Stuff on my dog

Tony: You know, kid, this is MY chair!
Nick: That's fine. YOU are MY chair!

Feed meee!

Yo! Waitress! Can we get some service over here?

Side note: We have at this point hundreds of dollars of baby amusement
devices His current favorite toy are these colored bowls. Go figure...

Nick's first blog post

He typed this himself. Note the use of the Caps Lock key. Apparently he was expressing some strong opinion there:

bdc   cc          ;y2e444444yxzdxdxrtdxDFSDSDFTJ N N BDV C V HBV CGHGUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFGV  CBG   V

Guy activities

While Polly and I were at a dog training thing today, the guys went to Best Buy, got a new router and re-wired the networking at the house. If the internet stops working tomorrow, I am asking Nick to fix it and he better do it because I have no idea what they changed.
(Photo from Kostadis)

Dad, you sure this is the right router?

Nick throwing stuff

Tony is not impressed that it's just toys and empty food dishes. He would like it to be real food, please.

Food!

Baby, noun. Plural, babies. Definition: A mechanism for transferring food from spoon onto clothing.

Some of this food may have made it inside the baby.

I had baby gruel!

Freeze warning!

There's a freeze warning for tonight for Bay Area. Nick is ready!

Where are my arms and legs? This is not ok!
I think I may yell soon.

A snow suit AND a funny hat? Really? There is
only so much humiliation a baby can take!

Camden Ponds

Down in South Bay, near the Los Gatos and Campbell border there is a little piece of doggie heaven called Camden Percolation Ponds. It is roughly here. There's an open field, and a creek, and some ponds to swim in and seasonally ducks and geese, and even some fall colors. Polly would like to live there. Even Tony likes it because lots of other dogs leave lots of pee-mail for him to read. We've been going there for about two years, ever since I googled "dogs swim south bay" one day after Polly informed me that unless regular swimming is provided for her amusement, she will chew a hole in every wall of my house. Thankfully, this little place came up as a search result, because I seriously considered driving back to Livermore and telling her breeder to take her crazy dog back.

Here's Polly at a tender age of six months going for her first Camden Ponds outing in February of 2008.

Yes, my head is, in fact, too small for my body.
And my tail is too long. I am a puppy, ok?

And my ears are huge. I is bat-dog. At least I am not eating
your drywall. So be thankful, ok?

When I went on maternity leave last May, we came here a lot also, since the main path is flat. Important when you are carrying an extra 30 lbs.

Tony: I like this place. I can pee on things!
Polly: We can still come here when you have the baby, right?
Because that drywall is looking pretty tasty to me.

The ponds get pretty gunky in the summer and the grassy areas grow foxtails, so we haven't been back there until last week. Polly was starting to make vague comments about how eating drywall would fit into her diet and exercise program, so I got the message. We went once last week, and again today. Last week it was 75 degrees and sunny. Today it was 55 and we got rained on. California weather...

The most challenging part of the whole exercise was figuring out how to pack the car. We needed to fit: one baby in car seat, two dogs, one large jogging stroller. First attempt was dogs in trunk, stroller in back seat next to baby. That technically worked, but fitting a BOB stroller into the back seat of a Subaru Forrester in a way that will not make it unfold and break the baby is not easy. And if the stroller wheels are even a little muddy, both the entire back area and you get dirty. The working configuration ended up being: stroller in trunk, Tony in back seat next to baby, Polly on the floor on the front passenger side. This works for two reasons:

1.  Tony is the best dog ever and is safe to have loose next to the baby. In fact he spent the entire drive with his head resting on the edge of Nick's car seat. 
2.  Polly is trained to ride on the passenger side floor and knows that if she moves from there she will be Dead Dog (TM).

From now on, I officially rename the Subaru into Traveling Circus Mobile.

The boys in the back seat. I think I will use this
picture when people ask me if labradors are good
with children.

Nick in NTS2 on the main path. Another nice thing about
this place is that the road is smooth and wide enough
to accommodate the stroller.

Looking towards Mount Hamilton. This is from last week's sunny day.

Today we got rained on. The dogs got wet, I got wet, the baby got
(a little) wet. But we saw a rainbow!

Nick likes hikes in the stroller. He is happy to sit there and watch
nature pass by for hours. This is his serious face.Sometimes if he sees
something particularly awesome, he says "goo".

Same facial expression, more clothes today.
Polly is very excited to see Nick hold a Chuck-it, but
unfortunately I had to take it away because he tried to
lick it. Sorry, Polly, he still hasn't figured out how
BALL works.

Swimming!

Birds! Thankfully Tony is too lazy to chase them and
Polly is too fixated on BALL.

This is not East Coast, but we get some fall colors in CA.

That was an excellent outing, can we come again? (last week)

Yes, Polly, we can come again!

I think my drywall is safe for now!

Obligatory public service announcement: if you go, remember that this place is technically on-leash. Leash the dogs when you see non-dog people or when you see other people whose dogs are on leash (there's probably a reason, like the dogs are reactive and won't appreciate your dogs coming up to them to "just say hi"). Carry poop bags, there are trash cans along the way. Also, apparently the ranger comes by at 2:30 every day. Avoid the ranger.

YAH (yet another hat)

Why, momma, why do you make me wear these embarrassing hats?

I think I have come up with perfect revenge for this! Just wait
until my next diaper!

Go Habs Go!

What the boys did while I was out shoe shopping.

Early morning reshuffling

Every morning we have a reshuffling of humans and dogs and their sleeping locations. It is relatively consistent in time and sequence of events, and proceeds as follows:

Initial configuration: knr and ng in bedroom on bed. Tony in bedroom on dog bed. Nick in his room in crib. Polly in living room on the beanbag chair.

5:30 am: Polly comes into bedroom, jumps on the bed, and lies on top of ng's legs, making sure all circulation to at least one leg is cut off.

5:55 am: Nick wakes up and starts saying "a-bda-bda-bda" which means "feed me now or I will yell in five minutes"

6:00 am: ng gets up to feed Nick. Tony comes into Nick's room, lies next to the crib and falls asleep. Polly takes up all of ng's space on the bed.

6:10 am: Nick goes back to sleep. Tony and ng come back. Polly jumps off the bed and goes back into beanbag chair. Tony goes back to dog bed.

6:30 am: Polly comes back into bedroom, jumps on the bed, and lies on top of ng's legs, making sure all circulation to at least one leg is cut off.

7:00 am: knr starts fidgeting.

7:01 am: Polly and Tony wake up, stretch, and flap their ears.

7:02 am: knr gets up.

7:03 am: Dogs make it understood that unless they get breakfast right now they will die of hunger! Dogs get breakfast.

7:04 am: Dogs finish breakfast. Tony demands to be let back into bedroom to sleep on his bed.

8:30 am: Nick wakes up.

8:35 am: knr removes Nick from crib, brings him to the bedroom, and dumps him on top of ng, thereby waking her up.

8:40: All humans are awake, dogs settle in for a nap.

My jacket has ears!!!

Nick finds the ears on his new coat absolutely hilarious. Or it
could be the secret baby stuff again that he's laughing about. He
won't tell me.

Stroller with a view

Nick watching dogs swim in the Camden Ponds. We were out there
for two hours. He didn't make a single squeak. Nature is very
entertaining to this baby, apparently.

No baby picture today

Spent all day making this. And it's not even for Nick.

Eating solids? No thanks!

Sometime around 6 months baby can be introduced to solids. Nick is still a bit too young, but we are starting to think about it. We bought a high chair and he likes to sit in it while I eat lunch. The other day I tried to feed him some milk from a spoon in preparation. He thought I was nuts. Today I gave him a slice of apple to lick. I mean, he licks everything else with great pleasure, maybe he'd actually like something edible. And this wasn't just some apple. This was a local, organic, pesticide-free, tree-ripened etc etc etc apple from my garden! His reaction? See for yourself.

What the heck is this?

You people EAT this stuff? It's horrible! Why would you
ever put this in your mouth?

Now this is MUCH tastier.

Cold!

Nick's been accumulating more and more layers for his evening
run with Kostadis. Here he is bundled in a fleece pajamas and two
layers of fleece blankets. I think I need to actually buy winter clothes.

Park!

And afterward all three of them took a long nap.

Snore...

Five months old!

Happy birthday to me! And no, Polly, you can't have my soccer ball.

NPR baby

That's non-photorealistic rendering for you non-graphics people.
Using the MobileMonet app on the iPhone. This is why Steve Jobs will own the world and all those in it. Because there are cool things like that on the iPhone.

Pumpin' baby plastic

Friday is Baby Gym day. Baby Gym is the best kind of entertainment: it's full of bright colors, soft plastic stuff to roll and bounce on, and other babies. Nick has a class at 12:30, and the Little Gym is within walking distance of our house, so if the weather is nice and he wakes up from his nap on time, we take the stroller.

Strollering is very serious work. Especially
when the stroller is way too big for you still.

Many toys are required to keep baby happy in the
stroller. Here we have one strap, one jingly toy, and
one fleecy blanket to suck on.

Sorry for the somewhat blurry photos in the rest of the post, I was using the iPhone and sometimes there was not quite enough light. And the babies are twitchy fast.

Babies on the bouncy inflatable mat thing.
It's supposed to help with balance or something.
Nick just likes to roll on it.

And do leg lifts.

The gym is a good place to pick up girls.
Well, hi there, how are you doing?
Your name is Nicole? Wow, what a coincidence!

Darnit! If I knew how to crawl, I would get that green thing!

This is me and my pal Anders. He has even less hair than I do!

My mom put me on this inclined wedge thing so I would roll downhill.

Then they rolled me on this giant donut thing. I thought that was
super fun. I even got to stand on my head, but there are no pictures
of that because mom was busy spotting me.

But it kind of looked like what this baby is doing.

I also got to lie on a ball. That was kind on interesting...

Yay! Baby gym is fun!

The Dogfather

Kostadis found a partially destuffed duck on his bed last night. Is Polly trying to send us a message about that pool she's been wanting us to build in the backyard?

Uh oh...

Hanging out on the deck

It was 75 degrees and sunny today. In November. This is why I live in California.
Jealous? Nick spent two hours on the deck watching me train Polly
and trying to roll over. He succeeded twice.