Shelby's Life and Whatnot

Solid foods

So Theo's going to town on solids now. You can introduce them as young as 4 months, but we waited until 6 months. Not for any particular reason or ideology, just that it seemed convenient. The "trend" nowadays is to introduce one food at a time, 3 days apart. This is so that if there's an allergy, you know what it is. Following my laissez faire parenting style, I decided that babies have been introduced to multiple foods for thousands of years, so why change it? So far he's eaten rice cereal, oatmeal, peaches, applesauce, bananas, green beans, peas, winter squash, sweet potatoes, prunes, carrots, and a blueberry/raspberry/banana mix. He seems to like pretty much everything so far! I also tried giving him some Cheerios because they're a great finger food and they dissolve in a mouth that doesn't have any teeth. However, I put one in his mouth, he tasted it, and then started to cry. Oh well, maybe next week!

Effin' mosquitos!

I got the world's worst night sleep last night. For some reason, I attract mosquitos like nobody's business. I'm a total magnet. If there's a mosquito in the tri-state area, it will find me and bite me. Quite frequently, I'll get bitten when nobody else around me does. Plus I'm allergic to the bites so much of the time they swell up to huge welts. I'm just one of those people, and it's genetic because my dad is the same way. We could go on a family vacation and sit outside for an hour and my dad and I would be covered in mosquito bites while Mom and my brother would have maybe 1 or 2, if that. Unfortunately, I suspect Theo inherited this trait too, as a couple of months ago I noticed two bites on him. Yay.

Anyway, so last night there was this mosquito and to add insult to injury, it kept flying right next to my ear. I don't know how they manage to do that, but the little buzz buzzing was constant. I spent half the night trying to swat at it because I couldn't sleep from the buzzing alone. I don't think I ended up smacking Kevin, but if I had it wouldn't be the first time. It then bit me. I had two bites on my hand that were so agonizing I couldn't sleep. I ended up having to get up at 4am to take a Benadryl, which quelled the itch enough to sleep. It seriously sucks!

On a better note, I made a ham and cheese quiche last night and it's really good!

Yet another reason why I have a kickass husband

So Kevin installed my radio--well, let's just call it a system. Seriously, the only thing this doesn't do is wash the dishes. The main component goes into the stereo slot--it's an LCD screen. The functions are many. First, GPS! For someone who is a chronically lost as I am, GPS is like the world's greatest invention. Now let me intervene here and say that I thought about getting the deluxe model of my car (a Mazda5) but I hate leather seats and the GPS was the only other appealing thing. Okay, so we get this aftermarket system. It's got a GPS that actually attempts to say street names (kinda funny). I also have Bluetooth connectivity, so expect a call from me and my hands-free car phone soon. There's also a backup cam. Since the trunk is kind of high, there's a huge blind spot in backing up. I got spoiled with the Prius and its backup cam, and really worried about running over someone's bicycle, or worse, somebody, because the vision is so impaired. Well this backup cam just kicks ass. I mean the only thing that could possibly be in danger is if a cat were laying underneath the bumper, and any cat that lays underneath the bumper and isn't smart enough to move when the car starts up--well, let's just call that Darwinism. The system of course connects to the radio, and my convenient steering wheel controls also work. The system also has a USB input, which means that I can plug in my iPhone and not only play the music, it charges it at the same time, AND all of the iPod functionality is right there on the touch screen. I no longer need to fumble with the iPod while I'm driving. And here's something super-cool--you can drive with the map and the iPod controls on at the same time. It does some other cool stuff (plays DVD's so I can watch a movie while driving!), and it's just all-around awesome. My husband rocks!

More Theo pictures!

Click on the cute baby for a new picture gallery!

New hair and glasses!

So I have basically worn the same pair of glasses my entire adult life. No, not the exact same, but the same style year after year. Well it was time for new glasses and I finally decided to branch out a little and go modern. I actually kinda like them. They're funky on the sides too! I also got a LONG-needed haircut. My stylist (whom I love!) looked up my last appointment and it was in the beginning of March. You know you've got a great cut when you can go 5 months between cuts and it still looks partially respectable at the end. Seriously, a good stylist is worth her weight in gold. Anyway, I wanted it all chopped off--love the style and ease, and Theo has gotten very grabby lately. So here we go--new hair and glasses!

I got some new glasses today! Pictures will be forthcoming. They're very different than any style I've ever worn before, but I think they're pretty cute.

The whale pool is still not inflated *sigh*. Instead, Theo and I headed over to Sears for another fun photo session. It should come as no surprise that Theo's extremely photogenic. The photographer said he was one of the best babies she's ever worked with. And he didn't spit up all over his outfit this time! Good thing too, since this was a special outfit. It's a Winnie the Pooh outfit that Kevin wore and has a picture in. The Zach wore the same outfit. It fit Theo (although it was difficult getting his chubby arms in and out of the shirt) so we got some fabulous pictures of him as well. I'm really happy with how they turned out.

Kiddie Pool

So we bought Theo an inflatable kiddie pool thinking it would be a nice way to cool off when it gets hot, like it is right now. There were a few to choose from at Target, but I thought it would be great to go with the larger one since we'd both be able to sit in it. Plus it's shaped like a whale and has a fun spray feature. Here it is:

Unfortunately, this was a mistake. It's very big, so we had to buy a bicycle pump. I just spent an hour and a half outside blowing it up (it's too big to inflate in the house) and it's still not done. The tail part has almost no air at all. *sigh* we should have gone with the smaller one. By the time we get this thing inflated, it will be Christmas.

It's been pointed out to me that my blog has gone blank. Every time I pledge to update more frequently, I never do. So this time I won't say it :D.

Let's see, we went on our RV trip and then turned around and went tent camping. The tent camping was a BLAST. Theo charmed the pants off of everyone, which got a little embarrassing--everyone running around with no pants. He has no problems sleeping in his PeaPod which is essentially a miniature tent that the baby sleeps in. It folds down to fit in a suitcase (taking up, say, half the suitcase) which is very convenient because we plan to take it traveling (and I don't trust hotel room cribs). He slept in it on both the RV and tent vacations and did just fine. The problem with it is that it's one of those flexible frame things that pop open and then you have to twist and collapse it to get it back into the bag, and I just haven't been able to master that. It's like those car window shades that do the same thing--pop out to become circles. We had to rebend the frame a bit, but other than that, it's worked quite well.

Speaking of traveling, we're looking forward to an upcoming weekend trip to Wisconsin. My grandfather passed away in January, and at the end of this month will have his military funeral (he's a WWII vet). We are flying, so it will be Theo's first plane trip. He's getting his own seat and we'll be bringing along a new car seat. It's a Sunshine Kids Radian 80 Convertible Seat and we got it because it does this:

Okay, the skeleton part in the picture is kind of weird (is that Jason hiding in the back?) but the point is, the seat bottom folds up, and you can then carry that bad boy through the airport. Supposedly it folds up to 7 inches. It's heavy (like 22 pounds), but at this point Theo's pretty much outgrown his infant seat, so our only other option would be to buy a regular car seat and haul that thing around, and no thank you.

This will come in very handy during our trip to England and Germany in December. Woo!

Theo is also quite large. He weighs ~22 pounds and is in the 97th percentile for weight, 97th percentile for head circumferance, and 75th percentile for height, although honestly I think they measured his height incorrectly at his last visit. Either way, he completely bypassed 9 month sized clothing and is now wearing 12 months. Go Theo!

The Jehovah's Witnesses visit us frequently. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe they're getting a lot of business in this neighborhood, or maybe we have a JW neighbor who keeps turning us in. At any rate, we got a flyer letting us know that we could attend the Jehovah's Witnesses convention--3 fun-packed days! The flyer is very eye-catching, featuring an impressionist-type image of a line of people walking through the grass with joyful expressions on their faces, lead by a clean-cut man, woman, and their daughter in an easter bonnet, a woman holding the elbow of her steadfast elderly relative (whom we can only assume is her mother), and a token black couple. The skies behind them are cloudy with lightning bolts while the skies ahead of them are blue with nary a chance of rain. Toward the end of the line there's a couple with their backs turned, waving in a jaunty manner--either to friends further behind them in the line, or in a "See ya, SUCKAS" who got left behind. The bold text proclaims:

HOW CAN YOU SURVIVE THE END OF THE WORLD? YOU ARE WARMLY INVITED TO COME AND LISTEN TO THE ANSWER.

Because when I think about the end of the world, I get all warm and fuzzy inside. Don't you? And here I thought the Rapture meant that people would be flying to Heaven. Oh no, according to this brochure, it's much more like the last scene in The Sound of Music where they're hiking over the Alps to freedom. Which, incidentally, did not actually happen to the real Von Trapp family. They simply boarded a train and rode right out of town.

Anyway, we'll be giving that one a miss.

We have successfully returned home from our Great RV Adventure! We left not this past Friday but two Fridays ago--me, Kevin, Theo, Scout, Digory, and a thousand pounds of crap--packed into the grandparents' 24-foot RV. We had grand plans, but the trip turned out to be a major learning experience. Of course it took us much longer to get anywhere because we had to stop and feed the baby, which you can't do while driving, and let the dogs out, which you also can't do while driving. And the RV doesn't go 80 mph like a car does. So our timing estimates were way off.

The point of our trip was to go up to Santa Rosa for a wine event at Nalle Winery, one of our longtime favorite wineries. The event was on Sunday, and Kevin had a forced vacation last week, so we decided to make a whole tour of it. Our first day we got a very late start (wait! I forgot my medicine!) and rolled into our campground at 10:30pm. I'm sure it was a very nice campground, and on the way out at noon the next day it looked pretty cool, but we spent another billion hours on the road encountering calamities like accidentally leaving one of the ceiling vents open and having it fly off on the freeway. Oops. Fortunately there's a Camping World in Gilroy. Which closed literally 5 minutes before we rolled in. We finally reached the campground that was further than we anticipated late Saturday night.

Sunday my parents came and picked us up and we did some wine tasting and relaxed at the Nalle event. Theo did fabulously, despite the 103 degree temperature. He slept half the time and the other just entertained himself either in his stroller or our laps. The meltdown was later to come. We headed back to the campground where Kevin, Theo and I got in the pool--soooooooo refreshing--and we showed Grandma and Grampa how well we swim underwater. Then it was a cookout and meltdown. Theo capped off the evening with a spectacular vomiting episode that left Mommy soaked. Well, now we know why he was so upset.

Following that we headed up to Mendocino, one of our favorite little towns. The campground there was quite nice and we had a lovely day in Mendocino. Next was camping amidst some redwoods. This campground was ideal for the dogs, and by ideal I mean they were finally able to be out on the tie-outs without tangling and strangling each other or barking their heads off at other passing dogs. We then moved to the East Bay where we had a very fun bbq dinner with our friends Anita and Derek and their two girls Paloma (almost 2) and Sabrina (9 months). Stupidly, we totally forgot to get pictures. Next time!

Then we visited our old haunt, the South Bay. My good friend from IBM, Dorothy, hosted a BBQ at her house for my other IBM friends Hai-Nhu and Sandy, as well as our friends Wendy and Marc. There were a total of 4 kids there--Sadie (belonging to Marc and Wendy, almost 2), Evelyn (belonging to Hai-Nhu and John, also almost 2), Sarah (belonging to Dorothy and Jimmy, 18 months) and Theo! It's funny because both Sadie and Evelyn were born within two weeks of each other, and Sarah is exactly 1 year and 2 days older than Theo. It was a blast seeing all of them and the kids. The last time we visited was a year ago and the kids have all changed so much. Getting a group shot of the kids and mommies was a challenge, but I think we got some fun ones.

Disaster struck on our way home. We arrived at the campground late only to find that our spot had been given to "overflow parking" from someone else's spot. This despite the fact that we pre-paid for the site and the confirmation clearly said that they would hold it until 7am the following morning. This campground was run by the Forest Service, and what a difference that made. The others were all State Parks and were just fabulous. Clean, well-run, friendly people, respectful other campers. This one seemed to be a madhouse. Since it was too late to find the concessionaire, we just pulled off into a turnout and slept there for the night. Kevin greeted the guy in the morning, expressed our displeasure at the site last night, and told him we would be leaving (we had planned to spend the 4th there as well). We then went and took pictures of the site that was supposed to be ours so we can submit them to the credit card company if they question our charge-back. Grrrrrrrr.

All in all it was a fun trip. We'll definitely be borrowing the RV again (the grandparents were practically begging us to borrow it the first time) and now we have a much better handle on what to expect and how to prepare. Hope you all had a fun 4th!