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