Hanging out with Erick & Morgan :)

Okay, here are the pictures from Teo's "date" with Erick and Morgan. Enjoy!

Playing and eating with Erick:


Playing with Morgan and some toys (and his favorite "toy" - the remote):

"I got your nose!":

We like to call this one "Glamour Shots by Deb" (anyone who's seen Napolean Dynomite should get the reference - any of you who haven't should! hehe):

"All that playing tuckered me out!":

Clean baby

Here are some pictures I took this morning after Teo's shower with Daddy. We've found that it's much easier to stick him in the shower than to haul out the little bathtub all the time, so we pretty much do so M-W-F, and sometimes even on the weekends. He really seems to enjoy it, too!

T-shirt Tuesday!

Here are some cute shots of Teo in his school "uniform", which he wears every Tuesday. All the kids wear their Forever Young shirts that day for their weekly walk to the farmer's market. Last week, Grandma Peggy came down and helped. She even got to feed Teo his bottle, which is a rare treat for her, since he only drinks bottles when he's there. Now that he's eating solids, though, I'm sure she'll have more opportunities to feed him. :)

Crawling for REAL this time!

Yes, folks, the boy can crawl!



And every day he can go a little farther! :) Man! We need to finish (start?) baby-proofing the house!!

More yummy stuff...

Here are a few more shots of our champion eater, this time enjoying some peas! My mom says (half-jokingly, of course) that it's simply not fair that I've ended up with such a good eater when I was so insanely picky. Sorry, mom!

An outing (er, date?) for mom and dad

Saturday we had tickets to the Music Circus production of "Hairspray" and Teo got to hang out with our friends Erick and Morgan for a few hours. Billy and his parents have had season tickets for years, but this year, this is the only show he and I attended, for obvious reasons! We saw the matinee & then picked Teo up and went out to dinner with Grandpa Jay and Grandma Peggy. It was a fun afternoon, but I really hate being away from him when I don't absolutely have to be (i.e. when I'm at work) - I miss my little man!!!

Erick and Morgan had a lot of fun hanging out with Teo, who was his usual sparkling self for them. They got some really cute pictures of their afternoon together, which I will post when Morgan emails them to me. :)

Oh, mobility!

Well, the little man is just progressing in leaps and bounds. He took a few actual crawling steps this week, and he's also trying very hard to sit up on his own. He's figured out how to get onto his bottom from a crawling position, but he hasn't quite been able to push up into a full sit. He'll be there very soon, I'm sure!

"I like to eat eat eat...

... oatmeal and bananas... and pears!"

Yes, folks, we've started solids! For a couple of weeks now, Teo has been greedily (hungrily?) eying other babies' food at school, to the point that they were having to take him to another room when feeding them! Since he's become increasingly mobile, he was starting to try to intercept a spoonful here and there!

So, this week we decided to give bananas a try (Dr. Sears' recommendation for a breastfed baby's first food) to see what he thought. Behold his bowl of bananas & Teo getting ready for his first bites:




"Lemme do it! I can do it, mommy!"


He was so funny the first day - he wouldn't open his mouth, and instead kept his lips pursed in a sort of kiss shape and just sucked the bananas off the tip. It was so cute!



Banana-toe:

"Mmmmmm... that was good!"

Since everything went so well with the bananas, we decided to go ahead with organic baby oatmeal, and he loves that, too! By now, though, he's a pro - he doesn't try to take the spoon away anymore, and he actually opens his mouth wide and allows us to deposit the food inside! There was barely any mess, too! (I'm not harboring any illusions about things staying this way, though. Don't worry, I'm not that delusional about this process!) Behold oatmeal face:


We made a trip out to Whole Foods on Friday evening to pick up some nice organic fruits and veggies (we're making our own food) and picked up some pears, apples, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, peas and brown rice cereal. We steamed up the pears this morning and made a nice puree, which he absolutely loved (hopefully it'll counteract the, ahem, binding effect of the bananas and cereal)!

This is so much fun! Yay!

A couple of cute shots:

Teo, who thinks he's old enough to pull himself up on things and stand:


Teo, looking like Dopey (of Seven Dwarfs fame):

Commando crawl!!

As you can see from the video, mobility is now the name of the game. Teo just keeps finding new and improved ways of getting where he wants to go. We really need to get on the ball with this baby-proofing stuff!!

Can't think of a good title for this post...

I'm sure it's because I'm a bit sleep-deprived! Teo hasn't been sleeping as well as usual, due to the fact that he's been a bit congested and we think he may be getting a bottom tooth or two. Oh, well! This too shall pass.

On to bigger and better things... like the the fun weekend we had with Grandma Peggy and Grandpa Jay. On Saturday afternoon, we met them at the mall and then went out to dinner - all through which Teo was extremely well-behaved (of course!). Here's a nice shot of Teo with Grandma:


Also, since we're going to be starting solids soon, Grandma Peggy was nice enough to clean up our beautiful hand-me down high chair for us and bring it over. It started it's journey with the cousins in Southern California, Vince and Jack, then made it's way up to Lacey and Lauren's house, and now Teo gets to use it! Here's a shot of the peanut in his new chair:


The weekend ended with a nice visit out to Rancho Murieta before Grandpa and Grandma headed out to see Evita at the Music Circus. All in all, a very nice weekend!

Doesn't he know...

he's only 5 months old?? The kid thinks he's supposed to be crawling already! What's next? A beard and a driver's license?! heehee!

Seriously, though, I really think he's going to be actually crawling within a couple of weeks. When we got home today, I put him down so I could change out of my work clothes and he promptly flipped over and got up on all fours and started rocking back and forth. In my experience, the next step is to start moving! Holy cow!

Not too much going on around here...

Since I don't really have all that much material this week - other than the fact that the boy keeps getting more and more mobile by the minute! - I decided to just take a few random shots of Sir Teo hanging out. Lo and behold - I finally got my "toes-in-mouth" shots, plus a video! Yay! So here are a few shots of him playing with his new "skwish" toy and eating his toes. Enjoy!


"Thumbs up, mommy - these things are good!"

"Mmmmmm"


Oh, I also finally got a shot of Ty and Eboney, two of Teo's "educarers" at school. They are in charge of him most of the day in the infant area, and he loves them! They take such good care of him, and I love that they love him so much - it makes it so much easier for me to leave him there when I go to work. I will work on getting photos of Di (pronounced "Dee") who absolutely adores making Teo laugh (and often gets herself in trouble for doing so when he's supposed to be taking a nap!), Diane, the center director, and Stephanie, Nakeya and Raquel, who work on the toddler side, but have him in after 4pm, when Ty and Eboney go home.

Eboney (left) and Ty:

Best Daddy in the Whole Wide World!

I just wanted to give a little "shout out" to my dear hubby for being such a fantastic daddy! As I mentioned in the Anniversary post below, he stayed home with Teo yesterday, as Teo was getting over the tail end (no pun intended - I swear!) of his tummy ailment, and they had a very fun day. They came to see me for lunch, washed my car (well, Teo watched as Billy washed my car), made dinner for both last night and tonight, napped, and generally enjoyed hanging out together.

Billy, when I got home from work: "I could totally be a stay-at-home dad! We had so much fun!" Ahhh... if only we could afford it... then I'd be home! It's a really sweet thought, though, hon! :) I love you!

The loves of my life (ready for a nighttime walk when Teo didn't want to sleep!):

Only one rule applies...

You must watch this video with the sound on!

Happy 45th Anniversary!!!

So, my parents celebrated their 45th - yes, that's 45th - anniversary on Sunday, August 3, 2008 with a nice little bbq get-together with some friends. We were almost unable to be there for the celebration, since Teo picked up a stomach virus at school & had been projectile vomiting since Saturday night, but we took him to the doctor on Sunday morning and she said he would be okay. We decided to risk getting the car all pukey and went for it, and he did fine on the ride. In fact, he did fine the whole day until the very last guests left, and then he let loose! Anyway, Teo is now fine, after staying home from school on Monday (with me) and Tuesday (with Billy), and that's not the point of this post... so moving on to bigger and better things!

Grandpa and Grandma enjoying Teo (notice the anti-puke towel!):


What I was really wanting to talk about is the fact that, in this day and age of throw-away marriages, Billy and I are so fortunate to have parents who have been married as long as our respective parents have. Billy's parents recently celebrated their 40th Anniversary - congratulations, by the way! The greatest part, though, is that both our sets of parents continue to enjoy each other's company, and are very much in love. And it's the kind of love that really counts - the kind that still smolders through the hard times, knowing that the flames will once again be fanned when the good times return - and they always do return. This is the kind of love that Billy and I aspire to, and with such wonderful examples in our lives, believe we can and will and do have.

My boys:

Auntie Monki & "Uncle" Ryan (someday we will remove the quotation marks):


In closing, a toast, in the words of my father: "Salud, amor y dinero... y tiempo para gozarlos!" (Translation: "To health, love and wealth... and time to enjoy them!")

A sweet toast:

Interesting Article

I was just reading this article and thought I'd share. :) It would be really nice to pick up a toy for Teo and not have to wonder if it will cause harm to him somewhere down the line!

"May I have the camera, mommy, pleeease?!"

"I want to bite it!"