Some good eatin'

A recent delicious takeout dinner from Augie’s Restaurant in Ballston Spa somehow ended up on Robby’s forehead. Augie’s has a way of taking food and making it so yummy, that you just want to put your face right in it. Robby did, and this is what it looked like...

He loved that eggplant dish so much he just kept eating it and evidently smearing it all over his face. Maybe he wanted to save some for later. Too bad grandma had to go and ruin the plan by wiping his face off.

Fun at the hotel pool

For our recent anniversary, Jude and I spent the night at the Courtyard Marriott in Saratoga. What a nice hotel! Everything was spotlessly clean and the decor was lovely. We checked in early so we could take Robby to the pool which was small but perfect for us. Robby was a little timid and unsure at first, but after a few minutes, he was relaxed as can be. We took the lifeguard floaty thing which was a perfect size for the little guy. After our fun swimming adventure, we dropped off Robby at my parents house so Jude and I could have a night to ourselves.

The coolest thing about our night at the hotel was that I actually won it from the World Awareness Children’s Museum in Glens Falls. They had a Sweetheart Raffle around Valentine’s Day and I entered and won this hotel stay and a host of other great prizes! This museum does some amazing work in the local community and the world. Check out their site to learn more about them.

I love that a museum of this nature exists in our community to help our children learn more about different cultures. You can even order reprints on their website of artwork from kids around the world. Robby has this print in his bedroom that I love. It’s a beautiful illustration drawn by a 10 year old in Africa depicting a street scene. I wonder what Robby’s ‘Malta Street Scene’ picture would look like. Hopefully by the time he’s ten it will look better than it does now!

Bang on the drum all day

There are very few commands I can tell Robby that he actually listens to. Two that work are "Robby, go play the piano" and "Robby, go play the drum". He will rarely play either instrument if not asked, but as soon as you mention it, he will glady comply.


His gentle baby touch for now isn't doing these instruments any harm, but I can only imagine Robby at age four going to town on the drum and banging the hell out of the piano.

Don't tell Robby, but for his first birthday next month, I decided to get him some instruments of his own. Remo drums makes a cool line of products for kids that aren't too "kiddy", but are still kid-friendly if you know what I mean. I purchased this floor tom which looks awesome and I think he's going to love it. I'll share pics of Robby and his new drum later. Knowing Robby, he won't play his own drum because he's so spoiled by mommy's djembe. I may have to trade him for his floor tom.

A face that only a mother could love

Robby makes this scrunchy stink-eye face all the time now. He squints his eyes like he’s staring at the sun, curls his lips up to show off two big front teeth and wrinkles his nose.

It’s truly a face that only a mother could love, and I don’t see any sign of it going away. The face often elicits laughter and varying frequencies of ooh’s and
ah’s from his adoring audience. The stinky face will live on.

Touchdowns and other cool tricks

For the first several months of a baby’s life, they pretty much can’t learn anything. You could show a baby a hundred times to do something like clap, and then when you say in your high-pitched squeaky baby-talk voice “Ok __(name)__, clap!!” the baby would stare at you intently as if he were processing something. He will probably look the other direction, tip his head to the side, raise his hand, crawl away, cry, poop, etc. The only thing the baby is assuredly not going to do is clap. You may even start to question your own IQ, but you should not worry. Soon enough the change will happen and your baby will learn things that you wished you never taught them.

Robby’s picking up new tricks almost daily! Some of the tricks are really cute, like smacking his lips and throwing his hands up when you say “touchdown”. We’ve almost mastered hi five’s and we’ll be slowing introducing the thumbs up. He’s also started sticking his tongue out at people, which when you’re ten months is kind of a cute thing to do. But thanks to Robby, I’ve seen more adult tongues in the past few weeks than I have my whole life. Obviously when a baby sticks his tongue out at you and you’re an adult in the grocery store, you should stick your tongue out back at him! We must encourage this awesome behavior.

Kidding aside, it’s really adorable seeing him learn new things. He gets very excited with the positive feedback his little tricks generate. He has learned to clap on his own now and will break into claps when he hears music. As a musician, this melts my heart. He may not be a baby Einstein, but he’s the smartest little man in my world.

Babies can be mean

To say that I love Robby is an understatement. That doesn’t mean that I love every last quirk about him though. For instance, I don’t love that he yanks my hair out, pinches me and laughs, bites me, kicks me, rips my glasses off, and scratches me with his razor nails. Despite being a massive 17lbs, he can be pretty darn mean sometimes.

Here he is just waiting for me to turn my back so he can take every thingy of baby wipes off the changing table shelf and put them all over his room. This past weekend he took one of my shoes and hid it under the bed and I could not find it anywhere! Yesterday he went thrashing through a pile of mail on the floor and ripped my Fast Company magazine and a bunch of envelopes, including some bills. (Why was the mail on the floor, you ask? I was "mommy multi-tasking", playing with Robby while sorting mail.)

He’s definitely getting to the age where items will start becoming displaced. In addition to taking things, he’s getting bolder by the day testing his limits by opening every cabinet, drawer, closet, door, stealing ipods, phones and Wii remotes, touching the stereo equipment and his latest trick, turning off the TV while smiling a devilish grin.

Robby gets more attention when he does mean things, which provoke's him even more. We're thankfully at the stage where his bold behavior is really kind of funny. He's charmingly mean, not tantrum-y mean. I know he won't be like this forever, but I like my little mean Robby just the way he is.

A trip down South

Orlando, FL is a great place to have relatives and I’m proud to say that I do. We recently took a trip down there with Robby to visit Jude’s brother and family. (I’m not making excuses as to why I haven’t posted in a while but it has been a busy few weeks for us)

We took our first airplane ride with Robby on Southwest and all went well. Robby made friends with Sarah, the cutest flight attendant I’ve seen in years. (have you noticed the ‘caliber’ of attendants has seriously dropped?) Jude loved that pretty Sarah kept coming back to flirt with Robby and check on us. I didn’t mind that Robby had small spurts of entertainment and that Jude and I got a couple more shot-glass sized ginger ale refills.

Traveling with a baby is for the most part, very cool and fun! We took him to the Kennedy Space Center, the Harry P Leu botanical gardens, Downtown Disney, the beach, and various other excursions. We didn’t do any of the major parks this year because I absolutely love thrill rides and was not about to pay $75 a ticket to eat Dippin’ Dots on a park bench with Robby. Good news is that, if you have family in Orlando, you will be back.

It was definitely one of those vacations where you feel like you need a vacation when you get back home, but it was fun overall. Plus Robby got to spend time with his cousins from whom he learned how to smack his lips and stick out his tongue on command. Fantastic.