Sunday, November 28, 2010

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my sanity

It may seem like we here at Baby Vivandres have cut back to holiday posts exclusively, but there is a very good reason.  It takes all the attention of two adults to keep up with our crazy son.  I don't mean he's a little crazy... I mean like full-on, no-common sense, one large fries short of a super-saver combo, Tom Cruise crazy.  Please see exhibit A and I trust you'll be a bit more sympathetic to our situation.

Exhibit A


Anyway, we made it down to Grandad and Abuelita's house for Thanksgiving and a wheat-free, dairy-free, garlic-free, onion-free, egg-free feast, as well as a memorial for my mom's brother who passed away not too long ago.  This gave us another one of those too-few opportunities to get MVP and his cousin together with their grandparents and snap some photos!

Here are some faves:

The cousins reconnected early with a cousinly hug.
"Say, Cousin.  You know what would make us look proportionally larger?"  "Gasp OMG I was thinking the same thing! Let's do it!"

"Let's tell everyone he's a Greyhound/Great Dane mix and they'll think we're HUUUUGE!"
What's up?  You wanna run with the big dogs?
Happy Grandparents
Welcome to my "Maison d'amour"... allow me to freshen your champagne.
Listen - nobody in this family can be trusted with knives.  We'd better take care of it.

Babies.... attack!
Up high is always the place to be.

And here's a bonus video of MVP redesigning our living room a few weeks ago.

The feng-shui was all wrong

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

A very spooky MVP update

I haven't posted this yet because I was planning to write more.  But MVP has had a bad fever the last couple days and things are hectic, so I'm just going to post what I had so far and will follow up with some other cool stuff soon.

Halloween was a bit of  surreal day. Babies are supposed to do new things all the time, and they do.  But it comes in spurts.  So MVP has been crawling over other objects a lot and he's gotten quite good at it.  We have an end-table in the living room that has a cross-bar and MVP frequently climbs over it.   So that morning, he went chasing a ball at speed and took a shortcut through the end table and basically hurdled the cross-bar - arms went over, left leg went way up like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant, other leg went up and over.  Never slowed down, never touched the bar.

We've also come to realize that if MVP gets outdoor exercise, he sleeps well, and if he doesn't then he doesn't.  They actually realized this at school, and they hate rainy days because it means MVP isn't going to nap.  We've taken this to heart to excellent effect, and we basically hit two playgrounds per day on the weekends.  We went to the Huntington gardens this morning, and let Mateo climb some stairs.  And like I said, he's gotten very good at it so he climbed up like 6 steps, then we took him to the bottom and he did it again... that was like 12 steps!  Wowsa!

My first 12 step program


Flash forward a few hours to that evening, at the Old Town Pasadena Halloween event.   MVP got tired of watching the costumed passers-by, so we found some steps in the corner of one of the buildings.  It goes five steps, then a landing (so a total of 6 steps), then five more steps to the left, then another landing and so on.  We set MVP down at the bottom and I follow him up.  And up.  And up.  The metal steps are making a cool sound and he's slapping them harder than he needs to as he ascends. Second story.  He's laughing as he goes.  Third story.  The costumed people in the plaza below us are starting to look very small.  As we approach the roof door, a security guard checks on us, decides we are unlikely to pose a security threat, and leaves us alone.

In all, The MVP climbed 55 steps to get to the top of that building, and laughed while doing it.  Which means he is in better shape than I am.

Rounding the steps on the third floor

In other news we are up to 21 lbs and four teeth.   Now let's go back in time for some photos.  First, a few more Halloween pics from The Huntington and Old Town Pas.

Spooooooky Monkey

Atop a conquered set of steps

Wheeeeeeeeee!

These so called "fountains" are the greatest things I've ever seen!  Why wasn't I informed?

Hey, is that a fountain?


We took MVP to his first USC football game two weeks ago.  As you might expect, he loved the band, and bopped up and down to the tune of Conquest.  He also brought his team good luck, as they absolutely crushed the Bears.

Taking in the smackdown

That's all for now.