Eric Sasson vists

Our good friend from NY, Eric Sasson, came into town on his way to an exclusive workshop for writers, the Squaw Valley Writers Conference. While he was here he stopped by our house to meet Nathan and have lunch with us. Next time he's in town he will most likely be a published writer and may not have time for us "little people." However by then Nathan will be a bigger little person...

Nathan le Plongeur!

Jill and Noah visit San Francisco

My cousin Jill's fiance, Noah, is doing some consulting out in the East Bay and Jill came to visit him for the weekend. On Sunday they came by our place for a quick tour of the Inner Sunset, and lunch at the perennial favorite, "Park Chow." Alex, Nathan and I enjoyed meeting Noah, and we look forward to seeing them again!!

A little more laughter

Listening to this never gets old. For us.

New way of walkin'

So Nathan has succesfully made the transition from a sedentary desk-jockey to mobile menace. He started really moving last Sunday, and here we see him being lured around our bedroom by his second favorite magazine, "Parenting" (his first favorite being the "Economist").

Back to work

After 7 months of maternity leave, today is my first day back at the office. Even though I had prepared myself mentally, nothing can make you ready... I woke up at 5:30 am with an ear pain, had a pounding headache at 8:00 am and nausea started at about 9:00 am.
I started the day with Nathan's first feeding, then ran around trying to get ready. Nathan definitely noticed something was off this morning and just wanted to be held which didn't help with getting ready! Everyone was stressed, even Mamili as it would be her first day alone with Nathanou.

After quick goodbyes, I got all my stuff in the car and started driving away. The drive was long but uneventful. Accompanied by James Blunt, my mind was wandering and doing a recap of the past 7 months, tears were coming up: How would I be able to leave my baby all day? As I passed Palo Alto, fond memories of car pooling with Sam came back -- still 30 minutes to go... Then, I made the rookie mistake of taking 85 N which has always bad traffic no matter what time of day.

Got to the office at around 9:00 am and went straight to my desk. Well, let's say that things were not exactly how I had left them: all the power cables, the mouse, the white-erase board, garbage bin and my chair were gone. So, my first action back on the job was to file a trouble ticket with facilities!

Nobody seem to expect me so I decided to come home early to make Nathan's last 2 feedings of the day. Separation at bedtime was hard, I would not see hime for 12 hours and after a day away from me how could he be sure he'd see me again...

I know it will all be ok and it is an adjustement for everyone in the family, so we'll keep working at making this a smooth transition.

Nathan by Tami DeSellier

A few weeks ago, on July 15 to be exact, Tami DeSellier (http://www.tamiland.com/) had set-up free photo sessions at Day One for the full day. All we needed to do was sign-up in advance and show up for Nathan's 15-minute shoot.


The pictures were made available online for ordering prints today at www.tamiland.com/FellDayOne and will be up for 5 days.

A Little Laughter

Day One play group @ Janice's

We all had lunch and babies enjoyed Monica's story telling.

First Paparazzo gig

Sam had his first Paparazzo gig on Sunday afternoon. Monica and Bill had agreed to a session with Sophia to build Sam's portfolio.

Nathan and I tagged along to San Rafael and turned it into an afternoon out to Marin. We assisted Sam in his picture taking and then had dinner. It was also Nathan's first encounter with a dog, Maggie had the cutest effect on Nathan who started gigling when he first saw her. What a sight!

Nathan meets Maggie

A boy. A dog. Too cute not to post. Enjoy.

Spinach face

Nathan's first time eating spinach. You can see for yourself where most of it went... It was not a hit!

(Note: The hair on Nathan's head is partially mine ;-)

Paparazzo shoot of Nathan

Sam was on a shooting spree this weekend so he used his favorite model, Nathan. Here are some of the pictures.

Me and my buddy

Nathan and I hung out quite a while today after I gave him his bottle. He was extremely calm, and happy...

Calm enough for me to be able to get this shot of both us with my cr*ppy phone camera.

The bottle war is officially over!

After about a month of refusing bottles -- Nathan prefers to get his milk from the source... Milka, that is! -- he finally drank his first full bottle of pumped milk tonight. During that grueling month, we had at least narrowed down to what bottle he preferred: Playtex dropins, a.k.a. the most annoying bottle system there is. But he's the boss!


Aunt Betsy was in town for a visit so she graciously offered to try giving him a bottle.
Well, he took it and drank a whooping 9 oz.!

Needless to say that Nathan is now getting a bottle a day to keep up with this little victory. We are hoping that in a little while we will be able to switch bottles on him to a "more" practical one.

Mommy brain!

What else stupid could I possibly do after washing my cell phone? Well, don't you worry, I did find something else... locking myself out with Nathan in my arms!

Very simple to do when your keys are not where they are supposed to be (i.e. in the car instead of in my bag). I drove home, opened the garage door, parked the car, picked up Nathan and the diaper bag, closed the car, then the garage door by hitting the inside button. I get up the stairs, look for the house keys in the diaper bag, in my pockets... no where to be found. Crap!


I run over to the Garage Master people around the block, hoping they'd be able to open the garage door. Well, no. "Thankfully" the new systems are more secure so they can't just "grab" a frequency and open the door.


It's 4:00 pm, Sam's at work for yet another good couple of hours. No job, and al. can't have him just rescue me. Nathan was a good sport at first and thought hanging out outside was pretty fun. Last resort, called a locksmith who got me in with Nathan sleeping in my arms.


That leads me to likely cause -- I wish -- of this "forgetfulness": Nathan's sleep training. After a few though weeks of bad sleep and a few night of waking up every 2 hours, we felt it was time to sleep train Nathan. We are at Day 3 and it is going better. It is probably the hardest thing I had to do since he was born, but we feel committed to the process no matter how long it takes.

Safe sleeping

Well, the time of lowering Nathan's matress to the lowest level has finally arrived. Voila Sam doing the job!

No, wait there's another one!

That's right, we are talking about a 6th tooth! The right upper central incisor (F) had been hiding from me. But after lots of giggles, I was finally able to see it come through.

At this rate, Nathan may have all 20 teeths by his first birthday!

5th tooth and dental summary

Ok, now you are going to think I am making this up but no, really I saw another new tooth today. I also found a dental chart to visualize things better, as taking a picture of his mouth is just not feasible.

Recap: At 6 months and 1 week, Nathan has his lower central incisors (P, O), one upper central incisor (E) and both his upper lateral incisors (D, G) are now coming out. The least we can say is that Nathan's teeth are quite ahead of schedule!

The most important thing to mention is that he has been handling his teething pain like a champ -- just a little crankiness here and there but nothing major.

Sam's first day at MuleSource

As you may know from my earlier post, I recently accepted a job offer at a small startup with offices in San Francisco (much easier commute) called MuleSource. The company sells top-tier support and services to people who are using the open source "Mule" application integration APIs and corresponding enterprise service bus.

For those who have any idea what I do... My job responsibilities will be similar to the ones I had at my last company, Symphoniq, however I'm now also responsible for growing and managing our customer support teams as well.

Coinciding with my first week on the job were visits to Corp HQ from many on the MuleSource executive team (including the CTO and VP's of Sales and EMEA Operations) as well as from a support partner from Australia, so it was a very opportune time to come onboard.

So far I'm thrilled with the enthusiasm and energy of the people I'm working with, and am extremely excited about the opportunities we have in front of us.

First "big boy"'s bath

We finally upgraded Nathan to the "big" tub from the kitchen sink. An upgrade he seemed to enjoy very much.

iWon

The Apple iPhone came out on June 29 while we were in Asheville, so as soon as we came home Sam started monitoring the iPhone inventory at Apple stores around the Bay (www.apple.com/retail/iphone). Finally, after a long night online, Saturday morning we find that both the San Francisco and the Burlingame stores have some iPhones available. We voted to make a trip to Burlingame thinking there would be less of a rush and easier parking. A good opportunity for me to make a stop at the Baby Gap store too.
The store was opening at 10 am. Nathan shortened his morning nap so that we could leave early enough to make it, as if he could tell something important was going on. We arrived at the store at 10:20 and while I parked the car, Sam ran in and snagged the LAST iPhone!

Sam was on a cloud, and waited patiently while I shopped at Baby Gap and Janie and Jack, evne though he was eager to get home to start playing with his new "toy"... I mean "business tool".

Sunday morning, after a long night of playing with the iPhone, Sam tells me he's got bad news and good news: the bad news is that the iPhone is not suitable as a "business tool" and the good news is that he's giving it to me... if I liked it!

So... iWon!

PS: Sunday morning we went phone shopping for Sam and he got a new Blackberry.

One more tooth

Today, Nathan's 4th tooth peeked out on his upper gum. So... we are moving to solids at increased velocity ;-) His favorites so far are carrots, haricots verts (green beans) and apple. But he already had a taste of zucchini, sweet potato, avocado, peas, and pear.

Nathan, the Ham

While at Grandma's house, Nathan discovered his skills as an orator lend themselves equally well to lectures, or comedy.

Asheville, here we come

We left on June 29 to visit Sam's mom in Asheville, North Carolina. The trip to get there went really well, even though we had to get up at 4 in the morning.

We had a fantastic time eating, visiting Mary Margaret's friends, hanging out at the house and eating. Nathan spent a lot of time laughing with his Grandma, charming the ladies and swimming with Dad. It was his very first time in a swimming pool and the water was cold but it didn't seem to bother him... I couldn't get in! He would grab on to Sam really tightly, especially after Sam pulled him under water!

The big bummer of the trip was that Sam couldn't find an iPhone in Asheville. The AT&T stores there did not yet receive their shipment.