Food

It is funny that for so long it felt like all we were fixated on with Emmett was sleep and poo. Things have really changed, though, with the introduction of food, although sleep and poo aren't far behind.

I really do not understand how food works with this kid. I have been making a bunch of different foodstuffs for Emmett to eat, but in the end he will really only eat banana. Well, banana mixed with other things, too, but it has to have banana in it. Banana was E's first food (Clear Lake) and since that time it has been the primary mixer with the box of rice cereal we bought. Now I have taken to making our own grains (today's was millet), but he would only eat a little of it when it was mixed with banana squash but ate like mad when it was with banana. Tonight Andrea did a banana with yogurt and that was a hit. The only way that we can get him to eat anything else, it seems, it to sneak it in with the banana---so today he got a mixture of banana squash, banana, and millet and as long as the percentage of banana was kept in the still-tastes-somewhat-like-banana level, then he would eat it just fine. I fear that we are raising a monkey.

I am actually a little surprised at how frustrated I get at mealtime, especially when he doesn't eat. I don't know what to do to encourage him to eat non-banana foods except to keep trying, I guess. It just seems like there are so many other good foods in this world and I wish he wasn't so hung up on bananas.

Things have been moving along just fine other than the food thing (much of the reason for no writing here as there is nothing much of interest happening). Emmett has started doing this thing that his cousin did where he makes a sort of angry face and breathes outward through his nose like a bull. It is kind of funny and I really wonder why he decided to start doing this as it is not a typical face that A or I make. I will have to try to get a video of it. The other thing is that he has really gotten interested in his own reflection and will stare at himself for long periods in the mirror of that plastic monstrosity the he plays in.

Nothing much other than that. I turned in my first ever letter of resignation yesterday, so that is big non-Emmett news, and I start my teaching gig at the end of next month. Slight changes, but nothing too dramatic. I will have to report here when something truly exciting comes along.

Back in the stay-at-home game

I have been slow to post again after my return from my conference and have been just enjoying the time with Andrea and Emmett. Now I try to break the quiet streak.

The conference was so-so. My flight didn't arrive until 3 in the morning which got me into my hotel at 4 in the morning, which set the wrong tone for the start of the conference. I spent a lot of late nights polishing the talk, delivered it on the Thursday of the conference (had arrived on Monday) and left almost immediately after---to the point that I have no idea how it was received by the uppidy-ups. Oh well.

While I was gone, Andrea's mom came to the city to take care of Emmett while Andrea worked. It was incredibly nice of her and Emmett really enjoyed hanging out with her. It is such a relief to be away from your kid and have him with someone that you really trust. While I was gone Emmett's first tooth broke through the surface (bottom, left-front tooth) and when Jan told me I actually got teary-eyed. I had this feeling like he was up, walking about, and talking and I was stuck at a conference. I snapped a picture of this now teeth this afternoon and it is shown to the left. The arrival of teeth has made for a slightly grumpier Emmett (perhaps the real reason is after spending so much time with his grandma he realized how hanging out with an adult all day is really supposed to be).

Since coming back things have been good. Emmett and I are getting back into running, we have taken a few bus trips, and we are working on cleaning the house. He is getting a little harder to get to sleep (it used to be I just laid him down and walked away), mostly due to his fooling with his new teeth. He is also rotating all over the place in the crib as he sleeps. He has yet to roll over at night, but he is definitely doing the back-to-front roll now. He is sitting up pretty well, but needs a spotter to keep him from conking his head (spoken by someone who let him lean over and conk his head on the rug, which momentarily bothered him). All exciting stuff.

The three of us have been able to take some after-Andrea's-work walks, and tonight we went up to Alamo Square to take touristy pictures in front of those houses from the credits of "Full House" with a stuffed animal from Andrea's work. The picture at left is one of the A&E looking like they just hopped off of the tour bus.

Oh, I forgot the other news...we have been adding more and more food to Emmett's menu. So far he has had (drum roll) in order: banana, avocado, rice cereal, sweet potato, peach, carrots, peas, pear, yogurt, and banana squash. The last two happened this week (in fact the top picture, I realize now, shows evidence of the sweet potato he had had hours previous---great parenting, huh?). I am starting to add foods from the "Super Baby Food" book and am using her technique of mashing a bunch of a food and then freezing it in ice cube trays. I used the Champion juicer that my mom and grandma gave me in its masticating mode to make the pulp and then froze as recommended---works like a charm. Will be adding other foods shortly, and have yet to see any adverse reactions from Emmett---well, except that he makes a very unhappy, sour face with each bite of yogurt (whole, plain).

Finally one more picture from the weekend where the three of us were riding an actual Muni bus. I think this might be the first ever family portrait to grace this blog.

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.

The good life

I don't know that I have mentioned it before here, but I really feel that we are really fortunate to have things going the way they are right now. Although Emmett will probably not know the difference, it will at least have meant quite a lot to Andrea and I that we got to spend so much of Emmett's first year-plus with at least one of us around him full-time. To get this to work out in San Francisco without going into deep debt definitely means that things are going our way.

Today Emmett and I spent a lot of time on the bus. This morning we headed over for our second week at the Mission library branch's bilingual sing-a-long and good-time jamboree (I should really find out what it is called). As I said before, the person that leads this is top-notch and very entertaining. It is a bit ahead of Emmett's level, but it is fun for me. He didn't complain during the show and got to look at lots of other kids, so that part was good. Oh, and he got to hear me whisper-sing in his ear...and that is a real treat.

In the afternoon I decided that we would head in the opposite direction from our normal travels and we went to Baker Beach. Looking back on Andrea's and my first four years of living here, I bet you that I have been to the ocean somewhere around 10 times. Often I forget that we are even connected to the ocean (60 degree weather doesn't inspire the beach for some reason). I had never been to Baker Beach and was actually impressed with how pretty it was and how easy it was to get there (one transfer and the second leg was very fast). It was kind of funny that we went all that way and Emmett was wide awake on the bus checking everything out, and then as soon as we got to the ocean he passed out. I think that part of the reason is that the ocean is too similar to his noise machine so it just puts him right to sleep---hopefully this isn't a permanent condition else we have eliminated surfing, deep sea fishing, and romantic walks along the beach from his future. So while he slept I walked the length of Baker Beach, climbed back up to the road, and then walked to the Golden Gate Bridge. It is just so amazing that there is such a pretty, development-free area that is part of the city. Again we are fortunate.

The bus trip home wasn't that exciting except that I changed his diaper in the grass and didn't have the cover on or anything when the bus pulled up. I didn't want to miss the bus, so I took the cloth-only diapered Emmett aboard a packed bus (luckily someone gave me a seat) and finally got his cover on while we were driving along. Oh, the other exciting thing is that the bus that picked us up from the GGBridge was completely empty so E&I got to have the bus to ourselves for a good 15 minutes. That was a first, too.

Tonight was our first official date night. Belinda and Nick have kindly offered to hang out here and keep an eye on E so that Andrea and I can go out and have a romantic evening together. Tonight we had the take-out that Nick ordered and watched Barack Obama give his nomination acceptance speech with B&N. After it was all done we were pretty pooped but we rallied and walked two blocks down the street for a glass of wine and a small dessert. When we finished our wine it was 9:20, we were exausted, and we just decided to come home. Andrea is already asleep and now I am off to join her. Next week we will save our energy for a full date night that might even have us out until 10!

Two side things

When we were at Clear Lake we had a dock that extended from quite a distance into the lake and which was about 15 feet above the surface of the water. In the mornings I would take Emmett out on the dock and lean him over (a la Michael Jackson) to show him the ducks and geese swimming below and it got me wondering when he will develop a fear or caution or "funny feeling in his stomach" about heights. It seemed like he didn't care at all being held so high up (nor did MJ's kid...just the press cared it seemed), so there must be a time when the change happens and I wonder whether it develops because of a fall, because his parents will continually warn him, or if there is some change that happens in his mind where he understands spatial relationships, the effects of gravity, and the ramifications of forgetting about gravity while standing on precipices?

Yawns: Emmett yawns quite a bit and has since day one (he has also sneezed quite a bit since day one---I think I posted about this once, but part of the reason is the lack of developed nose hair---Emmett always at least smiles and sometimes laughs when I say "gesundheit" to him when he sneezes, and his sneezes are most often paired---wonderful, little-known Emmett factoids here), and it is a well-known phenomenon that yawns are contagious. As an experiment I have dedicated a little time every few days to trying to get Emmett to yawn based on my yawning...still to no avail. I was reading a .edu website about yawns for kids that was saying that contagious yawning is leftover evolutionary social behavior, but if this is the case then either Emmett isn't paying attention to catch the signals or it has a learned component too, which seems to detract from the evolution idea...or hanging out with me all day is just too darn exciting to allow yawns?

New socks!!!!

You know it is a pretty slow day at the farm when the fact that Emmett moved on to big boy socks gets its own post. Yawn. Emmett has been talking in this very quiet voice and I tried to record it today but he was a louder than the super quiet whisper voice. However, as I was watching the video I found that what I thought sounded like Emmett saying "mom" while recording really does sound like it upon playback (shows up in the video at 19 seconds and you don't even have to play it backward---still would be mom that way, too, I guess). So if you watch the video you get the trifecta of hearing Emmett talk in his semi-quiet voice for a little bit, hearing him "say" the word "mom", and seeing him showing off his big boy socks. Now that I think about it, this video is not boring at all! (later edit: watching the video again it is kind of funny how his eyes get big right after saying his word. Maybe the reaction is a sudden realization that he might have let slip the fact that he can already talk and if we find out we will sell him to the circus. Or maybe he was reacting to my reaction (I remember noting he made a mom-like sound but don't think my reaction was very strong). Or maybe I just watch these videos too much?)



Today was Andrea's first day with real meetings throughout the day. I snuck Emmett into the school three times for feedings, and we found that E gets very distracted by everything that is around him at the school and isn't an efficient eater (that is what Andrea gets for having a bright, colorful classroom---a thin baby). It is going to be tricky to time Emmett's feedings with her breaks, but it is good practice to see how it will all work out.

It was interesting to have a real work day similar to what it was like a few weeks ago where one of us is home all day with the baby and the other is gone from 8-5 (well, mine was 7:30-7, but who is counting). It is pretty great that Emmett and Andrea get to see one another during the day with only a short walk separating them. I really feel like we have a good life right now---all of us.

Where my Saturday went

Going into today I knew that today the kayak was going to make its way from the floor of our garage to the ceiling of our garage, and I have been dreading it. Last night I spent a long time making scaled drawings as the landlord and I had come up with a plan that involved galvanized pipe, 2x6's and a ton of other things. I made scaled top view and side view plans with a scaled kayak that could be slid around into the best position, and then at 10 this morning I went upstairs and we discussed. It looked like the plan would work, so I was going to go pick up 2x6's to start phase one. However, about 20 minutes later the landlord came to the door telling me that after all of our planning, his 12 year-old daughter walked downstairs and declared that we were going to too much trouble and why don't we just use eye-bolts and call it good. She was right. We were not. We went with her plan (well, she proposed four eye-bolts and I one-upped her by cutting it down to two---you can't have a 12 year-old besting you). So...I spent the whole day in hardware stores, REI, and everywhere else it seemed (unfortunately everywhere except with Emmett and Andrea, that is), and at 6:30 Andrea and I, under Emmett's watchful eyes seated in a stroller, raised the kayak to the ceiling. I wish I would have had the camera while we were doing the lifting as Emmett had a look on his face like we were the two wackiest people in the world. Anyway, this is what our half of the garage is now looking like:
We now officially have a lot of things in our garage. For the past week while the kayak was residing on the garage floor the car was in the street and it made me realize how wonderful it would be to have no car in the garage with all kinds of space for strollers and boats and everything else. Oh well. We still have a car.

Very little Emmett time today, but Andrea is going back-to-school shopping tomorrow (she needs a new Trapper Keeper, I think) so he and I will get to make up for lost time. Oh, Andrea fed Emmett rice cereal today, so with that addition he has had three foods that didn't come from Andrea's body. She apparently made the rice cereal with breast milk. She also put breast milk in my oatmeal the other morning and wouldn't tell me why she was laughing at breakfast until after I was done eating. She thinks she is so funny.