memorial day weekend

babies love cheerios. no joke. they are small, easy to dissolve in the mouth and not too sticky in the hands (nice for parents). this is thomas in march. as you can see - he had learned by that time that O's can be enjoyed anywhere, any time, in almost any position. of course if you click on the pic - you'll see in detail that the O's get everywhere, including smeared on clothes, when they are accidentally removed from mouth.


this last weekend - he just discovered that he can shovel them into his mouth with the aid of small open bowls. more efficient than trying to get handfuls into your mouth. at that size, a handful constitutes only 3-4 at a time.

and he multi-tasks.... eating o's from the bowl, while walking, while batting a balloon around. it starts really early, that whole driving, changing CD's, while talking on cellphone thing.

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Hope you all had a nice memorial day weekend with family and friends! William was in PA on a business trip from Thursday to Monday evening, but his flight arrived a little early so thomas and i got to welcome daddy home at the bart station almost an hour earlier than expected. always a nice surprise!
William's mom helped watch thomas most of Friday and Saturday which was a huge help. it allowed me to go to my dr's ap on friday and run a bunch of errands on both days. Sunday was a busy day! we had a wonderful "home" church service at Daphne & Lawrence's house. there were 8 adults, plus the pastor's 2 big kids, the mui children and thomas. it was a wonderful, homey, intimate service. we all had lunch/bbq together and broke at around 2pm.
Thomas was so sleepy by then that he fell asleep on the car ride home - which was less than 2 miles. he didn't even bother to wake up when i transfered him.

That night we went over to the neighbors for another bbq. i spent most of the night chasing thomas around their house. he got to stay up until 9:30! and he got to try a piece of fruit cookie, topped with blueberry sauce and cream cheese. needless to say, as soon as he got a taste of it, he was demanding more with a wide open mouth. "Aaaauck! aaa!" like a hungry, mad little baby bird. although he was definitely not hungry - he was stuffed full of 7-layer dip, baked beans, mac&cheese casserole, a little bbq rib and spanish rice. he was definitely not hungry. maybe he discovered his 2nd stomach reserved for sweets. :)

years flying by

Happy birthday to William - that's 37 years. THIRTY SEVEN. only 3 years away from f-o-u-r-t-y. ha ha...
we celebrated with 2 of his best friends from college, darren & dorris, and a surprise visit from thomas' auntie jenny and her friend, jason.


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thomas' new trick for the week - adho mukha svanasana - aka the downward facing dog, an all body stretch & strengthening pose. sometimes his stance is a tad off, but he enjoys the many benefits of yoga greatly. including being able to see things upside down.


a ha! perfect alignment! :)

satisfying a craving

since my friend mrs. happy beginnings is always making me hungry with pics of the delicious food that she and her hubby cook, i decided it was payback time. i had a craving this week for a proper english breakfast. so i got some scones (trader joe's blueberry and cranberry orange) and whipped up some heavy cream. if you have never had freshly whipped cream, it is like nothing else. highly recommended to go with ANY bread or fruit. had the most delicious breakfast with thomas on thursday. we enjoyed the scones with a cup of wild sweet orange tea. scrumptious!
actually i made enough whipped cream for friday so we pigged out today too. thomas finished almost one whole blueberry scone all by himself. scary because each one is 320 calories.

after eating two and a half - i was completely stuffed and fairly lethargic. we both napped over 2 hours together yesterday and today. :)
thomas golden rule #4: big snacks are good right before big naps!

Thomas is definitely a boy

this is so gross. i was talking on the phone to a friend and thomas ran up to me with a naughty little look on his face, his jaw, chewing away. i immediately tried to get my finger between his lips. he squeezed his mouth together and dashed under the table. i scooted down there and snagged his leg. this caused him to turn around and laugh/squeal so i could see something that looked like bits of old dried up broccoli in his mouth. he zipped up again and in the next instance, swallowed. *#%&* GREAT!!!
i got closer and asked him to open again sternly. this time he opened very obediently (so cute like a little birdy mouth). there were two little black things that i managed to scrape off his tongue with my finger.


it definitely was not broccoli. as you can see, he ate a bug. it was one of those snakey, nasty, pincher bugs. GROSS! the two pieces i fished out were the head, and the pincher butt. everything else went down the hatch. ugh!! along with the nose picking and the avid climbing, i know i have the makings of a full-fledged little boy on my hands. just hope he doesn't try to eat a worm or snail. p.s. it was william's insistance that i record the pieces for posterity. :D

------------more on bug eating-------------

since vijay has provided me with a proper name for the nasty that thomas chewed up, i looked it up and found a picture of the earwig. note that the pincher butt part i got out of thomas looked exactly like the one on the right. so my only consolation is that it was not able to pinch him before he started chewing it up. UGH!!!
double UGH!!!

Happy Mother's Day!

A wonderful Mother's day to all mom's and MOMS-TO-BE!!

Here is a harmonica song from Thomas to you...since he can't sing yet.



And a special mother's day gift from Thomas to aaa-a-aaa-a-alllll YOU:


he will gladly pick your nose free of charge as well.

thinking about babies

thomas is bigger than mr. frog now and likes to squash his face into the froggy belly. last week, he perfected leveraging his head as a counterweight to get onto our bed. scsi has no refuge on our bed now. thomas likes to get up there and do belly/face flops, just WHAM! face straight into the bed. it actually looks like it should be uncomfortable, but he keeps doing it, so it must be fun.


one thing we have noticed is that after having thomas, we started to really care about the things he is exposed to, esp. chemicals. we really didn't care when it was just us. we used the whole gamut of household cleaners and solvents. but babies are a different story. as parents, you have this overwhelming need to protect them!

we started by switching over from 409/pinesol/clorox, to "simply green" cleaners from Trader Joe's. once we put the hardwood bamboo flooring in, we started using vinegar to clean everything. that stuff is great by the way. you dilute it in water and it will clean almost anything in your house. it is natural, safe for everyone. now i am looking for natural substitutes for windex and that Scrubbing Bubbles bathroom cleaner. they work so well, i love using them, but they have lots of chemicals that really aren't good for us to breath in.
if you are interested, for you baby or for your own health, they have a list of unsafe chemicals and safer alternatives at: http://es.epa.gov/techinfo/facts/safe-fs.html
It is part of the US EPA's website.


--------------scary how fast they are growing--------------------

I hear "i don't know how you do it, being home all the time." from working moms quite a bit. i actually used to think i would just go back to work and use day care. i liked working and liked what i was doing. i miss the daily people interaction and of course, making money is always nice. but once thomas was born, when it came down to it, i quit because i felt that this time would be relatively brief (5-7 years) and that i would never have their formative years back. so i chose to stay at home. we tightened down our budget (ouch) and there are definitely bad days when my arm is permanently cramped into place from holding him and i can't think of anything i would rather do than dump him on william.
there is just no easy way for today's working woman. you either sacrifice your child, or your sacrifice your career. it sucks either way. big time. dads really have it sooo much easier.
but overall, it has been so worth it staying at home, that smile gets me every time. yesterday, he ran to me for a hug and kissed me spontaneously. i hugged him back and said "i love you thomas" twice. then i promptly started to cry. so sappy!!! when i told william about my sappiness, he got a little sappy at work too. :)

the pictures we try to take a few times a week also show how fast this time is going by. you never really know what you have until you see the pics on your computer nice and big. these next two pics made me stop in amazment. i just feel like his adult face is almost staring out at me. crazy!! a fellow patron at the local pastry shop said that she has a 16 yr old and that certain expressions he makes still remind her of him when he was a baby. i am so glad that it works in reverse too. i guess that is why our parents always treat us like kids. that is what they see!

but then you catch a look or a pose that reminds you he is still a baby. the way his top lip puckers out in concentration, the way he uses his feet - like a little monkey. that is my favorite nickname for him right now.


he discovered a week or two ago that he can hang from things (like mom and the kitchen island). he also discovered that the cat tree is climbable. YIKES!!! i mean double yikes! i was at the computer and thomas was really quiet. then he started grunting in exertion a little. when i turned around, this is what i saw:

he did manage to get both feet onto that second level before i plucked him off AND he did carry that stool over from the kitchen... smart toddlers...

another benefit of brown rice

www.treehugger.com/brown_rice_is_green

Brown rice is not only better for you, it is greener!

Also, if you use Google, try: google-black
It saves a little energy and if more people use it, it could save a lot. - Ops! william just read the fine print and it doesn't apply to LCD screens. Savings are only for CRT's. oh well...