Home Alone

The theme of 1980 movie masterpieces continues with our next blog entry -- a combination of Home Alone and Mr. Mom. Last weekend Rachel took a much deserved vacation when she traveled to Boston for her college reunion (in fairness, I don't think any trip can adequately be called a vacation if you go across the country and back in less than 48 hours and have to worry about pumping every six hours).

That left the two big guys at home, counting the minutes until Rachel's return. I did what any reliable father would do and immediately went to the bullpen and enlisted help from the grandparents. Gigi took great care of Tate the afternoon Rachel left, and Grandma Barb and Grandpa Norm were a huge help all weekend.

The weekend went great, as we went for walks, took Tate swimming, played on the floor, showed off Tate's expert rolling skills, and compared Tate's comb-over with my dad's. The only hitch was when a certain father cut himself shaving. I think Rachel feared the worst when I picked her up with a bandage on my face.

At any rate, it was a great weekend for Rach to have fun at her reunion and us all to get comfortable with having others care for Tate. I think we'll soon be ready to graduate to the next stage -- a real vacation in Hawaii!

Thanks again to Gigi, Grandma Barb, Grandpa Norm, Uncle Josh and Rosy for all their help!

Baby Beluga

Tate recently started swim lessons at our local pool, or as I prefer to call it, water appreciation classes. He is officially a baby beluga swimmer. Our class includes such rigorous activities as hokey pokey, humpty dumpty, and 3-2-1 blast-off in which Tate practices his kicking skills. His favorite one so far is finding Mr. Turtle floating in the pool and chewing on him for the rest of the class.

I don't have an action photo in the pool yet, but Tate modeled his swim trunks for me before class one morning which I can't resist posting.

Three Moms and a Baby

With May coming to a close, it dawned on us that a blog update was in order. Apologies to Tate's fan club -- there's been a lot of action this month, and we'll do our best to bring everyone up to date in the next few days.

And is there a better way to start out than recapping a great Mother's Day? A few weeks ago, we celebrated Mother's Day at Filoli, a historic estate in Woodside (great call Gigi!).

While the title of this post may be perceived as a shout out to Steve Gutenberg, it actually represents the celebration of the three generations of mothers that accompanied Papa, Tate, and me at Filoli. They are, of course, Grandma Roni, Gigi, and Rachel, all pictured here with a "gravity defying plant" (as described by the docent when we walked in...I should point out that the plant really is far less gravity defying than the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz and I'd conservatively estimate he uttered this ice breaker 2000 times in the course of the day).

At any rate, we had a great time touring the house, exploring the grounds, and enjoying a box lunch in the courtyard. Happy Mothers Day to all, including Grandma Barb and Aunt Meg!