Christmas!

Here's Brennan's couch photo at 4 months. This was taken the day after his last doctor's visit, where he weighed in at 14 lbs. 4 oz, measured 26" long, and screamed through 4 vaccinations.

It's getting hard to get smiling photos, because every time I point the camera at him he stares and gives me the "what is that?" face. His daddy managed to get one, though. He's playing his favorite game, Grab The Feet. In fact, it's becoming something of a challenge to take a picture of him NOT grabbing his feet. He's also Mr. Roly-Poly these days, which is fun when he's on a blanket on the floor, not so fun when he's in his bassinet, it's 3 am, and he's stuck on his belly and not happy about it.

And here he is, reading. He's advanced.

Brennan's biggest Christmas gift was one of those godawful exer-saucer things, a riot of plastic and beeps and rattles, probably made in some third world country by children not much older than him. He's a little small for it, so sometimes he prefers playing with his shirt to reaching for the fun stuff.

Laika enjoyed Christmas a lot. He even put something under the tree.

So, onto the presents!

No, we did not change his outfits multiple times during gift opening. In what will be a huge shock to NO ONE, he became overwhelmed pretty quickly by all this Christmas stuff. We could get through about 3 presents before melting down. This is a pretty representative photo of the experience.

So here's a multi-day Christmas gift montage.

Of course, it's not all screaming at wrapping paper all the time here. There's also bathtime - he's just about outgrown the bath bucket, but he still manages to grab those feet.

He's getting a little big for his newborn towel, so we've had to introduce the zebra towel into the mix. It's giant, so I can wrap him up like a baby burrito.

Whew. A lot of photos to wade through, I know. You must be tired.

Getting Ready for Christmas

We've done pretty well avoiding noisy baby toys so far, but it looks as if we've begun our slide down that particular slippery slope.  Brennan has this new music duck - each extremity features a little tune played by an instrument, and if you press its belly, you get all 4 together - and he loves it.  He's able to trigger the belly music himself, although I'm still not sure if it's deliberate or accidental. There's also a frog that sings the alphabet song, but the dog commandeered it ages ago.  Sometimes Laika sets off the frog while Bren plays with the duck, and I get a brief preview of the cacophony in store for us.

It's been a few weeks since my last post, as I've been playing an exciting game called Keeping My Job.  Like many businesses these days, The Large Pet Hospital That Shall Not Be Named is experiencing some financial distress.  If I'm understanding things correctly, this is due in large part to hospital profits not keeping pace with the costs of running our shelter.  The hospital support of the shelter is our Unique Mission, which is unfortunately so Unique that the general public is largely unaware of it or misunderstands it.

This means, we have lots of meetings these days.  How to capture fees (which is practice management speak for, Quit accidentally or deliberately leaving services off the bill), how to improve public awareness, how to improve communication and efficiency, how to increase shelter donations, etc.  I'm hoping we get to the one where you build a pyramid out of office chairs soon, I've long dreamed of participating in bizarre business-y team building rituals.  These meetings typically take place on my days off, so Brennan has been seeing quite a bit of my workplace.  Here he is with one of the technicians, Angela, who was very sweet and came in two hours before her shift started to watch him.

But enough about me - what else has Baby B been up to?  Well, I've been trying out this Bebe Pod chair, which allegedly helps babies learn to sit up and strengthens their core muscles.  Or something.  Reviews so far are mixed, but I do love this picture for two reasons - one, the way I managed to position him so the seaweed decal is growing out of his head; two, the way he looks like he's saying, another martini, sweetheart, and make it snappy.  Bedtime and naptimes are going pretty well, and we're working on establishing a transitional object (parenting speak for, reassuring toy or blanky that is part of the bedtime ritual) - the soft puppy toy in the next picture.

Brennan has recently discovered his feet and loves to grab them, especially when I'm trying to change his diaper.  I sometimes catch him staring at his toes as if they hold the answer to the universe.  Check out the cute pants, by the way.  They were hand-knit for him by a GUY.  A straight one.  No, really.  He works with me at the Large Financially Strapped Pet Hospital That Shall Not Be Named.  Thanks, David!

Since I had the weekend off, we indulged in a family breakfast outing to Just for You.  An important part of my post-partum non-stop pastry parade is beignets.

We followed breakfast with a family Christmas tree outing, which involved double parking outside the hardware store and picking out a tree that wouldn't consume what little empty space we have left.  The tree skirt reminds me of a sweater I might have worn in the 80s.

Laika is very fond of the tree and likes lying under it with the Alphabet Frog.

A lot of Bren's play time is on a blanket on the floor, but we can sometimes entertain him (aka, keep him from crying) with the vibrating chair.  He can grab the dangling bunny and rip him off his velcro base.  Here he is watching me put lights on the tree.  Then he got bored.  So I finished the tree later, after I put the camera away.  And that, folks, is the extent of my holiday preparations to date.  A few days ago, I realized that Christmas had more or less snuck up behind me with a baseball bat.  I have no idea what to give anyone or how I'm going to get it taken care of in the next 11 days. Luckily, a new baby turns out to be a pretty handy excuse for all kinds of forgotten things and failures to show up, especially at a time when scaling back is a national trend.

Thanksgiving

I wasn't able to make it baby boot camp at all this week - most of the classes were cancelled, because of the holiday.  Which is a little weird when you think about it - a holiday devoted to overeating should be an occasion for more exercise classes, not less.  So we made up our own class, which was really just a very long walk with some bouts of jogging or running steps or doing push-ups on a bench - basically, looking like a crazy person.  Brennan wasn't much help as he napped almost the whole time. 

Grandma Lorna and Grandpa Üwe visited from Wisconsin and were put to work cooking turkeys, babysitting, and baby lifting.  Here's Ian in a brief pause between bouncing, wearing his day trader shirt.  I managed to incorporate alcohol into both of my contributions to Thanksgiving dinner - cranberry mandarin port relish and baked sweet potatoes with bourbon pecan butter.

Guess who's had champagne!

This is how Lorna had to eat dinner - trapped under a sleeping baby.

We've been working on bedtime for a couple of weeks and Bren's been pretty good about going to sleep in the 8-8:30 range.  He's still sleeping in the sidecar bassinet, though - the crib is still for things like kicking, mobile-watching, and cramming toys in the mouth.

We're also experimenting a little with the playground - I've held him in my lap on the swings and the slide, and while I don't know if he likes it, at least he isn't screaming.  Mostly, he seems to like watching everyone, even if he has to wear the ugly, Mommy-imposed sun hat.  He also seemed SUPER interested in the carousel - at least, until he was on it.  I think the jury is still out on that one, but judge for yourself....

Playtime

Guest Blogger:  Brennan Petersen

I'm sure you are wondering, Who is this handsome man of mystery?  What exotic things does he do every day?  Well, just this once, I'll allow access to my fabulous life and activities here in San Francisco. 

I like to dress sharp and check out the ladies -

how you doin'?

I really, really enjoy kicking

and drooling.

I test the durability of toys and blankets-

this one passed.

I fly through the air EVERY DAY.

I'm still trying to figure out what these hand things do.

They are DELICIOUS.

Sometimes, I wonder what happened to my portfolio.

Back to Work

My polling place is just down the street, in some dude's garage (I don't know why, but in San Francisco you vote in weird places.  When Mike lived in Russian Hill, he voted in an art gallery.) - so I loaded up the baby into the bjorn and walked over. I discovered a few things:  we barely fit in the booth - I had to turn a little sideways - and nothing speeds up my voting process like hearing Brennan drop a tremendous poo.  So I may have accidentally voted for Nader.  Sadly, Prop R, which would have renamed the city sewage plant after W, did not pass.

Here's Bren at 12 weeks.  I'm going to do these once a month now.  No input from the peanut gallery on the number of bottles visible in the background.

Here he is playing tickle with his Daddy.  We're not actually sure if he's ticklish but he smiles and squirms when we do it, so it's fun for everyone.

Playing with Lavender Lab (yes, it's full of lavender, like a big puppy shaped sachet)

I like to call this one "paparazzi catches Brennan leaving Nobu with Crinklebug"

These pics were taken on different days, we just like the rooster outfit A LOT.

My maternity leave is up and I started back at Pets on Sunday.  Bren spent the first day with his Daddy.  They walked up and down the hill a couple times, watched some football, and read "Sally Goes to the Vet" so that he could see what Mommy was doing at work.  Mommy spent the day wanting to call home every 5 minutes.  The next day he went to Cousin Ian's and spent the day with Nanny May. Mommy still wanted to call every 5 minutes, but was reined in by the knowledge that while May's English is WAY better than my Cantonese, a phone call would not be particularly rewarding for either of us.  Anyway, he seems to enjoy his time there - I imagine it helps that May seems to really like to be sure his little tummy is full.  

I suppose this would be the part where I say what a special time it was, but guess what - it's not that kind of blog.  But here's a "I love my little baby" picture, so I guess I'm at least a little corny.