The lurking genome

Jory's blue eyes and light brown hair aside (he was born with blond eyelashes!), he's both one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Indian. Jory's aunt Emma sent him a lovely kurta/pyjama set from her recent trip to India, so Jory was able to strut his Indian stuff at a recent dinner party.

Well, his head seems to be a bit bigger than is standard in India, but he still looks cute! Thanks, Auntie Emma!

A is for Alvin

I feel a little silly dressing my son in clothing with his name on it, but how can we resist?

An entente cordiale?

This is the sight I woke up to a few days ago. Imagine my surprise!

Can it be that some sort of cordial relationship is developing among our "offspring," fuzzy and smooth?

Can it be?

Yes indeed! The resource misappropriation continues!

Jory's grandmother bought him this blanket/rattle combo. Zanzibar drags it through the house and hides it in his lair like he's a lion on the savanna. At least someone's enjoying it!

I never get tired of these car seat pictures:

I'm pretty sure the cats know what goes on here, but they still sit on the changing table!

And this is a beautiful, soft, delicate play mat with fuzzy embroidery and a few lovely rattles. Oh yes, and a giant black cat!

Little bookworm

You call this literature??

Bah!

Roll with it

Jory had a breakthrough last week - rolling on purpose. It's great that he's getting control of his body, but now we really have to keep track of him when he's near an edge!

Adventures in spoon feeding

For the past few weeks, Jory's been giving us some definite signals that he's interested in real food. He insists on sitting up at the table with us, despite the fact that he can't really sit up by himself just yet, and he intently scrutinizes the process of the food leaving the table and moving to our mouths.

Our pediatrician gave us the go-ahead to try him on "solid" food - meaning rice cereal diluted in breast milk. Frankly, I don't see how this sludge is supposed to inspire him, but I guess this is the way it's supposed to be done. Whatever that means.

Of course we don't have any baby spoons, and the closest thing I could find was our set of measuring spoons. So here it is, Jory's first time eating "solid" food, as well as his debut into the world of spoons.




And here's the end of the great adventure:

And finally, the mess! I don't think he's been this dirty since he was born!

 

Five Guys

Finally got around to trying the famous Five Guys burger while we were in NJ a few weeks ago:

Jory enjoyed the sensation second-hand, although he got a little crotchety when mommy was taking too long to actually savor her food:

Comparison with In-N-Out? Five Guys is more expensive but has quite a few more options. If they did their fries animal style ... but of course, as long as these burger joints are divided geographically, a hard choice will never be necessary!

It's good to be the baby!

Especially when you can make your grandparents smile! 

Motoring along

It's pretty impressive to see how Jory's motor skills change over time. Just a few weeks ago he was totally enraged by "tummy time," probably because he has a giant head and a skinny neck. He'd strain and scream and just barely manage to bob his head around.

Now look at him! What an improvement!

He's also starting to push himself up on his arms to get his chest completely off the floor. He'll probably be wiggling around in no time ... and the cats' lives will have become even worse!

In transit

We had a lot of travel recently, including Jory's first four - four! - plane flights. Fortunately he didn't have any trouble at all with his ears ... most of his screeches were due to boredom.

He even had a flight alone with mommy, and while traveling alone with a baby is very tough, we were lucky to have a baby with hair that everyone wanted to touch!

The above picture is my favorite of this series, before things started to deteriorate:

Fortunately, Jory managed to sleep for four hours on the empty seat next to mommy!

Shark!

We're trying to brainwash get Jory excited about scuba diving and the ocean as soon as possible. You've already seen how much he enjoys his sea creature flash cards.

We've moved on to peppering his wardrobe with marine creatures (thanks Devaki!) and he owns two rash guards, two wetsuits, two swim diapers, and a life vest. The wetsuits and life vest are too big for him just yet, but he'll grow into them!

Jory is doing much better with tummy time!

Jory and his babysitter