Happy Thanksgiving (tomorrow)!

Sorry yet again for the lack of updates here. We've been busy getting the new house to a livable-yet-still-boxful state, and prepping the old house for selling. If you know anyone who wants to buy a nice 4-BR in Hillsboro, send them my way :)

We haven't taken very many pictures here yet - the clutter and the early sunset (plus the fact that a default location for storing the camera has yet to be determined) make for an uninspired photographer. But I do have my phone on me when we are out and about in more photogenic surroundings, and so I have managed to get a couple of cute videos recently, which Andy has kindly stuck on YouTube.

The first will give you a toddler perspective on (a portion of) our new backyard. Malcolm is carrying and attempting to eat small green tomatoes - the house came with some plants, but just before the video I had ripped them out as the weather has definitely become too cold for them to ripen. They were pretty loaded with tiny green fruit, though, which bounced all over the yard and were a perfect target for toddler hands and mouth. Please note the lovely helmet - a Grandma knit, of course!



Second, we have a video from last night, when we went out to dinner at an all-you-can eat salad bar place (Sweet Tomatoes) which also has all-baby-can-eat Mac'n'cheese (and soup, pizza, etc). This restaurant is quickly becoming one of our go-tos, because a) it's halfway between work and our new home, b) kids under 3 (I think) eat free [and kids love mac'n'cheese], c) we could always use more veggies in our diet, and d) if you sign up on their email list they will send you coupons for a free adult dinner on a regular basis. Plus, they have ceiling fans and generally lots of hustle and bustle and kids, which seem to be key to Malcolm's enjoyment

ANYway, at the restaurant Malcolm encountered a lucky confluence of sticky mac-n-cheese and optimal angle of spoon-to-bowl, and managed to feed himself successfully for several spoonfuls. We were quite impressed. He's dabbled before in dipping into yogurt and oatmeal (and even sweet potatoes), but mac-n-cheese is a whole new level of tool use :)



And that's today's update, folks! I'll try to check in with Thanksgiving pictures soon :)

Halloween!

Isn't Malcolm the cutest lil cheetah ever? He enjoyed helping us give out candy to the bigger kids, too - probably more than the brief walk-around-and-see-the neighbors that we did early in the evening. He thought it was very cool, if a bit intimidating, to watch dressed-up kids dive into the candy bowl.

Also - we're moving! This week! Closer to Portland, in the "better" school district, a block from an amazing park, library, and elementary school. The house was built in 1959, and we found the original plans rolled up in a closet. Pretty cool...
More later... though maybe not til we've unpacked...

A year and a walker

bSo... yeah, it's been a while. Again. And here I am at 9:30pm trying to bang out a quick entry - and since Mr. M. is often up at 6 (if not earlier squawking, though usually he will go back to sleep for a bit after a 5AM squawk-babble session) that leaves limited time. Especially since bed was late last night.

Anyway - Malcolm had a birthday! His first, in fact :). We had a nice day (I took him in late to daycare and Andy visited him at lunch), and that morning he actually took a couple of steps. Just between me and Andy - stagger stagger collapse/hug - but it seemed like very good timing. Over the next few days he started making quick progress, and less than a week later we captured this video:



(at this point he was much more comfortable holding our hands while walking, but would do it unassisted if something really special [like Mommy's video camera] presented itself)

We took another video tonight, 3 weeks exactly after his first steps on his first birthday. It's amazing how babies change so quickly at this age - though the first months have a lot going on, the transition out of babyhood happens in the blink of an eye, really. May I introduce, then: Malcolm the Toddler!



(and yes, he's not just toddling, but toddling with definite goals, however mercurial they may be. Cabinets beware!)

Hopefully this will inspire me to get back on the blog train (and hint hint, comments would be very inspiring as well). We really need to get a 1-year (and 3 week) bear-chair picture. We'll make that a goal for this weekend :)

A final note - one of the drawbacks (or benefits) to using Youtube for video hosting is that there is a lot of extraneous clutter on the site - including suggestions for similar videos. Right now, "Malcolm Performing for his Raisin" is one of the top videos suggested to me. Hee!

Sushi, 10 months later (plus corn)

Back when Malcolm was one month old, we took him to our local sushi restaurant.

He wasn't too impressed by the menu

or the foodbut conveniently slept through the meal, allowing us to eat in (relative) peace.

10 months later, eating out is not exactly peaceful, usually, but can be a lot of fun! The neighborhood sushi place is still a favorite, and they've even expanded. Malcolm is happy to look at (or chew on, or throw around) the menu...


And eat yummy noodles, and tofu, and green beans, and rice, and teriyaki salmon...

And wash it down with a sippy of water.

Mmm, sushi.
(actually, we are holding off on giving him raw fish for a while yet, but much of the rest of the Japanese cuisine is baby friendly)

One very cute pic from tonight - we had fresh corn (must be August!) for the first time this season, and after Malcolm and I had our kernels (which had been scraped from the cobs - we are both dentally challenged, me more so than him in the lateral incisor department), we gave him the denuded cobs. They amused him for a while and then he was ALL DONE. Here he demonstrates the ALL DONE sign (though he also uses it for "Oh My Gosh I Just Spotted The Kitchen Clock Up There!")
Hopefully I'll be better at updating this blog going forward. Feel free to find me on Facebook, too, where the short updates are more frequent but the pictures are fewer (shoot me a note if you don't know my full name but want to friend me :).

Still here!

We're still here! I know it's been ages since I updated, but we're doing great. Just very busy, at home and at work :). In the last month and a half, we have had:

a) A visit from Grandma and Grampa and Uncle Carl, complete with a beach day

b) pulling up on furniture / couch / people - on Memorial day weekend when we also went for a nice mountain hike

c) real crawling! (finally, right at 9 months)

d) cruising the furniture (has just started in the past week)

e) love for avocados still endures, lots of other foods tried with joy (beets! crackers! ) or indifference (cauliflower... deli turkey...)

f) hung out with second cousins Braden (14 months) and Henry (2 weeks!)

g) waving bye-bye, clapping and prompted hi-fiveing

h) diagnosis of slight anemia, but on-and-off-willingness to be fed (!) applesauce mixed with rusty-nail-tasting vitamin drops

i) first expedition to swimming at the rec center; and probably unrelated but you never know:

j) another ear infection just this past weekend :(. He's only had the two, not too bad for a daycare boy, but he was just miserable at night before we got it diagnosed. Antibiotics have perked him right up, though.

k) and of course, multiple bumps and bruises from the mobility milestones b through d. He doesn't know much fear yet, though he is getting progressively better at controlling his falls.

Anyone have any requests for pictures of any of these? I am overwhelmed by the photo possibilities. And it's time for bed now, but really quickly:

To the other point of this blog, I finished Malcolm's vest, started and finished the Wisp that's been in my sidebar for ages; am working on afghan squares, and then it will be on to a baby sweater for a friend/coworker's baby. And I'll be going to the Sock Summit in August - yay! I might want to brush up on my sock knitting skills, since I will be taking a baby socks class there :)

Genre-mixing picture from Worldwide Knit in Public Day a few weeks ago. Mmmm, gauge swatch! Note the lovely vest (if I do say so myself!)

Munching and pseudo-crawling

In the past week, Malcolm has figured out a couple of things. First, that solid food is actually good to eat! He still mostly doesn't want to be fed by spoon, but give him some appropriate finger foods and he now goes to town! At least until he gets sick of it and rubs his eyes... we've had an interesting time at bathtime recently!

To demonstrate, a quick video of pear-slice-noshing that occurred Saturday night:

Malcolm noshes a pear slice from Alison (& Andy & Malcolm) on Vimeo.

And the other big development - as of Sunday night (yes, it was a busy weekend) we have forward motion! The legs are not really involved yet, but he manages to drag himself where he wants to go by his arms and sheer force of will. The little dude is going to have very strong biceps, that's for sure! As you'll see in the following video, grown-up glasses (the drinking kind) are one of his favorite things. When he sees us take a drink, he often gets very insistent until we give him a sip (if water), or distract him. We're working on sippy cup use, but so far he is not very good about tipping it up enough to get much - or about not tipping it over to pour everywhere! (we're trying them without valves since he doesn't seem to get the concept of sucking on the valve yet)

Here's the pseudo-crawling video. We're not sure what to call this - pull-crawling? Dry butterfly stroke? Please don't mind the dirty floor, it was just fallen bits from dinner.

Malcolm almost crawling - 8 months! from Alison (& Andy & Malcolm) on Vimeo.

Edited to say - if the videos aren't showing up in the blog post, click on the video title link to go to Vimeo and view it there. Not sure why it doesn't appear to be working at the moment...

Rugrat!

Continuing the rug replacement recap...

While we were tearing out the old rug, padding, and baseboards, Malcolm spent some time hanging out in the livingroom in his Pack-n-play, filled with nearly all his toys:

Then once we were down to the subfloor, he was allowed back in for a snack:

And a gander at the naked floor:

Once the new carpet was in, he had a fun time in the big empty room on the fun, clean, patterned floor. It's loop-style (berber), great for small baby fingers to feel the textures, and hopefully better at staying clean than a plain cut style would be.
And eventually we got the furniture back in (note nicely sorted knitting stash in the cabinet behind his head...)!(the ball is one of Malcolm's favorite toys right now, just squishy enough to pick up with one hand, interesting enough to chew on for a while, and light and bouncy enough for Mommy and Daddy to induce giggles by bouncing it off of his head!)