May: Mother's Day, 4 months old, & Memorial Day

Mother's Day 2013, the view from here:

The Friday before Mother's Day, I went to Mother's Day Shabbat at Natalie's school. Actually, I arrived at Natalie's school that morning at 6am to help out with the school rummage sale. So by the mid-morning Shabbat assembly, I was pretty tired. But it was still fun.

And here's Natalie holding my Mother's Day present (skittles in the shape of a butterfly). As she reminded me, "Friends share, mommy. Friends share."

That week, her school had been studying community helpers (police, firefighters, etc.). As part of that, the kids were asked to think about what they did to help. Here's her response:

Saturday morning, I woke up to home-made baked pumpkin donuts. Decoration courtesy of Natalie, natch.

For Mother's Day itself, we hosted Mike's newly graduated thesis students and their parents for lunch. Mike made the pizzas, but I tried my hand at a chocolate cheesecake for dessert. Whenever we do these parties, my thing is to try and make the students' favorite dessert, so, well, um, I'm learning a lot! This was actually my first attempt since my cheesecake approximation that I made while we were living in Japan. This time, the cake was actually a little overdone, resulting in a firmer cheesecake - maybe something more like truffle pie. I also made some strawberry sauce to go with the cake - the sauce worked perfectly!

 Mother's Day also marked 4 months old for Jacob!

He's such a sweet, happy baby! He smiles and makes sounds and kicks his legs all around all the time. 

Lately, he's been making the motorboat sound, which is totally adorable. He's also been sucking on his hands a fair amount and drooling a lot, but no actual teeth have appeared just yet.

That's not to say he never cries. Check out this series:

And that, my friends, is four months old, all in a nutshell. If that doesn't simultaneously strike fear and love into your soul then, well, um, look again?

He still adores Natalie. She's like his rock star.

(Bit of an unorthodox outfit for the pediatrician there, but, well, you know healthcare these days. What can you do?)

He's also rolling over - not consistently, but definitely, absolutely:

And then he ends up on his stomach and he is So! Mad! because he hasn't yet figured how to roll back. So then we roll him back and then the game begins again.

He's much more aware of the world around him. He'll often beam at us with big smiles (and even throw in an occasional giggle). Here he is with Rachel.

And here he is trying to get a little snack from Mike.

At least he's a glass-full sort of optimist, right? What I love best is his crazed, determined look.

In all seriousness, Jacob is actually pretty interested in food. When we eat, he watches us and moves his mouth. I think we'll probably be starting a little infant cereal in the coming weeks.

 

Here is Jacob attending his first TCU baseball game and taking his first swim in the TCU pool:

He loved them both, clearly.

At his 4 month check-up, he was 13lbs, 4oz and 25 inches long. Big boy is growing!

 (I have clearly not mastered the art of the selfie)

We also had our good friend from Seattle, Meh, in town for Memorial Day (or Meh-morial Day?). We had fun together! Natalie, however, kept referring to her as "Auntie Claire" instead of "Auntie Meredith."

In other parts of the country, I'm told that Memorial Day marks the beginning of summer. Whatever. Natalie's got summer relaxation down.

A parting shot of the bathing beauty:

"School bus, this is little blue, over"

Today we started our journey to Fort Worth, and I am blogging from a motel in Baker City, OR. We actually packed up the apartment on Saturday (quite quickly, thanks to much help from our great friends), and we spend the weekend with our friends Scoot and Meh and their adorable baby Zachary. Scoot wrote a really nice piece on their feelings about our leaving Seattle on their blog today, and I can assure you that we feel the same way. I have lived in Seattle since 1999, and Kate since 2000. In that time, we have both made a lot of incredible friends, and Scoot and Meh are some of our oldest and closest (actually Scoot and my friendship dates back past our Seattle days, to our childhoods in Michigan). It was hard to leave Seattle today.

Two things made our journey a little easier. First, Kate's best friend, SYL, is accompanying us. We are taking both a moving van and a car, and thanks to SYL's presence, one driver always has company. Second, yesterday we picked up a pair of walkie-talkies, on the recommendation of SYL's boyfriend K. We have given each a code name -- the big yellow moving van is "school bus," and the smaller sedan is "little blue" (hence the title of this blog entry). And they make coordinating things between the cars easier and more fun.

These days

Here's a round-up of what we've been up to the past few days.

We've been dog-sitting for this cute creature:I also baked A LOT of cookies. The first baking party with SYL yielded three different cookies: chai shortbread, black and white striped cookies, and a classic sugar cookie.My observations: fresh ground cardamom will leave your kitchen smelling like cardamom for a long time; the black and white cookies were really good, but sooooo much work; and, by the time you've made all these cookies, the last thing you feel like doing is icing the sugar cookies.

The second round of baking was with Scott and Meh. They'd make sugar cookies and I brought some gingerbread. We'd planned to do this Christmas Day, but then it looked like this:Which is nice for memories, but bad for driving.

So we postponed our cookie-decorating party for a day. Here are the results:I still have more cookies left to bake for our family holiday swap. I'm making gingerbread, plus something else. Right now I'm leaning toward the chai shortbread, but we'll see. . . .

Christmas morning, I made these 90-minute cinnamon rolls. I've never had good luck with cinnamon rolls before, but these worked out great - and they really only did take 90 minutes from start to finish. I'd totally make these again.Last night we had a lovely dinner with Scott, Meh, B-hatch, Jenji, and a special visitor from the frozen lands.

Jacob, Week Three

Well, it looks like I'm managing a post a week (and they are all so creatively titled, too!). Meh, anyway, here's some of what you really come here for:

On Sunday, I took Natalie out for bagels. A little mommy-daughter date!

A success, I'd say!

We also celebrated Grandma Pat's belated birthday last week. I made a new chocolate cake recipe, the Wellesley Fudge Cake. The cake was awesome - deeply chocolatey and very moist. The icing, while delicious, wasn't my favorite; I think I would have preferred something more in the family of dark chocolate and less in the family of fudge. My official cake-sampler reported no irregularities, however.

I keep plowing away (or at least dribbling away) on Jacob's baby blanket. Needless to say, the arrival of the baby beat the completion of the blanket. But I can multi-task!

On the Jacob front, he remains as snuggly and cuddly as ever (see above. And below).

Jacob also took his first walk outside. He seems like being outside, although he remains deeply skeptical about any breath of wind whatsoever.

On Saturday, Mike and Natalie headed to school to see the women's basketball team take on UT. According to Mike, there were far more UT fans in attendance. However, Mike and Natalie were clearly rooting for the home team!

 In closing, here's one of my favorite recent Jacob pictures:

Congrats!

We would like to congratulate our friends Scoot and Meh on the birth of their son Zachary!

Playing Catch-up

I'm behind again. My goal in this post is to get the "I'm five months old" pictures up before next week's six-month milestone.

Things have been going well here. The siblings continue to do reasonably well together. I expect this to last exactly one more nanosecond.

In other news, motherhood remains exhausting:

But awesome:

 

Here's Natalie helping Mike make naan:

And here's Jacob up on campus for his liquid lunch.

It's been so long on the blog that we need to back up to Natalie's end-of-year party in her classroom. I wasn't there, but Mike took these pics.

It looks like a good time was had by all!


Also, here are some very belated pics of a dinner party that Mike and Natalie attended while I was in San Francisco with Jacob. Natalie initiated the group hug!

Mike and Jacob, just kicking back on the couch:

Our Fourth was very sweet and low-key. We had a few friends over, grilled, let the kids do their thing, etc. I'm not exactly sure what "their thing" was, but it seemed to involve ride-sharing and parading.

The other families left to go downtown for the fireworks; we put the kids to bed and watched Top Chef from five months ago. We're party animals, I tell you.

We've also been engaged in (what feels like) a massive room-shuffling project. Natalie's room became our new office / guest bedroom, the old office became Natalie's new room, and the guest room became Jacob's new room. We're only, uh, six months late on all of this! Anyway, more detailed pictures to follow once we put the finishing touches on each room, but here is a nice picture of Natalie and my friend Jen Em hanging the butterfly decals on Natalie's wall, plus a shot of Natalie's butterfly sheets. Any guesses as to the theme of Natalie's room? Hah. Major thanks to Jen for helping out with this (and to Meh for helping assemble the Big Girl Bed when she was in town in May).

When Jen was in town, we also went to see the cows. Our tax dollars at work! (We've been having a cool spell here, so it was considerably cooler than the last time I was at the cattle drive.)

And then we went to the farmer's market. And I bought some eggplant. And then I came home and took an arty picture of the eggplant. You're welcome.

Here are some slightly less arty pictures of blackberries and tomatoes from my garden.

Speaking of arty pursuits, I recently finished sewing Natalie a pool robe. I cut the pattern pieces from towels - this was kind of a fun project. It was also my first time working with bias tape. A little tricky for one's third sewing project ever. 'Tis far from good, but from far away, it's good!

And here's Natalie doing her thing at swim class:

In other milestones, Jacob's been trying a little food: cereal, sweet potatoes, bananas, and applesauce. His general reaction is to look something between angry and puzzled when you put the food in his mouth, and then to quickly express his displeasure that more isn't forthcoming quickly enough. Babies!

Natalie will be four (FOUR!!!) later this month, but sometimes she looks, like, seven to me:

The princess butterfly fairy, she is not pleased:

Although snack can fix many woes:

Natalie loves to play! Here she is playing music show, restaurant ( be she may actually be nursing her baby there - way to multitask, girlfriend!), and teacher.

Here's the cat - complete with ears and whiskers - that Natalie drew the other day:

Here are a few Jacob pictures. Jacob is such a sweet baby.

And here are the promised five-months pictures. Note the outfit change mid-photo shoot. We're keepin' it real.

Next post - all the videos from this last month. Coming soon!