Ann vs. Jason

By: Ann

This weekend was a very nice weekend with lots of family time spent together.  We originally were supposed to go to a fundraiser for my workplace; however, there wasn’t enough advertising which resulted in poor attendance.  There was also another health fair going on in the city that we didn’t know about until that day.  We tried making it earlier to my work’s fundraiser, but Athena was sleeping.  By the time we got there, people were packing up to leave (an hour earlier than scheduled).

After realizing very quickly that the event was shutting down, we first headed to a taqueria for a quick bite and then to Alum Rock State Park for, yet, another walk.  There used to be 20 different springs there, but, with Jason’s luck, he only found the sulfur spring.  This made us nostalgic for the sulfur springs in Delaware by OWU, our college.  For graduation, they would turn on  the fountain by my dorm Stuy and the area would smell like rotten eggs.  It was wonderful.  There was also a natural spring by the psych building that smelled like sulfur.

I spent the majority of today in the kitchen making baked goodies and such.  I made a Greek casserole (maybe a watered-down version of moussaka) and strawberry rhubarb peach pie (from scratch) for dessert.  Everything turned out really good.  Jason was looking forward to both dishes especially since he loves pies with rhubarb in them and (being the good Irish boy that he is) he loves anything potato-based.  Here’s a before picture.

Yummy Goodness

Athena’s Father’s Day present to Jason was sleeping for 2 hours while Jason and I got to eat dinner and dessert sans interruptions.  We usually take turns eating while tending to Athena.

After dinner, we decided to take some pictures outside for Jason’s first Father’s Day and with Athena being 7 months old.  Here are some pictures.  There’s more pictures on Jason’s Flickr page.

Daddy and his little girl

Happy little girl

We’re all looking forward to our upcoming trip to DC to visit my parents.  Athena has been a real jet-setter in her short little life.  She’s been to Ohio, Illinois, Nevada, and on July 4th weekend, DC.  We’re a little worried about the plain trip because she’s more mobile now and isn’t really satisfied with just being held anymore.  We’ll let you know how it goes.  Keep your fingers crossed for no tantrums and no illness.

By Jason

I just realized we haven’t updated the blog in a few weeks. Work has been very busy. I’ll cover some of the things we’ve been up to lately, including visits to a number of local parks.

GoogleServe 2009

This past week we had our annual community service project at work, GoogleServe. This year my team signed up together to remove invasive plants from the dunes at Half Moon Bay. We were going after mustard and ice plant. I was surprised to find out that ice plants aren’t native to California - I took a bunch of pictures of them when we visited Santa Cruz. They are great at stabilizing dunes but choke out native plants that local wildlife depend on.

I didn’t take any pictures, but Reid did, and you can enjoy this quick video from my friend and fellow internet-blogger Wysz.

Apparently very few Googlers (or Californians, for that matter) have ever used a hoe before. I tried to explain: in the Midwest, we have these things called yards, and with yards you can often find gardens. Given real estate prices here (even in a down market), I guess we’ll have to find a volunteer organization or community garden or something to better introduce Athena to the outdoors.

GoogleServe, by the way, is an amazing program that more companies should consider copying. Kudos to Seth for his help organizing.

Castle Rock State Park

Last weekend we took Athena on a hike in Castle Rock State Park. We’ve been on walks before, but we’re starting to work our way up to what I would call an official hike.

Athena loves hiking so far but going up and down hills is probably the only activity that’s still hard for Ann. She’s been working out and is probably in better shape than me by now but the changes in grade make walking a challenge for her.

You can see the Castle Rock formation in the photos below. Given all the mountains and cliffs around California I was a little surprised at how small Castle Rock is - it reminded me of the rocks at in Chippewa Gorge at Brecksville Metropark. Fun for climbing.

I have more photos at Flickr.

Lake Chabot with Ahan and Julie

A few weekends ago we spent the weekend at Ahan and Julie’s place, including a nice walk at Chabot Regional Park in the East Bay.

It’s a long story why we spent the whole weekend with them - we haven’t written about it much, but Athena had cold symptoms for about 5 weeks straight, since just after our visit to Cleveland. We’ve had water leaking in the ceiling and mold problems at this apartment so we spent the weekend with them to see if it would make a difference. I headed back home for one of the days to do a thorough cleaning, even washing the walls of her room.

In any event, she’s fine now. Back to the pictures:

Athena loves the grass. We couldn’t keep her on the blanket for long before she rolled over into the grass to start pulling it up.

We’ll try to do another update soon, with picture and video of Athena in her current favorite toy, the Johnny Jump-Up.

By Jason

Eating is not something you just know how to do - it’s a skill that must be mastered.  This post will show the remarkable progress made so far, starting from our first attempt at spoon feeding with Athena:

Despite the setbacks Athena was ready for a second attempt.

Though we didn’t quite get all the rice cereal in, the second try involved a lot more actual eating and much more enthusiasm for spoons.

Something you might notice in the photos is the way she keeps trying to grab the spoon as Ann feeds her.  This little girl just wants to do everything herself.

The next food on the menu was peas.  Which apparently were delicious:

We make a big deal about it when she eats solid food, look how pleased with herself she looks in this photo:

The peas were so delicious, in fact, that at the end Athena grabbed the bowl and tried to lick it clean.

Here are Ann and Athena hard at work:

I’ve got lots of additional messy feeding time photos up at Flickr.  Finally, here’s a 10-minute video of Athena’s first experience with sweet potatoes.  Enjoy:

By Jason

Athena is now very mobile - we can’t just let her play in her jungle playset, she’ll find her way to the nearest non-baby-toy object and put it in her mouth.

Here’s evidence:

This week Ann gave her some mashed green peas and she absolutely loved them. Next up we’ll post photos of the messy meal, look for that soon.

In other news, last week I got to tour the solar panels up on the roof at Google. Head over to my blog to read more.

By Jason

Since we’ve been back from our travels, Athena has aggressively pursuing the relevant developmental milestones.  She’s getting very determined, and when she wants to turn around and be held facing forward or grab a particular toy, she is not easily distracted from her goal.

One major new skill is creeping.  Creeping is the term for getting around on her belly but not actually crawling.  What Athena does is actually more accurately called inchworming, since she plants her face and hands on the floor, scoots her legs up, and then inches her way forward before starting over again.  As of this writing, she’s getting very close to actually crawling, so I’ll have to get some video soon.

The other major accomplishment to mention is teething.  Teething is horrible.  I don’t know whose idea this was, but her gums hurt and she doesn’t know why and she doesn’t like Orajel or baby ibuprofen, even though it makes her feel better.  Feeds have become a bigger challenge, and she’s too sore to be the reliably happy baby we’re so used to.  We ended up not going out to dinner for Mother’s Day (getting takeout instead) because we didn’t want to chance it.  Hopefully this tooth will pop out soon.

Visiting with Uncle Ahan:

Playing Rock Band at Google on a Saturday afternoon:

Athena hanging with Sandy:

In general Ann and I have been doing alright.  I’ve had a head cold that refuses to completely go away for about two weeks, though it seems to be on it’s way out now.  I’ve been pretty busy at work and having my ears all blocked up has made it hard to lead meetings and such.  Ann has been busy drawing up plans for a grant application at her clinic, they’re hoping to redesign the floorplan and make their space more efficient.

In fact, it was after a trip to her office to measure walls that we stopped by Kelley Park in San Jose.  Kelley park isn’t particualrly famous but it reminded me a bit of the Metroparks back in Cleveland - there’s a lot of trees, a creek, picnic tables and interesting sections.

Athena enjoying the koi pond in the Japanese Friendship Garden:

More fun with mom by the pond:

The Japanese park is on two levels, with ponds connected by streams.  Here we are at the upper pond:

This picture was fun - we tried to sit Athena down in the grass for a photo but she immediately flipped herself over and started pulling up the grass.  It was pretty much the most amazing thing she had ever discovered.  If we had left her there I have no doubt she would have defoliated the entire lawn.

Athena also enjoyed clawing the bark off the trees:

She’s not really waving, but we’ll say goodbye with this last photo:

By Jason

The second leg of our Easter trip was to Cleveland to see my side of the family.  It had been a while since Mom, Dad, and Ryan last got to see Athena in person and there were of plenty of new people for her to meet, including her great-grandmother.

We flew in just before the customary early Easter dinner.  Athena by this time was an experienced flier.  After a brief stop at my parents’ house we went to Gram and Aunt Linda’s to see everyone.  I was a bit worried that Athena would be overwhelmed by all the people and the attention but she was fine.  Here is Athena’s cousin Luke with her Uncle Ryan and Fake Aunt Laura.

Aunt Sue holds Athena while Ann examines the loot.  We came home with a ton of new clothes and toys.

Gram was overjoyed to hold her great-granddaughter for the first time.  I have to post these two pictures, I especially like the second where they are both smiling and looking off-frame.

After eating we did several rounds of family portraits.  My Nikon D60 is nice enough that we didn’t really need to run off to a studio or hire a photographer.   To be honest I’m not entirely happy with the shots - I couldn’t convince the rest of the family to wait a bit before taking their own photos, so a lot of the sunlight I was counting on was blocked and many shots have people looking in different directions.

I’ve got a bunch more family shots in the Flickr album but I had to post the four-generation shot (above) and the big group photo (below).

Athena and Luke are only a few weeks apart in age and they got along just fine.

It actually took a little while for them to both figure out there was another tiny person there.  In this shot they look like they are playing together with a baby book but at this point they hadn’t really noticed each other yet.

Of course, Athena’s first reaction to anything (or anyone) novel was predictable:

In the end they did interact quite a bit.  Here’s a shot where they were holding hands.

I like this picture of the three of us a lot.

In this rather goofy photo, Ron and Ann test out the hypothesis that two babies together might be as tall as my mother.  Not quite, but check back in a couple months.

Later we headed back to my parents house and met up with Ryan and Jessie, who have their own baby on the way.  Judging by the ultrasound, their kid may already be taller than my mom.

We got to spend some more time with Mom, Dad, Ryan and Laura the next day.  Here’s the correct way to feed a baby:

Here my brother demonstrates his  incorrect, cry-inducing method:

Ryan had already been in town a few days and had cleaned out the closet of our old bedroom.  He found boxes with our old toys, including Transformers and various super hero action figures.  It reminded me of a Christmas morning, somewhere around two decades ago.  In retrospect, we had a lot of toys - though I clearly remember most of my friends having many more.  I guess at that age I judged anything short of the full collection of every available Autobot as insufficient.

Spending time with Mom and Dad:

My Dad quickly figured out Athena’s sense of humor.

This is interesting, though you’ll have to click through to see the full-sized photo to read it.  It looks like a note sent to my Grandmother when she was getting married.  You can see that my sarcasm is clearly genetic.

Later that evening we met up with a bunch of friends at Tommy’s on Coventry in Cleveland Heights.  This is our favorite restaurant, so we always make a point of visiting when we’re in town.  The photo below is the result of Ann asking if someone could hand her something for Athena to play with.  Clearly none of these people are responsible enough to be parents.  We hung out at Jess’ place for a while afterward.

Our last day in town got off to a late start, and we didn’t leave my parents’ house to see Gram and Aunt Linda until much later than we originally planned because all three of us kept dozing.  Athena took an epic, almost 4-hour nap, probably just exhausted from all the excitement.  Ann was actually pretty sick and I (it turned out) was coming down with a stomach virus.

We eventually did get ourselves together and went to Mariachi Coco’s to meet up with even more friends and family.  It’s getting late, so I’ll have to refer you to the Flickr page for photos (to be honest there were so many people that I didn’t get a lot of shots) but it was a great time.  It’s really too bad we couldn’t stay longer and spend more time catching up.

By: Ann

We’re sorry for the delay in getting this post up.  The Morrison household has been one big germ cave ever since this trip.  There hasn’t been one week where one of us has been affected by a cold or stomach bug.  But, we’re on the mend, kind of.

Our trip started on the Thursday before Easter.  We arrived in Chicago late at night after one long and one short flight to Chicago.  Athena did wonderful for both flights.  She either played, ate, or slept. We were more than a little nervous about this flight.  We did do a dry run with our Vegas trip, but this flight was obviously much longer.

Thursday night we arrived in Chicago and were greeted at the airport by my brother Pauel and niece Jadyn.  Jadyn got a chance to stay up super late in order to meet her baby cousin.  She was pretty excited about it all.  It was really great having Athena meet her Uncle Pauel and Auntie Dominique and the gang.  Athena was quite the hit.

The next day was filled with a lot of relaxing, Jason (being the play slave that he is) getting placed in jail 42 times, and making homemade pizzas.

The next day we set out to see Caleb’s soccer debut.  It was a great game.  I was expecting a lot of organized chaos, but all of the children really were able to play really well.  Also, I’m pretty proud to say that Caleb scored all of the points for his team…even if it was only one point.  The excitement was just too much to handle.

Cory was a little incognito the whole weekend with a stomach virus.  Here he is braving the windy weather.  We were so proud of Caleb for his goal, that we took him out to eat at Cracker Barrel.  Ah, Cracker Barrel.  We’re really in the midwest now.

After the game, we tried for some family pics before opening our Easter baskets.

Later that night we decided to do Easter baskets early because we had a flight to catch to Cleveland the next morning.  Here’s some grass pictures.  We all got a little carried away with the plastic grass.  I remember when I was a kid, it only came in green.

Athena was pretty tired from the big day.  She needed some cuddle time with Uncle Pauel.

It was really great seeing everyone again, especially the kids.  They’re getting so big and smart.  I can’t wait to see them again.

By Jason

Ann, Athena and I spent last weekend in Las Vegas.  Why take a 4-month-old to Vegas?  Mainly to see Dan and Heather, with the side benefit that it’s a short, cheap flight and a good dry run for our upcoming trip to Chicago and Cleveland.

We stayed at Terrible’s Hotel and Casino, which is a few blocks off the strip and had better reviews than a lot of the cheaper hotels on the strip.  The hotel room was nice, but you had to walk through the cramped, smokey casino to get to it.  This seemed to be a common tactic at other hotels too, along with the standard psychological tricks with lighting and layout.

Athena loved rolling around on the big hotel bed:

Ann will probably write a bit more about our adventures in Las Vegas proper, but I wanted to post some photos of our drive out to the Valley of Fire State Park.

The Valley of Fire is less than an hour’s drive into the Mohave Desert.  The sandy tans and green scrub are suddenly broken with red, wind-carved rocks.

In the picture above, note how green the desert looks.  It’s a bit of an optical illusion with the low viewing angle - when you’re higher up, you can see how sparse the vegetation really is.

It’s an amazing place to visit, and a photographer’s paradise.  You can see Dan getting exactly the right angle:

The weather was perfect, too, sunny but only about 65 degrees or so.  There was a fairly strong breeze, which Athena just loved.

Here we are in between shots for a family photo.  You can see the more posed photos in Flickr, but I really love this one because it’s a little more candid.  Note Athena preparing the shove the cloth in her mouth and/or pull it off of Ann’s shoulder, a favorite passtime.

Here are Dan and Heather with more sandstone in the background:

The rocks have ancient native petroglyphs.  Sadly, some of them have been defaced fairly recently.  It takes a special kind of jerk to carve their name over millennia-old artwork.

Here we are on the viewing platform, with the landscape stretched out behind us.  Athena is apparently not afraid of heights.

I really like how this photo of the two of use turned out:

Rainbow Vista is another great stop in the park.  Here you can see bands of different color in the rocks and chasms.   Athena gives the place a thousand-yard stare:

Heather, Ann, Athena and Dan wait for me to get back from my usual wandering:

Okay, now this one is just too cute.  It’s practically cheating:

Dan is not exactly the biggest softie but I think Athena won him over:

I have to end with this shot of a series of fractures that really struck me - are we looking at rock, or the grain of some enormous tree?

I have a lot more artsy photos of the rocks and the desert landscape at Flickr, far too many to post here, so feel free to check them out.

By: Ann

A pregnant friend of mine asked me to come up with a list of pros and cons since having Athena.  I thought I’d share with everyone.

Cons:

1) I have to get used to being tired all of the time.  It has become pretty standard to find me  asleep on the couch around 8p.m. daily…probably due to #2.

2) I have to get up really early in the morning  on a regular basis.  I swear this child has an internal alarm set for 5a.m…today being a perfect example.

3)Jason and I are not able to go to the movies as often.  We don’t really know a lot of people in the Bay Area, so we have to rely on the schedule of my brother and sister-in-law (Ahan and Julie).   A couple of weekends ago, I surprised Jason by taking him to go see Watchmen (good movie, but probably not the best date movie).  We had Ahan and Julie watch her.  That was the first time that Jason and I got to do something social sans Athena.  It worked out really great.  One niece got doted on by a happy aunt and uncle and 2 happy parents got to go to the movies.

4)Working: If you told me right now that I was somehow magically independently wealthy, I would stay at home with Athena, no questions asked.  I never thought I’d feel this way because of loving so much what I do and being so work-oriented.

5)I’m in physical therapy due to the birthing process.   I can’t do any abdominal exercises or anything more than a walk without having pain.

Pros:
1)I look forward to seeing her every second of the day.  She has not gotten old to me at all.  She’s generally a pretty smiley and pleasant baby, which makes it easier to look forward to playing with her all of the time.

2)I love seeing Jason play with her.  It makes me so thankful that I found such a great guy and good daddy.

3)She really makes me happy and I feel so proud to be her mom.  I know it’s a bit cliche, but it’s true.  Whenever I think that Jason and I brought this tiny little life into the world, it really gives me chills.  Also, she has not done too many life achievements, yet, but I see so much potential in her.  And, with the risk of sounding a little obnoxious, we really do get stopped at least once every time we’re out with her due to people commenting on how cute she is.  I guess that’s an accomplishment, right?

4)No matter how bad of a day that Jason or I has/have had, she pretty much always brightens it up.

5)Since she has been born, I’ve really been on a baking streak.  I think it’s more having to do with me wanting more natural ingredients in my diet and less processed stuff.  Jason loves this, by the way.  This mean more cookies and homemade goods for him.

6)It’s truly amazing to see her little brain develop before our eyes.  Right now, she’s starting to grab at things.  She’s really starting to notice that she can affect things that are outside of her body, like flipping the light switch or knocking off the spices off of the spice rack (this is Jason’s favorite, I just wish he would clean up after her).

7)The house is a lot more livelier now.  It’s pretty eery and quiet when she’s not here.

8)Multi-tasking: I thought I was good at it before, but my skills have become finely tuned.

9)When walking on the street and passing other parents with babies (while with her), Jason and I always get these knowing nods or smiles from parents.  It’s like a silent exchange or secret club handshake in the form of a nod or smile.  It’s them saying “Hey, we have a baby, too.  We know what you’re going through…good and bad.  Isn’t it awesome?”  I received these same knowing nods when I was pregnant from other pregnant women, too.   However, more times than not, the “isn’t this awesome?” smile was not attached.

We just (a little preemptively) bought Athena this bouncy seat that you connect to the top of the molding on a doorway.  We have to stuff the seat with extra blankets because she’s so tiny.  The pictures are on Jason’s camera and I can’t find all the attachments to transfer the pictures onto a computer.  More pictures to come…

EDIT:  Here are the photos:

Yesterday Athena had solid food for the first time - well, somewhat solid, since it was finely-ground rice cereal mixed with milk. She seemed to do okay with it, so we decided to go for broke today and attempt rice cereal with a spoon.

She seems to have picked up on the whole spoon-goes-into-mouth part:

But not the eating or swallowing concept:

She was trying pretty hard to figure the whole thing out

I have a few more cute pictures in Flickr:

We also wanted to share photos of Athena wearing her denim ladybug dress, so Jeanie could see how cute she looks:

Particularly this photo, the look on her face is priceless: