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.

More science!

Dylan participated in a follow-up to the pingpong ball experiment.  This test was to see whether he reacted differently when unrepresentative samples of colored pingpong balls were selected at random, versus when the researcher could be seen to pick them out. 

We don't know the results, but they gave him his MA:

Dinner party

We weren't sure how long it would be before we were able to entertain in style again.  At the end of April, we hosted a French dinner, and friends Ryan, Becka, Mike, Matt and Laura came to join us.  Dylan went to sleep between the frisee salad course and the main course of beef bourguignon.

I'm feeling lazy, so I'll just point to Becka and Mike's blog about the event, posted in more detail than I ever get around to here. 

Qualified success

Previous reports of success with solids were premature.

Dylan continues to insist on feeding himself, either with purees on a spoon, or finger foods. This is when he consents to eat solids at all, which is only about half of the time. On a positive note, he demolished a floret of cooked broccoli last week.  I guess he liked that it came with a built in handle.

Tooth and beauty

We managed to get a few shots of Dylan showing off his first tooth right before its next-door-neighbor popped in:

And here's a close-up:

Success with solids!!

Dylan refuses to let us feed him.  He grabs the spoon away from us as soon as it's near his face and then plays with it.  So our solution has been to buy some soft silicone baby spoons and let him practice with them without any food.  After about a week of this, he's actually getting okay at putting the business end in his mouth. We've been dipping the spoon in food, and letting him have it, then once he's gotten most of the food off, we deliver a second spoon with food, and take the first spoon away while he's distracted.

So, this week, we've had some decent success at feeding him mango pureed in yogurt, oatmeal, and cream of wheat. Today, he had what seems to be his favorite food so far.  What was it?  Hummus, of course, like a good Jewish baby (possibly in honor of Larry and Galit's upcoming wedding in Israel).

Here's Dylan post-cream of wheat:

More Science

We took Dylan to participate in another experiment at UC Berkeley.  They were comparing the spatial skills of walkers and crawlers to pre-crawlers.  Since Dylan was in the control group, this experiment wasn't as exciting. For example, they wanted to see if he would look when they pointed at a picture, but he just stared at the pretty grad student talking to him. Still, necessary work in the name of science:

6 months old

I'm a little late to post, but on April 13, Dylan turned a half-year old. He had his six-month wellness appointment, and he weighed in at 14lb10oz (5th %ile), was 26" tall (25th %ile) and his head circumference was 45 3/4 cm (97th %ile).  The doctor was not concerned that all his calories seem to be going to grow his head, since he's very active.

Here's our big headed baby showing off his sitting skillz:

It's the tooth!

I was wondering why little Mister Congeniality had morphed into little Mister Crankypants over the last week. I assumed it was a growth spurt. We figured he wouldn't cut his fist tooth until approximately 1 year, like I did. However, lo and behold, there's the first little chomper peeking up in the front right-hand spot on his bottom jaw. I'll miss my little guy's toothless smile.

By the way, if anyone posts "you can't handle the tooth", or similar, in the comments, I will unfriend you on Facebook. 

He sits!

Well, with some support. Dylan's much happier sitting than laying down, since he can see his toys and the world around him more easily. 

Rolling over progress seems to have stalled.  He's mastered rolling from front-to-back, but doesn't seem to think that back-to-front is worth practicing any more. He did it once and ended up with his arms pinned underneath him, so he likely figures that back-to-front rolling is for chumps.