0517

Alex slept fine last night, woke up at 5:50am and didn't cry - just made little noises (made me think of Jasper's morning songs.) Uneventful morning consisting of me making pancakes, to which I added some freeze-dried strawberry pieces. I didn't give him one of the ones with strawberry yet, so I don't know if he'll like it. But it's actually a nice way to add fruit to pancake batter, I think. Then he slept and slept and slept for 3 hours (like yesterday.) Not sure why such long morning naps, but it's nice for me. I was expecting him to wake up earlier, and planned to put him on my back & head down to Whole Foods on the bus. I've been running low on stuff to feed Alex, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to go after his music class. But the long nap meant that we had to eat lunch & run off to music class. During his nap I boiled some noodles and made a few bowls with different treatments - one had Garam Masala, one had just olive oil, and one had olive oil and cilantro. He enjoyed the garam masala - I want to give him as many different spices as possible while he's still trying lots of new things. Later, many kids get very picky, so this is my chance to get him to try a huge variety of flavors. Anyway, he liked all of it well enough. Oh, and he had a few black beans.

Alex loved music class. He grinned at Cynthia, he grinned at bear, he played the drums, he shook the maracas (rattles?) We have CDs at home of the music, and he gets very interested whenever I play any of it. After class, we had enough time to head down to Whole Foods, where I picked up one of everything in the produce area, and a few other things. Should keep alex's taste buds amused for awhile, anyway.

Got home & tried to get him to nap, which wasn't so easy. He finally fell asleep at 4, and Jill called at 4:30 saying she was heading over. Alex woke up a few minutes later & we headed to Kalorama Park to see if any of the play group were going to show up. So he got to play with Eitan, Ruby (who is moving to NYC in a few weeks - should be nice to know someone with a similar-aged kid in 'the city',) and Noah. Jill showed up, as you can see in the pictures, and Alex was very happy to see her, very happy to swing on the swing, very happy to slide - you get the idea. He loved it all. Ate sand, tried to eat sticks, stuff like that.

So we got back a bit late for the start of dinner. Video conference with Angela happened first, which is great for Alex and Angela, but after a few minutes Alex gets squirmy & wants to play with the computer or chase the cat. Back to dinner, though - I pan-fried a couple of fingers of chicken (free-range, wholesome somekindachicken - I think it was raised in a small cabin overlooking a lake and got massages in the evenings. Not sure.) Fried in olive oil and ginger oil. He ate some of that, and some frozen veggies including red pepper, green beans, mushrooms, and broccoli. After he fell asleep, Jill & I fried up the rest of the chicken & added some of the TJ green thai curry sauce. Tomorrow I'm planning to give a little of that to Alex - we'll see how that goes - it might be too spicy!

Boy, his (and my) days are food-centric, at least in the re-telling! But that's important in his life right now as he transitions away from formula and into real foods. It's very interesting to watch him learn how to chew (with his gums, mostly) food, and how to get stuff that he doesn't like off his plate, and how to put different things into his mouth.