"Oh, You Wanted Me to Come Over THERE?"

Male Bonding

We had only a small crowd at our playgroup through MOMS Club yesterday. The 3 boys had fun grabbing each other's heads, though, so it was a success. It's funny to get together a calm and non-mobile 6-month old, a 7-month old on the verge of crawling, and a completely crawling and pulling-up 11-month old....and watch what happens!! The mothers had to do a lot of baby-wrangling but we managed to do plenty of gabbing, too!

Polly's House Of Toys

B and I stopped by to have lunch with Polly yesterday. Brooks might have gotten a titch overtired but the silly boy refused to go to sleep on the luxurious pallet we made on the floor of Polly's bedroom. So our last ditch effort was to gather up everything that could possibly be a Brooks toy. As you can see, Polly was quite creative in finding fun things for him:

Slow News Day

It's a rainy Thursday morning. I contemplated not leaving the house at all yesterday (although it wasn't raining then, so I can't use that as an excuse) but ended up taking B on one mini-outing just for a change of scenery. Decided to make this Shrimp Etouffee recipe for dinner which was VERY tasty, but took a wee bit longer than I meant for dinner preparation to take. Oh well.

I've waited to post about this since I didn't want to ruin a potential surprise for some of you local peeps who watch Comcast or Verizon cable, but alas....the time has come to announce my TELEVISION DEBUT!! I am very thankful that I don't sound as bad as I heard myself when I had to say my line over and over and over-- thanks to Drew Sogn for being a fabulous director!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrQ4rjKsZY0

Laundry Lessons

It's never too early to learn how to fold all of Seth's T-shirts and assorted football gear. Sheils and I had a childfree trip to the mall on Sunday, and B stayed home to help his dad with the laundry:

Alas, Grammie Sheils has returned to Dallas and with her departure, our life returns to the predictable and mundane. (Just kidding, all my local friends!! :-) We will indeed miss her, however, and look forward to her next visit in October!

In the meantime, I am trying to emulate her "go, go, go!" spirit and spent Brooks's nap making quite a bit of baby food. (After my first foray into sweet potatoes several months ago that I detailed in these pages, I haven't done too much. I've made a couple batches of things and mix those in with the jarred stuff. ) This morning, I "made" plums, peaches, lima beans (even straining them through a sieve after obliterating them in the Cuisinart!), Korean melon (I tried it and decided it tasted like a pear), and cantaloupe. Let the feasting begin!

So, Texans, Tell Me...

Did YOU have 55 degree weather this morning? Pretty crazy for late August, but with my love for autumn, I'm not complaining. It was just kinda weird to have to get out a blanket for our morning walk:

And then I even had to get out socks for B! (Of course, having not put him in socks in many months, I don't have any that are big enough.) We peeped in on him a bit later and sure were able to see those (small) socks quite clearly since he's taking full advantage of not having bumper pads in the crib anymore!

Who's Got a Big Mouth?

People always comment on Brooks's wide grin and NONE of us can figure out from which parent he might have gotten that. :-)

Thought the following photo tour might elicit a few giggles...and perhaps solve the mystery.

2006

2001
1999
1995
1989
1982ish

Timing is Everything

So not 5 minutes after I left a comment on Christian's blog yesterday that the Brookster hadn't shown any signs of any kind of vertical movement in his crib, my mom and I peered in at him to find him like this:

"Are you peeps watching this?":

"Man, you guys are having a party out there without me?":

Needless to say, we quickly took out the bumper pads that were helping him to pull up into a sitting position.

Um, and then we found this today:

Seth has already lowered the crib mattress!

PS-- Congrats to my cousin, Paula, and her family on the birth of Kathryn Rose yesterday afternoon!

Adventures in Produce (and a few other things)

After watching the action in Beijing for 2 weeks, we decided we needed some adventure and embarked on an exploration of a nearby large Asian market. I had read glowing reports about the depth and breadth of its produce department, and I figured perusing the aisles would be an enlightening experience.

I can't even tell you how many items there were that were completely unknown to us, and I consider myself relatively versed in Asian cuisines. I will go back once I've taken the time to go through a bunch of recipes and pinpoint uses for some of these mystery objects-- but for yesterday, I decided to pick up a few items that at least looked kinda familiar.

The cultural interactions are hard to beat at such a locale. The main conversation I had with another customer was at the okra display. An older Indian woman was picking out her pods when I walked up. She asked, "Do you like these?" and I agreed. Being a huge fan of Indian food, I asked her if she was going to make Bindi Masala, and she assented, to which I replied, "Well, I'm from Texas and we fry 'em there!!" :-)

Here's a sampling of our purchases yesterday:

Starting with the okra pods in the lower middle (don't worry--I bought more than that) and going clockwise, we have a purple potato (makes FUN purple mashed potatoes since the flesh is actually dark purple, too), a Korean melon, Pocky chocolate almond sticks, Taro Root ice bars, Kirin sweet milk tea drink, Chinese eggplant, and a sugarplum. The wrinkly green thing in the middle was advertised as a Kirby but, upon research at home, we think it's a Bitter Melon.

I also bought more mundane items like yams, asparagus, and an avocado. But with the last at $1.39 compared to the current typical grocery store price of $2.50, it was worth it just for that!!

The World Turned Upside-Down

That Grammie Sheils-- what a force she is. Everything changes when she's around. For example...

My child innocently eats his cereal yesterday morning, wearing a bib especially purchased for him by his paternal grandfather:

Sheils appears and the next thing you know:

And I guess cereal was just too boring since at the next meal, she's feeding him water out of a spoon...with a Tangerine Sorbet chaser!

Baylor indoctrination and spoon-drinking aside, her greatest skill is in bringing people together. Aunties Christy and Polly had only ever met in passing at my hospital room all those (7) months ago, but Brooksie got to enjoy a wonderful lunch yesterday with family and "family"!

WE LOVE GRAMMIE!! Too bad I didn't capture yesterday a recording of Sheils singing to Brooks the following song: "1...2...3...4...Grammie's name is Sheila Moore. 1...2...3..4...Opa's name is Gene Moore. 1...2...3...4...Come on in and close the door"....and so on!!

PS-- Happy 38th anniversary, Grammie and Opa!

Grammie's Here!!

Brooks is so excited to see his Grammie that he can't take his eyes off of her!

Stunting of Creative Juices

I've really had trouble coming up with post titles of late. Not really sure what the problem is, but I thought I'd take advantage of the situation and use my lack of creativity to represent an experience of inspirational deficit yesterday. The scheduled activity for our "new moms" group was to go to a pottery place to paint something involving either baby handprints or footprints. I had very low expectations for how the Brookster would take to this plan since he generally likes to be grabbing for any and all things. I could just imagine him getting a little too familiar with the paint. So while the other moms did really creative things with their children's prints--like turning a sideways handprint into a fish or toes into a caterpillar--we knew our limits and just did a regular ol' handprint on a plate with B's name written above. I have NO idea how it'll turn out upon being fired since it's already missing most of the pinky finger and the lower portion of the palm. Painting a 7-month old's hand is tricky business, as you can see here:

Before this messy adventure, we had a great playdate with Owen (not to be confused with the other Owen who recently had a first birthday party-- this Owen is only 3 months older than B). His mom, Katie, was my first friend in graduate school and it's been so fun to "grow more adult" together over the years. Our husbands now teach at the same school and then we had these boys so close together. We hadn't seen them in a few months so it was wonderful to go see their new house and play for awhile.

Owen appears very excited to have company:

He also has lots of cool toys. Here, he demonstrates the art of cranking the jack-in-the-box:

Impromptu Playdate

For the first time in many days, I realized yesterday that I had an afternoon devoid of any activities. Since cleaning my house didn't sound fun at all, I decided to invite myself over to Emily2's house for a little fun. Brooks wanted to invite his twin/girlfriend (again, don't think about that too much) so Cady and Lindsey came along, too.

Em2's bubbles were quite the hit:


Brooks did not let the bubble adventures keep him from honoring the frogs on his outfit with his leg position:

After the bubble excitement, Brooks demonstrated the proper position of crawling while Cadence looked on appreciatively:

Weekend O' Friends!

Seth left at 6 AM Saturday and got home well after 11 PM, but that didn't stop Brooks and me from having party after party!! The action got started with Ethan coming over to play. (B wasn't trying to be an exhibitionist, by the way. In an effort to be frugal, I bought some Target-brand diapers and their "ultra-absorbency" didn't quite hold up--er, hold in--for an unexpected 2.5 hour nap. I decided to go ahead and do a load of laundry since I just bought the onesie in question and realized it's only going to have a short window of wear, size-wise. )

Anyway, it all started out innocently:

But then Ethan got personal!!

Brooks was still outraged and ranting about the attack hours later:

Thank goodness Christy and Laura came over later to play for a little while:

Sunday brought its usual 8 AM church service, followed by a mandated nap for B so that we could meet our DC Baylor friends, Alison and David, for lunch. (Thanks, Em2 for the Red Rock Canyon Grill restaurant rec!!) Yum!

Happy Saturday!

Since I'm now officially a football widow with the start of practice today, I'm sure glad I have this little guy to keep me company!!

Hard Work

Apparently, learning to crawl is kinda frustrating:

"Can you say 'Aunt Sara'"?

The above question was asked many a time at our house yesterday during our fun visit with Sara! While I know she might prefer to spend less time travelling for work, we love that she's had some trips up to this area recently. Brooks was very happy to see her again so soon after our trip to Austin:

Aunt Sara is FUNNY!

My (50% off) Hotsling arrived while Sara was here so we had lots of fun trying to figure out just how it works. We still don't quite have it right in this pic but grinned anyway:

Sure Hope It's Because of a Ginormous Brain..?

I really don't think Brooks has any kind of huge head in terms of percentiles for his age, so something must be up with the Gymboree sizes. His current summer hat is sized 0-12 months and I've noticed it's getting pretty snug. I spent some time poking through their sale stuff earlier this week and decided to get a floppy hat in the next size (12-24 mos). While I was at it, I found the hat pictured below, which I had to buy in honor of our dear Stumpy, who is not a sea turtle but is surely somehow related! This particular hat is sized 2T-5T. Doesn't that mean it's for 2-5 year olds? Why is it not way too big on my not-quite-7-month-old?

(and yes, I know there's still a plastic tag attached. In true Emily fashion, I originally planned to leave the price tag on until the actual moment of wearing but knew I'd get all kinds of lip for that. Since it's a precious hat (even 1.5+ years before it's supposed to fit), I figured we'd be keeping it!!)

Good Thing He Lives in a Sty

When Brooks was born, Kathy and Joel brought over the cutest little pig pj outfit with matching plush piggie! He's finally able to wear it so I posed him in front of the crib which--yes, this makes me not only a bad housekeeper but also a bad mother--boasts plenty of dust particles! But that's okay, because B loves dirt!! (Note the dirt splotch on the pant leg!)

I Know That Guy!

Seth called on his way home yesterday to give us a heads-up, so Brooks and I sat outside waiting for him to arrive.

B when the truck pulled up:

Hugs all around:

Since Seth was the nice coach who volunteered to ride the (yellow school) bus (several hours) to the college where camp was held, he left his truck at the school. Not surprisingly given his vehicular "vandalism" history with high school students, he returned to find out that he, in fact, loves cheerleading:

Also flowers and ponies:

And, thank goodness, Biology!

Brooks is so happy to have the big guy home!

Getting Older

It's true: everyone is getting older, even the wee ones among us. We celebrated Owen's first birthday yesterday-- better late than never! The boy-formerly-known-as-Genghis approached his birthday cupcake quite calmly:

He, however, showed more excitement at any opportunity to play with Brooks's head, as demonstrated below in the pic of the BabyFest 2007 boys:

As the youngest in the group, B was a little sad about having so long to wait for his own birthday cake. Thank goodness for Fake Auntie Chisty and fun time with water to make him forget his woes:

You know who else is getting older? SETH! Happy birthday to him today. Without giving out any top secret info, let's just point out that tomorrow is my half-birthday and that makes us almost exactly 2.5 years apart. And you know I'm the spring chicken and he's long in the tooth, right??! He should be home later this afternoon from football camp (Travis said I need to report that it's "sleepaway football camp"!) so hopefully he's looking forward to birthday treat of.......hanging out at home with his fam!!!

---

Speaking of me as a spring chicken.... Jen and I went walking around my neighborhood with Molly and Brooks on Friday and then ended up with the kiddies in the swings at the tot lot. There was another mom there and she asked us if M & B were our children. After we confirmed it, she said that she and her neighbor had seen us walking and discussed that they thought we were teenagers! So there you go. Everyone is getting older except me (and Jen)!!!

Polly et Les Oeufs

We had an early morning rendezvous chez Polly to try out her new omelette pan. Before the cooking began, however, there was some playtime:

Then it was time to get down to business. Behold an action shot of Polly flipping the pan:

Et voila! The final product...perhaps a little too browned, but very tasty with spinach, tomato, and feta: