Live from Beverly, MA

We're now in the northern Boston suburb of Beverly, MA. Why, you ask? We have stopped through for two days to visit our old friends David and Patti, and their two children, McLaren and Abby. We knew David and Patti back when we were all carefree (read: childless) couples in Manhattan. Now, they are at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. Despite the craziness of three conflicting nap schedules (and the complete chaos that ensued when all three were awake), we were able to spend quite a bit of time with them over the past two days. We have decided that this trip has already been an excellent experience for Fiona, if only because she's had so much exposure to other children. As a coddled only child, she could probably use some toughening up. Eleanor offered Round 1 in New York. Now, observe Fiona's breaking-in by Abby, who is two months her senior and quite a bit larger.
As parents, one is often faced with the dilemma: "Do I intervene, or do I take a picture?" Clearly, we opted for the picture, which turned out to be a good thing. Fiona quickly learned to adapt to adversity.
And the whole thing had a happy ending. Toys were shared.
McLaren, at 2.5 years old, was a bit more difficult to capture on camera. But you will observe that Fiona is delighted with him. Apparently he was teaching her how to express open-mouthed enthusiasm. As if she needed training.Because Beverly is fairly close to Boston, our friend Emily (formerly of California), drove up for the morning to meet Fiona. Fiona was quite taken with Emily, who spent our entire lunch picking up various objects that Fiona had hurled onto the floor -- only to have Fiona hurl them onto the floor again.Tomorrow morning we drive to Salem, NH, where Fiona will meet her Great-Grandmother.

If She Can Make It Here...

New York City challenged the endurance of our little family. Erick and I were somewhat sad to discover that venturing out in Manhattan with a child is an entirely different proposition from living in the city during our previous life as a childless couple. Of course, we knew this in theory, but the reality brought on a sort of "you can't go home again" revelation. On Sunday, we took an hour subway ride from Jeff and Annie's Brooklyn apartment to the Upper East Side. This involved a lot of lugging Fiona's stroller up and down stairs. Once at East 68th St., we attended our former church, Redeemer Presbyterian. Only we were 45 minutes late as a concession to Fiona's morning nap, and we sat in the "family room" (a windowless basement chamber where families with wriggly children can attempt to watch a live feed of the service).

After church, we trekked downtown (more up and down stairs with the stroller) to Spring Street Natural, once our favorite brunch spot. In an attempt to maximize our catching-up efficiency, we had arranged a brunch with 9 friends. This was wonderful. As always, Fiona relished being the center of attention, and even kept up a brave front as she was passed between 9 pairs of arms. (See photos for a sample of some of Fiona's admirers).The final stop was FAO Schwarz, the (in)famous Manhattan toy store, where we met up with my childhood friend Kai-lin and her boys, JT and Liam. Somehow we failed to realize that the largest tourist attraction for children would be a madhouse on a rainy summer Sunday afternoon. The scene was roughly analogous to the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti. Kai-lin's sons were fantastic, though -- a highlight was JT (at the wise old age of 3.5) showing Fiona every single toy in sight, saying, "I'll get it for your birthday if you want it!" Fiona was fairly serious as she took in the whole scene...until we got to the stuffed pink rocking dog. (Think rocking horse, but with a large pink stuffed dog instead). This contraption made her day. JT, I think she wants it. After a long day, it was time for another hour-long subway ride back to Brooklyn, and an early bedtime for all of us. Everybody who raises children in New York City now has our admiration and sympathy.

TECHNICAL NOTE: As an added bonus for everyone, you will notice that I have finally figured out how to embed photos within the text of each update, rather than stacking them all at the beginning. It is a highly complex process by which one clicks on the photo and drags it to its desired location. Since this took me a month to figure out, I am proud of my new skill, which should make this blog much more user-friendly. Enjoy.

Introducing: The Amazing Eleanor!

While in New York City, we are staying with our very gracious college friends Jeff and Annie at their apartment in Kensington, Brooklyn. Jeff and Annie have a 1-and-a-half year old daughter, Eleanor. This visit is the first time we've met Eleanor, and she's a delight. It's fun to see what we can expect in a year: Eleanor is a walking, talking little person. In fact, Eleanor has so much energy and personality, she makes Fiona look comatose -- and Fiona's no shrinking violet!

It's been particularly interesting to see Eleanor and Fiona interact. They seem to regard each other with a combination of delight, suspicion, and outright aggression. Both are only children, so they're not quite sure how to make appropriate physical contact with another baby; there's a lot of face grabbing, eye poking, and pushing -- Mortal Combat baby-style. The fact that Eleanor makes more frequent contact is only due to the fact that she's bigger and more coordinated than Fiona. There have also been plenty of sweet moments. For instance, we managed to capture a fleeting moment of sharing above. And when Fiona was fussing in the bedroom, Eleanor stood outside her door and yelled in sympathy. Fiona, I'm ashamed to say, has shown no such empathy when Eleanor is upset, but we trust that in time they will become true friends. They certainly seem to share a taste in sunglasses.

The Batmobile Heads North

First thing on Saturday morning, we set off in our rented vehicle, bound for Brooklyn. Much to our surprise, when Erick picked up the car the night before, he learned that we'd been "upgraded." It turns out that we're the privileged renters of...an SUV. That's right, we were upgraded to paying through the nose for gas. Said SUV, a Hyundai Santa Fe, is so sleek and black and huge that we have dubbed it "The Batmobile." As you can see in the photo above, The Batmobile is so large that it cannot even fit in a single camera frame. We included Fiona in the picture for scale.

The nice thing about a large SUV (besides satellite radio) is that we had no problem fitting all of Fiona's gear into it. Since we're on the road for 2 weeks and we don't want to spend time buying supplies en route, I overprepared and packed everything we could possibly need, including 52 jars of baby food, 100 diapers, 160 diaper wipes, etc. Of course, I neglected to pack an umbrella, so of course we've had to contend with torrential downpours for the past 2 days.

The drive from McLean to Brooklyn took longer than ever before, partly because we made two long stops to feed Fiona and give her a break from the carseat, and partly because we encountered 4 traffic accidents along the way. Fiona took the entire thing in stride, and was in great spirits for almost the entire trip. In the bottom photo (above), Fiona is probably the happiest person at a rest stop along the New Jersey Turnpike.

Start Spreadin' the News!

Today it is truly hot and humid: 95 degrees and steamy. We wanted to get Fiona out of the air-conditioned house and expand her horizons, so we took her to the McLean Farmers' Market. Despite being partially dressed and despite Erick misting her with a spray bottle every 30 seconds, we watched Fiona visibly wilt. So this afternoon, we will probably expand her horizons by taking her to the air-conditioned shopping mall.

Fortunately, tomorrow we are heading to what we hope (probably mistakenly) will be cooler climes further north. For those of you who wish to follow our progress, here is our rough itinerary:
Saturday, June 28 - Tuesday, July 1: NYC/Brooklyn
Tuesday, July 1 - Wednesday, July 2: Hamilton, MA/Boston
Thursday, July 3 - Friday, July 4: Salem, NH
Saturday, July 5 - Sunday, July 12: Ogunquit, ME

I will attempt to keep up this blog during our New England tour, which shouldn't be any more challenging than here in Virginia, where I am currently sitting in a McDonald's using their (slow) free wifi. For those of you who weren't aware, McDonald's now has free wifi!

Fiona is in good spirits and is looking forward to meeting a whole new batch of admirers. Hopefully she'll still feel that way after a week on the road....

Fiona Visits Zoo; Loves Elephants, Alpacas

On Tuesday, we took Fiona to the National Zoo. Fiona has previously been to the Oakland Zoo, but she was much younger and slept through the entire visit (Erick and I had a great time, though). This was an infinitely more successful trip; Fiona had a blast! She saw tons of animals (the National Zoo, for those of you who haven't been, beats the heck out of the National Aquarium). Interestingly, Fiona's favorite animals, defined as the ones that inspired the most arm and leg waving, were the elephants (predictable) and the alpacas (????). She also enjoyed her first ride in the Baby Bjorn, kindly lent to us by our friend Jessie. (Since the Baby Bjorn allows great mobility of the appendages, we actually can't be entirely sure whether her convulsions were provoked by the animals or her newfound freedom). The photos above include Fiona in front of the elephants and some darned cute merkeets.

One highlight of the trip was the Japanese tourist who approached us and asked if she could take a photograph of Fiona. Since we were in a zoo at the time, we weren't quite sure how to interpret this, but we obliged.

Fiona Takes a Stand

Fiona has done many things in the past few days, but sadly we did not get photos of most of them. In brief, her activities included:

-the discovery that balloons are fun to play with;
-a cookout at a friends house, which included 3 other children, a dog, and 2 bunnies. Fiona was convulsing with joy the entire time;
-a playdate with Gabe, the son of family friends. Gabe is one month younger than Fiona and twice her size. In her attempt to make friends with him, Fiona grabbed his face and made Gabe cry. With Fiona, love hurts.
-another playdate with Zoe, in which Fiona grabbed all the toys while Zoe watched patiently;
-breakfast with Boom at the mall. Fiona wolfed down her Zweiback with her usual gusto;
-a trip to Sweet Stuff Bakery with Nana to meet Lisa, the proprietor. Lisa was appropriately charmed by Fiona, but sadly did not offer any free baked goods.

Fortunately, we did manage to get a photo of one of the most exciting moments: Fiona standing, supporting herself (one-handed!) on her Exersaucer. This happened quite suddenly during her afternoon playtime yesterday. (You can see my hand in the picture, because I was concerned that she might collapse at any time, but I promise that I was in no way supporting her). While the entire household raced around documenting this momentous event, Fiona was uncharacteristically somber. Perhaps she realizes that with standing comes responsibility. (As an added reinforcement, we left the Classified ads on the tray of her highchair this morning).