Adbentures in our Ban

It was a typical busy weekend at the Naegle household.  Saturday we went to a friends house in the ebening for Dabis to play with his buddy Luca.  They had great fun in a small pool and playing trains and trucks in the same space.  Sunday we went swimming at our neighbors house in the morning then spend most of the hot day inside before heading to Whittle's Train Shop (a hobby gone horribly wrong as they explain it) in the early ebening.  Today, we trecked to the Missouri Botanical Gardens in the morning then again spent most of the day inside, with a few bentures outside to play in the sprinkler.   I also got in a run with Dabis; Kristen made two solo shopping trips and we gabe Alex and Eban their first bites of "solid food".

Here are a few pictures from the weekend and last week.  The v->b switch in this post is brought to you by Dabis.

Alex and Eban watching Dabis swim in the pool

Dabis swimming by himself

Dabis at the train store

Botanical Gardens

Botanical Gardens

Botanical Gardens

Botanical Gardens

Botanical Gardens

Botanical Gardens

Drums at the Botanical Gardens

Lilly is a little crazy sometimes

Alex

Eban

Eban would really like to get this whole toy in his mouth

Sprinkler time in the back yard

Sprinkler time in the back yard

Sprinkler time in the back yard

Sprinkler time in the back yard

Sprinkler time in the back yard

Alex before first contact

Alex before first contact

First bite

Rejected!

Dabis really wanted to gibe Alex his first bite

Dabis gabe him the first bite, then let him habe the spoon

At last, a phone

Last Sunday morning, we were greeted with a complete failure of our phone and internet, a week later, and we have now switched providers and have a phone and internet! (Knock on wood, after all, it's only been 12 hours). Ironically, or at least I think it's ironic, but now I'm not sure after Alanis Morisette if I understand irony truly, we had to dial 9-1-1. At some point in John's ventures with the previous phone/internet company who was telling him at the time it would be three days before they could come out to look at it, at any point in a 13 hour time frame, John asked "Are you kidding, but what will I do if I have to dial 9-1-1, I don't have a phone??" From only hearing his side of the conversation, I had to fill in, in my head, with "How are you talking to me now?" Anyway, tonight, while we were enjoying root vegetable soup and watching Davis eat his steamed parsnips and squash, I saw flames from across the street. It was hard to tell, but it seemed like there was a fire in the house a few rows in on the street perpindicular to ours, on the back porch. We could both tell it seemed a little more like a B-B-Q and less like a house on fire, but I didn't want to take any chances, so I called it in. Turns out, it's illegal, so regardless of the fact that it did indeed turn out to be a B-B-Q (which John found out by going over ther), on the back porch of the second story, they had to send a truck out anyway. I'm sure we have one pissed-off neighbor, but I feel better knowing that if it had been a fire, we could have saved their house, and anyone inside it. At least now, that guy won't be bbq'ing at night.

We've had a very relaxing weekend, including some monster naps from Davis! Davis is continuing to amaze us daily. Today, he and Dad, walked across the living room. Also, while I was singing the 'itsy bitsy spider' to Davis he started to make the movements with his hand of a spider going up the water spout, at both the beginning and end! It was amazing! Both of his top teeth have broken through, for a total of four teeth, and we think some better sleep at night.

I think we are all looking forward to our first Chirstmas together as a family. John and I are now talking about what we want our tradition to be, and I think we each have a hard time imagining something different than what we had growing up. I will be taking Wednesday afternoon off and Thursday off with Davis. My paper is finally coming to it's final draft, so I can sit back and relax the holiday for a short bit, before I need to get moving on another piece of work that is due for conference abstract in mid-January.

Today, we recieved about 8" of snow. John and I took turns shoveling, and with our downstairs neighbor (yay!). It was a reward to shovel, it was a first since before I was pregnant. With our working internet, I plan to work from home tomorrow and go cross country skiing at lunch, near Mystic River, just a couple of blocks from our door.

Wait..didn't you just start crawling?

Davis showed his first official signs of tummy-off-the-floor-crawling just a couple of days ago. Yesterday, he stood! He crawled over to me and I gave him my hands when he started to crawl up me. He stood up with the support of my hands. I found out today that he stood up with the assistance of a chair at daycare earlier this week. He sure is growing and developing quickly. Here are a few other highlights from this week:

• Inspired by the book Hungry Monkey, recommended reading by our friend Brian, we have been feeding Davis our dinners. A couple of nights ago he had lentils, sauteed veggies, and steamed spinach blended (we pulled out the veggies before they were glazed in wine). The night before that was sweet potato quesadilla filling, complete with cumin and coriander. Tonight was root vegetable soup, a big hit!
• We tried giving Davis small chunks of steamed carrot. It was a a blast to push around on his plate, but not much made it into his mouth. Well, none at all actually.
• Tonight he ate some baby puff cereal. He not only enjoyed playing with it, but managed to eat a few puffs. The puffs are made mostly from rice, which soften with moisture and therefore don't present a serious choking hazard. As Grandma predicted, the cats are enjoying hanging out under the highchair where food might drop at any moment. Domino liked the rice puffs more than Lilly did.
  
• Sitting is no problem at all. I tried to put him down for a nap yesterday. He was almost completely asleep and as soon as I put him in his crib, he shot up to a sitting position.
  
• This one is more of a parental development milestone. We picked up a changing table, for free, from the Arlington Parent's list. We realized our struggles with changing him on the floor probably stem from the fact that the floor is play-zone! Already, things are going better on the changing table.
• In addition to hi and da, Davis has said ba and ra this week. We've heard ra only once, but he's definitely working on b's.
• Hugs! Davis is hugging! I don't think there's anything better in the world than a baby hug. When I picked him up from daycare on Tuesday I was showered with hugs and kisses. We're working on the kisses, which currently consist of an open mouth pressed against your cheek. They are wet.
  

Happy 6-month birthday Davis

Davis is six months old today! We went to the same arts and craft store today as we did on the day I was in labor to get some knitting needles for a hat for Davis. John remarked how interesting it was that we could know exactly where we were six months before. Six months is a fun milestone in the baby food timeline. Davis has now graduated from single food types, to mix food types. We now have things available to us like: corn AND butternut squash, green beans AND rice. I'm still making the majority of his food, but the jars give us a chance to try some stuff out before we invest a lot of time in making it. Top foods: Carrots, applesauce, and peas (but not split peas apparently). In addition to food, it's incredible the skills Davis has developed: commando crawling, sitting, eating on his own with a spoon (about a 25% target success rate), new vocalizations, rolling (I mean rolling, like whenever he wants, wherever he wants), swapping toys between hands, and memory. There's no such thing anymore as distracting him with something else. If he was after the cord on the baby monitor, you can't just hide it and show him a bear or an elephant..no, nothing will do but the cord. Also, cat feet and tails are excellent fun. Amazingly, Domino hasn't learned that there's a pretty unique giggle that immediate preceeds his tail being grabbed. He may one day...hopefully soon. I can tell that Domino is fighting an internal battle between his wanting to be near people and his NOT wanting to be near a flapping, squealing, grabbing Davis. One day, I know they will be great buddies.

Life has been incredibly busy lately, busy to the point that I can't remember to do basic things, like get my flu shot .. hm, and there was something else. Davis has been doing much better this week, it seems his fussy behavior was more likely due to a cold than to teething, since he's doing much better now but doesn't have any new teeth. John and I are very excited for the three-day weekend (John is taking off Columbus day from work). Yesterday, we went for a hike with our friend Dave and then had friends Bill and Sonya over for dinner (and more importantly, for one of Sonya's homemade desserts). Today, we went apple picking again, since my favorite apples are Mutsu, and weren't yet in season the last time we went. Turns out they STILL aren't in season, we were a week to two early. However, we had a nice time enjoying the gorgeous weather. Pictures from the weekend (so far) here. We went to a farm that we had visited last year when Grammie Jill was in town. John and I remember it quaintly, having yummy apple cider donuts, candied apples and a petting zoo. Well, we're not sure when exactly we went last year, but this year was quite different. The entire place was a zoo. We were able to pick apples since the fields are so big, but the line for candied apples and the shop were crazy. We picked our apples and headed out. The drive was gorgeous though, the beginning of fall is definitely here!

Tomorrow we get to take brunch to our friends the Apgars (baby Liam Apgar is only one month old and older brother Mack is a year older than Davis). We haven't seen them since just after Liam was born and they'll be moving soon to Conneticut. We don't know what we'll do with the rest of the day, maybe go downtown? What is for certain is that we will be waging an all out war with Indian Meal moths. We've been going at battling them for a while now, one infected bag of oatmeal/beans at a time. But now, now it's personal. No dried fruit will be left unturned, or corner unswept. Meal moths watch out, now I know it's either the freezer or the oven for you!

Teeth: The better to eat apples with

We've had a busy, but the good kind of busy, weekend here at the Naegle household (of course, one of many Naegle households). Saturday we got to see our friends Vasu and Rachana for brunch (we made pancakes they made idli. We subsequently bought idli dough at our local Indian shop and they now know how to make pancakes)! Then last night, our friends AJ and Susan came over for dinner (and of course they brought their killer chocolate pudding and a fantastic Belgian beer). That visit was bittersweet as Susan is moving to San Francisco in early October, followed by AJ in December/January (although, the idea is we slowly move all our friends to the west coast and then we follow...Megan might be looking at postdocs in Seattle ;)

Today, we went for our fifth year in a row (we think we've gone every year), to the Brookdale fruit farm in Hollis, NH to pick apples. Unfortunately, it was very early season, so several of our favorite varieties weren't quite ripe (so we'll have to go again!). This was a fantastic opportunity to get together with some yoga mom friends I had made on maternity leave. It's a really fantastic group of women and of all the groups I had participated in over maternity leave, this one I really feel connected to and want to keep in touch with. Also, for the first time, John got to meet them and we got to meet their spouses! Below are the 'girls', left-most is Siri and her Dad Dave (mom not pictured is Jarasa), then Scott and Charlotte are center (mom Tara) and on the right is Jane, the oldest of the group (mom Edua and Dad John). Davis is quite a bit younger, Siri and Charlotte are two weeks apart and are about 7.5-8months and Jane is 9months. I think the thing I realized today that was so refreshing is that for the first time I have met non-scientists/engineers in the last five years (ok, a couple are scientists/engineers, but one is an architect, one an architecture photographer, a clinical psychologist and a business analyst)!

We tried Davis out in the backpack we had bought when I was about 36-weeks pregnant. He loved it! It was great that he could pick trees while Dad picked apples.













It went so well today, that we hope to hike next weekend (more like a walk in the woods..but it's a start).

The biggest news of the weekend (aside from me actually trying on a pair of pre-pregnancy pants and then subsequently wearing them, oh and that the University of Washington BEAT 3rd ranked USC) is that Davis has a first tooth! His lower right front tooth has broken the surface! He's also eating like a champ now. Tonight he scarfed down an entire serving of carrots in just a couple of minutes. We followed this up with some bubbles, which he LOVED and Lilly HATED. We also got to talk to Grammie on Skype. So you can see it was a big weekend for all of us, and the picture below pretty much sums up how we feel now.

"Solid" Food

We've been introducing "solid" food to Davis for some time now. So far he has sampled peas, sweet potatoes, bananas, carrots apple sauce, rice cereal and combinations of those. Results have been varied. How much he eats really seem mood dependent, but he does seem to like freshly made foods over the packaged foods you get from the store.

Here are a couple of pictures of one of our recent adventures at dinner.

Often Davis gets more interested in the spoon or our hands, or the cats than eating:

The results of carrots. We think some actually went down, but we aren't sure: