Bye-bye binky

It's been ages since we posted. I can't even begin to remember what we've done in the last month, so I guess I won't even try and we'll just skip ahead to this weekend.

The big news of the weekend is that we are now a binky-free household. We took it away on Friday (coincidentally a night where Chuki was babysitting as we went to my office holiday party -- yes, we are cowards). In any event, there was a fair amount of crying the first couple of naps / nighttimes (we had long since taken away the pacifier for anything outside of the crib), but as of Saturday there have been no issues. I'm almost embarrassed by how easy it was and how long we put it off dreading the day. What else should we tackle? Potty training, here we come! (Actually, no, waiting on that one until we are home after Christmas with no trips planned.)

In the category of non-news, we did not buy a house. You might say, "uh...that is not news," but it is because we actually made an offer on a house (a bit of bargain shopping in this rapidly sinking economy). We got close to actually buying the house (going back and forth with counter offers), but in the end the seller must have allowed his subscription to the Wall Street Journal to lapse because he seems to think there are buyers who will be materializing in the next month who have a down payment burning a whole in their pockets. Meanwhile, we continue to enjoy the family bonding that you can only get when 3 people live in a 2-bedroom condo. Nice and cozy.

Sonia's latest obsessions are floor puzzles (the thick cardboard kind with big pieces that take up lots of space in the aforementioned tiny condo) and learning songs with hand motions. I will try and get her attempting to sing "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" on video before she actually learns the right words (it is far more amusing when it is sung in non-sensical toddler phonetics). She also is really into counting, so we spend a lot of time reciting our way from 1 to 10. Eleven is a foreign concept, which suggests that it is more about memorization than actual numbers.

We did enjoy a great Thanksgiving with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Kevin paying us a visit. Once again, we let Whole Foods do the cooking while we focused our our sommelier duties -- a division of labor that is rapidly becoming a tradition. We did visit the new California Academy of Sciences the day after Thanksgiving, where we stood in line for 45 minutes to get in (despite arriving before it opened and purchasing our tickets in advance), stayed in the museum for probably less than an hour before realizing that it was physically impossible to get near most of the exhibits. From what I saw of it standing in crowds 4-deep in front of every attraction, it looked pretty cool, and we look forward to visiting again in 10 years when the excitement has worn off.

I hear our non-binky-using sleeper waking up...will post more (and yes, I know, more photos) soon!