here's some pics, courtesy of Grandpa Fono.

Dylan learns to climb stairs

Dylan and Mommy and Riverdale Farm in downtown T.O. (probably our favourite stop on this trip)

Dylan learning about "fall"

3 generations

Goats are just like big cats

Dylan and Grandmama on the teeter totter at Sherborne Commons in the Toronto portlands

Men in plaid at the Don Valley bike and pedestrian path

OMG fall colours!!

Dylan and Grandmama at Huntington Park near the house

And we managed to get a group shot of the whole family, minus Rich who was languishing in California sunshine, and Grandpa George, the photographer.

Happy Birthday Dylan !!!

On Thursday, Dylan finished his first trip around the sun.  Here he is playing with his new piano.  He also got to open awesome new presents from all his grandparents (pics to come once they're assembled).

Dylan continues to scoot around on his butt, and walk around holding mommy's or daddy's hands.  He's also taken to pushing around furniture (since mommy and daddy are mean and won't buy him a walker).  He's got his first word (can you guess what it is?) and his first sign, "all done", which he uses when he's done a meal.

The things you learn from your blog stats

Go to Google Images, and search for "cute pumpkin photography".  See anyone you recognize?

However, I'm generally bamboozled by the locations of our audience.  I don't know anyone in Iran or Brazil. And this week, we got more page hits from Russia than we did from Canada.  Здравствуйте, Russian friends!

Song and dance

Dylan showing off with a little song ...

... and dance

11 months

Dylan's 11 month birthday was over a week ago, so I apologize for being late on the posting.  Dylan continues to scoot around on his behind, which you can view in the video below.  He's getting better at drinking from a cup, and he has seven teeth. He's constantly babbling, and while there are "words" to be found in his babbles, I'm not sure that any of them count as language yet.

I can't believe he's almost a year old!!

Montana

Before it gets too far in the past, I wanted to post about our visit to Montana.  Kevin and Leah got married on July 16 at Holland Lodge, the weekend after Robyn and Alan's wedding.  So we did the ever-popular San Francisco to Toronto to Missoula to Oakland open-jaw trip.

We used their wedding as an excuse to visit Glacier National Park for a few days.  It was an incredibly snowy year, and they didn't open the Going-to-the-Sun Road, the main road through the park, until our first day there.  There was still snow over the pass, and there were waterfalls everywhere.  The full photoset is here on Flickr, but here are some highlights:

Avalanche Lake

Waterfalls onto the road

Snow over the pass

Mountain goat at Hidden Lake Overlook

The whole family at Sun Point

Rich didn't take many pictures at the wedding site, leaving that to the hired guns, which you can see at the photographer's site, here.  We did get a few shots of the site, showing how lovely the area was.

There was a brief but violent thunderstorm during the reception, and one of the poles of the tent was destroyed by winds.  However, Leah and Kevin were rewarded with a full, double rainbow after it blew through.

And finally, on the way back, we got a half-day in Missoula, a fun little college town, or Montana's squishy liberal center.  We stopped off in two farmer's markets to buy snacks (one in Seely near the wedding and one in Missoula), which is always fun in new places.  Dylan got to ride on Missoula's famed carousel with Daddy.

Trying to get home was a bit of a clusterf**k, since our plane had been disabled by a hailstorm in Denver, but we were ultimately successful at getting on a different flight. 

10 months old!

The months seem to be flying by faster as time goes on.  Our little guy turned 10 months old on Saturday, which was the day we had friends over to celebrate Rich's and my birthday.

Dylan with his friend Anju

Our little guy is now sleeping through the night (with the help of a little Ferberesque sleep training a few weeks ago).  He eats almost anything, except baby food, including cat food and dirt, which I try to discourage.  He loves thai food, macaroni and cheese, chicken soup, and peaches and other stone fruit more than anything. Favorite activities include being pushed really high on the swings at the playground and going down slides. He also still loves being tossed in the air, but it's not as easy as it used to be.  We have adventure baby!

Dylan is getting efficient at scooting around on his butt, thus ending the days of just plunking him down with some toys and knowing he won't get himself into any trouble.  I don't know why he's particularly drawn to things that are dangerous, disgusting, or breakable. Dylan can also pull himself up and cruise around, vastly increasing the amount of the house that he can get to. 

Our Birthday Horoscope:

From The Globe and Mail:

IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY:
Does it matter that you can’t seem to get a handle on the meaning of your existence? No it does not. What matters is that you always follow the little voice that comes from your heart. Follow it this year and you’ll find all the meaning you need.

Very appropriate for Rich's 42nd birthday.

It's been a lovely day so far, and we will shortly head out (sans Dylan, who will be at home with a babysitter) to a nice dinner.

Trip to T.O.

My best friend from junior high and high school, Robyn, got married to her fiance Alan on July 10, giving us an excuse to visit the folks in Toronto.

Although it was brutally hot and humid, we did manage to get outside some.  Here we are enjoying an evening barbeque in the lovely backyard:

Me, Grandmama, David and Dylan

And a second barbeque with the Bayers in their fabulous tiki-themed backyard:

Me, Dylan, Great Aunt Maureen, Great Uncle Jonathan and Cousin Rebekah

We also went winetasting in Niagara. Here's a picture from that day:

And here are some more family pics:

Dylan with Grandpa

Me, Dylan, Great-great Uncle Joe and Great-great Aunt Martha

Dylan with Rich's Aunt's sister, Sarah

More pictures are here on flickr. Sorry, no pictures from the wedding, since we leave that to the pros.  Congratulations to Robyn and Alan!!

Grandma and Grandpa visit Berkeley

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I'd like to blog Dorothy and Eli's visit in mid-June.  While we were hoping to impress Grandma and Grandpa with how smoothly things are running around here, Dylan foiled our plans by going into his first ever sleep regression.  While he had been sleeping consistently through the night since he was three months old, he started waking up every two hours or so and refusing to be put back to sleep.  Needless to say, he was killing his parents.  Thanks goodness Dorothy and Eli were here for the worst of it so we could hand him off in the morning and get more sleep!

We had to scale back our plans for their visit due to our general stupor.  However, we did manage to get out one day and visit the Little Farm in Tilden Regional Park.  Grandma and Grandpa enjoyed showing Dylan the farm animals:

Here's Dylan with Grandma:

 

And here he is with Grandpa (and his new stacking cups and toy train, courtesy (of course) of Grandma and Grandpa:

More pics in the Month 8 Flickr set.

9 months old!

Dylan turned 9 months old last week.  For his in/ex utero equinox we drove him across the continental divide.  More on our Toronto/Montana extravaganza in the next post (Rich is editing the photo set down from 600 pictures so that we don't overload our flickr followers), but here are his 9-month stats from his doctor visit today.

Length = 28 inches (30th %ile)
Weight = 17lb5oz (11th %ile)
Head Circumference = 46.75 cm (90th %ile)

So our little guy is packing on the pounds thanks to his new and improved diet of actual food (well, mostly fruit still). He's got five teeth, and is babbling and clapping.  He can't crawl, but is working on cruising around while standing.

Here he is at 9 months (taken last week at Glacier National Park):

Today in the grocery store a woman was admiring him and said that his skin looked like peaches.  I came home and repeated this to Rich, who replied that it should, since that's half of what he eats these days.

More cuties

Our mom's group had originally planned a bbq get together at Tilden in May, but decided to postpone it until June so that we knew there would be no chance of rain, and the ground would have dried out. However, this weekend hosted an epic downpour, which was apparently "5 standard deviations outside the mean weather pattern," according to one of the dads in the group. Adding further insult, after we made the call to cancel due to several days of heavy rain, there ended up being a window of no rain after all during the planned event. Grrr....

We went ahead with a get together, but at our house. Mojitos and cupcakes (baked by Rich) and babies were all in abundance.

You can see the entire set on flickr here, but here are some of our favorite photos:

Our living room becomes a play area.

Gaby and Dylan

Like Samson, Dylan's copious hair is his one weakness

Dylan and friends

The women and babies I met through the Berkeley moms' group are continuing to meet, so Dylan has friends to play with and I have mom friends to kibbitz with.  Anna was kind enough to host a get-together at her house on Friday.

Here we are with Anna's son Hayden:

 Here are the moms and babies hanging out:

Here's Hayden, Dylan, Gabbie and Simone.  Since Dylan is the most photographed baby in history, he knows about looking at the camera.

Dylan hung around until Hayden's nap time.  Hayden was kind enough to share his toys before going to sleep.