Amaranth is messy, but I'd recommend it anyway.

So delightfully squishy.









And with delicious coconut oil in it, it's good for the skin anyway.

Thinking outside the box

This is how Moss uses a pacifier. To each his own.

that baby in the mirror is ignoring me...

Future Moss says, "Beep beep".

Chompers

roseola babe :'(

Yet another excuse for the lack of updates, but this one's a doozie. Little Moss came down with an unpleasant little virus with a pleasant little name, and is on what seems like a never-ending mommy kick.

But guess what?! I downloaded the blogger app for my fancy new fancy pants phone, though. So moving forward I plan to reserve Mondays for longer posts written on a computer, but I will post pictures and other cute little short updates whenever I think of it throughout the week. Keep checking back, there will be much new posting before April hits us smack in the face. <3

Dear Moss, Teeth and poop. Love, Dad

Moss, it's time we had a talk.  Up to now, I've gotten away with pretending you'll always be my happy little boy with your wide, toothless grin and your ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, anyone.  You've been  growing this whole time -- I know that and I'm not going to pretend otherwise -- but it's been lots of little things and it's all been very gradual, so without concentrated comparisons of earlier photos or Mom's blog posts it's not always been obvious.

This week, you decided to change things up.  It started with a sleepless night for you and Mom, after which we discovered your first little bottom tooth coming in.  Then, after another rough night, we found out both of your bottom teeth are coming in at once.  Then we realized both of your top teeth are on their way, too.  I can't imagine the amount of discomfort you're feeling, but it's got to be pretty hard to deal with it all in one shot.  That toothless grin is about to be nothing more than one of my very favorite memories of your first 7 months on this spinning earth.

We've been stepping up the real food lately, as well.  Watching you suck down strawberries and romanesco and carrots and salmon and all the other delicious foods you're exploring for the first time has been so exciting and interesting. That sense of new newness I feel when I watch you discover a taste or smell or texture that I've long since grown accustomed to has added a sense of novelty to my life that I haven't felt in so many more years than you can even imagine at this point.

Last but not least, with all this new input, there's the recent development in your output that I can't say I'm as happy about.  It was bound to happen eventually, I know, and of course "everybody poops", but that first big boy shit caught me entirely of guard.  I almost threw up and apparently scared the hell out of you, but I wasn't exactly emotionally/physically/mentally prepared for that one.  I'm going to try really hard to fight my knee jerk revulsion for your sake... Mom says it's pretty important that I not stigmatize this in a way you can't fully understand since we don't want you getting weird about it later.

Gone are the days when you were certainly a person but at the same time different; here to stay is the rest of your life, when you'll be occasionally gap toothed, when you'll have serious preferences about our food (dear god please don't be as picky as I was), and when you'll poop like a person rather than an infant.

Sunny funny honey bunny II

And your not-attractive-for-anyone "it's too bright out here" face.

Hmm.

Yes, after careful consideration I concur.

Teef!

It's hard to see because I'm a squirmy butt, but the two little bumps on my bottom gum are about to be two little teeth!  And I'm cranky about it!  

Unbridled joy today

Mr. Moss experiences a swing.  10/10 would ride again.

Mossercise!

Moss works on his core

Sunny funny honey bunny

Moss gets his daily allotment of vitamin D and extremely sharp shards of wood

Hold on...

So Moss has these fantastic plastic chain links that can be used for so many different things (teether! toy hook! rattle! ring toss! sculpture! drum stick!), but my favorite use so far has got to be "bus strap".  We hung some on his car seat in case he wanted to look at them, or bat at them, or pull one off and bite it every now and again, but instead he grabs them and holds on for dear life.  I'm not even a terrible driver!  It's adorable, but the adorable factor is unchartable once he falls asleep holding them.

 

cuteness not measurable using standard instruments

My first sushi

Oh relax, it's cucumber and rice.  ;)

Love bunny ^_^

Happy Valentine's Day from Moss!

Neutral Valentine's Day from Moss.

Sad Valentine's Day from Moss.

My first laptop

Never too young to code...

Just like Dad!

And it begins.

Well I was planning to have a series of cute posts all week documenting Moss's arduous pursuit of forward self-propulsion...

Wednesday 2/5

Friday 2/7

But then last night (at 1:30am I might add -- that sleep-disruptions-around-motor-milestones warning is no joke):

So there will probably still be a series of cute posts, but they will be of Moss crawling around and wreaking mischief, rather than of Moss figuring out how to crawl around so he can wreak mischief.

Tonight on the Moss Channel...

Behold, Moss very much enjoyed his chicken soup this evening.

And by enjoyed it, I mean he somehow rubbed it onto every skin cell he owns.

Amaze as he quaffs/dumps his cold drink with gusto...

And then thank the heavens for delicious pear dessert.

Busy month!

Whoops, 2 weeks in a row without a Moss post!  I was hoping that would never happen, but alas our life went a little cray cray.  In late January we flew to Chicago, where it was, just... no.

Moss Bear handled it like a champ, though.  

While there I was convinced to keep working on my PhD, despite my myriad fraught opinions on that topic.  We got to see a 16 month old Elliot, a 14 month old Anja, a 29 month old Rose and her new negative 6 month old sibling, and a 5 week old Maggie.  Delightful.

 So cold though.  Why do people have babies here?!

Then we traveled home over the course of 32 hours and an impromptu overnight pit stop in scenic Denver due to the sketchiest flight delay I've ever experienced.  Southwest made us board our delayed flight so that we could all sit on the tarmac for 1.5 hours (causing half the plane missing connections) so that a single flight attendant from another flight could go to Denver.  It was about 17 minutes within the terms of service and we missed our flight home by 8 minutes.  Brutally unpleasant.  I just have to pretend that someone she cared about was sick or dying or something because only then does the nepotism not make my skin crawl. And that was on last Sunday/Monday, explaining the first lack of blog post.

Then we got home and Ben immediately interviewed to switch job titles within Google, for which he'd been studying for the past several months, so everyone was super stressed for a while there. 

Well, not everyone.

THEN I got sick.  I can pretty much plan to be ill from post-plane ride days 5 through 13, so I don't know why I'm ever surprised about this anymore, but predictability doesn't make it any more fun.  So I decided to pretend I wasn't sick and go on a grueling hike with a relentless 12% grade and a squirmy babe.  Smaaaaart...

And then we immediately had house guests, and then Ben immediately went skiing with all his cool Google friends, and my ensuing lack of health and time and help explains the second Monday's absence of blog post, and here we are.  So to make up for it, let's flip to the Moss Channel -- all Moss, all the time.  A new post every day for the next 2 weeks will surely make up for our silence in the first half of February.  And let's start our Moss Marathon with a summary of his latest project, CRAWLING.  My prediction is that by the end of these 2 weeks of updates, he will be crawling, no ifs, ands or butts finally off the ground and wiggling around and getting into trouble.

So... close...