Fall

I love fall. I have concluded that it is my favorite season. I think I love it because it's all about transition. As my erstwhile wife could tell you, I loooove the times in between seasons and tend to get bored rather quickly when the season, whatever it is, eventually arrives in full force. Fall, however, is all about change. I love the changing leaves, changing temperatures, changing weather, etc. I love all the cider and pies and baked goods. Add to that our anniversary (Oct. 26) and M's birthday (Oct. 31), plus my grandma's birthday (Oct. 27), and you have the makings of a great season.

To get ourselves started with the whole fall thing, we went with some friends to a pumpkin patch on Sauvie Island earlier this afternoon. It's this island in the middle of the river that runs through Portland. We became obsessed with going there to pick fruit this summer and when our friends suggested going for pumpkins, we thought it sounded perfect. And it was, despite the fabulous fall weather the northwest graced us with. It was freezing and raining and muddy. Oh, was it muddy. And the patch was a little bare, since pumpkin-picking time apparently peaked last weekend. But it was so much fun and we all had a great time.

In addition to pumpkin gazing, M tried to chase a tractor outside and ran around the little country store (where we ran into some more friends) and petted some goats...

...and he posed for the ubiquitous pumpkin patch pictures with his moms. His pumpkin of choice was a bit small for sitting on, but he made do!



Happy fall!

PS: My mom and sister have been visiting this week and I'm going to post some photos of that as soon as I get them from my mom. M loves to hang out with his grammy and auntie and has been perfecting his giggle with them, among other things!

Haircut!

M got his hair cut yesterday and came out looking very cute. I was telling him that he's a big boy now, although really he's still our baby :) He needed both of his moms' cell phones as distraction toys. Here are a couple of the big event in progress. First is of Sacha holding little M, then of M with his almost-finished new do.




Also, here's one of Mateo (pre-trim) and Nils pushing a cart together. I tell you, it is so cool to see them becoming friends. Yesterday, we were the first ones at our baby group and, as other people came in, Mateo was acting shy and staying very close to me. Then Nils and Emily came in and he warmed up right away and started playing with his friend. It was neat to see.

Exploring

We drove around this weekend and saw some beautiful fall colors. The fall started early this year where we live and the trees are showing us some beautiful oranges, reds and yellows. We also got in some solid yard work, which is a good thing. We bought our house from two avid gardening enthusiasts and we have more plants than we know what to do with.

However, my real purpose in posting this is to put up a couple of pictures (they're a bit grainy, since I took them with the video camera and no flash). Being the fall enthusiast that I am, I got a little pumpkin for our dining room table last week. I gave it to Mateo today to play with and he loved it. So, here is our little pumpkin with his little pumpkin :)

Preparing

I got onto a big emergency preparedness kick before M was born. Maybe it was a way of nesting? Sacha and I got together a pretty decent disaster supply kit, including lots of canned food and some essential first aid items. We tried to figure out where the best place to keep it might be - in the basement so it would be close at hand? or in the shed out back so we could get to it if the house were to collapse? Fun stuff.

Anyway, fast forward to recently. On one of our date nights several months ago we went to see a movie about the fallout from Hurricane Katrina. It included some intense footage of the storm. After we left, I got to thinking about how we might respond to a disaster now that we have a child to think about. Some time later (I'm such a procrastinator), after months of driving by a billboard advertising www.ready.gov, I finally went to check it out. It got me very motivated to update our disaster kit.

I never gave it much thought, but you really do need to prepare to take care of your kid in a disaster! I went down the list of recommended baby items to have stashed away (diapers, formula, diaper cream, bottles or cups, warm clothes, etc) and realized that we had...nothing. We're doing a good job of taking care of M's day-to-day needs, but we'd be in trouble in an emergency.

And, as I went through the rest of ready.gov, I realized that we needed some more things for all of us, too. The website also mentioned that if you have a nursing mom or baby (or a pregnant person, older person, or someone who gets sick) that you're going to need more water on hand, and we had only the bare minimum as far as water goes.

So, I went on another kick! I seem to be having some protective mama bear instincts kicking in. I inventoried our current supplies and compared them to the list of recommended stuff. Then Sacha and I went through and figured out what we already had extra of in the house that could be used. And then we prioritized our top five things to get that we don't have.

Now we're on the road to having a good (but not too overwhelming) supply of emergency essentials close at hand. I feel really good about it and am relieved to know that we'll be able to take care of ourselves and the little guy if we ever need to.

11-month letter

Dear Mateo,
You are a busy 11-month-old boy! Your eleventh month was all about exploration and quite a lot of frustration. It's funny to write about it now, because you became such a happy boy when you learned to walk at the ripe old age of 11 months, 1 week...but that's for next month's letter. (The tenses might be wacky in this letter, because some things only happened last month and are now obsolete, while some are still quite current.)


During September, you worked hard practically around the clock on walking. You seemed to realize suddenly that there were more things in heaven and earth than the chair you might be holding onto and you wanted to check them all out. However, you didn't want to crawl to them, you wanted to walk! You spent a LOT of time feeling unhappy about this. At some point, you transitioned from appearing to be teething all the time to just plain being cranky all the time. I realize it sounds like I'm complaining here, but I'm not. From my perspective (of being with you pretty much around the clock), this is an objective fact. You were cranky. It was kind of a tough month that way. And we still managed to get through it and to find happy moments interspersed in the crankiness. Here are some things that make you happy:

Being with one of your moms. When you weren't struggling with gravity, you wanted to be with one of us. You wanted to be carried around and close to us all the time. If we left the room for a few minutes, you let us know that you wanted us back. You began to discover your cuddly side, which we thought was very cute. And, you continued to really enjoy being with Mommy.



And, pushing your own stroller! This was one of your most favorite things to do this month. You pushed your stroller everywhere! You even walked most of the way home from our local park one night.


Also, you've started to develop more of an appreciation for solid foods. Once we stepped back and let you decide for yourself how much you wanted to eat, you got a lot more comfortable with the idea. You developed a love (bordering on obsession, really) for cream cheese. For some reason, you prefer it spread on something instead of just in a little lump on the plate. We've had many breakfasts together in which you eat all the cream cheese off the top of my bagel and I eat whatever is leftover. Since cream cheese was all you would eat for quite awhile, we were happy that your one food of choice had some solid calories in it.


You've also gotten more into fruits and occasionally veggies. And, a particular combination of rice, beans, chicken, avocado and sour cream available from one of our local restaurants. We love going there, too, and are always happy to take you there :) You also, like most kids, love bread. Especially Grammy's special cheese toast.


I am happy to report that sleep is actually going better. In fact, (knock on wood) it's actually going pretty well. You nurse off to sleep fairly regularly these days, which we are okay with because you now know how to get yourself to sleep, too. For those times when you don't nurse down, Mommy reads you some stories and rocks you to your lullabies and you drift off peacefully in your crib.

I write this, I'm imagining myself of a few months ago reading this and passing out in shock. There were times (and many of them) when I thought you would never learn how to sleep on your own. It has been a long, hard road and I'm sure there are still some bumps waiting for us. But, for now, it is very satisfying to be at this point and be able to say that sleep is going well.

Here you are in a rare sleeping moment in your old carseat, which we still use occasionally:


So, those are some of the things you've been up to. Overall, you've been exploring. You have figured out several new things, including how to open the cupboards in the kitchen and how to open the oven. Needless to say, an oven lock is soon going to become the newest member of our family. You are showing signs of wanting to climb things, such as baby gates, bookshelves, and the rocking chair. You are a busy little boy and we are having tons of fun with you.

You also had a big old time exploring your grandparents' house recently. You walked all over with Grammy...

... and loooooved playing a finger puppet game with Grandpa.


You had tons of fun with Apa when he visited, too!




So far, here are some personality traits I associate with you (thanks to Wendy and Karen for the idea!): sweet, inquisitive, determined, and energetic!


Mateo, we love being your parents. We are thankful every day that you came to join our family. And, we can't believe you're almost a year old! More on that in the next letter :)

In the meantime, we love you oodles and oodles of noodles. Mwa, mwa!

love, Mama and Mommy

PS: We want to wish a very happy birthday to Nils and Liam, your friends who turned one on October 6th and 7th, respectively. Happy birthday, little guys!

Walking! Really walking!

Mateo learned how to walk for real today. He had been taking a few steps at a time and then all of the sudden, after we got home from the airport, he started walking all over the place! We got copious video footage of it at our neighborhood park, some of which I'm posting here.

I was looking at M after we got home and feeling very nostalgic. It was just 11 months ago that he was this tiny squirming little eight-pounder. We had to pump his arm up and down to keep him awake while he was nursing and he could barely lift his head off the ground. Now he's so big and coordinated and he's walking. Amazing. We love our little bear.

Pics

Some photos from our trip: