Bloggogriff

Eric is in the UK again, so Owen and I are on our own for the week. The main challenge in this is the sleep. I now look back on those two months before the UK trip as some kind of baby sleep Eden, lost and perhaps never to be recovered. A seemingly never-ending series of colds (with literally only one or two days off between them), teething, the time change...who knows? We only know that the kid wakes up at least once a night. Sometimes only for ten minutes, sometimes (like last night) for over an hour. In happier news, we've seen some fun developmental steps lately. Owen can clap at appropriate "hooray!" moments, stack blocks on top of one another, and - occasionally, and most recently - use a spoon without assistance. He also sings along ("yayayayaya") to his favorite Sesame Street music video ("Elmo's Song," courtesy of YouTube; it helps that large stretches of the song go "la la la la la la...").

Well, the trip to the UK definitively proved one thing: Owen does not care for travel. He did surprisingly well on the planes, but he was extremely displeased with the unusual sleeping arrangements (a pack n play, or our bed), jet lag, and strange food (aka baby food from jars, or "pots" in the English idiom). Add to that the fact that he and I both had nasty colds the whole week, and we were glad to be home. Alas, it's now a week on, and he has slept through the night exactly once. Since he probably lost a pound on the trip, he's been eating like mad this week. He has gotten to the point of wanting to eat whatever we are eating - normally okay, but sometimes a challenge considering that he still only has two teeth. Whenever he sees us with food, he opens his mouth (letting the paci fall wherever it happens to land, if he had it) and starts smacking his lips. Yesterday, his more outre food experiences included gelato at lunchtime and an asparagus-mushroom risotto, fla...