A big week

We have been very remiss in updating our journal here, and the only thing we have to say in our own defense is that it has been one crazy, and fun, week!  We'll see if we can give a brief recap.  On Wednesday our friends Steve and Rachel arrived to spend a few days before Christmas.  This is an annual tradition in our home that includes lots of Christmas shopping, video games, and Christmas movies (particularly "Christmas Vacation").  This year was no disappointment.  As usual, Steve arrived from Seattle having neither done nor planned any of his Christmas shopping.  But as stressful as that sounds it has become a traditional challenge for all of us to help him get it all done in just one or two days, and we have yet to fail!  This trip was also their first chance to meet Calvin.  Unfortunately, we can't say that he was on his very best behavior, which brings us to the next big happening of the week - Calvin's first tooth!  At this point it has fully cleared the gum but isn't all the way in.  This is a bittersweet milestone, as it means that we will be saying goodbye to that adorable gummy grin of his, but we know that toothy grins can be just as cute, which brings us to the last happening of the week, Calvin's very first birthday party!  Not his own, obviously, but a birthday party just the same!  Last night we joined in celebrating Liesl's first birthday.  One thing that we have learned - the first birthday party is mostly about the adults (hence the wine being served in the kitchen).  Nevertheless, Calvin seemed to have as much fun as we did.  Liesl got some great new toys for her birthday and was more than willing to share (like the wine, the easy sharing is likely something that won't be seen at birthday parties again for many years to come).  We had a great time meeting other young families, and taking notes on how to throw a great first birthday party.  We see a grilling party and a new turtle shaped sandbox about six months into our future...

A week before Christmas!

And we finally got the pictures back from Calvin's six month photo shoot, which was also our family Christmas photo shoot.  These are some of our favorites, and you can see all of them in the Calvin's six month photo shoot album.

  

 

Baby play

Babies love other babies, or so we had heard.  It wasn't until more recently, however, that Calvin really started to interact with other little munchkins more his size.  Cortney and Calvin went on a field trip today to spend some time with a new mom and baby who needed some uplifiting words and a little advice (those first three weeks can be hard).  Cortney's friend, Becky, and her daughter, Liesl, were a big part of this outing, too, and Calvin really seemed to make a connection with Liesl while we were there.  Of course, he's seen her numerous times in the past, but this time he really seemed to be communicating with her, even if she was too busy to care much.  He was clearly very intrigued, and perhaps a bit perplexed, by her ability to move about so easily.  We have a feeling that if he spends too much time with her his snail paced commando crawl will become a full fledged crawl that much faster!

It's easy being green

We moved on to peas today!  And by "we" we mean Calvin, of course, although it was a family affair.  We started with fresh frozen (we can get into the validity of that supermarket lingo later) peas, which looked appetizing enough to us and steamed them.  Post steam treatment they were still looking pretty yummy.  Then we transferred said peas to a blender and "liquefied" them (a process that is not as simple as the"liquefy"button on your blender will have you believe).  Then, as if liquefying was not inhumane enough, we mixed the now pasty peas with some of the water they were steamed in and a bit of breast milk.  At this point the peas had passed into a food state that only one out of three of us could even possibly find appealing and, with fingers crossed, we let him try them.  The good news is, he seemed to enjoy them.  The bad news is, he enjoyed them enough to share with his bib, his clothing, his highchair...

family dinner

Our favorite new advancement is by far Calvin's new peek-a-boo playing skill, but there are two other fun ones now, too.  At his checkup on Monday, Calvin's doctor told us to go ahead and increase the number of times he got solids during the day, so now he eats when we eat, and that makes for a fun family dinner.  We are even starting to get smiles out of him while he eats, though most of the time he seems to think it's a very serious undertaking.

The second new trick of which we spoke is one that strikes fear in our hearts - he is now able to get up on all fours, and thus is that much closer to crawling!  Thankfully it is still likely that he will wait until the Christmas tree is gone, but that still means we have a lot of child proofing to do, since we have naively been putting it off.  Check out this week's (his 27th week) photos to see the sequence of pictures showing how he gets into this crawling position - it's not via the traditional tummy time lift, it's Calvin's own personal way of doing things (the doctor did describe him as willful).