what would you like to celebrate?

take your pick:

the canucks sweep the blues in round 1!

(we've made franchise history!)

it's earth day!

(ironically enough, i'm spending the day inside doing laundry. plus i've caught a cold. sucks.)

it's administrative professionals day!

(shout-outs to my peeps at work! i hope i still get the bonus when i return to work...)

gabe likes meat!

(after a failed attempt yesterday, i hid it with his vegetables and he loved it! AND he's taken his first sips of water from his sippy cup! mind you, he spat it all out after so we'll see what happens next time :P)

happy easter!

this has been a really fun weekend. on friday gabe got to play with maddy, who is a very outspoken little girl with a very loud voice. whilst communicating with gabe about her toys, she totally freaked him out and he started to cry. we persisted and kept putting them back together, but after the 3rd outburst, we finally separated them :-)













gabe got a real treat for easter...we all dyed eggs for him, and his grandparents bought him an easter gift - emil, the organic giraffe binkie! for some reason my mom kept calling sophie the giraffe emily, so to "man" up his toys, we're calling the binky emil. and great-aunt billie also bought a gift for gabe...a blow-up bunny rabbit...i thought i might pass out before i got him blown up :P















it's been really great because chris actually had friday AND sunday off all day, so we got to spend lots of time together! and to really top off our weekend, gabe got his 6 month shots today...well, thankfully it was only 1 shot...loaded up with 6 different vaccines! we are so proud of gabe...he didn't even squeek when he got injected! and we timed it perfectly as usual, and right after the appt he took his nap!

we got all of gabe's measurements, and he's a funny guy...he's weighing kinda heavy at 18 lbs, 11 ozs! but his body length is just below the 50th percentile and his head size is still in the 75th percentile! our doctor was impressed by his weight gain since his 4 month check-up :-) hopefully gabe'll get his body sorted out and even out before his 12 month check-up!

mmm....bacon :-)

Yum yum yum! Anything with bacon wins top scores in my book. I bought my first issue of O magazine with Michelle Obama on the cover, and discovered there are recipes in the magazine. And there just happened to be a bacon-wrapped shrimp dish:

2 tbsp honey
1.5 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp Dijon mustard
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
½ tsp ground pepper
12 jumbo tail-on shrimp, peeled and deveined
6 slices bacon, halved crosswise

1. To make dressing, put 1 tbsp honey in a medium bowl. Add lemon juice and mustard; whisk to combine. Slowly pour in olive oil, whisking constantly. Season to taste with salt and pepper; set aside.


2. Use ½ tsp pepper to season shrimp all over. Wrap 1 piece of bacon snugly around each shrimp and secure with a toothpick running lengthwise (so shrimp can lie flat).


3. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Arrange shrimp in a single layer and cook, flipping once, until bacon is just crisp, about 10 minutes. Drizzle honey over shrimp and continue to cook, basting often with pan juices, until bacon is caramelized and shrimp are cooked through, about 2 minutes more. Transfer to a large plate.

Now that we're planning ahead for Gabe's meals, i'm starting to improve my diet (baby steps!), and i added organic yams to our meal and grilled cherry tomatoes. Overall a delish meal and i'm looking forward to making it again!

a major milestone!

i can't believe we missed it! sometime in the past few days, gabe's first tooth popped up! i think it's safe to say it happened on sunday night. chris and i had a date night at the canucks game and my parents were generously babysitting again :-) gabe was pretty fussy the entire time we were gone, but we all attributed it to a little separation anxiety.


tonight after his bedtime meal, gabe was crying so i stuck my finger in his mouth to suck on, when i stumbled upon his little incisor tooth! it wasn't even at the "breaking through" point, it was full on OUT! (his 2nd tooth is en route as well!) for 2 months chris and i have been checking his mouth because we thought he was going to be an early teether (red cheeks, "old man" lips), then after he started solids we just kind of forgot about potential teeth. even when he bit me multiple times today, i still hadn't clued in to a potential problem...i thought he was just being a lazy eater!

in hindsight, gabe`s taken a keen interest in sophie the giraffe, chewing on her legs and ears so i guess she`s performing well as a teething toy :-) i've been anticipating this day for a long time, and i had expected a change in his behaviour, sleep habits, and physical signs. but i'm completely stunned that there have been no dramatic changes...well...last night he slept longer than he's ever slept before...almost 12 hours! plus he had 5 mini-naps today, AND he went to bed at his normal time tonight and only fussed for 5 minutes!

6 months old!

blast it, time just flies by! my little buddy is 6 months old today, and i can't believe it! he has become so interesting in the past month with all of his developmental and social skills.

• he's almost 18 pounds, and 25 inches long!!! (yikes, we need to research for our next carseat!)
• he loves sitting in his bumbo chair, and will reach for his toys when they fall onto the ground
• he's well-behaved with everyone he meets...definitely a people-pleaser :-)
• now that gabe's eating solids, we've noticed him "chubbing" out a bit (his face in particular seems to have gotten a little pudgier)
• speaking of solids, gabe's increased the amount of food he eats...1 tbsp is no longer enough, so i'm trying to feed him at least twice a day 1.5 tbsps of rice cereal. i don't know about gabe, but i'm already bored of it...so i think i might start a new food item next weekend.
• gabe is an active baby in his crib - he's constantly spinning around and rolling onto his tummy at night and needs rescuing :P he's a pretty funny guy...when i rescue him, he looks at me and gives me his "what'd i do? or thanks for rescuing me!" smile. at 3 a.m., after that smile all is forgiven.
• he went through a phase a couple weeks ago of waking up for a night-feed, but i think we're past that hump...perhaps it was a growth spurt since he's gained almost 3 pounds this past month!
• he definitely knows his mommy & daddy! if someone is holding him, he will occasionally look my way, and start to reach an arm out for me. it's nice to be wanted :-) as soon as gabe hears the key in the door, his head starts spinning around trying to find daddy, and he gives chris the biggest smiles and arm flaps. so cute!
• speaking of daddy, when we put chris on speakerphone, gabe will now try to communicate back with grunts and squeals!
• we started our 2nd session of music together classes, and the older kids are loving him and greeted him with kisses last week!
• we're having issues with the tv...gabe gets distracted easily during a feed and will stop to see what's happening on tv. so we've tried to restrict the amount of tv he watches overall, regardless if it's baby einstein, hockey, or whatever else we're watching.
• he's dropped a nap...if he can get a total of 3-4 hours of naptime during the day, then he's good until bedtime, which has been bumped up to 9 p.m.!
• he still does his "old man" lip pursing thing, which has been accompanied with drooling recently, so i'm thinking there might be a tooth on its way!

we've had a busy week again! lunch-dates, birthdays, the baby fair...so much to do and so little time :-) this coming week is shaping up to be a busy one again...but at least we have a long weekend ahead of us and so far it's gonna be a low-key one!

vegas, baby!

we survived our first family vacation! in between the poo explosion and the volcanic explosion, we had a great time. PLUS i finally have decent pix of me and gabe together!


something must happen to babies (or at least gabe) when travelling 400 mph @ 40,000 feet, because man alive, gabe did the motherload of all poos mid-flight to vegas (10 wipes and a wardrobe change!). the encore came mid-flight to vancouver when he did a repeat performance :P other than the explosion, the flight to vegas was uneventful and gabe was a model baby and didn't fuss at all :-) phew!







being in a new environment with so much to see was a bit overwhelming for gabe, so he fell asleep while chris and i had a midnight meal. unfortunately the rest of the night seemed never-ending. he couldn't settle down in the crib the hotel provided, so i built a fortress on the bed for him to sleep in. still didn't work. eventually chris had to sleep beside him and sing him to sleep. phew! on the 2nd night, i devised a new plan and let him watch baby einstein...worked like a charm! very smart to bring the portable dvd player :-)


even though we were travelling with a baby, it didn't stop us from doing everything we wanted to do. we shopped, we dined, we gambled...but it just had a different vibe. for me, the foodie highlight of the trip was dinner at nobu! unfortunately gabe was fussy that night, so i didn`t get pictures of everything we ate :(











pic 1: spicy tuna roll w/avocado, soft shell crab roll, black cod w/miso
pic 2: strawberry shortcake with tofu ice cream, mochi ice cream - peanut butter, green tea, flower blossom, mango)


since chris and i have been to vegas umpteen times, we didn't do anything touristy, except to check out palazzo. i had all these plans to walk along the strip and show gabe all the different sites...the mirage volano, the canals at venetian, the lions at mgm...but alas, sleeping was a priority for him, so we don't have as many pix to share :( i've added a link to my picasa site on the sidebar - check'em out!



























as a family, the biggest highlight was taking gabe to the mgm pool! unfortunately the water was cold, so we didn't "swim" for as long as i had hoped. oh well, we'll just have to wait for our swimming lessons to start in may!














and as all good things must come to an end, so did gabe's patience. our flight home was scheduled to leave at 10:50 p.m. and arrive home at 1:30 a.m. i had timed things perfectly throughout the day, and it would've been spot on except our flight got delayed. we were told it was weather related, and that it was due to a volcanic eruption. excuse me? we don't have active volcanos in vancouver! it turned out that an eruption in alaska was to blame. huh?! well, our plane was en route from edmonton and was grounded in vancouver due to potential damage from the ash that blew 50,000 feet into the air. therefore we had to wait for a flight to arrive from montreal and thus were delayed by 2 hours :P we finally left vegas at 1 a.m., and gabe promptly had an hour-long meltdown on the flight :( poor little dude was so tired that even baby einstein couldn't help.


overall it was a great trip and i'm glad we went! thank goodness my parents will be with us on our next trip :-)

mindful eating (part 2)

ok, the vegas blog is coming. i'm just too tired to write about our experience.

in the meantime, here's part 2 of my eating rant. i wasn't sure about starting rice cereal since gabe's got a bit of a lingering cough from vegas, plus the fact that his sleep is totally messed up right now. but, our day got totally screwed up and chris ended up staying home from work and my parents were over for an early dinner. so 9 days shy of his 6 month bday, i figured what the heck...i've got ppl to take pix and videoclips, so off we went :-) in the end it was great to see gabe eating food!




















i did learn a few things from this first experience:

- gabe is a good eater, just like i thought he would be :-)
- i might have added too much breastmilk to the rice cereal...it ended up a bit runny
- just like the nutritionist said, babies will tell you when they're full, and sure enough gabe closed his mouth and turned his head away :-)
- he might be a good eater, but our first experience was definitely not a clean one. yup, that's food on his forehead!
- the bibbity and placemat were both new to him, so he treated them like toys :P

mindful eating

as gabe approaches 6 months, i've become very anxious about starting him on real food. everyone starts with baby rice cereal, but even that's confusing. just rice cereal? what about barley cereal? or wheat cereal? organic or regular? white rice or brown rice? which brand? oy! i got myself totally worked up over this damn rice cereal, that i finally took the plunge and bought good times organic brown rice cereal. finally...decision made!

also, my mom has her own ideas of what babies should be fed and how much/often. apparently i was such a good eater as a baby that i got a little too chubby and the nutritionist put me on a restrictive diet :P then my mom got me super paranoid about gabe's future, so in addition to the nutrition discussion from the phn at our drop-in session, i've been researching food on the internet, and i attended "mindful eating" at the west end community centre & capers on robson. i am now armed with so much information about babies and food, it's ridonkulous. the great thing about the mindful eating session is that we got to taste samples of food we could be giving our babies: baked yams cooked with olive oil, bananas with geram masala, cheese curds, poached pears w/fennel seeds. personally, i could've done without the fennel seeds :P

man alive, once we get back from vegas i've got a whole new adventure to look forward to with gabe. rice cereal, nutrio's, farley biscuits, and water in a sippy cup! yikes! my boy is growing up so fast :-(

aw, shucks!

holy crap, i'm so full. chris is so full, he's passed out on the couch :P

after discovering that my sis-in-law and her bf love raw oysters, we just had to take them to rodney's oyster house for dinner. i'd say we overindulged in food: 4 dozen raw oysters (fanny bay, summer breeze, chef creek and marinaside), oysters rockerfeller, pasta w/scallops, mussels, potato crusted halibut, and clam chowder. now, i'm not a big fan of raw oysters, but at rodney's they give you so many sauces to add, that it's hard to resist eating 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 oysters :-) despite the variety, i still stuck with the tobasco sauce.

1/2-way through the oysters!

and speaking of food, my little dude is definitely showing interest in it...

"clean up in aisle poo!"

gabe isn't a skinny baby, nor is he a chubby baby. unfortunately the fuzzi bunz are too loose in the leg area, so we`ve had a few poo explosions this week. usually i`ve had pants on him to catch some of the mess, but last night i didn`t even see it coming. it was a very quiet and slow poop, very unusual for gabe. i felt a warmth spread over my tummy. at first i thought he had pee`d on me, but nope, there it was...poop, and lots of it :P and not only was it on me, it was on the peanut nursing pillow (he`d pooped on my brest friend earlier in the week and was in the laundry), the burp towel, and my glider chair. major clean-up required!

well, after i gave gabe a major hose-down, i went to rinse the washcloth and chris was going to put a diaper back on, when chris shrieked and a torrent of pee went into the air! fortunately it went straight up onto gabe`s belly and the change pad, and missed the wall for once :P

now i have to admit that we`ve had just as many poo explosions with disposable diapers, and they`re way more size specific than the cloth diapers we`ve used. so for now we`re just going to muddle our way through this awkward size gabe is at. in a few weeks gabe`s gonna be on solids and his poo will change again, so hopefully things will get under control.