Suday Morning Cooking Show

Here is an excerpt from e-baby and Jambuca's cooking show this morning. Dress code is pretty casual around here.

Bad Blogger! No Cookie for You!

I haven't been keeping up with blogging well at all lately. That's partly, as I said, because work is insane. It is also because once the kids are in bed, it's just a pain in the tookus to get on the computer and write. There's no way I can write while they're awake. Not while e-baby is in this WHY phase, at least.


So when SNG asked me whether I wanted a netbook for my birthday, my first thought was, "What the heck will I do with a netbook? I never use the other computers we already have." But then I thought about it more. Why don't I use them? Because it's too much trouble to USE THEM. A netbook would be something I could leave on my side of the bed, ready to drop on my lap and start writing at bedtime. It is super lightweight and small, so it wouldn't make me feel trapped under a machine. And it would be mine mine mine, so I could leave some things logged in so I wouldn't have to put in passwords on all my webpages which would reduce a good 40% of the annoyance of using a computer when I'm already kind of tired.

So here I am, typing a blog entry with my new netbook (yes, I know, 2 weeks before my birthday), and it's very nice. The only trouble is that they had to rearrange some keys to make them fit. There's no dedicated End key; you have to Fn-PgDn. And PgDn is not in the right place. The touchpad is a poor design. But I'll get used to it, and maybe I'll start posting regularly again.

What is up with the alphafamily?
E-baby is getting close to her birthday and has been pracicing on her bike a lot. She can balance really well and is nearly ready for a pedal bike-- once she gets tall enough. I want to get her a trailer bike in the meantime, but SNG is nervous about her falling off. He wants to get her a teeeeeny custom painted Madone.

Jambuca continues to be fat and happy. He is doing really well with solids. Maybe too well. He dives into his baby food like a heroin junkie, especially sweet potatoes.

I'm looking at the triathlon series for next year and trying to decide which ones to do. I'm planning on a relay with 2 of my cousins (I got stuck doing the run- dangit!:-) and 2 friends from work are going to train with me for another sprint or two as well. No international distance races this time. Sprint tris are like a fun, intense workout. International tris are downright uncomfortable. I can be uncomfortable at home for free, thanks.

Every year since e-baby was born I've said that I'm going to do triathlon again "next year" and I still haven't done it. Wish me luck in getting my schedule in order to do it this time!

Commute Conversation

e-baby: 'What are these strings on my toy butterfly?'
me: 'Antennas'
e: 'Lantana?'
m: 'No, lantana are flowers. Antennas are on bugs.'
e: 'Butterflies eat the pollen on the lantana'
m: 'That's right'
e: 'What are antennas?'
m: 'They're like fingers for a bug.'
e: 'Like spiders?'
m: 'No, spiders have legs. Bugs have legs and antennas.'
e: 'But I'm talking about spiders.'
m: 'Spiders have 8 legs.'
e: 'Like octopuses!'
m: 'That's right'
e: 'Do octopuses eat spiders?'
m: 'I bet they would if they could'
e: 'Octopuses eating the snake with the spider in his mouth! Would that be a good plan?'
m: 'That would be an excellent plan!'

Never a dull moment.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Half a Year and a Half Bithday Party

Jambuca is 6 months old today. Six months is an important milestone-- he got to have "real" food for the first time (baby rice cereal) and everyone else had some half-birthday cake.

Since I've been so quiet in blogland lately, thanks to an insane amount of stuff going on at work and at home, there's not much record of what he's been doing the past few months. So in honor of the big half-birthday achievement, here are some highlights (nothing here is unusual for a regular 6-month-old baby, but I like to have a record of these things, and the blog is a good way to do that).

Jambuca is a very different kind of baby than his venerable big sister. Both of them are perfect to me, but I am glad that I had her first and him second, because he is one of those babies that fools people into thinking they're baby-whisperers. He's a parent-whisperer. I'm pretty sure he will get away with a lot more than e-baby will.

He's a very jovial fellow and laughs at everything, especially in anticipation of something funny or a tickle. Anticipatory baby laughs are the best. He likes to see himself in the mirror and busts out in belly laughs that seem to say "Damn, looka' me! I'm a HANDSOME little fella! WOO mama, look at me workin' it."

He's interested in toys, where "toys" are anything that can be grabbed and shoved into his mouth. Examples include straws, coffee cups, my hair, e-baby's hair, a nose, a shirt, a washrag, a teddy bear, a carseat strap, the railing of the crib... you get the idea. If he can see it, he'll mouth it. That reminds me-

He's trying so hard to be mobile. He can easily push up onto hands and knees, but for now getting to stuff is mostly a matter of rolling around. He rolls around a lot because while he can sit upright, and he can play with a toy, he cannot, it seems, do both at the same time. He ends up rolling on the floor eventually anyway.

He is also very, very interested in eating. When he got to try cereal for the first time this evening, it rocked his tiny little world. He made some faces that suggested he had NO idea WHAT had just happened or how to take the news, but he kept coming back for more food, so it wasn't all bad.

I've included some pictures of the shin-dig on Flickr here.

And here's a bonus video of e-baby singing to her baby brother and helping him with the candle.