Baking momma

getting ready to host a new years day brunch tomorrow with a bunch of muffins,  quiches, and bloody marys. 

Christmas in France

Here are a bunch of random pics from Christmas spent in Sanguinet in the Landes country an hour south of Bordeaux near the Atlantic ocean. Four days of celebrating Steph's grandmother, Yvette's, 90th birthday and Christmas.  I'm sure we'll post more pics and videos later.

Steph's uncle and aunt, Michel & Christy

Maya, Frank, and Ben

Oliver & Steph

Steph's grandmother Yvette (aka Mamie), Steph, and Steph's mom Claudette

Steph's brother Frank with Oliver, Maya, and Mael

Steph showing Oliver to her grandmother Yvette after the flight, this was a present for her 90th birthday.  Her husband Pierre, 92, is seated right behind her.

Champagne and little quiches after the flight

Ben and Oliver

Steph's aunt Christy

So many oysters....this scene repeated for many days

Steph's Cousin Alex (right) and girlfriend Florence.

Ben and Oliver picking out an after lunch treat

Steph's grandmother Yvette

France!

we arrived in france yesterday. the trip went pretty smoothly considering Oliver stayed awake most of the time, but he did pretty well. it's actually kind of exciting to travel with him and have him see  the world.


 

 

 We arrived yesterday afternoon and quickly had wine, cheese, bread, and sausages. Oliver's papi and mamie are really enjoying seeing him more aware and smiley than last time they saw him in Austin.

Steph and I had gone almost 30 hours without sleeping more than 10 minutes at a time, so we were very tired. Oliver sensed it and gave us a great gift...he went to bed around 7pm (france time) woke up to feed at 10pm and 1am, but then slept til 9am!!!
8 hours straight!!!  We are still a bit tired, but I imagined much worse. Tomorrow we head west to see the rest of the family, the first time they will see Oliver! I think we'll stop at the medieval castle-town of Carcassonne. (Dad, you remember this town, right?) We'll try and get some good pics of Oliver there while we eat mussels and fries.  

Grand Piano

One of my student's mother gave me a very sweet Christmas present for Oliver. This little baby piano* has been handing down from one baby to another since the 80's. 

Here is the story for the records:

"The Little piano That Could spent the 1980's and half of the "90's" in the family of Shelly Booth. She had about six kids who all delighted in the little piano. I, Margaret Smith, met Shelly in 1996 when my son George was one year old. When she gave the piano to me her kids cried so we had to sneak it to my car for a quick get-away. George enjoyed it for years and handed it down to Cooper when he was born in 2003. It was then passed to True Noonan Lamb until he turned six this year. 

We are passing this piano to you for your first born son and whom ever else finds there way into your family in the future. 

We ask only that you pass it forward when the time comes. Have a lovely holiday and bless you and your family.

Margaret Smith and Melissa Minton"

*(look under the big piano)

4 Months

Oliver is 4 months today. We went to the pediatrician yesterday and he is still holding in the 90 percentile in weight at 16lbs 12oz. He's healthy and he's been very sweet and smiley. Although... he didn't really like the vaccinations yesterday and he's been a little grumpy since!
Hopefully he will be happy again before we leave for France on Monday. We are a little worried about the long 3 flight trip over there but we are super excited to celebrated my Mamie's 90th birthday and spend time with the family.

3 Month+ pics

Oliver is getting big fast.  He's reaching and grabbing more, laughing more, and seemingly gets more adorable every day.

Here are a few recent pics of our precious.

Thanksgiving

Reed boy

We just spent Thanksgiving in Dallas with Amy's clan. Steph and I are truly grateful to have such a wonderful sibling family to share our first holiday with the most wonderful addition to our family, Oliver.

He loved spending time with his cousins, and they adored him.  Lily in particular was fascinated with Oliver, I think because she's obsessed with babies!  We loved that the cousins got to spend time with each other.  Its a surreal experience not only to have a child, but also to keep encountering these new experiences, like having a new child play with his twin sister's kids!  Crazy.

Lily Monster

Thank you so much Blake and Amy for a wonderful time.  It was nice to be able to have near-constant child/baby-talk. We needed it.  Oliver is wonderful, but sometimes it gets hard and we need to hear stories of similar parent trials & tribulations.  And you guys are good source for those. :).

Amy, you're a wonderful mother and are raising beautiful children, good job and thank you! Blake, you are a blast to hang out with, if not a bit dangerous with all the coffee and booze that ensues!  Thanks for my sports fix.

Also - and this is Stephanie talking - thank you Amy for braving your first turkey. And not just a small turkey, that one, we'll both have leftovers for over a week... :)





In France we don't celebrate Thanksgiving, and I am so grateful to have a holiday to remind us that there are so many things to be grateful for. It probably has had a great impact on me since I moved to the US.

Balding Oliver & Happy Blake

Emily with accessories

The Hooligans

Oliver is a human! ... I mean 3months

Ben and I joke that Oliver was not a human until he graduated from this 4th trimester. If you are wondering what I'm talking about, well, technically the human gestation period should be a year, but because human brains have evolved to be so big, baby has to come out earlier. As compared to animals who come out of their mother's belly pretty much walking, humans come a earlier requiring a lot more support to survive. Yesterday he turned 3 months so it's been one year from conception. He is definitely more aware and fun. See these videos:

As for our lives, after the possum episode with the chickens, we are now dealing with a new visitor and that one in our kitchen. A smart raccoon has figured out how to go through the 2 cat doors and eat our cat food. Even after we locked the door so the cats could only go out but not come back in, the raccoon figured out how to open the doors and visit us about 3 or 4 more times. 

Big problem when we're out of town... Ben set up a trap outside. No raccoon in sight though. He must be so smart to avoid the trap. Stay tuned...

This weekend was supposed to be pretty chilled at home, working on some projects. On Saturday at 11:30am, Ben received a text from his brother; a photo of him holding lots of fish. At 1pm we were in the car with Oliver heading out to the Bay. Pretty proud about that one considering the amount of stuff we have to think about bringing for Oliver. We're getting good as this! Anyways, the last minute trip was worth it. 8 fishermen = 54 trouts. We brought 13 home. We had a feast with friends and froze a bunch. Looking forward to enjoying more fish tacos over the winter.

 

Growing up in a swing

The moment we saw one of these door bouncy swings we knew that it was one toy/baby accessory that we wanted.  We were excited and lucky to inherit one from a friend, and have begun to introduce Oliver to it.  I think he has mixed feelings....control and not enough control.  He usually lasts about 5 minutes before getting terribly upset. We're thinking of capturing this same footage every couple weeks or so and then splicing the segments together to form a progression of Oliver growing into it.  We'll see if we get that ambitious.  Here are a couple that we have so far.

Oliver does smile

Oliver has been well known for his frowning look, especially with my family on Skype.
Well, here is a proof he does smile, especially right after he eats and he is starting to look more like a little boy every day.... :)

Bassinet

When Oliver turned 2 months, we moved him from the bassinet right by my bed side, to the crib in his own room. The experiment was fairly successful since he's been waking up a lot less at night. Last night, he actually slept through until 5am. Woohoo! 

Now we have a new bassinet tenant....

Halloween

Yesterday was Oliver's first Halloween. We didn't go all the way trick or treating but we happened to have a very cute outfit handed down from his aunt, Amy, and since it fit him perfectly we played the Halloween game in the afternoon with this little pumpkin costume.

 I put on a wig so he wouldn't be left alone but also to go teach a yoga class. The theme was about knowing we all die one day and to let go of taking our lives so seriously. The students got a kick out of it...

The Bay

I'm writing this post from the Bay. We arrived yesterday after a relatively nice road trip. It was the longest Oliver had been on, and he only got fussy once for a short time. As opposed to most babies who often fall asleep as soon as they are put in a car, Oliver is not a big fan of the car seat, he prefers to be held. Unfortunately, we can't hold him while driving. :)
When we arrived at the Bay, he seemed to be very excited with lots of smiles.  I explained to him that one day he will be fishing with his dad, his uncle and his grandfather. Ben also introduced him to football, he's actually watching a game right now.

The weather is nice out here. Ben and Andy went fishing this morning and caught a black drum and a trout. They were a little disappointed because other fishermen were catching a bunch of fish with live bait right next to them but hey, we are going to have a nice dinner tonight.

Forgot to mention... last week we saw the pediatrician, Oliver is over 13 lbs, still in the 90 percentile, he's healthy and still likes the milk!
On another note, we lost a member of our family last week. Ben and I were awaken by a horrible sound in the middle of the night. Ben got out and saw a tail sticking out of the top of the chicken coop. It was a possum, it had made its way up the chicken coop, killed a chicken, dragged it down in the yard, and went back to get another one when we got woken up. So they bad news is that we lost a chicken but we saved the other two!

Here are a few more videos for those who just can't get enough of Mr. Oliver!

Deux Mois

Oliver just turned two months this weekend. It's funny how it seems like he was born yesterday and like he's been with us forever at the same time. It was also one of our friend's son's first birthday this weekend, and we got to go to some crazy birthday party with a bouncy house and Bonzo the clown. We shall see what Oliver's first birthday will look like...

We just started Oliver on a new routine. As he was feeding on demand, I often had to wake up every hour in the middle of the night to nurse. After reading a book recommended by a friend, called Baby Wise, we got Oliver to wake up only once in the middle of the night for the past couple nights, so we're pretty excited. His routine - although flexible - is a lot more predictable and we are able to somewhat plan our activities around it.

Here are some fun pictures my mum took while they were here.

 

Cats and a Baby

Our mischievous cats have overall warmed nicely to the new addition.  Both Nouba and Lola, our feline babies, have not been remiss or distant size Oliver arrived a couple months back.  Nouba in fact has been even more loving, giving additional attention not only to Oliver but to everyone in general.  She as turned into a much more loving cat.

Now, we don't dare leave them together, there are lots of horror stories on the web of cats and babies.  But that said, I wanted to give a little insight into the friendly yet cautious budding relationship between Nouba and Oliver.

Out of town

This weekend we went down to San Antonio for a little weekend get-a-way with Oliver.
With the end of pregnancy and Oliver being too young to go anywhere, we had not left Austin in months.
He did fairly well on the car ride with a couple of 1 min fussy episodes. Car seat: not really his thing unless he's already sleeping...
When we arrived in San Antonio on Friday night, Oliver got to bond with his oncle.  And on Saturday night Ben and I enjoyed a nice romantic evening while Oliver took a nice long nap. :)




Here are couple pictures of Oliver with Andy and a video in the "family walker". Of course Oliver's feet are not even close to touching the ground and there is still a little time before he can hold his head fully... But we never get tired of his smiles!
More to come...