Shrek the Halls...

Tonight on ABC at 8pm you can watch Shrek the Halls, our holiday special. Unfortunately due to the tv format my name won't be listed but I'll make it on the dvd.

It has been getting good reviews and of course includes the dronkeys.

I'm Thankful for Momma's Boobies

You might say that Thanksgiving isn't too exciting for a 5 month old. After all, Thanksgiving is a holiday based on the gluttonous consumption of solid foods.



But we chose this Thanksgiving to introduce RJ to the wonderful world of solid foods. Rice Cereal certainly isn't Duck or Stuffing or Pumpkin Pie, but it's a start. Plus, since he's breastfed, he got all the Thanksgiving goodies reconstituted anyway.

Here is a video of his first "big boy" meal. Feeding a baby is never a clean and orderly undertaking, but I was actually impressed with the amount of cereal that made it to his tummy rather than his face or the bib or the tray. He seemed really ready for the experience.

How did we know he was ready? Well, the incessant reaching for our food and pouting when he didn't get it was a clue. For the last few weeks, he has been really interested in our food and his teachers reported that he was very interested in the other children's snacks. Interest is usually a good indicator that a child is developmentally ready for solids. He has also started teething. He drools and chews on everything (our thumbs, his toys, even his own feet). We haven't seen any pearly whites yet, but all signs point to them showing up sometime in the not-to-distant future. And he's been sitting more and more independently by the day, which is another prerequisite to eating solid food in the high chair. So all signs were pointing to solid foods, which our pediatrician had said that we could start when RJ showed interest. We originally had wanted to wait until he was 6 mos. old, which is the general recommendation of the AAP for exclusively breastfed babies, but we wanted to start before heading across the country for the holidays, so that we weren't introducing something new while traveling. Plus, he was so interested, that we figured starting slow, with only a little would be good for him.

More Thanksgiving Pics here:

Michele's Visit

The week before Thanksgiving, we had a much welcomed house guest! Michele (one of my favorite sorority sisters) was presenting at a conference in nearby Monterey and spent a few days with us and getting to know RJ.

We took RJ to our neighborhood park one afternoon and visited a Livermore winery on another.





On one of our days around town we went to Berkeley. We went to Bette's Ocean View for brunch and Kirala for dinner. Along the way RJ had a meal at the Berkeley Bowl Super Market and our most exciting adventure was a hunt for tree people. What are tree people you ask?

For those who haven't heard, here is an article on the latest developments to the story that has entertained us for a year now. UC Berkeley wants to build a new sports complex, but to do so required cutting down a couple trees. Being Berkeley, people have been living in the trees for the past year to protect them. If I was at Berkeley, I totally would've joined them! It looked like so much fun to camp out in a tree. It came up in the news again recently when somebody fell out of one as described on SFist:

"He was trying to get out of the tree, via a traverse line, to visit his poppa waiting down below. But it seems that he was not, in fact, on the line, and then took a nasty fall while trying to ride the non-existent traverse. Ouch. According to NBC 11, "Hill said although he does not want to place blame he believes the accident would not have happened if the university had not put up a fence around the grove." Oh, come now. One, if Hill hadn't been 40 feet up high in a tree to begin with, succumbing to the temptations of gravity, he wouldn't have fallen. Two, he "thought he was connected to a traverse line but he was mistaken." So? It's your fault, you sexy, klutzy bear."
As always clicking on the pictures leads you to more pictures in the album.

RJ's First Halloween

RJ is one lucky boy. He actually got to have TWO Halloween costumes, thanks to our good friends at Target and UPS. Delivered in 3-5 days, yeah right! The tracking said that the costume spent two days in Oakland (~45 miles away from us) before going out for delivery! So on Monday night, on the eve of RJ's Halloween parade at school, Lance stopped at a costume store and picked up a chili pepper.

Even though it was not our first choice of costumes, it apparently was the, "best costume in the class". According to Teacher Amanda, it was apparently a big hit among the many campus departments visited by his Infant/Toddler class.

Then finally on Halloween, his "real" costume arrived, just in time for Trick or Treating. He was a Dronkey. If you're saying, "A what??? he's a drunk? huh?" then clearly you didn't pay attention when you were helping Lance get his bonus by watching Shrek the Third last May. A Dronkey is the offspring of Dragon and Donkey, who fell in love during the first Shrek and apparently had babies by the time Shrek the Third rolled around. He was taken Trick or Treating by Silent Bob and Momma, who wore Shrek ears but didn't dress up because she had a killer cold and didn't have the energy to.

He even held his own little bag that his teachers at school made him.

And he got a good amount of loot even though we took him to only a few of our neighbors.
For the rest of the Halloween pictures, click here or on any of the pictures in the blog.