1/4/07 Baby faces

Rain foiled a long-awaited reunion with Rancho San Antonio this morning, where we used to hike regularly. So I invited Betsy, who'd suggested the hike, to be my guest at the Y again, as a good rainy-day alternative. I lasted a whole 20 minutes on the treadmill as a result, with a good 12 minutes of actual running!

While at the Y, I got some baby-face photos, including of Dylan, Betsy's 7-week-old boy. I just loved his big eyes peering around from the big field of yellow blanket.


Plus Katrina in quite the funny face!

But overall I hate carseat photos, since there's always an obnoxious warning label in the background, and the shoulder straps are ugly too. Hence the creative cropping on Dylan's photos. Actually, I like the result. Those eyes...

At home after picking up Gabriel, Julian insisted on riding his bike in the backyard, despite the wet ground and rain.

"No pictures, Mommy!" Julian's very into telling me not to do things. Don't call him "Precious" (OK I can see that), don't call him "Imp," no kisses, no hugs, don't say that, Mommy...!


Katrina sucks her hands all the time now...she's growing up so fast! One way in which she reminds me more of Julian than Gabriel as a baby is the sounds she makes and the way she interacts. If we'd had Julian first, we'd have assumed that's just the way babies talk, but since we had Gabriel first, we noticed a marked difference in the way Julian made and responded to sounds. I predict no speech delay with Katrina.


I took a little camera-video of Katrina sucking her hands, and ended up getting a few cute baby sounds too. I must remind myself that while this is endlessly fascinating to me, it's really quite dull to anyone who doesn't have a 3-month-old baby, including me when she's older! But for now, I can't get enough of her.


This video, I posted to Google Video instead of YouTube, in the hopes it wouldn't mash the picture, but it does. I just hope it works at all!

Our carpenter installed our bifold doors covering the laundry area today, the last of the big carpentry jobs, yay! But...the doors are the wrong style! We'd ordered style number 6529, but they arrived as 6528, and look completely wrong. I don't need setbacks like this when we're so close! The kids' rooms are ready to put furniture into, finally, though they still need electrical trim-out.

Gabriel...unbelievable. I'm not even sure I saw him this afternoon. After getting Julian down for a nap, I took care of some things in the office, took a short nap myself, then had a snack, back to the office....usually, Gabriel comes and talks to me from time to time, but not today. He found Julian's new coloring book and practically finished it (poor Julian!), then assaulted a Lincoln Log project with his fierce focus. He doesn't even call for me ("I'm DONE!") to wipe him anymore; he takes care of it all himself and always washes his hands.

All he plays with are building-block toys, nothing electronic or battery-powered: trains, lincoln logs, coloring books, puzzles, blocks. I wouldn't have expected so much entertainment from such basic toys even from him, but he continues to surprise me. I wouldn't mind at all playing with him more, but I am glad he so enjoys his quiet afternoons at home. They're short-lived.

1/4/07