Grapes

Once, when I was eight, my cousin and I were at my grandmother's house, and we were hungry. She had some green grapes that she was going to offer to everyone in a bit, but we were hungry right at that moment.

So someone told us we could have some grapes, but just a few. Oh, that was great. We dove in. We didn't mean to forget about how we were only supposed to have a few, but next thing you know, there were only three grapes left. And that's when we remembered.

Oops.

Well, we did stop then, leaving those three grapes. I think there were some pursed lips, and some fingers wagged in our general direction. It's a good thing we were cute, I guess.

I was reminded of that experience today while watching Anders eat some (red) grapes (sliced in half) as a dessert after dinner. I thought he was about done eating, so moved onto the fruit course. I gave him about five grapes (so about ten half grapes). He ate them, and then, "Mo?" Ok, five more, more eating, and then, again, "Mo?" —this went on until he had eaten about twenty-five grapes (fifty halves)!

I must admit, they were good grapes.

Mommy's slippers

Sometimes your feet just aren't warm enough, fuzzy enough, or blue enough. At times like that, Mommy's slippers are just the thing.

in the garden

We have a lot of spiders in our garden. I know that should make me happy, but they really like building webs that traverse various walking corridors in our backyard. So while I don't kill the spiders, I do regularly break the webs that get in the way (usually through conscious effort, and sometimes by walking right through them before I notice them).

Today, after breaking one such web, I noticed that the spider was quite big, and had caught some prey.



Elsewhere in the garden... it's fall, and that means the lemon tree is flowering again. We also have a primordial lemon that's larger than anything we've seen since planting the tree last spring. This guy is close to an inch long.


And our kung pao pepper plant finally has a couple of baby peppers. If it makes it to three, it will have exceeded the output of the bell pepper plant.

Anders's First Haircut!

We knew this moment would come. Sigrid kept putting it off, but Anders really had grown quite a mess of hair, as you can see by these pictures from a week ago:





So we decided that Anders would be getting a haircut this weekend. He didn't go to a fancy salon, but that doesn't mean he didn't get a shampoo before his cut.




We pulled back the rug in the back room, and put his high chair (sans tray) on top of an old sheet. Then we turned on a steady diet of Pororo episodes to keep him from getting restless. And then, for the next fifteen minutes or so, I butchered his hair, with a bit of cleanup work by Sigrid.








Here's the video version. It's close to four minutes long. The original cut was more like nine minutes long (edited down from about twenty minutes of raw footage), but upon review I had to admit that maybe the subject matter didn't merit that long of a video. So even if you think the video is excessive, keep in mind that it's less excessive than it originally was.


The result.







The fallen soldiers.

Sure!

When Anders started saying "sure," we thought it was a bit strange. After all, his proficiency with "yes" was pretty questionable, and don't you think "yes" would come before "sure" in a baby's vocabulary?

As it turns out, though, Sigrid will often be making or pouring something (like, say, iced tea) and ask me if I want some. And I often will, as we have noticed since the boy started with his new word, say, "sure."

Mystery solved.

Slider

Slider def'n:

1. A type of pitch in baseball.
   
2. A small burger.
   
3. The singular of that late-90s sci-fi show.
   
4. One who slides.

mad skillz

Anders is really into keyholes, clasps, belts, and so on. I suppose from one point of view, a parent should do little to encourage this in a child who still needs to be strapped into car seats, strollers, shopping carts, and so on, since otherwise pretty soon he'll be escaping on a regular basis.

But he's so excited by these new challenges! So I did what most parents probably do. I bought him a toy to practice these things on.





Here's the video version (as usual, Facebook viewers will need to click on "view original post" to see the video).

Knight of the Slotted Spoon

Most everyone knows who the knights who say "ni!" are.

But are you familiar with the knight of the slotted spoon?

latest trick

Amanda taught Anders to high-five, and he's really loving his new trick.

Smorgasbord

Here are a few pictures from the last two weeks or so...

Future beat poet.


No shirt, and so sad and forlorn...


We've all had that experience where all of your clothes are dirty...


Reading the news...



And, finally, it's the new game that's sweeping the nation! Feet in the air!

Croup

Last night, Anders visited the place of his birth. Of course, he lives in the city of his birth, so I mean more than that. I mean we took him to see a doctor at the hospital building where he was born.

He's fine, he's fine (indeed, Sigrid tells me he's doing much better today). He has croup, and one of the books we have basically says constricted breathing is a symptom to expect, but that wheezing is a symptom indicating a need for immediate medical treatment.

What are you supposed to do with that? Where's the dividing line between, oh, don't worry, and, yikes, emergency? We called an advice nurse, and she listened to my explanation (including me doing my best to imitate the sound he was making - not the barking cough part, but the labored breathing in between). She said it sounded like he was borderline in terms of whether to bring him in. She also said he'd probably get worse as the night progressed, so we figured there was a strong chance we'd be taking him in sometime during the night. That being the case, sooner seemed better than later - less discomfort for him, and 10:30 p.m. seemed like a better time for this than 3:00 a.m.

Anders didn't much care for the cool mister they gave him, but he loved the bubbles that the nurse found for him.