Baby’s First Thanksgiving

 Picture taken before (homemade) applesauce was rubbed into his hair!

  We had a good Thanksgiving.  We started the day with Richie’s first bike ride.  He enjoyed wearing his helmet and was amazingly tolerant of the trailer.  By “tolerant” I mean that he rapidly fell asleep and slept through the ride, the park, and the ride home.  Anthony rode behind Daddy on the one-wheel bike while I towed the trailer.  It was nice being out on bikes as a family!

  Anthony was a super helper for Thanksgiving dinner.  He made the cranberry sauce, helped with both pies and made the whipped cream.  He even ate some dinner this year, the cranberry sauce, the apple sauce and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.  (I think he tasted the mashed potatoes.)

  Richie ate a few bites of turkey, rubbed apple sauce in his hair and rejected the mashed potatoes.  When we had leftovers today he rubbed the potatoes in his hair.

Christmas Lights

 Every year Vasona Park puts on an amazing display of Christmas lights.  Normally it is a drive through, with an enormous line.  We went a few years ago with Ciaran and while we enjoyed the lights, driving through a park looking at lights wasn't really my thing.

  This year in celebration of the 15th anniversary of the display, Vasona had a walk-through evening.  It might be before Thanksgiving, but I was excited to take the boys to the amazing lights display. 

  We had a great time.  The excitement started with a school bus ride from a nearby church.  The walk was a little over a mile and Anthony was oohing at the lights the whole way.  He particular enjoyed his walk through the "Dinosaurs Den."  (Not sure why dinos are part of holiday lights, but its a tradition.)  We even got to take our picture with a dinosaur in a Santa hat.  Anthony took his sweatshirt off to show that dinosaur his dinosaur shirt.

  We waited in line for awhile for a visit with Santa.  Anthony "knew" this wasn't the REAL Santa, his beard wasn't real.  Richie was an amazingly good sport about the whole thing!

Tide Pools

 I'd wanted to take Anthony tidepooling for ages, but low tides were always at really inconvenient times.  Today the stars (well, moon) were in alignment and there was a low tide in the middle of the afternoon.

  It was a long walk out to the reef (a good mile), but Anthony was a real trooper.  Richie happily rode on my back in the ergo and took a little nap while we walked.  Anthony LOVED the tide pools.  He particularly liked poking all the sea anemone and looking for hermit crabs.  He also enjoyed playing in the water, in his jeans and tennis shoes.  (Daddy brought the car back as close as he could, so Anthony only had to walk half a mile back.)

  Richie loved playing in the sand.  He thought crawling in it was fun and happily played "chase the seagull".  Yes, he did have to taste the sand, too, even though I told him it wasn't very good.

Gingerbread Man

"The blue bag" is a weekly kindergarten homework assignment.  Every week Anthony chooses a new book from the selection to read and write a book report.  We read the book 2 days in a row, and then on the third day Anthony draws a picture about the story and writes a sentence about it.  (Dictating the sentence and then copying it is okay, too.)  He normally picks books we already have (Madeleine, Olivia, The Mitten) or stories he's quite familiar with. 

This week's book was "The Gingerbread Man" so in honor of the story we made gingerbread cookies.  Anthony enjoyed decorating them with raisins, but was a bit peeved that I wouldn't let him put frosting on them, too.  I was feeling a bit traditional and didn't really need to increase his sugar intake. 

We took several cookies to his favorite vendors at the Farmer's Market on Sunday.  It seemed more than overdue to repay their kindness to Anthony.  "Apple Lady" (aka Donna) was particularly pleased!

Anthony's Theatrical Debut

Saturday I took Anthony to see the CTC's production of "I don't want to go to bed."  As part of it, the "child" imagines how bedtime should be, playing with Mommy and Daddy instead of going to bed.  One of the games they played was "The three little pigs" and they brought children on stage to help be props.  Anthony desperately wanted to go on stage, fortunately he made it in as a brick.  His role wasn't quite as large as the sticks and straw, who got to blow down, but he was thrilled!

10 Months Old!

 Pudgers turned 10 months old on Halloween!

  At his check-up a few weeks ago he weighed in at 18 lb 3 oz and was 27” long.  He’s still holding steady at 25% for weight and 10% for height.

  His latest trick is standing all by himself.  He can’t do it for more than 2-3 seconds, but he keeps practicing.  He will do proper babbling, too.  Nice long chains of ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.  That’s his favorite, but I’ve heard all the other consonants, too.

  He’s also gotten much better about sleeping.  He’s only slept through the night twice, but he’s remembered how to go back to sleep after his bottle.  For the past two months he’s been waking up between 4 and 5.  Then he doesn’t want to go back to sleep by himself, so he ends up in our bed.  (We can’t have him waking up Anthony.)  Thirty minutes of playtime later he’d be back asleep and Bob and I would be done for the night.  Now we feed him, he goes back down, but then fusses for about 2 seconds before he rolls over and goes back to sleep.

His favorite foods are the “toasty carbohydrate” group—toast, graham crackers, and pancakes and the “sweet and squishy” food group—bananas, pears, and melon.  He did chow down on Safeway turkey meatloaf a few nights ago, so his diet is rapidly expanding.      

Lost His First Tooth!

 Anthony lost his first tooth today.  Unfortunately, he lost it in pretty spectacular fashion.  He took a bad fall off the jungle gym and landed face first in the wood chips.  He knocked out his tooth, which was ready to go, and did a real number on his lip, I counted at least five cuts.  Unclear where the tooth went, I assume he swallowed it.

  He wasn’t too concerned with the tooth fairy most of the evening, I think he was too busy being upset with his hurt lip.  Poor little thing.  We did write a letter to her and put that under his pillow.  I’m fairly confident she will find the missing tooth and give Anthony his prize.

  I’m working on getting adjusted to his new smile.  Its stunningly different!