The Month in Review

Phew. Tor has finally shut the door behind his billions of unwelcome virus guests, and he slept through the night again last night. We needed that. The illness wasn't a total loss, though: he ended up exponentially better at drinking from a cup (vs. a sippy cup), since his mouth hurt too much to suck on anything. We're now setting about plumping him back up, given that since Monday, he'd eaten exactly two liters of apple juice, a half gallon of Carnation Instant Breakfast, and eighteen tubes of Gogurt (I counted every sticky one). So this blog can return to its regularly scheduled programming, which was supposed to involve some highlights of October thus far.

Given Tor's penchant for baking imaginary pizzas, Lars wanted to grill the real deal so that Tor could form and decorate his own dough. The dough-forming part went fine, but then we took it away to cook and he almost had conniptions. Fortunately, pizza grills fast.

Many hands making light work

Dendro with the photo-bomb

The only thing missing is company!

We're starting to get out the cozy fall clothes in the early mornings, although they're not really necessary yet, and to close the window to keep Tor warm in the bath.

"I don't always wear blankets. But when I do,
I'm smug about it."

Bubbles make every bath better...as does a mohawk

It's still plenty warm enough for us to traipse around the Bay Area's bouldering sites, though. We checked out Castle Rock State Park two weeks ago and found this tree elf.

 A notoriously camera-shy species

The weekend following, we drove up to Tahoe to visit Norm and Charmaine (slash Pakka and Aah-Bee--who can say why?). Tor reveled in his role--and his costume--as the littlest sous chef. He also got introduced to animal crackers.

Moonwalking so smoothly that the camera couldn't handle it

The real Pandora's Box, it turns out

Bear two ways

Lars and I imposed on his parents' generosity to sneak away for a morning and climb Haystack Crack at Lover's Leap, a classic three-pitch 5.8. What a treat.

Topped out by 11:30

This last weekend, our family checked out the annual harvest festival at the Ardenwood Historical Farm in Newark. The gimmick is, you get to pick all the Indian corn and popcorn you want--but you have to put half of it in their corn cribs. Also, they try to sell you $12 pumpkins. We weren't biting.

Aboard a traditional early American truck

A hearty lunch before heading into the fields

"Handful of bees, Mother?"

Diving in with sleeves rolled up

Time Tor would take to harvest the entire field:
> 1 year

Preparing the harvest decor for hanging...

...and the popcorn for popping

Finally, we have developments on the big-boy front! First off, Tor is TOTALLY WEANED. It's been a long time coming, and he still has quite a few moments where he only wants to be held by me (as indicated by a tearful "UP WITH MAMA!"), but it's a move toward independence (and now Lars can put him to bed regularly!). Second, Tor is practicing using a tiny red toilet. He likes to sit on it and read Potty Time with Elmo over and over and over again until something happens. We can see some effort there, too, so hopefully sphincter control is not too far behind...































Third, here's Tor showing off some color knowledge for ya. We're getting red, blue, yellow, pink, purple, white, and orange fairly consistently, but green and black are proving bugbears for some reason.

And he'll play you out: