Interacting with your baby can be fun!

We came to New Jersey for Robby's 10-year high school reunion & Thanksgiving with Dad & Nancy. We had a delicious Thanksgiving meal cooked by Nancy. It had all the Thanksgiving-meal staple dishes: turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, etc. The baby ate a little turkey with his avocado.

We've been re-exploring New Providence with the baby. It's such a small town that Robby keeps running into acquaintances in the local stores and shopping centers. He misses this small-town feeling. I'm stuck in the hotel room working on my term papers due next week. I have two papers due on Friday, so I have to keeping working until they're done.

Atticus is a trooper. He gets hauled in & out of the carseat. He eats whatever we feed him. We've run out of baby food, so we feed him whatever is on the dinner table (most anything mushy & dairy-free). He sleeps when we put him down. He has been babysat for twice already (once by Nina's parents & once by Dr. Feinberg), so he has had to wake up at 11pm when we pick him up. He has been absolutely easy.

Back to work!

He follows directions!

At the dinner table, we shout, "Arms up!" in English and in Chinese. When Atticus raises his arms, we give hug and kiss him and give positive reinforcement. He shoots his arms up & calls out to us, expecting kisses. We gasp in feigned surprise & laugh and kiss him.

If you're on the babygroup list, you can see a video of this new exercise.

Our interactions have changed so dramatically in the past week. He now looks at us differently...with a look of expectation. We can communicate him in a more complex way (as complex as we can with a 9-month old). We exchange sounds and responses now, which is SO nice! No longer do we coo at his expressionless face. No longer do we work up a sweat trying to eek out a laugh or a smile from him.

Yay.

He crawls!

Forward!

Atticus has been crawling backward for the past few weeks. Yesterday at daycare was the first time I watched him crawl forward towards me!

It looks a little strange because instead of being on all fours, one knee is up with him leg planted on the ground.

He's mobile!

Atticus's First Number

Atticus got his first digits tonight.

I had been driving home from work when I heard a restaurant review on NPR by Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer Prize winning food critic from the LA Weekly. He reviewed a new restaurant in Culver City called the A Frame. I called Robby up & we decided to check it out. The chef also started the phenomenal chain of Kogi trucks, which are famous for its Korean tacos. The food at A Frame was delicious: soft crab cakes, grilled lamp chops, & a lemongrass clam chowder. We also met the chef/owner & got to compliment on the food.

The hostess of the restaurant was so enamored by the Boy that she volunteered to babysit him & gave us her number. She carried him for a bit while we finished our dessert & told Robby that she lived at an ashram in India with her hippy mom when she was a child. Cool stuff. We're glad we got a chance to enjoy this restaurant before it gets pretentious.

Approaching 9 months...

Atticus is almost 8 months and 3 weeks.

He can go from lying position to sitting-up position by pushing himself backward & tucking on leg underneath his body. He can lean forward on both hands & prop himself up on his hands and knees. He is dying to crawl & almost there. When he pushes forward, he lands on his belly - legs and knees up in the air - & looks like a sunbathing whale.

Just in the past few days, he has begun yelling out for attention, we assume. He contorts his face (one eye squinting) & opens his mouth loudly... "Ahhh!" Robby thinks he has learned this from his classmates in day care who shout out for attention.

Yesterday, he began clapping his hands. I'm not sure he's doing it deliberately, though. He also started lifting both arms up.

Our baby boy is getting so big!

Happy Halloween!

This year was Atticus's first Halloween!

Our rigid & packed schedule doesn't allow us to participate in social events, so we decided to throw a little party in the backyard. Also, we were too busy to cook, so we made it a pot luck.

Robby dressed up as a chef, I was a waitress, & the boy was broccoli in a pot. Then he peed while I was changing his diaper & got his costume & my costume wet.

Our party started at 2pm & ended at 5pm. Afterward, we took a short walk around the neighborhood to see all the activity. There were some elaborate displays with sound effects, strobe lights, & animatronics. One house even had a few actors leaping onto trick-or-treaters as they traipsed toward the front door for candy. One neighbor created a haunted house in his backyard. I didn't have the guts to walk through it, but Robby did, & he said it was pretty scary.

Next year, we'll go trick-or-treating & really enjoy being out among the ghouls and ghosties.