Will's foray into real food

Though we are strong supporters of breast-milk for babies, we also have decided with our children to start introducing other foods after four months and start incorporating them regularly after six months. So these were taken some time in the past two months (the exact dates are fuzzy but so is everything that has happened recently).

As you can see, solid food is the WORST thing that has ever happened to Will (watch for his reaction at 0:11):

It's been like that with everything we've tried (rice cereal, bananas, carrots). Kind of funny but frustrating because we'd like to start incorporating solids every day. Plus Will's weight is trending down (he's gone from 50th to 40th to - most recently - the 25th percentile of weight. Note: this is not bad, especially given who he gets his genes from, but still we want him to eat).

Other funny pictures of Will with food on his face:

Lyla photos

Since we're rapidly approaching the birth of my son, and this blog is only going to become that much more neglected when we add taking care of another child to our list of responsibilities. I thought I'd put up a bunch of recent photos of Lyla for y'all to enjoy.

I know they're not as good as the real thing, and Lyla's been especially awesome the past few weeks. But I hope they put a smile on your face.

Pudding!!

Rocking Cow!!

Um, Red Overalls and Striped Hat!!!

Mall Playground!!!

No Pants!!!!

Lyla's birthday party

Decorations:Cupcakes (notice the butterfly theme):

Lyla and Daddy!!
Meggy and her daddy!!
Ian and his daddy!!!
Sadie and her daddy!!!
Adults!!!
Kids playing!!
Josh and Ellie!!!
Go, Meggy, go!!
Getting ready to open presents!!!
Time for presents:
Here comes Sadie, ready to help!Yay! Storybook Bible!

Yay!! Noisy toy!! Super cute and educational!! (I was quite relieved later to discover it has both a "low volume" setting and an "off" setting)
Yay! Princess papasan chair!
Hey! My presents!!
Oh man! I can climb all over this thing!! Mom and dad won't let me fall over so I can do whatever I want!!
Now it's time for my birthday cupcake!

Mmmm... messy and delicious!

Messy foods

Just because... (we're all Lyla fans, are we not?)

Chicago trip

Katherine, Lyla and I headed to Chicago this past weekend to meet up with our dear San Diego friends Jaime and Danielle who we hadn't seen since we abandoned them in July of 2007 (known as the Summer of Our Discontent to the fun timers). We drove down on Saturday morning (after deciding not to try and leave Friday night because someone... I won't name names... decided to be wide awake from 2:30 am to 5:15 am on Thursday night, thus limiting the amount of sleep the Driver for the Chicago trip got). We arrived and met up with my cousin Jen and cousin-in-law Matt who moved to Chicago 6 weeks ago for work and adventure. After a couple minutes driving around looking for parking (ah, cities...) we went up and saw there place which is awesome and in a great neighborhood. I was impressed with how much they've set it up in only six weeks. Katherine and I have been known to not get fully settled in for long periods of time when we've moved in the past. Jen, Matt, Kevin, Katherine, and Lyla went to lunch at this great Thai restaurant called Oodles of Noodles. Katherine kept remarking how she had forgotten about Thai food since we haven't found a restaurant in Grand Rapids (I'm not saying one doesn't exist, but they aren't prominent in the 'hoods we roll in). The food was delicious, including (but not limited to) pot stickers that were the size of Lyla's fist and muy delicioso!!

After lunch we drove over to our friends Chris and Beth's condo where we were going to spend the night. We got settled in and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing. Dinner that night was a Mexican restaurant not to far from where the live. It was good, but not as good as the Thai (seriously, imagine going over a year without Thai food and then breaking the fast with an amazing meal). The rest of the night involved putting Lyla to bed, talking, and watching the end of the Matrix.

The next morning we got up and went to breakfast at Milk and Honey, a local, um, restaurant. I can't think how to describe the food other than "delicious". I had a huevos rancheros casserole that was piping hot but delicious. We met our friend Krina there and had a wonderful time catching up. After returning to the condo, some of us got naps, some of us got to watch Ghost Rider (no comment), some of us got to load the car. Fun times!!

Then we headed to the water front to meet up with Jaime and Danielle who were in town for a wedding and finished all their activities. We met at the Shedd Aquarium which is like a zoo for fish. We had a good time walking around looking at all the marine life and supplement our pretty decent knowledge of marine life with various factual tidbits. Mainly the aquarium was context for catching up on the many many life changing happenings of the past year for both of us.

Man it was great to see them. And it was great to see them with Lyla. I don't know that many people who are like this so it was great to see it in both Jaime and Danielle but they are just natural parents. I'm not sure how best to describe it... it's like a combination of love, gentleness, confidence, and playfulness that children can't help but be attracted to and comforted by. Now Lyla is a good kid and very cheerful around people but there was definitely something more with Jaime and Danielle; something I didn't expect to be drawn out in only the six or so hours we spent together. Anyway, seeing them was bittersweet because we were reminded how awesome they are and because we were reminded how awesome they are.

All in all it was an awesome weekend considering we went there and back and spent quality time with seven different people all under 40 hours. Here are pictures that Jaime took with his super camera. I'll post the mediocre ones we took with our camera later.

Lyla looking for things to do in the guidebook:


Lyla and Daddy marvelling at the reflective power of the "bean":


Family portrait under the "bean":

Marveling at my little girl

*Cue Cats In The Cradle by Harry Chapin
It seems that just today Lyla has advanced developmentally in leaps and bounds. She's been more interactive, more attentive, more content, and more vocal over the past few days. But today she did three things that blew me away and brought a tear to my eye. (I know this is just PFS - Proud Father Syndrome, but three things all happening today made her seem so grown up and that just got to me.)

When I was feeding her peaches and apple sauce she grabbed the spoon and guided it into her own mouth. Wow. From what we've read that signals that she's starting to want to figure out how to feed herself. It was just neat, not too big.

The second thing was more impressive. I was sitting on the ground and letting Lyla sit on my crossed legs. I held my hands stationary in front of her and she proceeded to reach up and place her hands on each of mine (left on left, right on right). She then pulled herself up under her own power and stood up. It was awesome and she did it a number of times including twice starting from sitting flat on the ground.

The third was after bath time tonight she stood up again pulling herself up on my arm. She then turned and faced me, grabbed each of my thumbs in her opposite hand and walked about one foot towards me supporting herself (usually when she walks I provide counter force to steady her... not his time). In addition, she had this intense determination as she was walking. As if each step was a real triumph. When she finally did it (i.e. reached me) she had the most excited look on her face. She had done it!! It melted me. Big smile, teary eyes, visions of my little girl growing up into a young girl. I wish you could have been there to share it.

Eating is hard work.

I know this is cruel, to exploit my daughter for cheap laughs, but this was hilarious and needs to be shared.

We've been feeding Lyla solid foods for a couple weeks now. Every night around six she gets a meal of rice cereal mixed with some sort of mushed fruit (so far it's been either bananas or pears, I think peaches are being introduced tonight). Every night Lyla's level of interest and hunger has been different, making the feeding unique every time. For example, two or three days ago she apparently was starving and end up eating two servings. She just wouldn't stop eating and would yell in between bites (as if she was saying, "GET IN MY BELLY!!!). Super cute, kind of disturbing.

And then there was this... Poor girl had had a long day and could barely continue. See for yourself:

How to Make Your Baby Smell Like Garlic

So during the week my mom was here Kevin and I took a night to go out to dinner by ourselves, carefully timed in between Lyla's feedings. One of the types of food I missed most while I was pregnant was sushi. I love sushi. I love the rolls, I love the sashimi, I love the rice, I love the seaweed, I love edamame, I love it. Our favorite sushi restaurant in San Diego was Zen5 -- it was within walking distance of our house, had awesome rolls and different specialty rolls every day, and played loud reggae music all the time. It was always full of twenty-somethings, had a couple of tv's on and was so loud it was sometimes hard to hold conversations.
We had gotten a couple of recommendations for sushi restaurants here in Grand Rapids and were excited to give Mikado a try. We ventured out into the cold (about 30 degrees that night, so not too bad) and drove down to the strip mall where the restaurant is located. We walked inside the brightly lit space and were immediately seated. The first thing I noticed inside was how quiet it was -- only two tables were filled in the whole restaurant. Our server brought over warm towels and green tea, both of which helped combat the cold we had just escaped. We looked over the menu, which featured one half page of sushi and about three pages of other Japanese food. But we had come for sushi, and so we had sushi.
After we ordered our server delivered salads and tofu soup. The salad had a delicious peanut-garlic dressing, and we gobbled it up before the sushi arrived. Everything was very good, although the selection was definitely limited compared to San Diego restaurants.
We stopped for frozen yogurt on the way home -- TCBY is another place that is pretty empty in December in Michigan -- and then rescued my mom and fed the baby. She slept well that night (Lyla, not my mom), so we went through the next day with only pleasant impressions of the night before. I didn't even think very much about the meal until the following evening when I was feeding the little girl. She turned her face toward me and produced a distinctly garlic-y burp right in my face. Oh yeah -- everything I eat she gets too.... Right.
She hasn't had any bad reactions to anything so far, so I'm just eating as I normally would. It is wonderful to be able to have sushi again! And lunch meat! And sunny-side-up eggs. Life is good.