Recent milestones

Hi there, loyal blog readers...that is if there are any left of you. Yes, I know, I am becoming ridiculously bad about posting regularly. Suffice it to say that going back to work fulltime has made many things in my life "optional" that before were not. Not just blog posting, but also cooking dinner (or even going to the grocery store, for that matter), going to the gym, reading our mail, paying bills on time, getting to the dry cleaner on a regular basis (although I have become quite creative in pulling together outfits that are marginally acceptable for work out of whatever random clothes are actually clean)...you get the picture. Hectic, hectic, hectic.

But, in the midst of all of this activity, life is good. Sonia is getting bigger and more mobile every day. A number of recent milestones include:

• Figuring out how to consistently pull up to a standing position. She is so excited about doing this now that if you are somewhere where there is nothing to pull up on (say in the park on the grass), she will pout and be visibly annoyed. She is not "cruising" yet, but that is right around the corner since she does occasionally go from holding one thing (say the couch) to something very close by (like the coffee table) with a little feet movement.
• Speaking of pouting, she has developed a new super-pouty facial expression. I have yet to capture it on camera, but it involves scrunching up her entire face and is used to express extreme dislike, say for eating vegetables or being held when she would rather be standing.
• She is sort of eating more solid foods now. About 50% of the time she still spits them out, but sometimes she will actually chomp on the Cheerio (or whatever) and swallow it. Of course, when I saw "chomp" I should say gum it excessively because she still has no teeth to speak of.
• Waving -- well, kind of. Every morning we practice waving goodbye, and now sometimes she will sort of move one of her arms. We all get so excited when she does this and she is super smiley as a result, but I don't think she has figured out the cause and effect yet.
• Kind of like waving, but far more annoying, is Sonia's newfound ability to throw things. Most notably, every night when we put her down to sleep, as soon as we leave the room she immediately stands up in the crib, grabs the pacifier out of her mouth (which she gets to have when it's time to sleep), and chucks it onto the floor. Then she immediately regrets this move, wants the pacifier back, and starts to wail loudly. The fact she does this every single night either signifies that she is not smart enough to figure out that the pacifier will no longer be within reach if she hurls it across the room, or that she is a little genius who has figured out a plan to get us to come back into her room when she doesn't want to be sleeping. I'm not sure which is worse. :-)
• Perhaps our favorite milestone is that she has learned how to clap. She doesn't do it for very long (which is why the video below is so short), but she does seem to do it when she's most happy, and then of course she is all smiles because we react like idiots and start clapping maniacally back at her.

Other than that, life continues as usual. We found another house we are considering making an offer on, but since 22 other people (!) requested to see the disclosure packet for the house (the first step in making an offer), it will be a little competitive to say the least. We may not even bother to make an offer since there is so little chance of winning, and if you did win you would be the idiot who paid more than 22 other people thought the house was worth. Of course, now that I've typed that, then we'll probably win just so I have to look like a fool on my own blog. :-)

Close encounters of the dog kind

As mentioned in the previous post, Sonia had her first real experience meeting a dog this past week while we visited my parents. As the video below demonstrates, the affection was decidedly one-sided when Sonia first met Muffy (a rather large golden retriever whose name is short for "Miss Muffet", which made a lot more sense when my parents used to also have a cat named Spider). Sonia didn't cry when Muffy would "say hello" (read: lick her face, hands, and legs), but she definitely wasn't smiling. But, by the end of the trip, she was actually seeking the dog out, crawling over to her and looking sad whenever Muffy walked away. I just knew she would be an ally in my multi-year battle to convince Sameer we need a pet.

Family vacation

Last week we enjoyed a great trip to Oregon, filled with lots of visits with family and friends and only a few travel-related mishaps. We flew up to Portland on Friday, a trip that almost didn't happen since we completely misjudged how long it would take to get through the check-in line at Southwest. After waiting over an hour in line (during which I spent most of the time giving Sameer the evil eye since we were running late due to the fact he had refused to pack the night before because he was "too tired to stay awake" at 8:30pm), we just barely made our flight. We would have definitely missed it, save for having frequent flier status on American (a perk we used to avoid the long security line, even though we weren't flying their airline), and the fact that the gate representative was actually an old classmate of Sameer's from Webb (who he was convinced had held the door open a bit longer since, as she said, "I thought when I saw the name it had to be you.") Nevertheless, we were the last people to board a crowded flight, so that meant no extra seat for Sonia, and even no two seats together until some kind man offered to switch with one of us. It is amazing what lengths people will go to to not sit next to your almost 8-month old baby. Still, the flight was uneventful, and after picking up the world's worst rental car (a Dodge Magnum -- all I can say is don't buy one), we made it to my parents' house for a quick lunch. Everyone was excited to see Sonia, especially my parents' dog Muffy, who was thrilled that there was a new person in the house who also gets around on all fours. Despite being an old dog, we quickly learned that Muffy can move pretty fast when she wants to, and within 15 minutes had given Sonia her first ever dog licking, which left Sonia so stunned that I don't think it even occurred to her to cry.

After lunch, we headed to Camp Colton in Colton, Oregon for our friends Kellie and Zach's wedding "retreat" (a weekend long affair where most guests got to stay at the camp where the wedding was held and hang out and catch up). We got to spend a lot of time with my old high school friends Charity and Kellie, Sonia got to experience the great outdoors Oregon-style, and we got to enjoy a lot of family bonding. Unfortunately a fair amount of that bonding occurred in the middle of the night when Sonia decided that she was too scared to sleep in a new, strange crib, and instead wanted to sleep with Mommy & Daddy. That would have been fine, except that we were in the kids' room of our shared cabin (the only room with a crib), and the only other beds were bunk beds. And of course I had foolishly chosen the bottom bunk thinking this was a great score on my part, but obviously there was no way Sonia was going to sleep in the top bunk, so instead she and I spent the night sharing the bottom bunk. Let's just say her motor skills, especially kicking and squirming, are quite advanced. The next morning everyone else staying in the cabin had the good social graces to claim they did not hear her crying during the night, so at least we were the only people she managed to repeatedly wake up.

On Saturday we attended the wedding itself, which was a fun, family-friendly event. Lots of other kids and babies for Sonia to stare it, and Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Kevin in attendance, so no shortage of people to help watch her. My dad was a big hit on the dance floor, as always, and everyone had a great time. It was a beautiful day weather-wise, and the night ended late with everyone by the camp's big firepit enjoying s'mores while the hired nannies watched the kids. Perfect.

The next day we drove to Corvallis so Sonia could meet my extended family for the first time, including her Great Grandmother, who is a young-at-heart 97 years old. We met up at my Aunt Judy and Uncle Harry's house, and my cousins Julie and John were there, along with John's husband Mark and their adorable son Arthur. We enjoyed a leisurely lunch and of course the obligatory family photo session (4 generations in attendance!) before Sonia decided that it was naptime and we headed back to Portland to my parents' house, where we stayed through the 4th of July. Sameer got to play a fair amount of golf (including shooting a record-setting 96), Sonia learned how to pull herself up to a standing position (exciting, but also terrifying to think that a lot more mobility may be just around the corner), and, best of all, we finally got my parents on high-speed internet so they can actually watch the videos of Sonia that we post here. We also took Sonia on her first ever trip to the vineyard, although alas she did not get to participate in barrel tasting. The trip was so great that Sameer decided to prolong it even longer by locking the keys in our rental car while it was running in the driveway (he had turned on the air conditioning to cool it down, but then locked us out of the car when he closed the doors). Sonia no doubt picked up a few new vocabulary words as Sameer described his sentiments about the auto-locking feature of American cars (note: in no way was this incident his fault, the car itself was obviously to blame). But, the locksmith came surprisingly fast given it was a holiday, and we still made our flight on time and got Sonia home to sleep in her own bed, blissfully not in the same room as ours.

All in all, a great trip home. Below is a picture of the whole family from our Corvallis visit. For more pictures from our adventures, click here.