Food!

What can I say...our girl loves food.  Perhaps that's why she's currently in the 90th percentile for weight!  ;)  But really, we just started offering food to her in the past few weeks and she's had a positive reaction to just about everything we've thrown at her (and we've thrown quite a bit).  So far she's tried cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon, broccoli, butternut squash, carrots, bananas, oatmeal, greek yogurt, avocado, mango, and even a smidge of turkey.  

I'm currently toying with the baby led weaning approach where you allow the baby to exclusively self feed and skip all purees and fortified rice cereals.  I love the idea of being able to simply feed her what we are eating (within reason of course).  Since choking is a concern we've been offering her large chunks of food that she can hold, play with and suck on.  She does manage to get some down, but she typically breaks off small pieces at a time.  Using this approach the baby learns to chew before learning to swallow, so the first few weeks are really just about exploring food and getting used to the textures, tastes and sensation.  

Here are a few of our favorites...honeydew was a big hit early on.  :)

But I think broccoli may be the current favorite! 

 Amazingly, she's pretty darn good about getting the spoon into her mouth.  I've been loading the spoon with oatmeal and handing it over.  She greedily puts it in her mouth and plays with it.  This way of feeding isn't for the neat freak...she makes a total mess!  Every evening is followed by a bath and I find myself wishing that we had a more easy to clean highchair.  Oh well.  :)

Fun-filled weekend!

What a fun weekend we've had!  It all started with Quinn's first sleepover.  We invited his best friend, Madin, over to spend the night.  It all began with dinner on the deck, followed by ice cream and then marshmallow roasting over the fire pit.  The boys had a campout in a tent in Q's room.  They were up until the wee hours whispering in the tent, but finally managed to go to sleep.  

The next morning we hopped on the trolley and headed downtown to a new park that was recently completed on the site of an old parking lot around the county administration building.  It's a super nice park, with great slides, cool climbing structures and a fountain for splash play.  We also ran into the boys' buddies Kinley and Bella there.  They had a ton of fun!

After the park we wandered up to the Little Italy farmers market to procure some lunch.  Madin opted for tomatoes and sausage and spent the next hour gnawing on this massive hunk of salami-ish sausage. It was pretty amusing to witness!

After Madin went back home we loaded ourselves back into the car and headed north to Fallbrook and the Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve for a party hosted by the USGS seasonal field crew.  Both Q and A passed out in the car on the way up (this is probably the first time in over a year that Q has fallen asleep in the car!)

SMER is a beautiful piece of property and filled with wildlife.  This specked rattlesnake is one of many that frequently visits the house.  They also have regular mountain lion sightings.  

The biggest draw of the afternoon was the swimming hole in the Santa Margarita River.  It's a great spot with water deep enough for swimming and jumping off of the rocks.  Q was very brave and jumped right in!

Once the swimming was done we wandered back up to the house where Q entertained himself with sidewalk chalk.  Here he recreated the swimming hole experience complete with rock, water and lots of happy people all over the place.  :)

Field work with boy

Quinn has been asking for months to go out in the field with me.  I finally decided to give him the opportunity and took him out for a day of MAPS (Mapping Avian Productivity and Survivorship) banding at Cabrillo National Monument.  This is field work at its absolute cushiest...sitting under a tree overlooking the ocean banding birds, driving to the nets.  We set up 10 12-foot long mist nets, which we check every 30-40 minutes.  Birds are removed and taken back to a central location where we collect information about their species, age, sex and molt.  We fit them with a numbered metal band and release them.  To my surprise Q even jumped out of bed at 445 am filled with anticipation for the coming day. 

Here we are in front of the lighthouse after setting up the nets at sunrise

Heading out on our first net run of the morning

Just some silliness while we were waiting to go check nets again

Not a bad view!

Q approaches a net to see if we have any birds

Looks like we struck out at this one (this was a pretty slow day!)

Finally we captured somebody.  This was a California Thrasher.  Q was able to release it for us after we fitting him with a band.

More down time...checking out the whale skeleton and checking at the overlook for any whale sightings (we were not lucky enough to see one that day). 

And sometimes we catch things besides birds in our nets.  Here is a cicada that was captured in a net for Q to check out.  :)

Although it wasn't the most exciting day out there, Quinn did get to help out with some banding.  We caught several different species including an Anna's Hummingbird, California Thrasher, California Towhee, Spotted Towhee, Dark-eyed Junco, and probably a few others that I'm not remembering at the moment.  He was able to talk about his experience at preschool the following day.  :)

5 Months Already?

It's hard to believe that our little chunk is already 5 months old.  She's so much fun these days while making sure to keep us on our toes and not letting us get comfortable in any kind of routine.  Our baby who, for months slept from 8pm until 5 or 6 am appears to be gone and replaced by one who wakes up at all hours of the night and screams until she gets what she wants (which is usually to nurse).  But nighttime (and naptime) aside she's really a fun and happy girl.  She smiles at almost everyone she sees and will still let pretty much anyone hold her.  She's developing some skills (rolling in both directions, and currently working on sitting up solo) and also working on adding some new rolls of chub to the already impressive collection.  She and Q continue to get along well and we remain hopeful that this good sibling relationship will be in place until she starts messing with his stuff.  :)  We have not yet started solids, but she does enjoy her liquids and has recently developed a taste for fine beer.  Happy July!

Rolling rolling rolling

She did it a few times a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't see it.  Now she's on a roll...



and giggling

3 Months Old

And finally, we celebrate Anna's 3 month birthday!  Our girl is a big one.  She currently weighs between 15 and 16 pounds and is wearing mostly 6-9 (or even 6-12) month clothes!  She's been sleeping great at night.  She typically goes down around 8 and wakes up briefly around 5 to eat before going back to sleep until 7/8.  I went back to work part-time two weeks ago, so A is slowly adjusting to being in daycare.  She's not really rolling over yet...has done it a few times, but doesn't seem interested in doing it again.  :)

Paso Robles and Jeff's Triathalon

A long road trip with a baby who suddenly hates the car = a very long road trip.  I had to sit squished between car seats in the back in an attempt to soothe said baby.  We did manage to have a few good goof-off moments.  

The villa we stayed in.  It was a huge 2700 SF straw bale house on the top of the hill over-looking the vineyards of Paso Robles

Anna had one nice, relaxing, happy day :)

Spectators.  

Very thankful that Jim Caretta stopped by to catch the race on his way to count grey whales.  I'm not sure I would have managed the trip to the race without his help!  Thanks Jim!!

Jeff had a great race.  I didn't take many photos, because I was in video mode.  He came in 19th in his age group (out of almost 100).  This was his first olympic distance triathlon.  

After the race we stopped briefly in Ventura, where Jeff was scheduled for a few days of training.  Had some fun playing with my waterproof camera case.  Q's first time in the water in a year...he still remembers how to swim.  :)

The original plan was for me to drop Jeff off in Ventura, drive the rest of the way home (3-4 horus) with Q and A and he'd take the train.  After experiencing Anna on this trip (many bouts of SCREAMING in the car) we changed plans and left him the car while we took the train home.  Train travel is the way to go!!