Boston bound baby (second time for Dd)

When D was just over five months, the three of us traveled to a wedding in Montreal.  It was a good trip, which we wrote about in this post: montreal.  At exactly the same age Dd and my mom were nice enough to accompany me to my company’s internal research conference in Boston, which I was eager to attend this year.  It’s an annual event but I hadn’t been since D was 10 months old, what with building the house, being stressed out and then being pregnant.    With D I managed to store up enough milk to be away from him for five whole days, but it was tough and ten months is twice as old as Dd’s current five months.   I’m lucky my wonderful mom was able watch him in the hotel for me. 

I would have missed Dd dearly if I had left him behind, but my reasons were practical, as much as sentimental.   Had I left him, Jack would have needed almost as much help from family to handle both him and D and he would have fallen behind on work.  Moreover I would have had to spend so much time pumping during the conference, it would have been pretty miserable. 
I’d say it all went pretty well, and I was happy to learn about new projects I’ll be working on and to meet face-to-face with several people I have worked with for years but had never met.

Now I'm ready a normal week back at work.

Dd is wearing that hat we got for D in Montreal.

country count

With our recent trip to Portugal I was inspired to total up the number of countries we have each visited so far.  

Together, Jack and I have been to 19 countries.

• USA
• Canada
• Costa Rica
• Iceland
• France 
• Italy
• Austria
• Hungary
• Romania
• Turkey
• Tunisia
• Morocco
• Israel
• Jordan
• Malaysia
• Singapore
• Hong Kong
• United Kingdom
• Portugal

Without me, Jack has been to Thailand and without him I've been to:

• Antigua
• Germany
• Belarus
• Russia
• Switzerland
• Czech Republic
• Ireland

So Jack is at 20 and I'm at 26 countries.   I don't know what Dd has been doing with his time but he's only been to two countries in his five months and D is slacking by only going to three in his first five years.   I don't think we'll ever catch up to my globe trotting friend, Gabrielle, who has visited 51 countries, and worked or studied in quite a few of them.   http://gabakin.blogspot.com/2018/10/51-comme-le-pastis.html

Dd's first foods

In four short years the advice on feeding babies has changed enough that we started solids with Dd just after four months of age, rather than at six months like we did with D.  There are still lots of sources that suggest "exclusively breast feeding for six months," but the emerging research on allergies indicates that fewer allergies result when babies are exposed to common allergens early and often.  

From https://www.foodallergy.org/life-with-food-allergies/food-allergy-101/facts-and-statistics:

- The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention reports that the prevalence of food allergy in children increased by 50 percent between 1997 and 2011.

- Between 1997 and 2008, the prevalence of peanut or tree nut allergy appears to have more than tripled in U.S. children.

The advice given to parents in the late 90s to introduce allergens later clearly didn't work.

Dd's first food was peanut powder mixed in breast milk.  Thankfully all went well.  Now he has also readily eaten peas, carrots, green beans, broccoli and apple sauce.  He's also sucked on an orange slice and been exposed to egg whites (another common allergen) though the texture was tricky.

Things are looking good for having a food allergy free family.  

Interestingly, he is also way better at eating that we remember D being at first.  He doesn't gag or push it out of his mouth the way D often did at first.  He's also been incredibly interested in food.  We speculate that he has watched us eat substantially more often than D had by this point because we have a consistent dinner time before he goes to bed and we sit around a dining table looking at each other.  When D was a baby we sometimes ate after his bedtime and when we did we were lined up in a row in our tiny galley kitchen without the benefit of a table.   The difference really is notable.  

Wish us luck in taking advantage of his open minded palate and making Dd in to a pretty good eater like D is!

Azores hike 6

Lomba d'el rei - abbreviated.
What was supposed to be a 2.8 mile loop turned out to be a 2.5 mile out-and-back because rains had swollen the creek we were supposed to easily cross at the bottom of the ravine / rocky beach.  Even without the kids we weren't crossing it that day.  We really were quite lucky with the weather during our trip.

Azores hike 5

Lomba da Fazenda

Azores hike 4

Lagoa Furnas, Pico do Ferro

Azores hike 3

Cha Gorreana

Azores hike 2

Atalho dos Vermelhos

Azores hike 1

Despite everyone waking up at 11am today due to jet lag, we got our first hike in the Azores in today: Serra Devassa, which was only about 3 miles.  

Yesterday was rainy (with thunderstorms) and we were way too tired after the red-eye flight here, anyway.

resemblance and coloring part two

The original post was hailed as “so obviously the best thing on the internet,” but it’s  yesterday’s news because NEW BABY

winter pictures

Here are a few recent non-holiday family pictures: