Half a Year and Counting

Collin has reached yet another important milestone in his development. He has survived six entire months with us as his parents! That is half of a year and coincidentally coincides (within a day) to Andrea's birthday which is also our anniversary. He also has teeth! 2 of them. I'm pretty excited that he is going to have teeth, but I think Andrea would rather he didn't (at least for a while) since she now has to teach him not to bite certain things.

But the big news is that he is crawling. He scooched along for a long time, but it is a full on crawl now. For a long time we could put him on the floor, go off for a minute, come back and he would be more or less in the same place we left him. Now, if we were to leave him alone for more than a minute he may very well be at the neighbor's house - or in Kansas. He hasn't asked for the car keys yet, but it's just a matter of time.

I've learned that when babies start to crawl they immediately head for the most dangerous thing in their immediate vicinity. There could be toys everywhere, but he had much rather bang his head on the coffee table or chew on a door stop. (Why do they build houses where every corner and edge is sharp??? Couldn't they round some of this stuff off?) But anyway, I think I've figured out why babies do this. We parents have an instinctive urge to protect our little ones and in order to balance this out, babies are born with an instinctive urge to kill themselves. There is some sort of evil natural selection going on here. It's as if one day they wake up and think: "You know what would really hit the spot right now? Some drain cleaner!" So they spend the whole day searching for drain cleaner. If they can't find any they'll either order some online or find something equally dangerous, like: "Hey - I wonder what its like inside the fireplace." Or: "That electrical cord looks scrumptious!" Some aren't quite so dangerous - just gross. Cat food comes to mind. Or chewing on the dog's chew toy. Parents have to respond to this by moving everything up out of their reach. I hear that you just keep moving things higher and higher until they are teenagers and everything you own is in the attic.

Luckily we've been able to keep Collin away from everything other than the odd head bump, but I had no idea we lived in such a dangerous place.

We aren't really trying to contain him as long as someone is watching him and it is delightful to watch him crawl around and he loves it - he'll follow Andrea from room to room and untie her shoes every chance he gets.

Collin's first Christmas (tree)

Collin had his first Christmas this week complete with a tree! He, of course will not remember any of this and we will always remember it as the Christmas when Collin thought it was just another Thursday except the house was full of people and his nanny didn't show up. This was our first Christmas with a tree. Andrea and I have been married for 10 (yes, TEN) years and have never had a tree. She just didin't want one. She felt there were other ways to decorate and celebrate, and even though I put up a fight most years, she won out every time. We wrapped the trunks of the trees in our front yard with lights and we would go to the tree lot to collect trimmings and spread them around the house and I think we even put up stockings one year. But 10 years and no tree. However this year I had leverage (a new baby). The exchange went something like this:

ME: "I want a tree this year. We have a kid and a bigger house now. There is no excuse."
ANDREA: "I don't want a tree. We don't have a good place to put it. It's a terrible waste of environmental resources and Collin won't remember it anyway."
ME: "We have a kid now. We have to get a tree."
ANDREA: "No. He's 5 months old. He doesn't even know what Christmas is. He doesn't need a tree."
ME: "In a few years he will demand a tree, so we may as well get used to it, plus I've always wanted to have one. Plus your family is visiting and they will expect a tree"
ANDREA: "We don't have anything to decorate it with."
ME: "We have lights (from decorating the trunks of 0ur previous trees) and I know where to buy ornaments. We start small and add to it every year. This is the best possible time to start - new house - new kid."
ANDREA: "OK, but is has to go in this room because the colors are better"
ME: "No, it needs to go in this room, because, ummmm, that's where I pictured it."
ANDREA: "It has to go in this room and we have to rearrange all of the furniture to make it work."
ME: "OK, but we are NOT listening to ANY Mannheim Steamroller."
ANDREA: "Good - I hate Mannheim Steamroller."

So I went and got a tree. We have 9' ceilings so I went for a 7'-8' noble fir, but in retrospect I could gone a little bigger (size is everyting), but it was a great first tree. I also got a base and headed home. Andrea let me bring it in, put it in the base, do a little a trimming and start decorating it. All without adult supervision. Collin helped and he likes lights. I like lights and we didn't have a singe ornament to our name - but we had LOTS of lights. So, of course, I went all Clark Griswald on it and just started wrapping it with lights. I started with one color and wrapped it from the top to the botton, then picked another and went from the bottom to the top. This went on for a while until I had used most of the lights that we used to use to wrap the trunks of 7 live oaks in our old front yard. I plugged it in, turned off the lights and went to get Andrea. Collin loved it, but the following exchange went something like this:

ME: "Well, what do you think" (hoping the breaker doesn't trip)
ADNREA: "WOW. That is very impressive! But what does it look if we turn on the lights?"
ME: "Ummmm.... Let'd find out" (Switches on lights)
ANDREA: "It's really nice with the lights out, but when the lights are on all you can see are wires everywhere."
ME: "Ya, that's normal - you need all those wires to hang the ornaments."
ANDREA: "But we don't have any ornaments and you can hang them from the tree branches."
ME: "OK - Should we just add more lights?"

Ultimately Andrea's logic prevailed and she took off every single light I had put on and put back on about 1/5 of them. Then we bought ornaments, then andrea decided it needed to be decorated with orange origami birds which she and our friend Katsumi spent an evening making. It looked very nice in the end we all had a great time and we have a good base to build on for next year.





On the Christmas front: We had a great visit from Andrea's parents and her brother Paul and his family. They have 3 kids (3, 5, and 7) so we got a good preview of what is coming. They are all wonderful and it's amazing how different they all are. Vivvy (Vivienne- 3) is all about pink, mermaids and her Christmas dress. Jeremy (5) is all about dinosaurs, chaos, legos and getting the most out of every minute. Ethan (7) is all about games, cash-money and non-stop excitement. They are a delightful trio and without a dull moment! Collin also got a ton of toys from lots of family and friends (which he needed).

Me? I got lots of SPAM (seriously-see previous post - I never should have posted that). But overall it was a wonderful Christmas and I wouldn't trade a minute if it - but I Will trade the SPAM. What I really wanted was a Wii!