Like a REAL date???

Yesterday, for the first time since the baby was born, Derek and I went out alone for a few hours and caught a movie. It was so strange to not be with the baby for so long. Once a month, I get to go and have a mom's night out to do rubber stamping/scrapbooking and Derek would watch Juliana for a couple of hours. And once in a while, I might have a quick run to the store while Jessica or Derek watches her for a few minutes. But this time, it was just Jessica watching Juliana.
For 3.5 hours... all alone....

Luckily it went rather smoothly and Juliana was in a fairly good mood when we left... full tummy and a dry diaper. Derek called her when we got to the theater to confirm which showing we would be watching and, as soon as the movie ended, he called her again to let her know we would be on our way home. Everything was happy and peaceful when he talked with her before the movie started. The sun was shining... birds were chirping... all was right in the world. When he called after the movie ended, storm clouds were looming on the horizon. (figuratively - it was a bright sunny 75 degrees yesterday) Baby was starting to get fussy and Derek said he heard the first notes of panic in Jessica's voice. Ok, maybe not panic, but a really, really, REALLY strong concern about the direction things were heading. It came across as an ever-so-slightly higher pitch in her voice when she talked.

When we got home, baby was content and being carried by Jessica, and perked up when she heard our voices. I think she was a little upset with me, since she didn't immediately want to come to me, but wanted only Daddy to hold her. She would only give me the cursory glance every so often. This lasted about 10 minutes and I was back on her good side again.

Jessica said that she kept the baby entertained with Disney videos. They went through Little Mermaid, Tarzan, Lion King and Aladdin. It must have been playing at double speed, to get through all those in 3.5 hours. I imagine it sounded like chipmunk speech. Jessica claims that they only watched portions of each movie. How confusing would that be? The sea witch steals the voice of Tarzan until Simba kisses Abu?

Oh...the movie we went to see was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls. It didn't stand up to the first movie, but it wasn't a bad movie, but it was difficult to truly get into the movie with some of the antics that went on.

New foods, acne problems and definitions

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been introducing Juliana to new spices in between some new solids. As I'm sure it is with most babies, she prefers fruits to vegetables. So, if we're introducing a new fruit, it's sure to be better received if it is mixed with bananas (her current favorite). When it comes to vegetables, she will eat a little of it, but not even half of what she would eat if it were fruit. One of the things they recommend from the First Foods class I attended, is to season the food the same way you would season it if you were eating it (excluding any salt, which should be minimal to none). One of my first experiments was to warm up some some pureed sweet potato on the stovetop and flavor it with a little pat of butter and a pinch of sage. Score! She ate about as much as she would of fruit. Now i need to work in other seasonings with some of the other vegetables.

This past weekend, the weather was unusually warm (low 90's), so we made a trek to the (air-conditioned) mall and grabbed some lunch at Claim Jumper. Juliana seemed particularly interested in our food, but there were too many things that were new, that if she had a reaction, we'd have a tough time narrowing it down to what it could be. The wait staff was kind enough to bring out a baby platter (cheese sticks, a slice of turkey sandwich meat, applesauce and mandarin orange slices.) Since we haven't introduced her to cheeses yet, sandwich meat is off-limits (as well as citrus fruits for now), we decided to let her try the applesauce. It seemed a little sweetened and was flavored with cinnamon. I offered her a taste, and she made a face, but she opened up her mouth for more. I guess she wasn't sure if she liked it.


Hmmm, I don't think she cares much for it. Do you?


Four bites was about all that she would take. Here's the full video of her reactions from the 3rd bite.




They say that it can take up to 15 introductions of a food before it will be accepted.

With a reaction like this, it may take a minimum of 15 tries...

Ah well.... in the meantime we have other things to worry about. Like what? Like acne problems. No, we're not talking about Jessica, or Daddy... or the baby... or even me. We're talking about Jojo (the cat!). Yes, poor kitty, she has feline acne on her chin. There were four really big zits that had infections running deep. We took her to the vet and tried just keeping the area clean with an iodine solution (Didn't work). Then we tried Pyoben Gel (a type of acne cream that is safe for animals)... seemed to help initially, but then the acne seemed to get worse. So now, Jo gets to take a little pill twice a day for a couple of weeks to try to clear the infection up. Five days into taking the pills and the acne is almost all gone. The vet says that their skin layers can be up to 42 layers thick (worst case scenario would be that she would have to take the meds for 5 weeks), but hopefully it will only take a couple of weeks.

You would think that acne problems would be associated with Jessica (being a teenager and all), but lately the only persistent discussion with her has been over the definition of "boyfriend". She figures that on an average day, she sends and receives around 140 text messages. (she says she usually has to wipe her message inbox at least twice each day, which stores up to 50 messages there) Most of these messages are from friends that are boys, hence our (Derek's and my) use of the term "boyfriend". "They are NOT my boyfriend!" is the typical response we'd get from Jessica. To her, a boyfriend is someone to be dated. Once I pointed out that we never referred to them as "exclusive boyfriends", she gave us a sheepish grin and said "In that case, I have a million boyfriends". Teenagers!

Mom, were we ever like this? Wait... don't answer. I don't think I really want to know the answer. I'm not sure I could handle it right now. They say that your kids are like you when you were a child, only ten times worse. Juliana is only 8 months old and I'd like to keep her that way in my head a while longer.

My first Mothers' Day

What a day! Filled with family, food, fun and fanciful unicorns! Ok, maybe the unicorns were only in my head.

For a couple of weeks now, we have known that we would be having brunch with my mom, sister, and cousin and then a steak dinner at my cousin's place. All last week it's been "brunch on Sunday" this and "brunch at the Edgewater" that. Saturday night rolls around and I realize that I haven't the slightest clue as to what time we will be having brunch. So I text message my sister "What time is brunch tomorrow?" to which she responds "9:45". 9:45??? That's not brunch... that makes it breakfast! Ah well, no sleeping in for me (as if Juliana would allow that anyways). We get up and pack the baby and her accoutrements (that's Ah-COO-trey-mon, with the French accent, because she's down like that) and trek down to the Seattle waterfront. We (Daddy, Jessica and I - aka the Baby Entourage) are strictly there for baby, because everything is all about the baby. Everyone wants to see the baby and we're just fluff. But we're okay with that today, because there is food involved.

The breakfast/brunch/whatever buffet was pretty good overall and everyone ate way too much. Jessica was a little apprehensive when I told her this place is known for their seafood, because the last time we took her out for dinner at a (Chinese) seafood restaurant, jellyfish was served and she really wasn't looking forward to another course of that. Once I explained that it was a traditional American cuisine being served, she let out the biggest sigh of relief.

People have been asking for a current photo of Jessica and Juliana together, but Jessica usually protests. Today was no different. As soon as I pulled out the camera at the restaurant, Jessica started using her sister as a shield:

Have I ever mentioned how much I love my little sister?

You can tell Juliana got bored with this game rather quickly.

After about five clicks of the camera, Jessica gave up and relented to give us a grin (I had to resort to the - "it's Mothers' Day, so you have to do what I say" tactic and, amazingly, it worked):

Juliana just wanted that water glass and pondered possible means of achieving this.

After the meal was over, we parted ways with Mom, Sis and Cousin Wes until dinner. Once home, Jessica helped me prepare some coconut ice cream for tonight's dessert (we tag-teamed the preparation with entertaining the baby). We had just enough time to chill the base and get it churned before we had to head back out the door. (Daddy got in a long nap during all this - does this mean I get a nap on Father's Day?)

Dinner was relaxing and delicious, except for the intermittent squirming exhibited by Jessica. When visiting with other people, we've made it a rule that she can not text message until we're back in the car. The first time this rule was effected, she practically screamed bloody murder. Today she just got a little twitchy every now and then. Derek wanted to linger there a little longer, just to get Jessica properly riled up, but the baby was ready for bed, so we bid our adieus and trekked back home.

All in all, it was a rather nice first Mothers' Day.

Flowers, Growing Older and Life in the Family Lane

For the past few weeks, my mom has been visiting (staying at my sister's, since we don't have an extra bed right now) and will be in the area until just past Mother's Day. This past week was the last week of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, so we (Juliana, Pau-Pau, Sahm-Yi and I) made the trek 30 minutes north of here to take in the color. There were tulips and daffodils and irises as far as the eye could see.
Most of the fields had your standard tulips you see at the flower stands. There are actually a ton of varieties of tulips (who knew?), and we stopped by the Roozengaarde viewing garden to check them out. This is a shot of some of the more exotic ones we saw.


(Those larger ones in the foreground are also a type of tulips) There was also one variety that, when in full bloom, I could hide my whole face behind. I never knew tulips could grow so big.

Juliana was squinting, since it was a very sunny day (smack dab in between two horribly wet and nasty days). She did have a sun hat with her that day, but we did remove it for a couple of pictures.

There was even "an authentic Dutch windmill" there. Does that mean it was shipped over from Holland? or just modeled and built like one?

Have you seen the windmill? Is it over this way?

Pau-Pau wanted a picture with Juliana by the rhododendron bush. After walking around for a while, we took a break on the grassy area. Juliana plopped herself down on her Sahm-Yi's feet.

What is this again? Grass?

Living in a second floor condo in wet, rainy Washington, we don't get to spend a whole lot of time out on the grass.

The day after our trip to Mount Vernon, Sahm-Yi had to go on a business trip for a few days. Rather than relegating Pau-Pau or Jessica to the couch for the duration of 5 days, Juliana and I spent those days staying in Issaquah with Pau-Pau at my sister's home. So Derek and Jessica had a few days of fending for themselves in the kitchen. I heard they had pizza for at least two of those nights. and Derek did fix his specialty for dinner the first night - Arroz con algo de lata (Translation: Rice with stuff from cans - which usually means corn and turkey chili)

Before coming home on Wednesday, I dropped off the baby with Derek at his office and had a night out with my cousin Wes. Where did we go? Well, let's get a little back story... Back in January, I learned that a certain band was touring and tickets were going on sale for a performance in Seattle. Derek made me (yes, he really did) get tickets and the original plan was to go with my sister. Who was performing? Why the very band that held our teenage hearts and covered so many bedroom walls around the globe in the 80's --- Duran Duran.

Considering the fact that they were nearing the half-century mark, they looked pretty good. The performance was great, even if Simon was a little flat on a couple of the tunes. I remember reading that touring was really hard on his singing even back in the 80's since most all of the songs were written at the upper end of his vocal range. We had some good seats off to the side about 40 feet from the stage. My first complaint was that we were seated behind a couple of rows of really tall people who insisted on standing during the whole concert.

My only other complaint? The fact that I'm getting old. When the opening act started performing, the first thing that popped into my head was "Ugh! I need ear plugs" followed very closely by "Oh my gosh! I forgot to bring ear plugs!" and then "Wait! I'm asking for ear plugs? Waaaahhhh! I'm getting old!" Ok, not exactly on that last part, but you get the idea.

When I got home, it was 1am and Derek was half asleep with the baby, Jessica was pretending to be asleep in her bedroom (we learned that the next morning) and the cats were wrapping themselves around my ankles.

Yesterday was a day of catch-up. Dishes needed to be done, news to be caught up on and mail to sort through. Some of the more interesting news? Jessica has a new boyfriend (David - a non-smoker junior) and a new best friend (Tyler). She's still friends with Rebecca (her former BFF), but a disagreement between mutual friends had them falling to different sides.

That's all for now. Here are a couple of cute pictures to end the day with:

Mama, what is this shiny thing you have attached to your hand?

Late last month, my friend Teresa came up from Portland with her three boys. This is a picture of Juliana giving some love to her youngest, Peter.