And then there was September

A little downtime with the blog for the last few weeks, but that has come to an end. Last Friday I went to the lab for the first time in three weeks and that threw everything off for me. I am the least efficient writer of scientific papers in the world and I have one hanging over my head. As a result I have been trying to discipline myself to get this one out, which means dropping the blog for a bit. The other thing keeping me from writing is it is convention time and I have been spending too much time listening to speeches, hearing about how well abstinence-only sex ed. works, etc. Anyway, I thought I would write a quick update for the record books.

Saturday was the six-month kegger celebration for Augie, Ethan, and Emmett, who were all born within a few days of one another. Andrea and I were in charge of the keg with the other fams taking care of the food stuff, and we all convened for an afternoon party in Dolores Park. The weather was gorgeous and the park was so empty (relatively) that I think that everyone that arrived by car was able to park right next to the park (unheard of!). The reason was that this was also burning man weekend, which I now realize is the Super Bowl weekend of San Francisco (Andrea and I tend to go places that are normally miserable to visit, such as IKEA, on Super Bowl Sunday) and we will make note to visit Pier 39, Ghiradelli Square, and take our picture on the corner of Haight and Ashbury on Burning Man weekend next year.

The party was a lot of fun and lasted much longer than I thought it would (we are all toting around infants these days so we seem to have between-nap windows of about 2.5 hours). The worst part is that we only got through about 1/2 to 2/3 of the keg...I was told that it was a party of 50 people and as I hadn't bought a keg since my undergraduate days I assumed that we could squeeze by with a 1/2 barrel and buy more as needed. At the party I learned that a group of 50ish 30+-year-olds does not drink like a group of 50 21-ish-year-olds. Life lessons all around. Anyway, in the end I think we were in the park from 12-6ish or so. Pretty good for a bunch of parenty fogies like us.

Sunday we got up early to go to "Sunday Streets": San Francisco's attempt at shutting down a few miles of road for use by pedestrians, bikes, skaters, etc. (not cars) in order to get the community out and about. The roads they chose were poor choices in my opinion as it was mostly industrial areas, but it was nice to see quite a few people using the streets. Andrea pointed out that they were missing a key constituency in the Burners, so the next one in two weeks will probably have a better turn out. The route passed by the Transamerica building so we took crankypants' picture next to it (at left).

Monday Andrea, Emmett, 1/3-to-1/2 of a keg, and I made our way up Marin way to swim at Augie's grandparents' house. Augie's grandma is an amazing host and we all had a good time. However, when the party was over it was decided that the quickly flattening beer would be jettisoned for an easier trip home. As we pumped the keg and poured the last bit into the gravel, I knew that we were experiencing a very big milepost in our lives: the time we become old as we can't drink the beer. It is good to have this blog for not only will we be able to track large events in Emmett's life, but we will be able to look back and smile as we remember the afternoon we became middle-aged.

Tuesday was the end of Andrea's student-free time, and she and Belinda spent much of the day coloring, filling out names on popscicle sticks, and making last minute school supply orders. Emmett and I would swing in for feedings here and there, but were back on our schedule of running, playing, and napping.

Oh, this reminds me about the monkey. The monkey has been mentioned and shown here, both in picture and movie format, and during the last week he developed a hole in his back with innerds starting to spill everywhere. Fear of choking, etc. led us to remove the monkey and replace it with a yellow bear or something like that. You would think that between the two of us, Andrea and I that is, and our discussions about and laughter at Emmett's sleeping partner, we would have predicted what would happen were we to take away his monkey. OK, if we weren't to predict it though, you would think that we would put it together as soon as naps-like-clockwork Emmett won't sleep that he needs his monkey. Well, if we didn't get it then and had to resort back to rocking Emmett to sleep, etc., we would finally solve the puzzle. You can see where this is going. Emmett would not nap Saturday (monkey taken away), Sunday, or Monday. Tuesday when Andrea went back to work I was feeling bad for the monkey (or Emmett, can't remember which) and performed an operation to cure the monkey which involved taking one of my tube socks, wrapping it around the body of the monkey at the location of the wound, and knotting it so that Emmett can't rip it off (I will have to put a picture up tomorrow...Emmett and the monkey are in a passonate embrace currently). Well, lo-and-behold, Emmett napped immediately and since then is back to his easy-to-nap self. If we can't figure out something this easy, I don't have any idea how Emmett is going to make it with us.

Today Emmett and I walked Andrea to school on her first day, returned to the farmers market, did a little shopping for a springform pan, and jogged in the park. A pretty exciting day, all-in-all. I took a video of Emmett laughing when I was giving him a bath but I wasn't looking through the camera while filming and it was too privates-heavy, so I will have to try again tomorrow.

Oh, on the food front we are still just doing the bananas, avocado, and rice cereal thing. I am going to add more this week as he has passed (nearly) the 6 month point which means that there are a lot more things he can eat. Andrea took a video of me feeding him bananas with the wooden spoon (we have a rubber one too, but I have been toying with this one a bit). It is not that exciting and is more here for the die-hards, but it does show his getting to the point that he is developing some muscle control:


I have been trying different combinations of the three foods. By themselves, Emmett's order of preference seems to be bananas, rice cereal, avocado. Bananas and rice cereal seems almost as good as bananas alone, and through some strange magic rice cereal and avocado are worse than avocado alone. I have to say, though, that I tasted the latter combination and realized that it was really bad and feeding it to a child should not be allowed.

The solid food thing is introducing changes in the diaper, if you know what I mean. Having been a solid food eater for well over thirty years, I know where this all leads and I don't like it one bit.

One more picture for the heck of it. Those who have given up sucking their toes are missing out on great bliss.