Callum got his first teeth in september (lower central incisors).  He got number 3 & 4 in October (upper central incisors).  And now he’s working on his 5th and 6th (upper lateral incisors).

This video is several clips from September where I ask Callum to show his teeth.  It’s actually quite ridiculous how much I asked to see his teeth.  The very end features a more recent clip of Callum with four teeth.

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if the above videos don’t work on your computer try this one: small_mp4

So those of you keeping track will know that Callum is now a big SEVEN months old!  He can sit for about forever - 1 second (unfortunately that 1 second tends to happen just when you turn away), he learned how to splash in the bath, and sometimes he waves at the baby in the mirror.  I’m still not 100% convinced that he does that on purpose, but it definitely happens pretty regularly, so I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.  After a brief infatuation with the cats, he has decided that they aren’t too interesting, after all, and he’s now up to three meals of solids each day.  VERY time consuming.  He’s trying very hard to crawl, but he’s honestly not looking very close to actually doing it, so don’t hold your breath on that one.

We had lots of visitors in the past month.  Crystal & Chris came from Phoenix again, only this time they had a bed to sleep in.  UPGRADE!  Brad & Kristen came a few days later in mid-road trip, and Lynn & Peter came over for dinner - all in the same week!  It was so nice to see everyone, and I have to say we ate better than usual - we LOVE having visitors.  

OK, so let’s get to what you’re really interested in - PICTURES!

Guess what?  I learned how to crochet, so I made us all matching hats for Halloween.  We went as the three bears.  Kermy was going to be Goldilocks, but she wasn’t so excited about going trick-or-treating.  

We hope you had a great Halloween!

Today I nearly met my match.  I waged a tough battle against an enormous butternut squash, and you’ll be happy to hear that I emerged victorious. 

We have been making Callum’s baby food.  After a few initial hurdles involving frozen peas which turned out to have salt in them (who knew?) and green beans which turned out to be almost impossible to pulverize and then REALLY didn’t go down well. . . and the ultimate acquisition of a food mill, which was deemed to be the right tool for the job, we finally got the hang of it. 

We have since found unsalted peas and squashed them to bits, smooshed up LOTS of sweet potatoes, shattered one bag of frozen butternut squash, and destroyed a bunch of gorgeous organic bananas. 

Every time we go to the grocery store, Callum and I peruse the organic produce section and eye up our next potential adversaries.  Most recently, I stumbled on an enormous organic butternut squash.  It was cheap and huge, and we were running low on squash (our bag of frozen squash was too teany), so it became part of the plan. 

It hovered around the house for about 5 days and was in various turns a mantelpiece, a weapon (threatened only, not used), a hat, and a microphone, and it came to be referred to as “the gourd.”  Today was the day I decided to annihilate the gourd.

I didn’t think it would be too much of a challenge.  After all, it’s just a vegetable, and I’m a human.  Much stronger – plus I have the ol’ brain to help me out.  BUT, as soon as I took a knife to it, I knew I was in trouble.  Turns out, raw butternut squash is VERY tough to cut.  Even with the nice sharp knife we borrowed from Jocelyn. 

The secret is to roast it first, then cut it.  That, however, requires cooking gear that is STILL in transit from London.  Yes.  Still.  SO, I pressed on.  Cut, peel peel peel, cut cut cut, peel peel peel.  It probably took about an hour – maybe longer, and in the mean time Callum woke up from his nap and was a spectator for the end of the battle. 

I boiled as much as would comfortably fit in our one pot, pureed it in the food processor, and spooned it into ice cube trays.  I filled two trays, and I still have an enormous Tupperware container filled with uncooked squash.  The point, though, is that after a long and arduous struggle, I suffered minimal injuries (a sore right palm and very dry hands), and I emerged victorious.  Congratulations me.

As it happens, babies only eat pureed food for a little while, so I’m thinking . . . . that I may not EVER have to do this EVER again.  Which is a very good thing.

And by the way, Callum has FOUR teeth now!

OK, so a few of you have been asking for pictures of Callum’s teeth, which until now are only “alleged” teeth.  The trouble thus far is that teeth start out very small, and babies have a way of 1) closing their mouths when you’re trying to take a picture of them, and 2) finding a way to smile so that the light somehow misses the teeth and they’re invisible in the pictures.  

Anyway, now they’re visible, thanks in part to Andy’s tricky photography (and a little help from his finger) and here they are!

Callum turned 6 months old today, and we celebrated with sweet potatoes!  Woohoo!  It was extremely messy - mostly because he was talking through the entire meal.  Bababa Ba BUA baba, and everyone of them punctuated to the extent that sweet potato went everywhere.  

He can sit up for longer now, and we’ve started to give him a bath just sitting up in the bath, instead of lounging in his baby lounger.  He has also - and this is one of the more interesting developmental milestones to date - started to protest when he doesn’t get his way.  Today, he cried because I didn’t give him his bowl of sweet potatoes to play with, and he cried because I took the bath toys away from him when it was time to get out of the bath.  So, when he starts talking, I completely expect him to say, “but MOOooommmmmmmm. . .. ”  Nice.

Here are some pictures from the last month. . . 

So I thought it might be time for an update on us.  An usdate, if you will.  Well actually you don’t have a choice.  So…

CALLUM has TWO TEETH!  Ok so maybe not two whole teeth, but two that are poking through the gums, growing up into teeth.  We were completely shocked, as he’s the first in his little playgroup to get teeth, and so - unlike other developmental milestones - I wasn’t anxiously anticipating the day his tooth would arrive.  He just jammed my hand in his mouth, as usual, and I felt it!  I said, “Hold on a second!  Can I please feel that?”  He didn’t respond, so I took that as a “Sure, go ahead,” and lo and behold - tooth!  The other tooth started growing about 2 days later.  Once they’re big enough to be easily visible, we’ll obviously take pictures and post them up here.  

He’s also eating two meals of rice cereal every day, and I think we’re going to branch out into green vegetables this weekend.  I read that if you start with yummy sweet things, they don’t like the veggies later, so we’re starting with veggies.  I’m fine with this idea in theory, but at least the rice cereal is white, so when Callum grabs it from me and launches it across the room, the mess isn’t too bad.  I’m going to have to cordon off everything within a 6-food radius of the little dude when GREEN things come into play.  

Speaking of mess, he has also started to figure out that if he kicks around in the bath, Mommy gets wet.  He doesn’t completely get it yet, but I noticed a spark of recognition there yesterday. . . this could be trouble.  Hey - at least it gives me another excuse to wear bummy clothes.  Other than the usual no job, my clothes are still on the boat, new mom type stuff.

So that’s Callum.  Andy & I . . . are boring, so I guess this is really more of a Callumpdate.  Sorry.

So, back in July . . . of 2007 . . . we went to Norway to celebrate our anniversary and Katie Anne’s birthday.  We took several hundred pictures, and we’ve been a little busy since then, so we took some time to get around to posting them.  So long, even, that I didn’t even know I was pregnant until we got home from this trip, and now Callum is 5 months old.

We flew into Bergen and rented a car, because we thought we would enjoy the drive up to Balestrand, a town on the north edge of the Sognefjord.  Bergen itself was a perfect starting point - a beautiful little town with plenty of interesting sights to check out.  We didn’t have long, but we were anxious to get up to the fjord, so that was fine.

Our drive took forever, but it was a fun adventure.  Taking ferries seems to be a way of life up there.  The directions kept telling us to drive across the water, and there wouldn’t be a bridge on the map. . . we were glad to see the ferries, because we weren’t sure our rental car would make it across the fjords on its own.

Balestrand was as beautiful as we expected, and the people who ran our hotel were very helpful in pointing us toward fun things to do.  Since we had the car, we were able to use Balestrand as home base, but we could still drive around and explore.

We expected our trip to be a fairly lazy four days, but somehow we managed to squeeze quite a few big activities in there.  We went for a short hike that ended up - as short hikes are prone to do - being a fairly long and arduous hike.  The weather was gorgeous and we had a great time.  

Then we went kayaking in the fjord.  Before you ask, yes, the water WAS cold, but perhaps not as cold as you might imagine.  Also fun, and we enjoyed chatting and joking with our guide, who was American.  

We ate an enormous buffet meal at the big fancy hotel in Balestrand - no booze, though, because the cheapest wines there were the equivalent of about $70/bottle, and they were brands that we recognized as inexpensive wines.  Those Norwegians really tax their booze - no wonder people were loaded down with duty free at the airport!

We drove to Jostedalsbreen, the biggest glacier in continental Europe, and we were actually able to hike up and on part of it.  It was sort of like hiking a giant snowcone - not solid ice, but little pebbly ice.  It was actually less challenging than perhaps we expected, but the view was amazing, and we got to wear crampons and carry pickaxes, so we felt cool anyway.  

Here are some pictures of our adventures.

The last day, we took a ferry along the Sognefjord and down one of the narrow branch fjords (Aurlandsfjord).  The weather was pretty cold, extremely windy, and at times drizzly, but it was just astonishingly beautiful - so much so that it actually made up more than half of our trip photos and is largely the reason it took so long to sort through them and post this.  There are quite a few here, but they are all so amazing that it was very hard to choose.  As it is, this is less than 10% of them.

This short trip to Norway ended up being one of our favorite trips ever.  Norway is high on the list of places we would like to go back to.  We went for four days and barely saw anything, but everything we did see was breathtaking.  The blues were bluer and the greens were greener.  If you ever get a chance to go to Norway, go go GO!

So, our little fella turned 5 months old over the weekend, which means it’s time to send pictures of the fifth month of his life (well, the bit that happened after we got back from our trip).  He has lots of new tricks now - he rolled over a few times finally, and he seems to be getting the hang of that.  He’s practicing sitting up on his own, which he can do for about 3 seconds before his inevitable fall one way or the other.  Our favorite is the very slow fall forward - hilarious.  

He loves being on his tummy, and he can get a little air under his bum, so hopefully that means he’ll start crawling one of these days.  He has also discovered that he can squeal very loudly whenever he feels the inspiration to do so. . . this has provided plenty of amusement for everyone involved.  

He’s getting better at eating his rice cereal, and we just started dropping his late-night bottle three days ago.  So far he slept through all three nights, so hopefully that trend will continue. . . admittedly he is now insatiable during the day, but we’ll get there.

Anyway, here are the new pictures. . . 

We had a wonderful visit over in and around Pennsylvania.  We spent five days with my brother Thaddeus and his wonderful family, and the rest of the time we were based at Andy’s parents house, but we stopped by to see Fyl and Meghan, we went up to see clan McFadden & Simone, and we spent a fun evening with the Shumans.  We also had a little soirée one Saturday night and got to see even more of our friends.

This trip was so much fun - we spent two weeks feeling so loved and appreciated.  It was such a gift to be able to visit so many people who we care about and miss being around.  I have to admit wondering at times why we live so far away from all of those people. . . but I think we’ll stick with this plan for now and re-evaluate next year.  

Who knows?  We might be able to see people just as much (or almost as much) from here as we could there!  We’ll see how it goes.  Anyway, thanks everyone for coming to see us, having us over, playing with us and just generally being so loving and kind.  We feel so grateful that we have all of you and that we had this opportunity to see all of you (well, most of you).  Now it’s your turn.  Come see us in SF!  Callum’s only going to get cuter with age. . . . 

Here are some pictures of our trip.