Da-da

Aiden with his Dada!

Aiden is taking his first baby steps with talking.  He can kinda say "this", "that", bubbles ("bub"), the "fffff" sound for fan and an unmistakable "Dada".  As it turns out, Dada is a multi-purpose word and is used liberally to refer to both his dada and his mama.  While he's only tried to say Mama one time, he makes a valiant attempt at "Angela" every night at the encouragement of his official Dada.  It sounds like "ya-ya-ya".  This might be Aiden's first joke.  He knows it's funny and that he should be calling me mama.  The more I hear it, the more I like being called Dada.  It's beyond cute and truly an amazing feeling to hear my little one call me. 

Little Man

Aiden is so good at walking these days that its rare to see him crawl.  He proudly paces up and down, up and down.  At Barbara and Alvin's baby shower, I followed him around thinking he'd eventually tire out.  It never happened and I finally pulled up a chair in the middle of the room and watched him from there.

In these pictures, he looks like a little boy and not a baby.  It happened so fast, I'm still not sure where my baby went.

Small steps for Baba, giant leap for Mama

Aiden has been practicing his walking the last couple of weeks. Smart kid that he is, he figured that the best place to practice walking, is the bed and not the hardwood floors. When I'm trying to put him down to bed he does this thing where at first he stands up using me for support and then slowly lets go. He then tries to stand for as long as he can on his own before falling on his bum. Once he got comfortable with that, he incorporated a few small steps into this exercise. He has since gained enough confidence to try it on the floor.

Just the other day I got home from work and he was really excited as always to see me. He was sitting with his Mommy on the floor, so I sat a couple of feet opposite from them. The next thing you know, he lets go off his Mommy and walks up to me. It all happened so fast and unexpectedly that we both started looking at each other with OMG written on our faces. And then off course he got this huge adrenaline rush and could not stop walking back and forth from one end to the other until he had completely exhausted himself. We were too excited and caught in the moment to even think about recording it. Fortunately it's almost become a routine and we finally managed to get it on film.

Since the time he started getting mobile his independence streak has started to show up a bit. He no longer sits in a place and cries like he used to. Now when he needs something, he just crawls over to us and demands attention. This has made life a little easier for Mama in one way because she can let him play on his own while she attends to her very important chores (mostly playing with her Mac). But of course it has opened up this whole other world where nothing is safe from him anymore. He's putting our minimal child proofing skills to some serious test.

BFF (Best Friends Forever)

Up until 2 weeks ago, Aiden's best friends in the whole wide world were getting more than their fair share of smiles. Mommy was getting a little bit jealous. I understand why Aiden thinks Mr. Sun is super cool....he sings and changes colors. Mommy only sings...sort of. But Mr. Fan? He only gets adoration when he's doing absolutely nothing.... Meet Mr. Fan and Mr. Sun.

Mr. Fan

Mr. Sun

The last 2 weeks have been exciting. Aiden is smiling more than ever and with a little effort, you are almost always guaranteed a smile.

Here's Mommy getting a well earned smile by making some funny sounds. Thank you Aiden!

Aiden's Spa Day at Grandma's

Aiden loves the water- it calms him when nothing else will. This includes baths and swimming in hot tubs! This weekend he had a spa day with Mama, Quita and Aunt Helena. He was really fussy before we got in the hot tub and immediately calmed down even though it was a windy day.

Aunt Helena didn't have her swimsuit and went skinny-dipping - another first for Aiden.

Swimming with Quita is fun!

Eww! Girls are yucky!

Chocilla's dream team

Mom, Dad, Sister Helena, our super duper nurse midwife, Judi and our awesome Doula, Catherine who drove to our house in the middle of the night all the way from Mill Valley when things got a little too busy. We couldn't have done it without their support. They were and still are simply incredible and we are so glad that we made the right choices when we put together our birth team.

Chocilla makes his entry into the world

Chocilla arrived on July 26th at 6:42am at a birth center in San Francisco. He had a beautiful water birth and shot through the water like Nemo (from "Finding Nemo", one of my favorite animation movies :). He was a very good baby inside the womb, helped Mommy a lot during the pregnancy and especially on his way out into the world. He rarely cries and we are hoping it stays that way :)

Chocilla at 38 weeks, all cooked and ready to pop anytime now

What we know about Chocilla...

After 9 months we know very little about this person who will change our lives forever. In fact we know more about what we don't know...

We don't know the baby's sex. Lac thinks girl; I think boy but have been having doubts the last month so lately I've been generally confused. Almost everyone we talk to has a strong scientifically based opinion.

Did you get morning sickness? No. Which means girl.
Do you like sweet or sour? Sweet. Also girl.
Are you prettier or uglier pregnant? Ummmmm...not sure....let's just assume prettier. Boy.
Are you carrying long or wide? Ummmmm...not sure but I can't see my toes. This one can go either way...boy or girl depending on the commentator's cultural background.

We don't have a name. We have a top-secret short list. 3-5 girl names and 3-5 boy names. You have no idea how disturbed people are by this. The uber-secret list was recently shared with the 15 year old pool attendant (I won't tell you if it was in San Bruno or San Mateo) after an extensive back-ground check to make sure she didn't know anyone we knew.

Chocilla likes to play footsie at 7 am in the morning. (We will remind him/her of this in 15 years when Chocilla thinks 11 am is way early!)

Chocilla's a pretty chill and cooperative baby and is more of a stretcher than a soccer player. He/She has been head down, butt left and feet right for months. I can tell because feel hiccup taps in the same place every single day.

Chocilla squirms (with delight?) when I sing Kumbaya (pretty much the only long song I know). Don't hold this against Chocilla, we're counting on the rest of you to make sure that our child is exposed to better singing and more diverse tracks.

Chocilla gets really still/quiet when anyone who isn't Vanilla-mama tries to play with him/her. You have to be a little stealthy if you want to feel this baby move.

Chocilla at 30 weeks

Chocilla at 16 weeks in Pacific Grove with Chocolate & Vanilla