Taggies

Auntie Janine, Thom's sister, gave Aaron this Taggies blanket which has different tags sewn around the border, varying in color and texture. I had it in Aaron's crib the other day as part of my goal of finding some "cuddle" toys for Aaron to sleep with, but it was at the foot of the crib when I put him down.
When Thom went to get Aaron up after we could hear that he was awake, he found the Taggies blanket on top of Aaron. He must have kicked it up within reach.

C'mon Janine - don't these pictures make you want to see how adorable your nephew is in person? The guest room awaits...

Visit from Grandma Jane

Last Sunday, before we knew about the fires, our friend Linda and her mom Jane came to see Aaron. Jane is from Ohio and was visiting Linda for a week and this was her first time meeting Aaron. Linda and Thom have been friends for so long, she is like family to us. And Jane and her husband Dick (who passed away 2 years ago) have been like adopted in-laws to Thom and I. So Jane has become "Grandma Jane" to Aaron.

When she arrived, Aaron has just gone down for a nap and we let a very impatient :-) Jane peek in on him while he slept. After lunch, Aaron finally woke up, but not in a very good mood, despite taking a fairly long nap. Aaron was pretty fussy, but I don't think Grandma Jane took it personally. Hopefully Aaron will be friendlier with her when she visits town again in January.

Ash from the fire

When we got home, there was a fair amount of ash in the yard, but not too bad. Here are a couple of photos of the front and back before Thom hosed it down.

The Santa Ana winds also tore down a corner of our sun shade. It is secured pretty well with hardware and it actually didn't tear, but the turnbuckle came unscrewed, giving you a good idea how strong and long the winds blew to get it to come undone.

Slowly returning to normal

Last night we opened a good bottle of wine to celebrate our return home. Considering that all of our wine could have gone up in flames, it seemed like a good time to pull out a special bottle.

This morning, I was able to put Aaron in his Jumperoo where he happily jumped until I made him some cereal which he ate in his highchair. Simple things, but after spending 3 nights away from home without his Jumperoo or his highchair, I really appreciated them. While at my parents house, we to hold him most of the time he was awake (or put him on the bed in our room where he could play with his feet) since we had no contraption into which to place him and the floor wasn't safe with a puppy running around and twin 4 year old boys. And although I managed to feed him on my lap or while he was in someone else's lap, it's definitely easier to do in the highchair.

We saw a map today of the homes that burned in our neighborhood and it confirmed what I had guessed - the fires came within .5 miles of our home. We can't see the burned homes from our house since they are over the hill from us, so seeing the map really made it clear how lucky we were. We heard that there were a lot of firefighters in this area protecting our homes and I know there were helicopters doing water drops. Although 20 homes or so burned in our neighborhood, they were mostly homes adjacent to the open space. The firefighters managed to keep the fire from encroaching further in.

When we were under evacuation, I was worried about our home, but also felt strangely detached. I love our home and neighborhood and I'm a sentimental pack rat that has closets filled with "stuff", so I expected to be more concerned about losing it all. But I think having Aaron has changed my perspective. We had packed up photos and some mementos along with our clothes, so we did have some of our irreplaceables with us. But I think the important thing is that I was with Thom and Aaron and my family was all safe. I'm sure I would have been upset if we did lose our house and its contents, but at the time, I had my family and nothing else was important enough to lose sleep over.

Back home!

We found out this morning that the evacuation order had been lifted for our neighborhood, so we headed home a little after noon. It's smoky outside, but inside it is not too bad. Lots of ash outside and small amounts near doors and windows inside. We unpacked the car, called my parents, some neighbors, and now we are about to pop a pizza in the oven for an overdue lunch.

Our home survived!

Thom drove up to our neighborhood a little bit ago and our house is in good shape. There is some ash, but not as bad as he expected and inside the house is not too smoky. He was able to grab a few things from the house before heading back. The evacuation is still in order, but the streets are not all guarded so some people have been able to get in to check on their properties at their own risk. Thom did report that the fires seem to be out in our neighborhood, so hopefully the danger has passed and we can go home tomorrow.

He also drove by my sister's neighborhood and it seems to have survived as well, although he didn't drive by her house itself. He also commented that there were people out playing golf on a nearby golf course. I guess some people are less affected by the fires than others.

Update

Since Monday, we've been watching the news most of the day, reading news online and following local blogs and newsgroups set up just for these fires. The blogs and newsgroups are a good source of information since some neighbors have been able to get into the neighborhood and check the status of the homes there and then report online. No one has reported on our street itself, although streets nearby have been spared which is a good sign. We've also been talking to other people from our neighborhood and calling our answering machine to see if it still picks up.

As of today, as best we can tell, our house is still standing, although other homes in our neighborhood have been lost. Since the fires are still burning and the winds could change direction, we are not out of the woods yet, but remain optimistic. Thom drove up to our neighborhood to see if he can get in to our house. We're not sure he'll be allowed in, but hopefully at least he will have some news of the area when he returns.

We will keep you posted.

Thank you!

We've had so many friends and family call or e-mail to check on us since Monday. We really appreciate it. We've had several offers of places to stay and offers of help. It's a good feeling knowing that we can rely on our friends in times of need. And I'm so glad we live near family during something like this. My parents have been extremely helpful, I can't thank them enough.

Although I think we did pretty good packing for an evacuation, there are a few things we could have used, most of them for Aaron. Luckily, our friends Chris and Jenny live only a mile or so from my parents and also have a baby boy, so they have been a great resource. Monday, Thom went over to get a baby monitor and some bibs (I only had one with me that had already been in the diaper bag). The spare monitor they had was a video monitor and was not wireless. Not only is our room upstairs, it is the furthest one down the hall, so the monitor wouldn't help us if we were downstairs eating dinner. So on Tuesday, they offered us their wireless monitor, willing to do without it for a couple of days to help us out. This was a big help since we'd been making sure one of us (or another family member) was upstairs within earshot of Aaron while he was sleeping.

Also on Tuesday, we took Aaron over to Chris and Jenny's house for a bath. I hadn't packed any necessities for bathing Aaron. In addition to letting us give him a bath, Jenny had baked us some chocolate chip cookies and pumpkin bread (both were excellent!) and ended up packing a bag for us with the wireless baby monitor, the baked goodies, pajamas for me (which I forgot to pack), more burp cloths, some extra clothes for Aaron since Oliver is not yet using his 6-9 month outfits, and a baby towel and washcloths for us to take with us. All of this has made our stay away from home easier and more comfortable.

Evacuation

Today is the third day we've been under evacuation. As far as we can tell - from informal reports from neighbors online and the fact that answering machine is still picking up, our house is still standing.

Sunday afternoon, our friend Linda and her mother Jane were visiting (I will post another blog entry with pictures on that). When we saw them out, we noticed it was smoky and figured there was a fire somewhere. It is prime fire season out here and it's not uncommon to have smoke from distant fires, especially with Santa Ana winds to blow the smoke from the east. We watched the news briefly and saw that the fires were well east of us. Then we headed to a our friends' home for their daughter's birthday party. I didn't think too much about it, but when we got home, it was as bad or worse, meaning that the fire was not under control.

I don't think I realized how bad it was at first. We watched the news a bit before bed, but although I went to bed at the usual time, Thom stayed up late looking for information on the internet and TV. I assumed the fire was far enough east that it wasn't a threat to us and that we'd wake up to the reverse 911 call if we needed to evacuate. But after Thom was in bed about 2 hours, we were both awakened by the strong winds and by Aaron. Thom got up to watch the news. Several new fires had started, one of which was too close for comfort. By the time I finished feeding Aaron, we were ready to start packing a few things up - just in case.

It was 3:30 in the morning and I was half asleep. I packed a bag for Aaron with spare clothes, diapers, burp clothes. Then I pulled out boxes of pictures and mementos to have ready to go. Thom started to gather important papers. After the last fires in this area, I had gone over in my head what I would take with us in the event of an evacuation, so I had a good idea of what to take. I packed a couple of overnight bags for Thom and I, fully assuming we might be gone for a day at the most. As we continued to watch the news, we were pretty sure we'd be leaving soon. I continued to pack up things as I thought of them - quilts of Aaron's that had been hand made, receipts for my home business (for tax purposes), some leftovers from the fridge, more burp cloths, coffee (since I knew my Dad would only have decaf).

Around 4:20am, the phone rang. It was a reverse 911 call from the police telling us to leave. So Thom started packing up the car as I continued to throw random things into bags. We waited until the last minute to call my parents to see if we could come here, then we woke up Aaron and got him ready to go. He seemed to think it was fun to get up early.

With everything packed up, we locked up the house, turned off the gas, and headed towards the freeway to my parents. We noticed a lot of cars going the other direction which was our first clue there might be a problem. Sure enough, the freeway towards my parents house was closed, so we had to go the opposite direction and head around the long way. What would normally be a 30 minute trip ended up being about an hour. Since it was still early for normal rush hour traffic and evacuations in our area were just starting, traffic was thankfully not too bad.

When we arrived, my parents were up and our room was ready for us. We set up the portable crib that we leave here for Aaron, but couldn't get to sleep ourselves. I had gotten about 4 hours and Thom only 2. But we stayed up, made some coffee, and had some oatmeal that Dad fixed for us, while watching the news. Not long after, my sister and her 3 kids arrived. My brother-in-law had left town for work on Sunday, not realizing he'd be leaving her to manage the evacuation of 3 kids, a dog and a cat.

My parents have a 5 bedroom, 2 story house, so there is plenty of room for all of us, but with all the kids and a puppy (the cat is stuck in the garage), it gets chaotic. Plus with the air quality so poor, the kids can't play outdoors for extended periods of time. But so far we are all managing, getting out each day for trips to the grocery store and other minor errands.

I'm going to post a few more entries on what is going on, but figure this one is long enough.

Safe from the fires

I'm typically careful about posting any information that identifies where we live because I worry about internet predators. But I thought distant friends and relatives might be watching the news and worried about us, so I wanted to let you know that we are safe from the fires burning in CA today. Unfortunately, our house is threatened and we don't know what will happen, but we are currently safe with my mom and dad. I will keep you posted.

First Hike

The Saturday before the fires, Thom and I decided to take Aaron on a hike. We used to hike quite a bit to train for hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, but since we did that hike, we stopped going as much. But there was a new trail head near our house, so we decided to check it out.

We have the UV shade on the stroller, which blocks a lot, but not all of the sun. Aaron still fusses when the sun is on his face.

The hike was mostly uphill and about 15-20 minutes into it, Aaron was getting really fussy and I noticed his face was red. With the stroller seat reclined and going uphill, I think the blood was rushing to his head, so we decided to turn back and try another day after we figure out how to get the seat back into an upright position. (When we first put him in the jog stroller, I wanted him in a reclining position. Since then, I've never figured out how to get it back up. It seems obvious, but it just won't latch.)

Baby food

Eating solids is going great. By the second day of eating solids, Aaron had it down. By the 3rd day, he was eating all the cereal I fed him, leaning forward and opening wide for each bite. I have gradually increased the amount I give him from 1/2 TBSP to 2 TBSP, making it thicker each day.

After a week of rice cereal for breakfast and almost another week of rice cereal for breakfast and dinner, I thought it was time to introduce a new food. Having read conflicting theories on whether giving babies fruits before vegetables makes them like veggies more, and having heard personal accounts, I decided to try out veggies before fruits. I went to the store yesterday and decided on sweet peas by Gerber Organics. The selection of organic single vegetables (not mixed with other veggies or with grains or meat) was slim and peas seemed like a good option. Plus, they were sweet peas, so I thought they couldn't be that bad. Eager to see what he thought, I fed him the peas yesterday evening before his cereal.

I tried to warn him that it was something new and not the cereal he had been eating, but of course he didn't understand. So imagine his surprise when I put the spoonful of peas into his mouth! He looked even more bewildered than when I first gave him cereal. He kind of looked like I had betrayed his trust. But then he opened his mouth for another bite, so I gave him more. He still didn't seem to like it, but he was eating it. But after a few bites, I could tell he wasn't happy with it, despite continuing to open his mouth for more, so we switched to cereal. On the last bite of peas, he finally spit it back out. He must have just figured out how to do it, because he then proceeded to spit out his rice cereal for the first few bites before he finally ate it all down. I am going to try peas again this evening. We'll see how it goes.

Due to the lack of variety of single food organic baby food, I'm going to try to make my own. I had hoped to find squash for one of his first foods, but I only found it mixed in with other vegetables. And I didn't see any pumpkin. I'm introducing one food at a time for a week or so until we are sure there is no adverse reaction. Once he's had a food without reaction, we'll start to mix them together, but until then, it will probably be easier to make our own.

Random musings

There are certain things we can do when Aaron is in the right mood that will induce wonderful fits of giggling. Kissing his neck, tickling his ribs, pretending to eat his hands, making funny faces. But we've found that prolonged fits of laughing seem to bring on a case of hiccups in Aaron that can last for 10 minutes or longer. So we try to be careful now if he is giggling close to bedtime, not to overdo it since it is hard to put him to bed if he has the hiccups.

After 6 months, we've finally noticed that Aaron's hair is starting to fall out. There were many predictions that it would fall out, but when we passed the 3-4 month mark with a full head of hair, I thought we were past the danger zone. But slowly I noticed it getting thinner in the back on the sides and now I see the hairs collecting on his changing pad and in his crib. It also seems like it might be thinning out on top. After 6 months, we are really going to miss it if it all falls out.

Now that Aaron's teeth are really poking through his gums, he has taken to sticking his finger in his mouth to play with them. At least that is what it seems like. Sometimes, he sticks a finger in the side of his mouth and fusses, making me think he has more teeth on the way, but other times, he just kind of plays with the front teeth.

Aaron is also really starting to notice things and tries to reach out and grab anything in reach. I was holding him in the kitchen the other day to prepare some cereal for him, and he was reaching out and touching the knives in the knife block. He's going to be trouble, I can tell.

Fall Birthdays

Last weekend we hosted the Fall Birthdays party for my mom, all my siblings and one brother-in-law, all who have birthdays within a 6 week time frame in September and October. I only had a chance to snap a couple of photos early on.

Before everyone arrived, cousin Elizabeth read Aaron the true story of the 3 little pigs (as told from the wolf's perspective). It is a book my mom brought over. Aaron was enthralled with Elizabeth's story telling and sat still longer on my brother's lap listening than when I've tried to read him stories.

We have the Chinese board game Go, which is always sitting out on the living room coffee table. All the kids who visit make up their own games using the black and white stones. Conner and Barb are playing their version in this picture.

Rice Cereal

Just 10 days shy of Aaron's 6 month birthday, we decided to introduce rice cereal. He's been showing more and more interest in what we are eating and drinking and he's not been nursing as well - he'll stop eating to look around, then take a brief drink, then look around some more, so I'll end the feeding only to have him get hungry 2 hours later. So it seemed like the right time to introduce his first food.

I made sure to nurse him first so that he wouldn't be overly hungry, and then I made up a very thin mixture of organic brown rice cereal and breast milk. The spoon I'm feeding him with was mine. In fact it has my name and birth date engraved on the handle. I believe it is from Gerber. (I can't seem to find spoons like this anymore - they all have a rubber coating on the end, which seems unnecessary.)

The pictures were taken towards the end of the feeding. The video is from the very beginning. He seemed to catch on after awhile and I think he may actually have swallowed about the equivalent of 2 spoonfuls.

Rollin', rollin', rollin', keep them babies rollin'

Aaron just started rolling over this week, but has quickly mastered the task. At least to the left. He does not roll to the right. Ever.

I try to keep him on a blanket on the floor when he rolls (to protect the carpet from spit-up, not to protect him from the floor) but this proves to be a challenge since he quickly rolls off the blanket and into nearby furniture. Since he cannot roll to the right, I just turn him 180 degrees when he gets to the edge of the blanket so he can roll back across to where he started.

Yesterday, he wouldn't go to sleep when we put him down for his afternoon nap, so I finally got him up and let him roll around. As soon as I put him down on his back, he starts rolling. And as you'll see in the video below, he is fussy and tired, but he won't stop rolling. It is almost as if he has no choice but to roll if he is put on the ground.

Singing

Before Aaron was born, I only sang in the car or when no one else could hear me. I can't carry a tune in a bucket. I remember babysitting my niece Mattea with Thom and I wouldn't sing to her if he was in earshot because I was so embarrassed by my tone deafness.

I figured I'd feel the same way with Aaron. But it hasn't taken long to get over it. Aaron loves it when I sing. And I don't care who hears me. All that matters is that it makes Aaron happy. I sing him songs I remember from childhood - Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Mary Had a Little Lamb, The Itsy Bitsy Spider (one of his favorites). And I make up songs, some to tunes I make up, some to familiar tunes. Most revolve around the idea of going to sleep. This one is sung to the tune of Clementine:

Little baby, little baby, little baby, little boy
You are tired
So now it's time to
Close your eyes and go to sleep.

Nothing very creative, but he seems to like it.

So I was really impressed when I saw this video of Anita Renfroe singing lyrics she put to the William Tell Overture. I think all moms will relate.

We've got teeth!!

Aaron and I went out to the local farmer's market this afternoon, stopping at the library, too. When we got home, it was only 2 hours since he'd last eaten, but he was trying to nurse on my shoulder. I thought it might be teething and let him bite on my knuckle. He's been teething for weeks, but he seemed more upset than usual. At one point, I got a peek into his mouth and could just barely make out the tops of two bottom teeth emerging from his gums! I almost gave him infant Tylenol for the pain, but since he kept rooting, I fed him instead, which seemed to help. Afterwards, he was in a smiley mood and not long after he went down for a nap (after we called his father to tell him the exciting news).

Two milestones in one day! My baby is all growed up.

At the park

Yesterday I met a group of friends with their new babies at the park. Aaron had a good time and I'm sure is looking forward to the days when he can help Gabe chase squirrels - assuming Gabe is still interested in such things by the time Aaron can run around.

And speaking of running, he has reached a milestone along the way - he rolled over today from back to front. He was on a blanket in our room playing with a cloth book while I folded laundry. One second he was on his back, the next he was 3/4 of the way turned over. I saw him just as he was landing on his stomach. I actually missed seeing how he did it. I clapped and cheered and he smiled a bit. I think he did recognize he had done something new. But he quickly got tired and was ready for a nap. Rolling over really takes it out of you, I guess.

Sling Baby

On Sunday, Aaron woke up early from a nap and I was doing some chores around the house. So I put him in this handy sling my friend Heidi lent me while I finished up. His dad thought he looked like Yoda being carried around my Luke Skywalker, so he took some pictures. Notice how he is grabbing the sling with his left hand. It is important to always have something in the claw.