Andrew - Month 12

Entropy still reigns at home, but there's now a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. He's always been interested in playing with the big trashcan in the kitchen and till now we've always stopped him whenever he tries to open it. The exception, as Andrew has discovered, is if he wants to make a deposit. It started with tissue paper and now he occasionally scours the floor looking for grains of rice or other bits of trash that he can throw away. So now we have a hilarious little Roomba in the making.

Oh, and he loves to follow grandma around with the swiffer whenever she's doing any cleaning.

Andrew has also discovered lids. More specifically, he has discovered their proper place and now seems quite keen on making sure that they go back on their respective containers after they've been removed. He now signals that he's had enough to drink by attempting to put the lid back on his bottle or sippy cup.

So that's progress, I guess. The family room may be a toy-strewn war zone during his waking hours, but at least we know that the lids will be safe.

Andrew - Month 11

With great power come great responsibility. - Uncle Ben

We're hoping Andrew learns this quick, because he's using his newly acquired mobility to wreak havoc. So much so that we've taken to calling him our little "foe," short for Force of Entropy. And his entropy field (aka his reach) is constantly increasing -- anything below counter height is in danger of falling into his little fingers.

Favorite activity this month? Causing a mess. Anything stacked will get knocked down. Anything neatly organized will get scattered. He seems to take inordinate delight in this and will look at us and smile while throwing his folded clothes around or pulling down all the books from the bookshelf.

Given a choice between a shiny new toy or pulling random junk out of a box and tossing them around the room? The box will win every time.

We haven't had to worry about him getting into our cabinets because most of them are pretty high, but I don't think that's going to be much protection for long. He knows that going on his tippy toes will give him a couple extra inches, which while cute makes life a little more difficult for us. He can even reach the door handles now. Fortunately he doesn't quite have the control to open them. Not that it makes much of a difference -- he'll just bang on it till we open it for him...

Not too many pictures this month as I'm still recovering from what I took during last month's travels.

Andrew - Month 10

Month 10 was quite an adventure as we traveled the world with Andrew. We covered eight countries, six time zones and two coasts in three weeks. He put up with us lugging him around like a champ and I often wondered what he thought was going on as he was constantly waking up in strange new places. Thank goodness he was happy in the ergo carrier or none of us would have had much fun.

We started in London and spent the first couple days recovering from jetlag and the huge timezone change. Andrew went from being the first to bed and first to awake to the last to bed and the last to wake up. The first night was especially tough as he didn't go down till 6am, and we were all pretty wiped out so staying up with him was no easy task.

From London, we drove to Dover where we boarded the cruise ship that would be our home for the next 10 days, stopping at Kiel (Germany), Talinn (Estonia), St. Petersburg (Russia), Helsinki (Finland), Stockholm (Sweden) and Copenhagen (Denmark). I don't think we could have covered so many places with Andrew any other way (at least, not without a lot more hassle).

We stayed in Copenhagen for a few more days before flying to NY to hang out with my family. My sister took the opportunity to take us to the beach - Andrew's first. In fact, I'd never been to the Jersey Shore either even though I grew up in NJ.

And then it was time to go home again...

While in NJ, Andrew started walking all by himself for the first time.

A mere week later, he's gotten a lot more control and can actually get around fairly well all by himself. Time to get serious about baby-proofing...

An Efficient Vector

I guess it should be no surprise, but babies are amazingly good vectors for disease -- everybody wants to hold, hug, kiss and otherwise play with them. And as we discovered this past weekend, Andrew's no exception.

We were in Tahoe over Labor Day weekend with Charity's parents, my cousin June and her friend Carina. We're not sure how, but Andrew managed to catch some bug and started throwing up on Sunday. On Monday, Charity started throwing up as well. She even manage to pay Andrew back for all the times he has thrown up on her... :)

I succumbed Tuesday afternoon with a fever and diarrhea. June and Carina started throwing up later that night. And today Charity's dad reported having diarrhea as well.

The only one who has escaped is Charity's mom. For now...