toby of the day, 10.20.07

Today we went to a party at the very cute lenodle-mogooms houses. There were lots of babies there (well, if you consider 4 to be lots, which we do). I always thought that once I had a baby I would be better at guessing the age or gender of other children. But either because I’m grossly inattentive or because our baby is aberrantly large with a head full of hair, I’m still terrible at it. So I’ve mostly settled on saying things like “my, that’s a nice baby”. Afterward we briefly stopped by the besmorf house where they were preparing to watch some ultimate fighting pay-per-view thing. Toby wanted to stay and cheer on the spider while he kneed his competitors in the head, but we had to go home to our sakoolley house instead.

toby of the day, 10.19.07

Toby has recently started to grab things and bring them to his mouth. The grabbing part is still a little clunky, but once he’s grabbed on, the item, be it a finger, sock, toy, or your shirt, is covered with drool in seconds. So far we’ve mostly been offering him soft things like socks and blankets. But someday we could give him other things without too much anxiety since California just became the first state to ban phthalates from children’s toys. So as long as we don’t have to move out of San Francisco, Toby’s liver, thyroid, and testes may be safe, at least from this class of unpronounceable chemicals. Although we could always move to the EU since they banned these things like a decade ago. Then toby’s liver would only have the delicious wines, beers, and sweet sweet lambics to contend with. mmmmm, lambic.

toby of the day, 10.15.07

Today as I sat at my desk at work trying to get some stupid analysis program to run and wishing that I were still at home curled up on the sofa, a rat ran across some molding above my head. I really hate my job.

toby of the day, 10.14.07

Tonight, toby went to sleep with a pacifier in his mouth. Prior attempts at the pacifier resulted in him sucking on it briefly before it would pop out. And prior sleeping attempts have always involved him feeding multiple times first. Unfortunately, while the pacifier was cool, because it meant that he didn’t eat a lot before bed, I was stuck with a lot of extra food, which was, well, uncomfortable. In other news, toby’s new favorite inanimate object is an American analog set poster. When he sees it, he just goes crazy, smiling, giggling, babbling, even cupcaking. I almost feel sorry for his previous love, the halogen lamp. Almost. Then I remember that it’s a lamp.

toby of the day, 10.13.07

Today we went to Berkeley so jon could stock up on meats at Berkeley bowl. It only took us 20 minutes to get there (plus of course another 15 minutes to park), which is in stark contrast to previous visits when, while sitting in traffic, we could see ducks waddling by faster than we were moving. Toby quickly tired of the store so he and I spent much of our time out front waiting. It turns out that lots of people talk to you when you have a baby. More specifically, lots of people talk to me. Even back when I was younger and wanted to appear unapproachable I was always the person tourists would ask for directions. Now that I have a baby I am apparently more approachable than ever. Jon always says that no one ever talks to him when he carries toby around. I talked to 4 people just during the 20 minutes I sat outside of Berkeley bowl. I also have a list of suggestions that people offered while I was pregnant. For example, according to a toothless woman on the bus, I should have taken toby swimming when he was 6 weeks old. Maybe we’ll do that with the next baby. Although by then, I’m sure we’ll have even more suggestions.

toby of the day, carole of the day, 10.10.07

Today toby celebrated his 3rd month birthday making him 1/4 year old. We didn't do much to celebrate it, aside from adorning him with kisses. We also celebrated jon's mom's 60th birthday today. Though again, celebrate is a bit of a stretch since really we just called her before we went to work. But we did send her a nifty gift, Jon wrote and recorded a handful of songs about some of the quirkier moments in his upbringing, like the time he got caught stealing RATT's 'Invasion of your privacy' tape from Tower Records in Tokyo. This is the cover we used for the CD we gave to her. See how we put toby to work. we tried to put lulington to work, but as you can see, she was less cooperative. Since we can't figure out how to post the song here, maybe one day we'll post one on our myspace page, a page which is almost as closely guarded a secret as our netflix queue.

toby of the day, 10.06.07

Saturday we packed Isaac and toby into a prius and headed to Napa. We had tasty wine and barbecue at Barber’s Q, followed by some not so exciting wines but a nice view of the hills and of a frisky fence lizard at the Robert Sinskey vineyard. After that we consumed lots of sips of wines and dollars of toby’s college fund at our favorite wine store, and finally we wandered through the ever famous Napa Cajun festival, because who doesn’t equate Napa and Cajun. It was a quite a lovely day, although, ultimately, I think that toby and I have the same complaint about trips to the wine country: they involve too much time in the car. Naturally, my way of voicing this complaint in through my soft and melodic voice, while Toby states his opinion through more of a grating scream reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard (I wonder what the modern description of this is since chalkboards are now obsolete?). Anyhoo, in the process of enduring his cries, we did discover that when hungry, sleepy and stuck in a car seat, toby will take a bottle even from me. So in the end, it was even a day of learning. Huzzah!

toby of the day, 10.05.07

Well, we made it through the week. Toby seems to have taken to the new daycare just fine. Jon too. And I’m getting there. While I admit to some procrastinating on Friday, looking for more and more things that“ needed” to be done at home before dropping him off, I did eventually manage to do so, and with only a few tears shed as I wandered past the construction workers on the corner. I think our only real disappointment is that the boy that we had imagined Toby hanging out with, a wavy haired one-year old who spent much of his time staring wide-eyed at the wall, a boy we believe could one day star in the sequel to ‘dazed and confused’, had his last day on Friday. In his stead is a cute and curly haired but hyper-verbal 2 1/2 year old who likes to discuss the rules of sharing and the dangers of bouncing on the bed. Definitely not a stoner boy. Overall the place is nice, small (4 kids total), and friendly. We do feel a little young relative to the other parents, whether that’s real or just a consequence of them wearing suits and not New Pornographers t-shirts and fraying pants, we’re not sure. But really that may just be a persistent issue of self-perception or self-deception about our new roles as parents, or a consequence of being a sloppily dressed academic. Maybe we just need to get our corduroy jackets fitted with elbow patches.

Survival of the Politest

After almost three months with Toby, we still can’t figure out who the hell he looks like. Some of his features are sort of Sarah’s, some are sort of mine. Some are sort of both. Take his eyes for example. For the most part, they are more like Sarah’s than mine. But his right eye has more Japanese characteristics than his left eye. It’s a little narrower than its left counterpart, and the fold on his right eyelid is less pronounced. His nose is a little of both of us. The tip of his nose is roundish, like Sarah’s, but his nose is wide, like mine. And he hasn’t even started picking it yet! (Though I have). A principle in genetics is that within each individual, genes from each parent battle it out. For example, genes for growth that are paternally contributed vie for expression against maternal genes that try to suppress growth in utero. But, when we think about how our genes are sculpting Toby’s appearance, I like to imagine his maternal and paternally contributed genes bowing at each other, letting each other express themselves equally (see image by Sarah). Kind of like Japanese society (at least, superficially). I guess that means Sarah is Japanese after all.

toby of the day, 10.01.07

even though daily posting is really is the best way to verify the continued existence of ed, I'm moving toward less frequent posting, hopefully more than once a week, but less than every day. anyway, this week we begin transitioning toby into daycare. After spending 2 1/2 months at home with him, I’m actually not ready to hand him over to someone else. We could be in for a rough week. Fortunately, I don’t work using Tai Chi to make Chinese steamed buns, because my tears would make the buns salty and sour and I would be fired. Of course, then I wouldn’t have to send toby to daycare because I would be out of a job. Which would be ok because jon would be making so much money using kung fu to play soccer, I could just make buns at home. that would be awesome. mmmm, steamed buns.

toby of the day, 9.29-30.07

On saturday we had Isaac, Kevin, and Jess over for brunch. Then went to see patty & jason’s new version of their old house. It’s powered by the sun. On Sunday we had to make a trip to babies r us to buy the one kind of nipple toby seems to like. Though not as scary as we expected, it was still unpleasant, so to recover we took our zipcar over to route 1 and did a little hiking up some bluffs overlooking the ocean (toby’s first hike) and went down to the beach (also a first) where toby quickly replaced the lint between his toes with sand. We decided that with all the other firsts he was experiencing, we would skip his first viewing of naked men doing handstands (actually, a first for all of us), so we stayed on the clothed end of the beach.