No poopy diapers!

Warning: poop story ahead

I don't know if we have shared this information or not. I know Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Bridget know, but just in case the information didn't make it into the grape vine...

Peregrine has a very distinctive sound he makes when he needs to poop. He started making it months ago. One day when Sky was at home with him, he started grunting and his face turned red and his eyes crossed a little, and she thought 'hmm...maybe he's pooping?' She quickly moved him to the bathroom, took off his pants, unbuttoned his onesie, took off his diaper, and plopped him over the toilet bowl. A few minutes later, her hard work was rewarded by his hard work and (almost) all of the poop in the toilet. Very little clean up!

That kind of started a trend. We have been keeping a close eye on the boy during the day trying to pick up on his pooping cues. He seems to have an especially generous portion of lower bowel; he typically goes three or even four days between poops. He has one good poop every few days and seems just right as rain.

We had a few misfires and have had a bit of negotiation in figuring out how to perch him on the toilet for pooping, but except for one catastrophic failure (I came home to Sky bleaching the bathroom and running all the towels and shower curtain through the laundry) it has generally gone pretty well. He has a little donut insert for the toilet, now, that he can sit on (and has a built in "deflector" for the pee that inevitably happens when he's 'pushin hard'), which is better than trying to keep him suspended over the bowl. He even gives us 'warning' grunts before he really needs to poop and we're convinced he 'holds it' until we get him over the toilet.

The upside? Neither of us has had to change a poopy diaper in over three months. Note, in this time we also have put him on a good portion of solid food, so his poop is no longer baby-fresh. His sleep schedule is back to strange. He's even getting a little fussy perhaps from teething.

But we have not had to deal with even a single poopy diaper in that whole time. Amazing.

Singalong with Peregrine

Peregrine and Poppa have been playing some guitar and singing some songs. We've been trying to do lots of singing to the little guy, and most recently Poppa has been doing quite of a bit of guitar + singing with him. A variety of songs - classic songs, newfangled songs, thematically inappropriate songs - but lots of singing nonetheless (we figure he doesn't care too much about lyrical value, just tone, so...).
He shows a distinct preference for songs that are fast and upbeat (much akin to his taste of 'soothing' music, as it were), and also seems to particularly like it when Poppa sings "The Birthday Party" by Peter Mayer. Special thanks to Uncle Niall for teaching Poppa the chord progression.
As it turns out, Peregrine likes to sing, too! Quite often, he will "singalong with Poppa". Sometimes this lasts for one song, sometimes more. Occasionally he won't bother singing along at all, but that's increasingly rare.
Anyway, Poppa got home from work the other day and was doing some singing with the little guy, and Momma got some of it on video!

He does his singalong sort of a-syllabically, but since his general command of syllables is pretty low at this point, I figure that's OK. Even if Poppa sings words, he just kind of 'ahhhhh's'. But he can do it for a 20 minutes of singing or more. Cute!

lots of fun this week

With the Thanksgiving break, we had a bit of extra time to do some things. This was a blessed break from the norm of feeling panicked and that there were too many things we couldn't get to, so it was extra-nice.
Thanksgiving week started pretty exciting for Seattle, in that we had snow and cold (see previous post). Thanksgiving itself was pretty OK. Sky had to work a call shift and spent that 24 hours working, so that meant Taj and Peregrine were on their own for the day. Thankfully (heh heh), Uncle Loren was hosting a Thanksgiving Extravaganza at his place so we headed down there to enjoy some turkey and various pot-lucked goodies.
The following day we both had off, and we had Erica, our "Mom's Helper/Nanny" come by for most of the day. Sky got to get some sleep. I was feeling bad having just gotten through two consecutive major holidays without any sort of fanfare at home, so I busted out the Christmas decorations and got to work putting lights up on the house. Would you believe we were the first house in the neighborhood to have lights up, the very day after Thanksgiving? Yeah, I thought so.
Then, since we wanted an opportunity to enjoy it, we went ahead and got our christmas tree up! I'll be in DC next week and two weeks from now we go to MN, so we felt we should seize the moment and just get one. It's a very nice noble fir. A little on the small side from the norm, but we're trying to scale back a bit - we always end up with one way too large! Peregrine helped decorate it and just loves to look at it with its lights on.
Then on Sunday we took advantage of the recent snowfall in the mountains and headed out for our first cross country ski. Unlike our last ski (in New Mexico), this one didn't start 9,000 feet up so it felt easy as pie. It didn't hurt that the snow conditions were just about perfect - enough stick to get good kick but cold and compact enough for very nice glide. We skied for about 1.5 hours on a railroad grade and it was really very nice. Peregrine slept most of the time in one of his carriers (we tried both the Ergo and the Bjorn to see which was better). Passing a few folks out with their babies in trailers, we have briefly entertained the idea of picking something like that up. Sounds like they're pricey, though. If anyone knows of a good low-priced version we're all ears.
Anyway, a very nice ski wrapped up a very nice holiday weekend. We were thrilled to both get some stuff done around the house AND have a chance to do something fun and outdoors. If only there were four-day weekends every week!

Pictures!

5.3

Peregrine's first thanksgiving, with snow!

We're in the midst of a winter storm out here in the Puget Sound, which means we've received some *gasp* three inches of snow! However, coupled with sub-freezing temperatures that's enough to shut down the region pretty effectively. It took Poppa over two hours to get home on the bus on Monday and he had to work from home on Tuesday. Wednesday was still frozen so most of the area was tied up. Today we're getting more snow!
It's supposed to warm up this afternoon and we'll likely see everything melt, but it has been fun to have a little snow for the little guy and have it feel a bit like winter. Plus, we got to have him wear the cutest hat ever.
Pictures!

Month 5.2

When porcupines attack...

It involves a lot of giggling, apparently.

(My apologies about the sound. Apparently I blocked the mic with my finger)

Costumed crusader

Here is Peregrine, being cute in his dinosaur costume at cousin James' birthday party.


That is all.

Dinner's on!

We've started Peregrine on solid (though thoroughly pureed) food recently.

Yeah, he loves it. When he sees that spoon, he strikes much like a coiled cobra, without warning...We have to restrain him to keep him from ferociously attacking whoever might be wielding the spoon of precious, precious squash. Or peas. Or brown rice mush. Beware the dreaded Brown Rice Mush Cobra.

I'm looking forward to having him try more adventurous things soon - maybe vindaloo? Any votes?

Regardless, here's a movie of him mowing down, for those of you who enjoy this kind of thing.

For those of you keeping "score"

Peregrine was measured all the way around on Thursday. His new dimensions:
26 3/4" long (80th percentile) - average length of a nine-month-old.
15 pounds 3 ounces (30th percentile) - good weight for his age.

For the record, this puts him the same length as a nine month old and but he's at a reasonable 5 month weight, so he's in the 2nd percentile for weight-for-height. They were suitably impressed and thought he looked great and healthy and scored very good on his 'tummy time score' (lots of head lifting and motor coordination).

Yay, Peregrine!

A whole slew of pictures...

Lots of photos from the last month or so. Can't believe he's almost 5 months old.
Enjoy!

Month 5.1

Sample videos, part 2

These are the same video, just encoded differently (first via blogger, second via youtube). Definitely a dark shot...but he's feeling chatty.

videos

Trying to see where will do the least compression...I tried uploading the videos to YouTube instead of straight through blogger.
Note, these are the same videos, just converted by YouTube instead of by Blogger.

Playing with the new Bloggie camera

Just received our new "Bloggie" camera that we have to try out here and see if it will fit the bill for us for grabbing quick videos and the occasional snap shot of Peregrine.
Let me know what you folks think of the quality.

sleeping

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, his less-than-desirable sleep habits have returned. The last two nights running he woke up almost exactly every hour. Not fun, especially with Sky going back to work today.

If anyone has any pointers or ideas, please (PLEASE) let us know?

Look! A Video!

We don't actually have a video camera of any kind but Uncle Loren does, on his phone.
It just so happens that on this first day back at work for Momma, Peregrine is at home with Auntie Lys and Uncle Loren. And, thankfully, he seems to be having a good time!

(can't say the same for Momma, though)

Finally, a bit of rest

After struggling these last few weeks with Peregrine not sleeping particularly well, we've managed to get at least ONE night of respite, and hopefully more are on the way.
He had been chugging along up until a couple weeks ago with sleeping four or five hours at a time, feeding, then going back to sleep. Then he started sleeping less and less overnight. First down to only three hours, then two, and this last week it's been two hour stretches at most - sometimes only one - before he wakes up and wants to eat NOW!
Gradually going insane, we finally decided we had to do something. We had already moved him from his co-sleeper next to our bed into his crib in the corner of our room. After much debate - and feeling REALLY bad about it - we moved his crib into "his" room last night, and put him down in there. We had a whole plan of how long he was going to have to cry for before we picked him up and how long he was going to have to go between feedings. It was horrible for us; not that it's a bad thing to do, necessarily, but it was something we had not wanted. We were really bummed about having to do this, but we need to start getting some sleep and Sky is going back to work soon.

He did just great. He fell asleep almost immediately and slept for five full hours before waking up gently and getting a full feeding, then he went back down for four more hours. All without any fuss!

We know it won't necessarily last, that it could change at a moment's notice, but it felt really good to both get some sleep and not have to be forced to listen to him cry (yet).

Maybe Momma snores too much, and it was waking him up? I don't know, but he had a great night last night and so did we. It feels like a new lease on life!

More pictures!

Month 4.1

just a few pictures...

Month 4

Device recommendations from other parents?

So, many of the readers are fairly tech savvy I believe. I've recently thought that I need to get a gadget for Sky. The hope would be to have one device with which she could do all the things she might want to do.
The new iPhone is a great example - it has a reasonably high quality still camera, hi-definition video, it plays music through our speakers, and Sky could access things at work like medication libraries and such. Plus, Sky has played with one before and she found it easy to use and understand, even attractive to use. Right now we have our big dSLR, we would have to get a little video camera, and she has to have the iPod for music. This is a lot of stuff to haul around.
Unfortunately, the iPhone is a couple hundred bucks plus a minimum of $50/mo for a data plan she probably won't use almost at all. This seems too much for what we want. The new iPod touch seemed like a happy medium but the still camera is supposedly not good at all, which is a key feature.
So...is there a multi-use device out there that can fill all our needs? Crucially, this is something that can shoot stills and video and upload it to the web without a computer (over WiFi), but also play music preferably on a 30-pin dock, and have access to the App Store or the Android Market. Or do we get a new micro point-and-shoot that does decent video? What have other parents done?

flip-flop

This morning (early this morning), Peregrine rolled over from back to front, twice! The first time I thought it was a fluke, but I rolled him back and he promptly did it again. He has definitely been working on his skills and had gotten pretty good at flipping onto his side recently (and banging his ankles on the side of the co-sleeper while we're trying to sleep) though we figured it would be a while before we had a flip-flopper.

While this doesn't quite make up for the not-sleeping-for-the-last-week business, it's pretty cool for us nonetheless.

(In re: posting updates, our apologies. We've been busy, Taj in particular, and the whole "blog thing" is not in Sky's nature)

Weekly update!

Hey, we almost hit the "weekly" thing this time! Not bad, not bad at all.
Let's see...another busy week.
We said goodbye Uncle Niall on Sunday, back to Columbus and foreign-sounding things like "warmth" and "sunshine".
We had no fewer than 3 nights this week where Peregrine slept 7 hours straight. Whoah.
We had visits from unkas Mike and Andy, game playing friends of Taj's, and a number of solid hours game time. Somehow, Uncle Niall - the ROOKIE - managed I believe to win all three games that he had never played before. To that end, I think Boomtown is a fun lightweight filler game, I have yet to win at Neuroshima Hex despite many playings, and apparently you have to keep a close eye on what House Lannister is up to with the cities in the game A Game of Thrones. Niall came out of nowhere and whooped us.
We had visits from aunties Rebecca and Teri, from Sky's work.
Peregrine and Mama went up to Lummi Island and spent a day with Grandma Myra and Grandpa Ben (sorry, no pictures of that one!).
This weekend we debated heading out for a big to-do, but opted in the end for a day trip up to Mt Baker national park. We've never been, and "it's just around the corner" they say (not so sure I buy that...). It was chilly and we got to bundle Pip for the cold for the first time. A very nice hike, but an unfortunate level of cloud cover which meant we actually could not see Baker ever. Or Mt. Shuksan, just next door. I think we'll try to get back, and it was nice to get out of the house. The day in total was trying, as Peregrine had a bad night, and getting (us/him) TO the Park was a lot easier and less difficult than getting (us/him) FROM the Park back home. Despite our best intentions and planning efforts, we were traveling during his Melt Down Hour. It was probably just a lot of stimulation and such. Ah well - every day is an opportunity for learning.

Being up at the Park reminded me of this strange "cult of parenthood" thing that of which we're now members. There's some unwritten rule that any parents with small children are immediately part of your clique or community, and, as such, normal social rules about your or others' children don't necessarily apply. Just being on the trail with Peregrine we had more interactions with strangers than we've had hiking probably the last five years; people just want to chat and say hello and bond over...whatever it is. In the parking lot, it's perfectly OK to invite a stranger's child to sit on your car and say hello to the baby or whatever. I hear Spain is a great place to raise kids because everyone watches everyone elses' kids in the park or what have you; whichever parent the kids are closest to has responsibility for the whole gaggle regardless of whether they've ever seen them before.
Huh. Well, here's to that, then!

Pictures!

Sorry, late post

We're really trying to get new pictures up every week or so, but it has definitely been two+ weeks since our last set.
Sorry.
Anyway, we do have some new pictures. There's been a lot going on, but not so much, but then again quite a bit. Seeing friends and lots of family and spending time watching Dr. Who and other things from time to time.
I think most of the local grandmas and grandpas have been through here in the last could weeks. Also, Auntie Lys and the cousins. Mostly, as you can probably guess since we haven't had time to post (due to lack of time, not due to excessive laziness, I swear) we've been darn busy. Uncle Niall is the most recent visitor, he's been out here for a conference and staying in the extra room, making us vegetarian (vegan!) delights and helping out in the garden. It's been really nice!

We'll try to get back on track next week. For now, pictures!

Another week goes by...

The time sure flies. Peregrine's ninth week was as eventful as ever. We started the week with a brief visit from Great Aunt Erin, Great Uncle Dan, and Cousin Peter all the way from Grand Rapids, MN. We had a wonderful dinner that they brought by and were lucky to get to spend a few hours with them as they were out on the coast for their holiday.

There were lots of other visits as well, but somehow (sleep deprivation, perhaps?) we can no longer keep straight who visits us for afternoons, evenings, or mornings. We do know that Uncle Tarso, Aunt Darlene, Cousin Joaquim, and Cousin Simona came to visit on Friday for the night, and Grandpa Ben and Grandma Myra came down as well. Myra's birthday was Friday and Tarso and Darlene had hoped to get up to Lummi for a visit but the ferry was broken, so we all celebrated down here in Everett with a very nice dinner prepared by Sky, and then we had breakfast in a local diner Saturday morning. Sunday, Taj had friends over to play some games and relax a bit. It was a full, but very nice weekend.

All we really know is that Peregrine got a lot better this week at whapping things. His accuracy at whapping has greatly improved, he can hit what he's looking at almost all the time now (if, of course, it's within range). He also just started trying to grab with a lobster hand, and we've even seen him grab on to one of his toys once or twice!

Monday, Peregrine had his two month checkup. This included weighing and measuring and such. You'll all no doubt be excited to know that he weighed 11 pounds 8.5 ounces, has grown to 24" in length, and his head is 15 3/4" around. I understand this is good, and I think the important piece is not current size or weight but rather that he's growing well. Which I think we knew. He's getting very big! The two month checkup also unfortunately comes vaccinations. That was less fun - three shots for Pip. There was a lot of screaming. He actually bounced back pretty quick, though, and he seems perfectly OK now.

Today Grandma Myra came by again to help out with Pip while Sky did some gardening and just generally relax a little bit. It was a great help!

Pictures!

Hard to believe, but he's 2 months old!

Amazingly, Peregrine turned 2 (months) on Saturday. Wow...8 weeks old already!

It was an exciting week for us. To start the week, cousin Nora and uncle Thaddeus (Tvor) came to visit. Nora and Pip are birthday twins - a few years apart, sure, but born on the same day! Pip was excited to meet cousin Nora, but I think Nora was even more excited to meet Peregrine. It was, however, not Pip's best day - in fact, he had what I think was his longest inconsolable crying session, clocking in at over two hours. This made it very difficult for Nora to get some good hugs and holding time in, but he was able to be nice at one point - long enough for a couple pictures at least.

Sky and Peregrine headed out the following day to the beach with her clan (Taj had to go to work). The had a blast, a grand old time playing in the sand and ocean, all the cousins in a big heap.

The day after, they all went out again, this time to the Snoqualmie River and hung out on the shore, kicking back all together and having a great old time. The day after, birth-class friend Amye and her son Abel came over to visit. Peregrine and Abel enjoyed each others' company quite a bit, and Sky and Amye went for a very nice walk.

Let's see...then...hmm...it all runs together. I know that on Sunday, we went down to Seattle to visit with Eric and Sarah and baby Scout, and Sarah made us an incredible brunch. It was a very nice morning of hanging out and laughing and playing with the babies. Later that day, Great Aunt Erin, Great Uncle Dan, and Cousin Peter came to visit all the way from Minnesota! We had a wonderful dinner they brought from Bellevue, where they were staying.

As great as all that stuff was, though, the really cool happening was that Peregrine started smiling! Big old eyes-wide-open grins. Repeatedly! Very exciting! This is the first time he's started smiling consciously - he'd been smiling when he was asleep sometimes, but now it's very clearly in response to faces and events. He loves smiling at Froggie and Paul the Duck, and even at Momma and Poppa. He especially likes to smile when you stick your tongue out at him.

Anyway, that made for a great week - smiling and cooing is pretty darn cool. Undoubtedly, more things transpired, but honestly we're too tired to remember them.

Pictures!

OK, just a couple pictures

No update this week

Everything's going great, but we didn't get a lot of pictures and we didn't do much out of the ordinary. Therefore, no update.

New pictures up (week 6!)

It has been another whirlwind week or so hereabouts. We had grandparents leaving on Alaskan cruises, other grandparents coming to visit and help out, lots of visits by local friends and family, Poppa's first week back at work, and so much more.
Not too many specific adventures to relate, which I suppose is OK given that we do, after all, have a newborn on our hands. One would be well within rights to have a week or two pass occasionally where no big event happens, I should hope.
That said, highlights did include a trip down to Seattle to drop the Munson Grandparents off for their fabulous Alaskan cruise. Gramma Pam came over from the peninsula to help out and get some Peregrine Time. We also had a very nice walk or two through Spencer Island park, a large wildlife refuge just outside the city of Everett with lots of herons, hawks, swallows, etc.
This weekend we attended a reunion of our childbirth class attendees (now featuring babies!) which was very fun. It was a small potluck affair and not everyone could make it, but it was neat to see everyone and what the babies are like, and hear about the birth stories.
Sad days as we said goodbye to Grandpa Bruce Sunday morning and Grandma Biddy Sunday evening. Grandma Biddy has been here since June 10th or thereabouts, and I think we had all gotten used to having her around. We're not totally at a loss, since we know we'll get lots of visits from Gramma Pam and Grandma Myra when we need help. It sure is nice to have so many willing grandparents around!
Pictures!

Incremental update

It's been a fairly quiet week here, though of course "quiet" is a relative term when one is referring to a home housing a newborn. Peregrine is five weeks old already!

While there are no specific stories I get to relate (that I can think of right now), here are a few highlights I get to relate:
- Visit and walk with fellow childbirth class attendees Sarah, Eric, and baby Scout
- Visit by Gramma Pam
- Visit by Auntie Lys, Uncle Billy, Cousin James, Cousin Lana, and Uncle Loren
- Arrival of Grandpa Bruce
- Departure of Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Biddy on the Alaskan Cruise Ship
- Acquisition of a fancy hi-tech stroller
- Trip to Seattle Waterfront
- Series of unpleasant days involving heat in the 90s and high humidity. Gah. But there was nice time relaxing in the park.
- Spain won the world cup.

This next week is a big one, Poppa goes back to work! I will start out at half-time for a couple weeks before transitioning to full-time. I've really been enjoying the time at home with Sky and Pip but it's time to get back to the grind.
So, beyond Poppa getting out of the house four hours a day, it also means Momma is going sola four hours a day! Exciting times, lots of new-ness... 

Pictures!

Stehekin trip

Following on the heels of our successful trip to find some sunshine, we were full of vim and vigor and wanting to get out of the house a bit more. We thought to ourselves, well, why not head across the mountains again and this time spend a few days in the sun somewhere? Cause we're crazy like that.
Luckily for us, Sky's dad and step-mom have a place up at the top of Lake Chelan in a "town" called Stehekin. Stehekin is off the grid - no phones, mains electricity, or sewer - and you can't get there by car, only on foot or by boat or float plane. It's a beautiful river valley nestled in the North Cascades with soaring mountains all around. It's quite simply tranquil and lovely.

So we thought, hey, Peregrine is three weeks old now, surely we can take a road trip, boat ride, and spend four nights in Stehekin. How hard could that be?

Turns out, not that hard. We had a great time. Packing was a bit of a chore as we haven't done that yet for him, and deliberations on how much/what was needed got a little convoluted (we don't need as much as we thought, though!) In particular, the question of "Pack'N'Play or no Pack'N'Play" was a drawn out consideration. (we went with "no"). Two giant storage bins, a wheelie bag, one big green hiking backpack, a cooler, diaper bag, and assorted carry-ons later, the three.25 of us hit the road. We travel light.

The ferry leaves really early - 0930 or thereabouts - and the ferry landing is three hours away. Since Pip is still eating on-demand, we needed to plan time for stops on the way, so we left Sunday and spent the night in Wenatchee at a hotel. The hotel even had a little institutional crib for Pip. Very nice. Monday morning, we headed up the road to Field's Point Landing and waited for the ferry. Weather was of course beautiful, being the east side and all. There are two ferries up the lake, and we opted for the slower one as Grandma Biddy hasn't seen all the sights along the way yet. The boat ride (Pip's first boat trip!) was uneventful, he slept and ate and was in good spirits.

Arriving in Stehekin, we were supposed to borrow a car in the valley belonging to friends of ours/Sky's folks. (While there are no roads TO Stehekin, there is a road IN Stehekin and it is easier to get around if you have wheels as the valley is 30 miles long). The car wasn't exactly where we thought it would be, though, and when we DID find it, it wouldn't start. Puppa had to push it out of the parking spot - on a hill, of course - while grandma tried to pop the clutch. It didn't take, but the rangers were nice enough to jump it with their gear. Only a scant hour after arriving at the landing we headed up-valley to the house.

Everything there went perfectly. We had to discard some trapped rodents, but that's to be expected this time of year. Grandma Bridget hardly screamed at all. The weather was beautiful, we could gaze up at the mountains, listen to the wind in the trees, smell the air through the pines, and just generally soak up life at a slower pace. Pip loved it in particular, we think, but we all really just had a great time.

Over the course of the four days we spent there, we got out for a few laid-back hikes ("hike" might be a strong word, but we did move about under our own power), made a couple trips to the Bakery for yummy snacks, and had dinner up at the Stehekin Valley Ranch one night; Puppa Taj cooked the rest of the meals. Mostly, though, we just loved life with the sun and warmth and mountains and river. It was just delightful. Peregrine loved in particular looking out the windows up at Mt McGregor, and we all enjoyed snuggling in front of the wood stove in the evenings when the weather cooled down a bit.

The car didn't start again, though, so we had to find an alternative car - thanks to Anna Maria and Laurie for letting us borrow one of theirs.

The trip home went very smoothly back to the Gray Gray Everett Gray Area, and all told the trip was as perfect as could be. Mumma and Puppa have new-found confidence in their ability to travel with a tiny child and no pack-n-play and Pip clearly loves the outdoors and Stehekin especially. Grandma Biddy got to see and experience the slowed-down life of Stehekin too!

Pictures!

Sun Hunters

Right around week 2.5, we heard on the news that the Seattle area set a new weather record for the most days between nice days (something like 275 days from 70F to 70F). Additionally, it had been gray, gray gray for months. We were starting to get a little stir crazy and needed to see some natural sunlight!

Fortunately, from Everett, the sun is usually just 1 1/2 hours away: all we have to do is make it over Steven's Pass and we are likely to encounter beautiful weather. So we decided, why not? We packed up Pip in his car seat, a diaper bag, Mumma, Puppa, and Grandma Bridget, and hit the road.

It was a pretty easy drive to the pass - Peregrine doesn't mind his car seat at all. We stopped at the Pass for a feeding (first roadside feeding!) which was still gray, but as soon as we dropped below about 3500 feet on the East side of the pass, the skies opened up and the sun came out. It was glorious. I think all four of us really appreciated it.

We drove to Leavenworth, WA, a total of about 1 1/2 hours, and when we got there we went for a very nice relaxed stroll in Waterfront Park. Then we grabbed a bratwurst and sat around in the plaza before doing a little bit of strolling through downtown and a little shopping. Leavenworth is a nice town for a break, especially if you don't go when the hordes of tourists are there.

After a couple hours, we headed back across the pass to the Gray Gray West Side Gray Area. Where it was gray.

Pip's first road trip, then, went exceedingly well - he enjoyed the trip out and about, was very content to be in his car seat (until he wanted to eat), and everybody had a good time. And even though we ended back up in the gray, our spirits were buoyed by our four or five hours of uninterrupted sun and warmth!

Pictures!

New pictures, month 1

Some new pictures from month 1 uploaded over on Picasa, check them out!

First post! Introducing Peregrine Shaw Munson

First post for the blog tracking Peregrine Shaw Munson's new life. We'll do our best to try and keep this updated at least monthly, but I don't know that we're "blog people" so we'll just have to wait and see.




Here's what we sent out before I got the blog up:




Sky and I would like to ask you all to join us in welcoming our son,
Peregrine Shaw Munson, to the world!
He was born 5-June-2010 at 12:14pm after a beautiful 11 hour labor,
weighing 7 pounds 13 ounces. Mom, Dad, and Baby are all doing well and
are back at home now recovering and working on getting some rest.
We hope you can all visit him in person at some point and be a part of
his life, but for now you'll have to settle for a few pictures.




All our best,

Sky and Taj