Funpants and To Do Lists

A is for Alastair and...

2010-09-20T22:11:00.010-04:00

The six months that have passed since the last time we updated this blog have been a wild time for the Rushes. As I'm sure all of you already know, the implacable and handsome Harvey Ian Rush joined our merry crew on June 13th.

Harvey is a cool customer - pretty laid back and already his brother's biggest fan. At three months old he's holding his head up very well, has rolled over a few times, and has a deep love of gnawing on fingers and baby toys. Did I mention how much he loves Alastair?

Alastair is growing into his new role of big brother. He gets very excited when during a calm moment we put Harvey in his lap. He'll hug him, push him away, then want him back. They'll be partners in crime before we know it.

Though he has adjusted pretty well to the new guy in the house, not all is going well for Alastair, which brings us to the real reason for this post. Alastair has been diagnosed as autistic. The biggest red flag is that he is still not talking. He babbles a lot, but not at anyone in particular and with no discernible words. This was one of the concerns we discussed with his doctor at his two-year checkup. At that point the results of an autism-screening questionnaire recommended that we have him properly evaluated. The process took a few weeks, but ultimately he was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum last Wednesday.

This is an intensely bad news/good news situation. The diagnosis is bad news, but it also opens up many opportunities for early intervention and therapy for Alastair and networking and support for us. With his diagnosis Alastair is eligible for up to 10 hours of in-home therapy through Connecticut's Birth to Three early intervention program. That will be starting very soon, something for which Emily and I are very anxious.

We are trying to keep moving forward without getting too trapped by our worries, fears, and myriad questions. Alastair is the same charming kid he was a month ago, still loves his books, wagon rides, and the playground. Now we know that he needs us to help him learn things his way, something we will tackle with all the gusto, good cheer, love, and baked goods we can muster. [It's been a very baked-goods-filled few weeks here.] We're a touch exhausted, but we're optimistic as well, and will try to keep everyone informed as we learn more and have progress to report. We appreciate your thoughts, well wishes, prayers, or whatever cosmic good vibes you can send Alastair's way.

New Hampshire Celebration and Expectoration

2010-03-14T23:07:00.003-04:00

Last weekend the Rushes took a journey up to North Conway, New Hampshire, to reunite with some friends for a long weekend. This fine crew of Rushes, Weinbergs, Varneys, Joneses, and Parker/Thomases met while most of us were in grad school at Simmons. Starting, I believe, in 2003, we had a tradition of renting a house for a weekend in the winter and going camping for a weekend in the summer. That fell aside when Emily and I moved to New Haven and the baby rush got under way. Happily, a deal was found on an eight bedroom house, and four kids (ages 4 months to 3 years) and ten adults (including two pregnant ladies) resumed our biannual gathering.

Recapping the entire weekend is beyond me at this point, but suffice it to say that we had a great time reuniting with such good friends. The bed times might have shifted a little earlier, and the wake up times were definitely earlier, but the food was better and the time together was much more precious. Plus, Sylvia, Maya, and Alastair got on like gangbusters (no doubt baby Ian will be in the fray next winter). Even picking up a stomach bug from one of the kids (who shall remain nameless) didn't dampen our good time. (Thankfully it didn't hit Emily and me till after we got home. Alastair wasn't as lucky, but he weathered it with more grace than his parents.) Eating the BRAT diet for a few days was a small price to pay for the fun.

Here's Maya and Alastair on Friday morning, ready to play. Notice Alastair digging into his toy bag. He abandoned his toys as soon as he could get his hands on other people's toys, which are much more fun.

Here's a video of Alastair leading Maya on a promenade around the fireplace. Maya is such a cool cat - so patient and observant. She's the novelist of the bunch.

Here's Alastair and me going for a walk behind the house. He is very good about holding Daddy's hand on walks. It melts my heart, of course. He really liked the stream that is just to the left out of the shot.

Adorable about sums up this shot of Sylvia. She was definitely in charge of the kids, at least in her mind. Alastair didn't seem to have gotten the memo, however.

A rare moment when all three of the big kids were still.

Shannon holding baby Ian, who was very chill and well-behaved for such a young fella. It was nice to be reminded how small newborns are.

Flips & Flaps

2010-02-05T21:49:00.003-05:00

Alastair is really into books with flaps these days. Just this morning I bought him a junky one about the 50 states from the $1 bin at Target for him to look at while we shopped. He pretty much demolished it by the time we we were leaving. But I think I can quiz him on the state capitals now.

Every morning he brings this book into the kitchen and sits on the floor with it while I clean up after breakfast. It's called "Go! Go! Go!" and is by Roxie Munro.
The flaps in this book aren't extremely sturdy, so they tend to rip over time (I like to say that Alastair is an enthusiastic reader.) But every few days Mike will go through it and tape up the tears. It's a fun book - we want it to last!

It starts in a fire station:
And moves to a balloon festival:
Here's a horse stable (look at how cute those hands & wrists are!):
I think my favorite pages are from the Deep-Sea Discovery Research Vessel:
Let's hope the book holds up so Baby #2 can enjoy it also.

Well, Hello There!

2010-01-30T19:35:00.000-05:00

Look who we got to peek in on last week:

We were glad to find out that everything looks normal and on track with Rush Baby #2 - June 7th is still the expected due date. That's so soon! Fortunately, we really don't need too much, except maybe a few pink things if it's a girl.

For those who can't keep track, and because it's been quite a while since our last post, Alastair is already 17 months old - almost 18! He is non-stop motion and does an excellent job of tiring me out every day. I now really enjoy the 2 days a week that I work when I can pass him off to Mike in the afternoon and spend a few hours with the homeless population of New Haven. Ah, sweet relief.

These days, Alastair likes to knock things down, stack things up, hide things between the pages of his books, and balance pieces of food on top of his sippy cup. He really likes to put things one place, and then pick them up and move them to another place. It's fascinating to watch, really. He does this thing with his raisins, where he grabs a few, walks to the middle of the living room floor, puts them all down, then picks them up and eats them. Why is he doing this? I don't know, but it's hilarious.

Here we are, with my 21 week belly:

F is for Football

2009-09-26T23:02:00.004-04:00

I've never been a fall is for football kind of guy. I'm much more prone to spring baseball fever. That said, we've had a few crisp, early fall weekends in a row, so today I got in the seasonal mood and decided to introduce Alastair to the fine American tradition that is college football. Ivy League football, no less!

Emily was working today, so after morning nap the Rush boys ventured across town to the Yale Bowl. Free parking, free staff admission - it was a perfect afternoon adventure for us. No huge investment of time or money, so I knew we could leave whenever we wanted.

Here we are watching Yale v. Cornell. You can see how big the Yale Bowl is. When I was growing up the phone book included instructions in the event that the local nuclear power plant were to melt down. It said to go to the Yale Bowl. I'm not sure that would have been the best idea, but it's a lovely place to watch a game. The crowd looks sparse, but we're looking across to the Cornell side. There were more on the Yale side. Seemed like a nice mix of students, alums, local football fans, and young families. Alastair was by no means the only wee one.

I brought Alastair's lunch. That's a piece of chicken stuck to his lower lip. In the past few days he's started eating out of a bowl without dumping the contents all over the place. During lunch I managed to alternately hold him in my lap and stand him up with a bowl of food on the bleacher. Such a big boy. The game did not distract him from his chicken, kidney beans, green beans, and grapes. Especially not the grapes.

After lunch Alastair started to get a little restless, but there was no one in our row, so he could move around as much as he wanted. Stand up, sit down. Cruise down the row, cruise on back. One wildcard that I hadn't anticpated was the massive amounts of peeling paint on the bleachers. Had to be vigilant, lest he snack on some blue paint chips. Yo Yale, how about a fresh coat?

Alastair seemed to enjoy himself, even if he didn't quite notice that there was a game going on. Everyone sitting around us was very interesting, especially the little boy in front of us. From what I saw of the game neither team looked very impressive...it was a bit of a punting contest. Regardless, it was a win for Team Rush. We left while we were ahead (if not Yale), just before the half.

Running, Swimming, Camping

2009-09-14T09:58:00.004-04:00

Wait, I said something about a July update, didn't I? Well, I can't remember that long ago. Let's look at some photos to stir my memories.
Oh yeah! Mike and Alastair ran the Chester Road Race on July 4th - remember Mike ran it last year when I was super pregnant? It's a nice little family tradition now.

We got to visit with a lot of friends in July. There was a Library Ladies reunion at Candice & Aaron's house in Franklin, MA. Here's the lovely bunch of us:
It's hard to tell from the photo, but Deanna is pregnant and is going to have a little boy in November! Sylvia had a good time playing with Alastair - she's going to be a great big sister.
Erich & Rebecca stopped by to get some cuddles from Alastair, and they gave him an awesome FBI tee shirt for his birthday, which you can sort of see in this photo:
Niv and his family were in town, so they came over for a playdate - fun times!
July was filled with a lot of swimming for Alastair. He and I took a Parent & Tot swim class, so every Thursday afternoon for 6 weeks we got to splash and kick in the pool. Alastair loved it! You'll have to take my word for it, though, because I have no photos from the class. But we also went swimming at Caitlin's grandparent's house and Grandmom Nancy's pool.
July will also be remembered for our first family camping trip. Two photos sum up that weekend quite nicely. First:
This is Alastair in our tent at 4:30 AM, wide awake (looking like a little angel.) This was when I made the executive decision that we were all getting back in the car and driving home, after trying for 2+ hours to get Alastair to fall back asleep. Even though he had managed, earlier in the night, to sleep through a massive thunder-and-lightning storm (that scared the poop out of mommy.)

The other photo is from the next day. We decided to invite some friends and family to our campsite on Saturday to help celebrate Mike & Alastair's birthdays. Here is Alastair during the party:
He slept for most of it.

Summer Days Drifting Away

2009-07-29T09:40:00.003-04:00

For me, it's officially summer - I snapped at Mike the other day to get a fan going in the living room (the heat makes Mama cranky, he responded promptly) and I have to have the air conditioner on in our bedroom when I nurse Alastair and go to bed. Let's revisit the cool, rainy days of June that now seem so far away.

Mike and I went to his 15-year high school reunion, which marked the first time we went out at night and left it to someone else to put Alastair to bed. Alastair stayed at his friend Caitlin's house, and though he looks a bit unsure here, he had a great time.
And we had a great time at the reunion!
See, I'm even giving it a thumbs up. Also, this is a sort of silly photo to post from the reunion, since these are all people we see on a regular basis, but we didn't take too many photos that night.

We spent a fun day at Caitlin's great-grandparents's beach house in Westbrook, CT. Alastair and Caitlin are getting to be great friends.
Though it was cool and breezy, Alastair had fun dipping his toes in the water.

June saw a little bit of sadness, too, when the Friedman's moved to Brookline, MA. I met Niv's mom at the library, when I helped her find books about sleep strategies for babies. It turns out that Niv was born a day before Alastair, and we were in the hospital at the same time! Niv was Alastair's first guy-friend (don't let those gorgeous locks fool you) and I hope we'll stay in touch as the babes get older. Here they are (sort of playing together) at our last playdate:

Alastair and Felix and I spent about 4 days at Grandmom Sally's house in June while Mike went to VA for a work conference. It was hard to be without Daddy for so long, but we really had a great time. Definitely the highlight was taking Alastair to the Jersey shore for the first time (Manasquan, for those in the know).
Look at those clouds! Yes, it was nice and cool all day. I really miss June. This time, he wasn't as happy about getting his feet wet:

And June ended with Father's Day! Alastair and I picked out some musical instruments for Daddy, so we can get our family band going. At first, Alastair liked the harmonica.
A moment later, not so much.
Ah, good times. Stay tuned for a July update.

A Peek Into Our Weekend...

2009-06-08T10:00:00.002-04:00

Playing by himself like a big boy, shopping for a piece that will hide all breakables from a curious baby, visiting the goats at a local farm, hoping for a ride on the tractor, napping among the mess, trying out a new look, keeping my meatballs away from baby fingers.

Checking In At 9 Months

2009-05-29T14:37:00.002-04:00

Last week was Alastair's 9 month check-up with the pediatrician. He weighs a whopping 23 lbs 14 oz and is 29 inches long. For those keeping score (I'm not, I swear!) that's about 90th percentile for weight and 75th for height. He's a bit chunky, heehee.
But what's most impressive is his head. It's 48 centimeters - about the 98th percentile. It's so big, in fact, that the doctor hopes at his next appointment (1 year) his head size will have reached a "plateau." We need to hope that his head doesn't get any bigger! He also still has a bit of a flat spot on one side of the back of his head. My baby's head is big and flat! I have no control over these things, so I'm trying not to worry about it (but it's hard as a Mommy to not freak a little when the doctor mentions the word "helmet.")

It's okay, though. He's used to wearing a helmet.

A Peek Into Our Weekend, Mother's Day Edition

2009-05-11T09:21:00.002-04:00

Helping the public with their many informational needs, early morning cuddling in bed, surprising Mommy with a new book to read together, eating pancakes, sliding, swinging, walking outside on a beautiful day, getting clean.

What Happens Next?

2009-05-05T09:55:00.000-04:00

Alastair would like to show you his new (to him) book - we bought it at a used book shop a few weeks ago after a yummy lunch at Friendly's where Alastair had his first french fry. What a day!

The book is from 1959 and is called "What Happens Next? Adventures of a Hero" by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers and is illustrated by REMO (I need to look up this REMO - just one name and all in caps? He must be interesting.) The author's note in the beginning of the book says this:

Peter and Michael's mother said, "My boys like a story that keeps them guessing about what happens next. They like adventure." So I wrote this story for Peter and for Michael and for every boy and girl who likes adventure, who likes a story that keeps them guessing about WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

The story follows Michael as he leaves home to do great things and have adventures. The adventures involve a baby and mama bear, flying a huge eagle, diving into a mountain lake, the circus, lassoing a bengal tiger and a ham sandwich. Every few pages, when Michael is in a sticky situation, the reader is asked, "What Happens Next?" I bet it will be fun when Alastair is older to see what he thinks will happen to Michael in the following pages.

REMO's illustrations are fun, too. They're just simple line drawings on bright blocks of color. I think Michael looks like a little Pablo Picasso in his striped shirt and overalls (though when I tried to find an image of Picasso in such an outfit, I could not. Perhaps this is just in my head.)

Sorry some of the photos are blurry - Alastair was very excited and could not keep the book still. He just wanted to EAT IT.

A Peek Into Our Weekend...

2009-05-04T09:08:00.002-04:00

Alastair and Mommy stopping for lunch while out shopping, making a big mess in the dining room in order to paint the trim, playing with Daddy, still not figuring out this whole crawling thing, jumping, taking wet walks with Felix, wrapping a gift for a special boy celebrating his 1st birthday this week!

Snoozing on the Belly

2009-04-04T22:08:00.004-04:00

The following photo is proof that Alastair now sleeps on his belly. (It's also proof that he likes to cuddle with his socks, but that's another story.)
I had a hard time imagining this sleeping-on-the-stomach thing. Alastair really doesn't like to be on his stomach. Don't worry, we do tummy time and all of that. And he sometimes winds up on his belly when he's playing with his toys, but he doesn't, like, hang out there. So I was pretty shocked when I first saw him asleep on his stomach. It's adorable, though, when he wakes up and lifts his big head to look at me and smiles.

Cravin' Culture

2009-03-08T17:59:00.002-04:00

Coming up on 7 months old, Alastair is evolving into a cultured young man. Few things excite him more than books. He loves story time. Sit him in your lap, grab a book, open it in front of him and he'll start squealing with delight. Emily and I take this to mean he'll be an enthusiastic and determined reader, a true lover of words and ideas. However, unbiased observers may just conclude that he's hungry. Take a look.

Yes, gnawing on books is a favorite pastime for Mr. AGR. A good percentage of his calories come from board books, I suspect. That's OK. As long has he has a happy association with books Emily and I are content. Thankfully neither of us are preservation librarians...then we might have professional qualms about the slobber he spreads on his collection. Here's a cute still of him taking a bite out of Brown Bear, Brown Bear.

One of the things Emily and I discussed prior to Alastair's arrival was planning a weekly Sunday adventure. In lieu of church, we'd set aside family time to explore, learn, and get out of the house. We haven't been motivated to plan many adventures yet, but today we had a great time taking Alastair to his first museum. Both Emily and I were keen to see the exhibit "Endless forms": Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts at the Yale Center for British Art.

Yale's art museums are free, which is perfect for babies in case you can only stay a short time. Alastair was a champ today, so we were able to linger for a good while. I had him in his BabyBjorn carrier. He hung there on my chest, content and even thrilled just to look around and take in the scene, giggling quietly, but loud enough to charm the guards (we could have walked out with a painting and they wouldn't have noticed). The exhibit had a nice mix of small things: notes, drawings, specimens, engravings; and big things: paintings, photographs, sculpture, etc. Alastair was particularly excited by one large display of specimens of birds arranged around a tree as if they were still alive. He also liked looking at a big TV showing footage of peacock mating rituals. Perhaps we have a budding ornithologist on our hands.

As we were leaving, Emily visited the ladies room. I waited outside with Alastair (who had the hiccups), along with another man. When his wife exited the restroom, he said to her, "Did you see the baby with the hiccups exhibit?" She looked confused, then on cue Alastair hiccuped loudly and got her attention, as well as a good laugh from me and the other gentleman.

More Machine than Man

2009-03-07T23:35:00.004-05:00

I've had a significant hearing loss in my right ear since I was young. Around age 8 or 9 I developed a ringing in my right ear after a bad cold. My ear rang for a year, and after all was said and done I struggled to hear higher frequencies in that ear.

Most people would never know this about me because it never handicapped me in an appreciable way. [My mother might have disagreed with this point. My teenage years were torture to her...she knew I wasn't listening to her, but the possibility always existed that I couldn't hear her. I allowed the ambiguity to persist as much as possible.] My old bandmates knew because I was maniacal about protecting my good ear. Emily knows because I sit on her right if I want to hear her at the movies, and sit on her left if I want to focus on the film.

Over the past few years I've noticed my right ear getting worse, and with Alastair arriving last summer, the volume of sounds in the house suddenly became an issue where it rarely was in the past. For significant chunks of the day, and all night after his bedtime, the TV has to be quiet, our voices need to be subdued, and music can't be blasted. Fatherhood quickly made me think it might be time for a hearing aid.

I'm always eager to throw technology at a problem, so I took the plunge. After getting tested in December and confirming that my right ear has deteriorated over the last ten years (I'm REALLY bad in the higher frequencies now - I can stand next to a smoke alarm, plug my left ear, and only hear a quiet tone), I picked up my first hearing aid on Thursday.

Day 1 was a little shaky. It seemed like all I was hearing was wind. I'd hear the air going by as I walked down the hall, not just outside in the breeze. I constantly heard my own voice. I was constantly aware of the hunk of plastic in my ear. I wasn't keen on hearing myself eat. Suffice it to say I wasn't a happy camper. Day 2 was better, although I did cheat by taking it out while I listened to headphones at work. Day 3, today, was better yet. I forgot about it for long stretches and didn't play with it much at all. Wind is still an issue, but less so indoors.

Everyone says it takes your brain time to adjust to hearing new things. If the wind continues to be a problem, I may return it and upgrade to a more expensive model that includes wind noise cancellation, which will be key while I'm biking. Wind cancellation or not, I can tell just how bad my right ear was when I take the hearing aid out. Feels like I'm totally deaf on that side without it. I guess that means I'm going to be part machine from now on.

Cute, clever, and cranially endowed

2009-02-26T21:56:00.005-05:00

The next major developmental milestone for Alastair will likely be crawling. He isn't showing many signs of being on the go, but he's picking up new tricks here and there. For now we're happy that he can sit and play with his toys on his own, at least for a minute or two.

Now that he's eating solid foods three times a day - this week is squash...very yummy - he's spending more and more time in his high chair. He likes it there because he has a good view of Felix, he can look out the window (a new interest), and can see us while we do things in the kitchen.

We often leave toys on his tray for him to play with and/or throw on the floor. He quickly learned that throwing all of his toys on the floor will get our attention and bring us over to pick them up. Now he's moving on to new uses. Today I noticed that he was banging his Haba ring on the leg of the high chair as a means of getting Felix's attention. Check it out.

Clearly Felix knows Alastair's game and won't give him the satisfaction of reacting. You'll notice that AGR's heart isn't wholly into it on the video. He's keenly away of the camera and despite my hiding in the living room he knew the tape was rolling.

Being the charming cad that he is, Alastair received a few 6 month birthday presents from some of his more ardent admirers, including Rebecca and Erich (thanks guys!), who were kind enough to send along a few things, including a hat. We go on about how large his head is - it's in the 97th percentile for his age - so they smartly sent one sized for 18-24 month olds. That would certainly be big enough, right? Um, no. Check it out:

Nice try Zimmermanns. Next time go for the 4-year old sizes. Pretty soon Alastair will be able to borrow his daddy's hats.

We're certainly tired of winter here, and imagine that many of you are as well, so I'll close this post with something that will undoubtedly warm your hearts. What was the internet invented for if not for videos of giggling babies?

Take that Mr. Groundhog.

New Friends and New Things to Chew On

2009-02-18T11:50:00.002-05:00

Alastair is almost able to sit up on his own. To prevent him from toppling over onto his face, I put the Boppy around him to provide some support. Here he is sitting up in his crib:
Yesterday, while in this position, he discovered a new chew toy!
That is one tasty crib. And it must feel good on the new teeth that are coming in (he already has his two bottom teeth - now the top ones are popping through.)

This morning, Alastair and I hosted a playdate. Grace came over with her mom Lisa, and Niv and his mom Shiri joined us. The babes took turns in the jumparoo while the moms had blueberry cake and tea. And then I brought down a basket full of toys and Alastair did his best to share them with Grace and Niv.
That's a lot of toys!

This one is my favorite, because it looks like Alastair is totally eyeing whatever Niv is playing with, and it also shows how ladylike and adorable Grace is (it's so funny having a boy and then seeing how different little baby girls can be.) And I love how they're all wearing bibs - though Alastair has still managed to get the top of his shirt covered in drool.

Finally, for those keeping track, here are Alastair's stats from his 6 month appointment:
weight: 19 lbs. 10 oz.
height: 27.5 inches
head: 46 cm. (that's about the 97th percentile for head size, baby!)

One Half of a Year

2009-02-11T13:01:00.004-05:00

Today is Alastair's 6 month birthday! That deserves another exclamation point. ! The weeks from about 4 1/2 months to now have been filled with so many changes, I thought I'd highlight a few.

A big change is that we hardly ever swaddle Alastair anymore. I was a bit worried that we would still be wrapping him up like a burrito on his 7th birthday, but he no longer needs to have his arms pinned down in order to sleep. When we put him down at night, he wears this fleece bag-with-arms thing over his jammies to keep him warm (oh my god, he wears a Snuggie.) And when he naps, I still sort of swaddle his torso with the blanket. I don't know why I do this, maybe I'm having a hard time letting go. But I promise I'll stop before he's 7.

Alastair has also turned into a crotch grabber (his own, if that needed clarification.) This development really annoys me, but I'm not quite sure what to do about it. It started back around Xmas when he had some bad diaper rash, and he'd grab... down there... whenever I took his diaper off to change him. I thought he was just hurting from the rash. But the rash is gone and he still does it whenever I take his diaper off. He always does it with is left hand, too - perhaps he will be left-handed? I know this isn't that big of a deal, but it's put a serious crimp in naked-tummy-time, which was always fun.

Besides his crotch, Alastair is grabbing anything he can get his hands on these days, and then trying to get said thing into his mouth. This is most exciting when he's sitting in his Bumbo on the kitchen counter (yes, I know we're probably not supposed to have him up there in his Bumbo.) He got the lid to the cookie jar the other day - yum, cookies! Now we know to keep the counter clean.

Recently he has discovered the joys of grabbing mommy's hair - I'm often untangling strands of it from his little hands. Ew, that is gross. And he has developed a love of his toes. These I allow him to eat, because baby toes are delicious.

There are so many other new things - Alastair now loves loves loves Felix, he gets so excited when he sees him. He squeals with delight. And he's getting more playful in the bath, splashing and being silly. And sometimes in the middle of the night, I hear him in his crib scratching the mattress with his fingernails, over and over again. He's not upset, I think he just likes the sound it makes.

I'll leave you with two things. First, an adorable video from this morning of Alastair eating pears.

And we've decided to take a family photo on the 11th of every month. Here's today's photo:

Solid Foods for AGR

2009-02-01T22:14:00.004-05:00

Today marks two successful weeks of solid foods for Alastair. Well, by "solid", of course, I mean foods that were at one point solid. I tried to convince Emily that beef jerky would be a good place to start, but she issued the mommy veto.

We started with the traditional rice cereal. I'm of the opinion that this was a waste of time...I think he gets more substance and nutrition when he gnaws on Brown Bear, Brown Bear than he did from the rice cereal. I know that the whole purpose of the rice cereal is to introduce solids with something that has almost zero chance of setting off an allergic reaction, but that makes it B-O-R-I-N-G. Here's a video of his first taste.

[EDIT: Sorry I put the sweet potato video in twice. Here's the proper video of the rice cereal. -MR]

The food was boring, but its effects were pretty humorous. About an hour or so after Alastair's first taste of rice cereal, he turned into a complete madman. Screaming, carrying on, standing, waving his arms. He had the spirit and needed to let it out. Maybe he has an allergy to boring food and this was the symptom. Check out the mania.

After a week of rice cereal we moved on to Gerber's organic sweet potatoes. Sounded more exciting than rice cereal, and Alastair certainly liked it better. He took to chomping down on the spoon with his two little teeth. It was also much more gratifying to Emily and me from a comedy standpoint. Having your baby smile at you with orange mush all over his face as if he just gorged on buffalo wings never fails to make you giggle.

We shifted from a once a day schedule to a breakfast and dinner schedule, so Alastair had lots of opportunity to develop his taste for sweet potatoes. By the end of the week he was lunging for the spoon and swallowing very well. We even made it through one feeding with a clean bib. Still need some work in that department though.

Today we started on peas. We're not drawing conclusions yet, but initial returns aren't positive. The peas are slightly thicker than the sweet potatoes, which are nice and smooth. The mashed potato consistency clearly took Alastair by surprise. Peas aren't as sweet either. So we're going to have to keep at it...if daddy has his way AGR will be loving peas by the end of the week. Next week will bring yet another smooth treat.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T09:45:00.000-05:00

Monkey See...

2008-11-25T14:18:00.002-05:00

I thought it would be fun to do some posts about the cool books that Alastair has been receiving. It should be no surprise that he has quite the library already, and some definite favorites. Really, some books make him smile and giggle, it's quite amazing.

First up is "Monkey World: an A - Z of Occupations" by Matthew Porter. This was a gift from the lovely Rosanne and Doug (it finally came - thanks guys!)
Each letter of the alphabet is a different occupation, with a funny poem and illustration.

Detective
I solve the riddles and the muddles;
Follow footprints into puddles;
Hunt for clues among the grass;
With my magnifying glass.

There is no thief I cannot catch;
I have yet to meet my match;
My methods are most effective;
I'm a truly great detective!

It is such a fun book, perhaps more enjoyable for the parents than the kid, but still. Here are some more images:

And sticking with the monkey theme, here is a cute photo of Alastair napping in his monkey jammies:
Aren't those the most kissable cheeks?!

Alastair, Viral Video Star

2008-11-13T23:46:00.002-05:00

Well, I may be exaggerating a bit. So far Alastair hasn't shown up on The Soup, been mashed up with Spaghetti Cat, or been rickrolled, but he is a growing presence on Youtube. Emily and I have been posting clips to my Youtube channel for a while. Now that we have a respectable number of videos up, we can properly assist in your goal of killing time at work. Hopefully the cuteness to follow will help Friday roll by quickly.

This first video is the oldest, and it makes me nostalgic for when I could walk around endlessly with AGR on my shoulder. He's so much bigger now, I'd tear my rotator cuff if I tried that.

Next up we have Alastair and Caitlin Sizer, who is two days younger than our boy, hanging out together in his pack 'n' play. Caitlin's mom and dad, Tracy and Mark, came over a while ago and we had a serious laughing fit just watching them squirm around, even though they pretty much ignored each other. No doubt they will hate us for this one day.

OK, no more sharing the spotlight. Here we have one of our most exciting mornings. I was in the shower getting ready for work, when Emily made me dry off quickly and come into the nursery. Alastair had discovered one of his toys (thanks Jen, Sandy and Isaac!), which was hanging on the side of his crib. Not only that, but he discovered that if he hit it, it would move. Cause and effect, hurray!

This video captures Alastair's first opportunity to taste anything other than breast milk. He was having some trouble moving his bowels and straining a lot. So a few weeks ago, at the advice of his doctor, we gave him some prune juice to help smooth his movements along. His facial reactions to the prune juice are precious. You don't have to thank us for not recording his intestinal reaction later that day. Ugh.

Finally, here's Alastair playing with another of his favorite toys. Well, in truth it's more me talking in my baby voice, of which I am in no way embarrassed. There's some great smiles and giggle from the little man, as well as a guest appearance by Felix.

That's it for now. We'll keep posting videos, so keep an eye on the Youtube channel, and on the blog.

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T08:16:00.002-04:00

Alastair is a worm for his first Halloween - a great big wiggly worm! His grandmom Sally made the awesome costume and this photo was taken at her house a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully Alastair will still fit into it when we see trick-or-treaters tonight.

The New Best Reason New Haven Rocks

2008-09-10T22:48:00.002-04:00

Since moving to New Haven 3 1/2 years ago, there have been many things I've missed about Boston. Modern big screen movie theaters, real newspapers (other than The Times), the ubiquity of the Red Sox, good bands coming through, etc., etc. That said, New Haven can stake a claim to some things Boston cannot: the world's best pizza (Boston pizza is hit or miss, mostly miss), white birch beer, free Yale museums, and more bike-friendly streets. All of these things, however impressive, have been trumped by the latest, greatest reason to live and work in New Haven: The Cupcake Truck.

I can't quite describe the sensation The Cupcake Truck has caused. When I posted something about it to Facebook, I had friends leaving comments about moving to New Haven within seconds. There's something about saying "Cupcake Truck" that makes people drool. I know I momentarily lost all dignity when I heard about it. I must have sounded like Scooby Doo: "Cupcake Truck? Let's go Shaggy!" "Cupcake" has an effect similar to "bacon" ... combine it with anything and it gets people excited, except that "cupcake" gets the vegetarians worked up too.

Last week my friends and colleagues Jennifer and Clayton joined me in checking out the truck. It totally lived up to my expectations. You pick a cupcake. You pick a frosting. If you are feeling decadent, you pick an additional topping or two. For $2, you get a cup of sugary nostalgia, made to your own special culinary specs. Simple, fun, and irresistible.

I went with chocolate cake and vanilla buttermilk frosting. Straightforward goodness, hard to screw up but harder to truly shine. The cupcake was light and moist, but very chocolaty. The frosting was airy and creamy, with just enough sugar to make me lick the wrapper when I was done. The cake might have been a touch crumbly (I've heard others make this minor critique also), but that's nitpicking. On my next visit, I think I'll try the red velvet cake with a chocolate frosting.

One neat thing about the Cupcake Truck is that they keep a blog where they post their daily menu. Every morning I look forward to that day's menu showing up in Google Reader. If only the feed off the Times front page brought such happy news.

OK, here's the obligatory Alastair photo. I took this tonight. He snuck one hand out of his swaddling blanket. I thought he looked like Napoleon Bonaparte.

Mommy Has Some Catching Up To Do

2008-09-10T14:57:00.005-04:00

Look at this delightfully huge pile of magazines that I have yet to read. I guess I've been a bit busy recently.
Included here are a few Luckys, Vogues (including the HUGE fall fashion issue), and dominos, a Cookie, the fall tv preview issue of Entertainment Weekly, even the 2009 Ikea catalog (I think of it as a magazine more than a catalog.) Alastair and I are having fun reading through these, though I have to read them outloud because these days his eyes are caked shut from goo. I don't know, it's some sort of baby thing.

Speaking of the baby, I feel like I shouldn't do a post without including a picture of him. So here's a funny one:
Look at how big his head is!! And check out that chubby chin roll, heehee. In this shot, he's squirming like crazy because he's unswaddled. He just doesn't know what to do with his limbs when they're not tightly pinned down by the blanket. What a funny boy.

Four Weeks of Ups and Downs...

2008-09-08T21:56:00.000-04:00

Tonight at 11:20pm, our baby will be a month old! These first few weeks with Alastair have been incredibly hard. Of course they've been magical and wonderful and amazing, but also quite difficult. It's a horrible feeling to listen to your baby cry and not know why he's so upset. And when you're delirious from lack of sleep, you start to think of all these crazy ideas about why he's crying - maybe my breast milk is poisoning him, maybe he's constipated, maybe his brain is bleeding, maybe he's just a bastard and is trying to ruin my life (haha, no, I never thought that).

But things are slowly getting better. For starters, I'm feeling a lot more normal. I wasn't quite prepared for how awful I was going to feel when I got home from the hospital. But, duh, birthing a baby hurts and takes a nasty toll on your body. But I'm healing, thank goodness.

And the past several days have been pretty good. Alastair hasn't had a really bad crying fit in the middle of the night in a while (I can handle them in the daylight hours.) And even though I'm still nervous about leaving him unattended for any length of time, I managed to take a shower when Mike wasn't home because I discovered that if I leave the bathroom door open, I can see Alastair in his crib from the shower. I now know that I can pretty reliably get the little fussbucket to stop crying by holding him while bouncing on the exercise ball (which actually makes me a bit nervous because I feel like I'm going to have to bring this ball with me everywhere, or require everyone I know to get one.) And I no longer have shooting pain my wrists and forearms when I pick him up (he's a big boy.)

So who knows what tonight will be like. We're certainly far from any sort of reliable schedule yet. But I'm happy to report that Mike, Alastair, Felix and I have survived the first month, pretty much unscathed.

2nd Pediatrician Visit

2008-08-26T21:02:00.002-04:00

Alastair, Emily and I journeyed out to the Yale Health Plan this afternoon for the little man's second pediatrician appointment. Emily and I were anxious to find out how much he weighs...judging by the increasing ache in Emily's wrist, we knew he was adding the ounces, but we were still anxious to know how much. At his first appointment a week ago Friday he weighed 6 lbs, 10 oz, down from his birth weight of 7, 2.5.

The drive there was uneventful. I think that because Felix is such an anxiety inducing passenger (the threat of dog vomit is ever present), I have an unwarranted level of concern for my son when he's along for the ride. Alastair definitely likes the car...he is a very quiet and well behaved back seat passenger. We have a Graco Snugride that seems to be comfortable for him, but it's a bit of a tight fit in the back of the Subaru. It's also impossible for us to see him when we're in the front seat...maybe we'll get one of those mirrors so we can see him.

Once we were in the examining room, he went right onto the scale. His weight is up to 7 lbs, 14 oz. That's over a pound in just over a week! Emily's concerns that he wasn't getting enough breast milk were unfounded...he's obviously feeding like a champ to pack on those ounces. He's half an inch longer and his head is bigger too. No surprise there...he get's so much positive feedback from us his head will be swelling more and more.

The rest of the exam was uneventful. He's doing well in all regards. Alastair (and Emily and I) quite enjoyed the glider that was in the examination room. We previously poo-pooed them in Babies R Us, but he chilled right out while I rocked him after he got fussy waiting for the doctor to come in.

We really like his doctor...she has a very calm, matter-of-fact, oh-yes-that's-normal-dear kind of demeanor. Plus I half imagine her wearing a cocktail dress, lounging in a jazz club, smoking a cigarrette with a long stemmed holder. In the movie of our lives she will be played in a cameo by Susan Sarandon. The leads of course will be Kerri Russel and Christian Bale. [Feel free to cast yourself in the comments.]

Whence Alastair Grant?

2008-08-19T22:37:00.003-04:00

We've gotten some very nice reviews on the name Alastair Grant Rush, so I thought I'd give some background on the choice.

For a long time, if we had a boy, I wanted to name him Grant, after my maternal grandfather. Emily warmed to the name, so we were looking for a middle name. Nothing came easily, but eventually I mentioned Alastair as a possible middle name. Seeing the name Alastair Macaulay, who is the dance critic for the New York Times, gave me the idea. Emily liked it immediately.

So for some time our boy's name was Grant Alastair. About a month ago, however, while walking Felix after work, I started to think that Alastair Grant worked better. I sheepishly raised the switch with Emily, and she agreed. Alastair Grant it was. In one way, it is an even better tribute to my grandfather....Grant was actually his middle name, which he went by because he shared his first name, William, with his father.

According to Wikipedia and other online sources, Alastair is the anglicized version of the Scottish (Gaelic) version of Alexander, "protector of men." In Gaelic it's spelled Alasdair. In English, Alastair is the dominant spelling, but there are lots of variations (see the ridiculous list on Wikipedia). The emphasis is on the first syllable, and the last syllable is pronounced "ster", not "stair". Spelled phonetically, it's Alister.

One very cute story: when Emily's brother Ian told his daughter Hannah that Aunt Emily had a baby boy named Alastair, she replied, "Alice? That's a funny name for a boy."

Thumbs up on Alastair's First Week

2008-08-19T21:12:00.004-04:00

Alastair gives a thumbs up on his first week.

To our great joy, Alastair Grant Rush was born a week ago, on Monday, August 11, 2008. Emily's water broke at 11:30 PM on Saturday the 9th. She was in bed, I was in the kitchen making beef jerky. We made a trip to the hospital Sunday morning, but as serious contractions had yet to start, we went home and rested all day. By Monday morning contractions still had yet to get going, so we returned to the hospital where they put Emily on a pitocin drip to help the contractions along.

Boy or girl?

After a day of contractions, one epidural, a solid nap, and a heavy rainstorm (Emily's favorite weather), Emily started pushing just after Jeopardy, continued through House Hunters and Design to Sell on HGTV, and then switched over to the Olympics, where beach volleyball, swimming, Michael Phelps, and men's gymnastics inspired her to earn the gold medal for pushing. Alastair made his debut, after four hours of pushing, at 11:20 PM, just after an iPhone commercial. He weighed in at 7 lbs, 2.5 oz, 21" long.

It's been a long but fantastic week. We came home on Wednesday, and had the great fortune to have Emily's mom Sally with us all week. Thank you for everything Sally! (Felix especially thanks you for the wonderful morning walks.)

Alastair has been very agreeable for the most part, and every day has gotten easier. Mom is recovering nicely, still taking things easy and making liberal use of the seat pad we brought home from the hospital, but already fitting into her pre-pregnancy funpants.

Dad has been busy as designated burping, laundry, and grocery man. He is a little obsessed with taking pictures of Alastair as he rests in his lap, as even a cursory glance at our Flickr stream will show you. He turned his work email off on his iPhone, and is enjoying the (mostly) quiet family time.

We've put a lot of photos up on Flickr, so keep your eye there for all the cuteness you can handle. And stay tuned here for ongoing Alastair news.

Sentimental Onesie, Mystery Onesie

2008-07-26T21:49:00.005-04:00

Now that we are on the other side of Emily's baby showers (she'll be giving a recap of those herself), we have begun to sort out the clothing situation. If the nursery's current condition is a bellwether of things to come, then our child will likely be quite a clotheshorse.

Two onesies are of particular interest to me, one for sentimental reasons, one for mysterious reasons. The first is from a layette set that my mother gave me just a few months before she passed away. I think it must have been in the Fall of 2000, as she passed away in the Spring of 2001. She was working at AJ Wright in Brockton, MA at the time, while she was living with my Aunt Ruth to help take care of my grandmother, who was suffering from Alzheimer's, and my grandfather.

The layette set was packaged as the "Greatest Layette Hits" of John Lennon. A onesie, hat, and booties were packaged like an LP, CD, and cassette. They all have illustrations on them, which were taken from drawings by Lennon.

Louise knew that I love the Beatles, so when she saw the set at AJ Wright, she picked it up and gave it to me as a very early baby gift. The timing was fortuitous, as her metastasized ovarian cancer was diagnosed that Fall. One of her last gifts to me was also her first gift to her grandchild. I'll smile and think of her every time I struggle with the onesie snaps.

The mysterious onsie is a very cute Red Sox number. Emily was gracious enough to let me add it to the registry, although it was difficult to resist adding a slew of similarly styled stuff. I was very excited when we saw that it was one of the very first items to be purchased from our Amazon registry.

Unfortunately, when it arrived it had no gift note. At the time we figured someone would mention it, but no one has, so we have no idea who sent it to us. If you bought the Red Sox onesie, can you let us know it was you?

[EDIT: The giver of the Red Sox onesie has been identified! Thank you Kelly!]

Four on the Fourth

2008-07-07T22:14:00.003-04:00

For the second year in a row Emily and I celebrated Independence Day at the Chester Four on the Fourth Road Race. Well, Emily celebrated by enjoying downtown Chester, and I celebrated by sweating my way around town through the humidity and over the hills. We were joined by Adam, taking a break from his marathons for a leisurely four mile jog, and Mark and Tracy, with Mark running as well and Tracy gestating as well.

We all met up at the local Catholic parish center where we registered, picked up our numbers and t-shirts, and compared notes on proper starting position.

At the start of the race there was a very nice tribute to a local man who is currently serving in Kuwait. Michael Pitruzzello called his wife on her cell phone and addressed the runners at the start before running four miles in the dessert at the same time. It was very touching and upbeat, perfect for the day. I was a bit verklempt, I must admit. Channel 8 even carried the story.

Mark and I stuck together for the first half of the race. As the race was starting we made sure to jog by our better halves and wave. Emily and Tracy camped out in folding chairs at a convenient spot where the race passes twice. It should be no surprise that I did not look as cheerful the second time I went by.

Remarkably, we were all smiling after the race, if for different reasons. Adam had good reason to smile as he finished 18th overall, which is very impressive. I was smiling because I knew I didn't have to run another step for another year if I didn't want. (I didn't do as well this year as last. Let's blame the humidity.) I'm pretty sure Mark is smiling because someone was taking his picture without his shirt on. (Sally, be sure to show Jane and Joan this picture...you three can reminisce about our rehearsal dinner.)

After the race Emily and I went to Mark and Tracy's house for lunch. We had a good time eating burgers and salad and comparing pregnancy notes. Mark and I resolved that next year we'll run the race with jogging strollers. Now that will be a funny photo opportunity.

As told by Michael

2008-06-30T22:16:00.007-04:00

When I was little, my father, like any good dad, read me stories before bed. As a soon-to-be father myself, this strikes me as both one of the great joys and trials of being a parent. I can only imagine the thrill I'll get from seeing my child enthralled by the same stories I loved, but I can also see myself getting a tired of the same story over and over. As a boy, I managed to grow up never having heard Good Night Moon, but I certainly had Where the Wild Things Are read to me quite a few times.

No doubt my father got plenty sick of reading the same books over and over again. When I was around 4 years old, he started to mix up the routine by having me dictate stories to him, which he carefully wrote down. He did this fairly often, and saved all of the stories in a folder with Popeye on it. I still have the stories and the folder.

I wish I could ask him today what his motivation was and where he got the idea. I like to think that out of desperate boredom the idea came to him, a brilliant parenting brainstorm to break the monotony. More likely he read about it somewhere, but either way I think it was a great way to encourage creativity and to leave his son with a folder full of cherished early memories with his dad.

A few years ago, soon after I started working as an archivist, I thought it would be a great idea to do a home-grown digitization project. I would scan the stories, transcribe them, and put the whole mess up on the Web. I did get around to scanning the stories, but not much else.

Seven years later I'm about to be a father, missing my own dad, and thinking of reading stories and eventually writing them down, just as Gary did. As a small tribute to him, I've posted the scans of my stories to Flickr. Here are a few of my favorites.

This one isn't dated, but compared with the others I think it's a very early story. My narrative structure was fairly simple. My writing process pretty much consisted of listing all of the TV characters I could think of.

Mickey Mouse Story

Minnie and Mickey were walking. They saw Mertie and Ferdie. Then they saw Donald. Then they saw his nephews. Then they saw Goofy. Then they saw Pluto. Then they saw Grover. Then they saw Big Bird. Then they saw Gordon. Then they saw Oscar. Then they saw Big Bird's nest. Then they went to Minnie and Mickey's house and shopped.

As told by Michael.

Things gradually got more complicated, growing from a list of all of the Disney and Sesame Street characters I could think of to more action-packed yarns. You can clearly see in this story my future loves of comic books and public history sites taking root in my subconscious. [This may have been written after a formative trip to Philly where I saw the Liberty Bell.]

1/6/82

Batman and Robin Meet Mity [sic] Mouse

One day Batman and Robin met Mity Mouse. Who else followed Mity Mouse but the Joker and he followed Mity Mouse right to Batman and Robin. He said, "If you meet me at the old state house tonight I will go after you tonight." Batman and Robin jumped into the Batmobile and soared off and Mity Mouse slipped right into the trunk of the Batmobile. They soared off to the old state house. Who would be waiting there but the Joker. There he was, right up there where the old bell used to be.

To be continued tomorrow night.

My favorite of the bunch is undated, but I think it is from my "middle period." I'm experimenting with post-modern verse to explore my anxieties about growing into a big boy while still yearning for the warm embrace of my little boy world.

Little and High

Big Bird pretends he's small.
Now pretend Little Bird is tall.
Now pretend a snail is big.
Now we will change Big Bird back into big and Little Bird back into little.
Now Big Bird went to his nest and took a nap and he had his teddy bear with him and also his blanket.

As told by Michael

Growing Green, Growing Round

2008-06-21T23:22:00.003-04:00

Denizens of the web, you have been clamoring for more photos of Emily's belly. Why, you ask, have we posted so many pictures of our back yard, when the real action is in Mrs. Rush's waistline? Well, we aim to please, so here are some pics of Emily's baby bump. In our back yard, of course.

Looking very pregnant but very happy. Check out that belly!

Pots on the wall, bun in the oven. We now have a favorite garden center, Vinny's in Wallingford. We got these plants there, as well as all of the seed, fertilizer, and mulch for the grass.

Last year we trimmed this rose bush back and removed a lot of dead branches. It seems to have rebounded very nicely...it has many more blooms this year than last. Between the roses and the honeysuckle vines on the back fence, our back yard smells great. BTW, it was a minor miracle to get Felix to face the right way for this photo...you can see I used his bone to bribe him.

We're trying to spend time with Felix in the back yard so that he is more comfortable there. He dislikes being out there alone, so we are trying to train him to enjoy it by giving him lots of treats. Our hope is that he'll be happy back there as an escape from baby central. Tonight he was content to chill outside with Emily and chew a bone while I mowed the lawn. Note how green it looks now! That was all dirt just a month or so ago. I keep catching squirrels messing around digging holes. Hopefully Felix will learn to enjoy harassing them.

Sandwiches in Charlottesville

2008-06-21T22:30:00.003-04:00

I spent the week before last in at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, attending a class at Rare Book School. The class itself was excellent, although it had relatively little to do with rare books. It was called Designing Archival Description Systems, and was more of a workshop than a class. We spent a lot of time imagining and sketching the archival description database and web interface of the future...great fun, with a nifty group of people.

Here I am in my dorm room at UVA. The beginning of the week was super hot in Charlottesville, so I was happy to spend my time in an air conditioned dorm room and conference room, although it was strange to alternate between chilly and hot. I felt a little odd having a hoody tied around my waist when walking around in 100+ heat.

The highlight of the week was being able to return to my favorite sandwich shop in the world, Take It Away, which is right off of the UVA campus.

I first fell in love with the place when I attended Rare Book School in 2005. Returning three years later it was just as good as I remembered.

Its brilliance is in its simplicity. Pick a meat. Pick a cheese. Pick a bread (freshly baked). Pick a sauce (go with the house, which is kinda like a particularly creamy Caesar dressing). If you want to go crazy, add sprouts and cucumbers. That's it. Can't exactly mess that up, can you?

To complement the sandwich, you can pick from a ridiculous selection of potato chips. Besides being beautiful to look at, the chip display carries several of my favorite chip brands, including Dirty and Utz. It also has a decent selection of interesting sodas, beers, and wine, in addition to the usual suspects.

Here you see a wonderful smoked turkey sandwich on sourdough, with swiss, sprouts and cukes, and house dressing. The bread is all baked baguette style and cut on the diagonal so you get wonderful large smooshy centers and crispy edges. I was very partial to the Sprecher ginger ale.

My favorite sandwich of the week was baked ham on wheat, again with swiss, sprouts, cukes, and house. Always get the house. With this lunch I opted for a cookie rather than chips, going with cookie with oreo chunks baked in. It was much creamier than I expected...very good. The Sprecher root beer was so so...I like something more sharp...this was smoother with a heavy honey flavor.

Grass and mushrooms

2008-06-13T13:35:00.003-04:00

First of all, this post has nothing to do with drugs, though the title would suggest otherwise. No, instead it's time for a yard update! Geez, we sure do have a lot to say about our yard. One would think that I actually spend a good deal of time outside, but I really don't.

We now have a grassy backyard:
Keep in mind that this picture was taken a week or so ago, so it looks even better now. It's green and soft and I won't be afraid to put my baby right on it. I'd also like to take a moment to publicly admit to Mike that I was wrong and I'm sorry I doubted you. I did not think that rototilling the backyard and creating a vast mud-pit would lead to such nice results. I really didn't think that grass would grow back there, but all that raking and leveling of the dirt and watering has really paid off. Good job!

In not so good news, we have a problem with our hydrangea bushes in the front yard:

My completely unscientific diagnosis is mushroom root rot (which is really fun to say) or honey fungus (which, if true, means we could eat these 'shrooms - yuck). Does anyone know? I'm just going to ask Mike to dig them up and we'll plant some new ones and hope for the best.

Fencing

2008-05-24T23:49:00.003-04:00

Dearest readers, you didn't think that ripping up our backyard would be the only major outdoor project at La Casa Rush last week, did you? Of course it wasn't. Before I even got around to actually putting grass seed down in out backyard, I dove right into a fence-building project.

Ever since we bought our house last year Emily and I have wanted to fence off the back yard so that we can bring Felix back there without worrying about him running off and playing in traffic. I didn't mind having him back there off-leash with me, but he certainly couldn't be left out there alone. I imagine that the given the opportunity to run free he would have just sat by the back door and waited impatiently for us to let him in, but that's not something we wanted to find out from experience. And with the baby coming soon, it will become a necessity to be able to just kick Felix out so he can do his business without putting on his leash and going around the block. I think that he will grow to appreciate a little private time in the back yard away from Baby Rush. Well, actually, I know he'll hate being back there alone, but I hope he'll grow to accept it.

On our many dog walks around the neighborhood, Emily pointed out a certain style of fence that she was fond of. There are several houses with similar fences over on Front Street in Fair Haven. She likes the evenly-spaced square slats.

To build our fence I was extremely fortunate to have the help and tutelage of my friend Blake. He's got a little handyman business on the side when he isn't teaching geography at Yale or Southern Connecticut. He had the tools and the know-how. I had a picture of a fence, some Lowe's coupons, and a credit card. Toss in seven hours on a weekend and some cold beverages and we had ourselves a fence.

The trickiest part of building the fence was getting the gates aligned correctly. We did a great job of keeping the posts plumb and level, which made hanging the gate much easier.

On the narrow side of the yard it's all gate. Here Blake looks happy because we built that gate super-fast. We were racing against the clock because Emily and I had company coming over late Sunday morning. He and I joked that we were ready for the World Speed Fence Building Competition.

Emily was very excited by the finished fence. Even before the baby arrives, I imagine that there will be afternoons this summer when she doesn't want move in the heat, to say nothing of walking Felix. Hopefully the backyard will have grass for him to lie in by then.

By the time I finished the fence I was a little loopy. It was at the end of a long day, standing in the rain, that I mounted the final slat. The battery on my power drill died the very moment that I put in the last screw. Here's a creepy shot of me showing off the gate.

Excavation, Part II

2008-05-15T22:33:00.003-04:00

In a previous post, Emily posted pictures of the gigantic hole I dug in the back yard to excavate the concrete thingy I discovered. Last night I was finally able to get it out of the hole. In truth, I was finally able to watch my friend Mark get it out of the hole for me, but seeing how difficult it can be to find an hour when Mark isn't either working or thinking of working, I still count it as an impressive feat. I know that many of our devoted readers are anxious to find out what the hell was buried in our yard. Unfortunately, I still don't know, but here's what it looked like:

It's like a triple decker PB & J sandwich, except instead of peanut butter and jelly, the layers are concrete and brick. There's a small metal rod protruding ever so slightly from the top of it, so my assumption is that it was part of a foundation for an old structure of some kind. I'm actually growing fond of it...perhaps we can use it as a stool in a rock garden or something. I'll have to see if IKEA has a line of cushions for concrete thingies excavated from back yards.

The real reason for Mark's visit was to rototill the back yard so that I can plant some fresh grass seed. We had grass on about half of it, but it was scraggly as hell, so I decided to start fresh. Right now it's all dirt with a few stubborn blades of grass standing around like the last guests to leave a party that ran late. We ran out of daylight, so I'll have to finish grading the yard with a rake and throw down the seed this weekend.

Prior to tilling I was already well aware of the bounty of items buried in our back yard, and ripping up the top soil didn't fail to turn up more. Soon after we bought the house I spent a few hours on my hands and knees inspecting all corners of the yard for glass and other foreign objects, of which I found plenty, including a plastic cowboy figurine who now stands on top of our clock in the kitchen.

Digging deeper last night turned up a wide variety of treasures. My personal favorites, which I am saving, are a green letter "W" that looks like it belongs on some kind of menu board and a shard of blue pottery that has "Boston" written on it. Other interesting tidbits include a shard of a glass syrup bottle from San Francisco, an old hoe head, a spoon and fork (just need the knife for the set), a cork, assorted beer caps, a drill bit, 8 cents, and lots of oyster shells (I'm not sure if ours was an oysterman's house, but there's no shortage of shells in the yard). The next time Emily and I buy a house, I'd love it if our friends snuck over before we moved in to bury some trinkets for me to discover. I'll find them, I'm sure of that.

Who calls it Taylor Ham?

2008-05-08T19:00:00.003-04:00

A couple of weekends ago, my mom came to visit us and we had a lovely time. We did some shopping downtown and I got to show her around the library where I work. Although I wouldn't allow her to take a picture of me at the reference desk, we did get a nice picture outside the building:

She brought us some great gifts, most from her recent trip to Georgia and South Carolina. We got pecan candies, key lime cookies and peach sparkling cider - all delicious. She also gave us the most beautiful collection of shells in a little sweetgrass basket:

If I found all of those awesome shells, I don't think I'd give them away. Thanks mom!

The baby also got some presents from grandma:

The adorable shirt and bib are being modeled by my childhood bears Sweetcakes, Snuffy & Fudge (l-r). Right now I have them sitting in the empty baby's room, sending out good vibes. I think this is weirding Mike out.

And finally, no trip into or out of New Jersey is complete without the purchase of porkroll!

My mom always brings some when she visits, and I'm usually sent home with some when I visit her. Now why is this so hard to find outside of Jersey? I guess it's like Tastykake products - if I could have them all the time, I probably wouldn't enjoy them as much.

(Wow - this Wikipedia page is fascinating. I've never called it "taylor ham" before).

Blueberry cake

2008-04-27T22:11:00.002-04:00

On Friday Emily checked out a book from work called The Weekend Baker. The recipes are organized by three levels of difficulty - "baker's express," "baking in stages," and "productions." I'm not sure if we'll get to the productions before the book is due, but on Friday we perused the express recipes and settled on Warm Cinnamon-Spiced Blueberry Cake to try this weekend.

When I woke up on Saturday, Emily was already long back from her walk with Felix and had the KitchenAid mixer humming. Seemed pretty easy to make, at least she made it seem that way. It came out looking great.

The cake was delicious, especially with vanilla ice cream. It just had a hint of cinnamon, which didn't overpower the juicy goodness of the blueberries. It was also very moist, yet not mushy. It is a distant memory at this point, after Emily, Sally, and I polished it off with extreme prejudice. Emily said the baby liked it too, but it might have been the ice cream it was cheering for.

Boston Marathon 2008

2008-04-24T22:05:00.004-04:00

Even though I left Massachusetts to move back to Connecticut three years ago next week, I still make a point to observe the Patriots' Day holiday. I love Connecticut, but it has a definite lack of bogus state or county holidays. In Massachusetts you get Patriot's Day (ostensibly to celebrate the Battles of Concord and Lexington, but really for the Marathon) and in Suffolk County (Boston and its environs) you get Evacuation Day (ostensibly the day the British left Boston, but really St. Patrick's Day). Connecticut should make up a crackpot holiday or two. Cotton Gin Day? Hartford Whalers Remembrance Day? Indian Casino Day? Dr. Mel Day? If you have a good idea for a Connecticut state holiday, leave it in a comment.

Anyways, as I try to do every year, I drove up to watch the Marathon with Adam and Chris. When we lived together in Newton next to the Elliot stop on the T we would usually take the D train out to Woodland, but in recent years we've been watching at the corner of Walnut and Comm Ave, near the Newton Public Library and town hall. There's space there to play frisbee if you want, lots of food vendors congregate at the corner, you can take your picture with the Johnny Kelley statue, and it's right before the start of Heartbreak Hill, so you can see some good grimaces.

This year the weather was beautiful. We've had warmer weather in the past, but the conditions were perfect this year, especially compared with last year's wind and rain. It was a nice surprise that my friend Becky and her mom joined us as well.

I was looking forward to seeing Lance Armstrong run by. When the moment came, much to my horror, I was busy reading an email on my iPhone, and I could only look up to see his yellow t-shirt jogging away. Damn iPhone! The dangers of ubiquitous technology.

A set of my marathon pics is on Flickr.

Belly & Baby

2008-04-22T12:48:00.002-04:00

We haven't been very good about taking lots of shots of my growing belly, but I definitely look pregnant! A coworker of mine at the library told me recently, "You are bigger than when you first started working here." I thought that was a cute way of phrasing it. Good thing I had a reason for my sudden weight gain or he would have been mighty embarrassed. And two women on the street stopped me to ask if I was pregnant and they offered all sorts of congratulations. I didn't even know them, it was really nice. Here's a photo of me and my friend Tracy, who is also pregnant and due only 1 week after me:
I'm so much bigger than her! Tracy looks so tiny. Maybe those stripes aren't helping.

And several weeks ago when I was about 20 weeks, we had the big ultrasound. This is where they check to make sure all the organs and bones are growing correctly and they take lots of notes and measurements. I was lying on the table with goo all over my belly for quite a while just staring at Mike. We couldn't look at the monitor because we don't want to know if it's a boy or a girl, and you never know if the baby might flash you! It was sort of fun knowing that the answer was right there but we're going to wait for the big surprise. Fortunately, the technician was able to show us some images at the end, and we got some to take home too.
Keep in mind that these images were scanned from a transparency, so they are a bit fuzzy. But that's our baby.
And if you look closely, you can see that the baby is facing forward in this photo. You can see his/her nose and mouth and these big eye sockets... we joked that s/he looked like Skeletor, so now that's on the list for possible middle names (just kidding, mom!)

Project Purge / Musical Archeology

2008-04-20T00:03:00.002-04:00

Emily and I are in full pre-baby nesting mode. So far it has manifested itself in the form of lots of painting, replacing light switches and sockets, and assembling IKEA purchases. However, a large part of our current to do list is "Project Purge."

We are very good at parting with our stuff. On a fairly regular basis we thin out our closets and dressers and make trips to good will. Not as frequently, but reliably, we go through our books and donate the ones we don't need - I'm more keen to get rid of the books than Emily, usually. This time we are being a bit more ruthless. I sold my Nintendo DS a few weeks ago, and my PS2 will follow soon. Other things we are just pushing down to the basement, where we'll sort them out later.

As part of this process, you find some interesting things. I came across a VHS tape of my old band Prime Rib playing at the Acme in New York City back on May 12, 2001. This was our second, and slightly more successful performance in NYC. We played at 7 o'clock, so half the city was still asleep. Needless to say it wasn't a packed house. We had some enthusiastic friends, however, which made it better, even if half of them were legally blind (due to my dear friend Amy bringing her friends). I was supposed to borrow a bass amp from the band that was to follow us, only they didn't show up in time, so I plugged into a direct box and could only hear myself ever so slightly through the monitor. You can see in the video that I'm concentrating really hard on keeping time and playing evenly. My bass is quiet early in the set, but the sound guy improved the mix as the gig went on.

In the spirit of sharing, I've posted all ten songs from the Acme gig on Youtube. I hope that Chris, Doug and Pete don't mind. I figured that no one but the four of us would bother to watch. Much to my great surprise, when I logged back in to Youtube to fix some things about two hours after I first uploaded the songs, for some reason 13 people had watched the song Stealing You. Only three of those views were me testing, so at least 10 strangers have seen that clip. Doug, you've gone viral!

More signs of spring

2008-04-17T23:18:00.002-04:00

In addition to the flowers blooming in front of our house, there are more signs of spring in the neighborhood. Across the river the cherry blossoms are coming out along Front Street. We've been hearing more conversations on the street at night. New Haven Public Works is actually sweeping the streets in the Heights. My favorite sign of spring, however, is the swans on the river. Felix approves as well.

I've also noticed more motorcycles around the neighborhood. I think the bikers like to ride up and down Quinnipiac because of the proximity to the river and the nice views. I don't mind, but they can be loud. Today I almost punched a biker - not out of aggression but by accident. I was on my bicycle, stopped at the light on East Grand, about to turn left onto Quinnipiac. As I stuck my left arm out to signal my turn, a biker came by me on the left and I was inches from clotheslining him. Needless to say I was startled, but he seemed non-plussed. I should have been annoyed, but he seemed cheerful (if not remorseful) which always wins me over. If you can be cheerful getting through the East Grand/Quinnipiac intersection, it must be spring.

The Grounds

2008-04-15T12:41:00.004-04:00

Mike and I have been very focused on getting stuff done inside the house before the baby comes, but now that it's getting warmer, some of our attention is shifting to the yard. Mike has big plans for putting down grass seed, but first, he's combing through the dirt and removing nasty bits like glass and forks. And large concrete boulders like this:
What the hell is that? Mike has removed about 5 or 6 of them from our backyard now. Some of them have holes, like maybe for a pole or something, so perhaps there was a large canopy or tent set up outside? We're just not sure. This was buried the deepest and he was out there one night digging away to get it dislodged... I can only hope that our neighbors saw him and thought he was digging a grave. And now the thing is too heavy for him to move himself, so it's just sitting there and it cracks me up whenever I see it:
(can you see why we need the grass seed?)

In other yard news, last fall I planted bulbs and now they're here!
These are in the front, between our hydrangea bushes and they look so cute.

Road Trip 2008

2008-04-06T21:37:00.005-04:00

We've been home for a month now, but our road trip to Florida and back is still fresh on our minds. We took two weeks off and drove down to Port Charlotte to visit Emily's dad Rich and his wife Carolyn, as well as my uncle Ron and aunt Deanna, who happen to live just a mile or two away. We spent five days on the Gulf Coast with them, played some golf, visited Solomon's Castle (a bizarre house covered in aluminum offset printing plates and filled with found object art that comes with ridiculously over the top puns from the tour guide), saw the Red Sox crush Boston College 24-0, visited Sanibel Island where we saw a dolphin playing in the shallows, and toured the Edison and Ford Estates in Fort Myers.

After the chill pace of the Gulf Coast started to seem all too weird to our Northeastern city-dwelling minds, we moved on to Fort Lauderdale to visit our friends Patrick and Sev, who showed us the east coast action. We strangely started our time in Fort Lauderdale at a Renaissance Fair, where we narrowly avoided ordering a mammoth turkey leg, which was remarkable considering the appetite we worked up after our epic game of gigantic Jenga.

But each evening Patrick filled us with excellent home cooking. The highlight for me was visiting South Beach in Miami, which was especially hopping because Miami was hosting a non-stop, several day gay dance party on the beach. There were lots of waxed chests poking out of tight swimsuits walking around. Quite the scene.

On our way home we spent a day in Savannah, which was gorgeous and is probably over-represented in our photos. I'd definitely retire there over Florida...a great walking city with at least one cozy book store, scores of restaurants, and incredibly well-preserved architecture.

The real triumph of the trip was our score in the license plate game. Emily and I managed to see license plates from 45 states, the District of Columbia and 5 Canadian provinces. Only North and South Dakota, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming escaped our grasp. The most exciting find came when we saw Hawaii just as we returned to New Haven, parked right outside Romeo's. I'm not if sure we've ever been more excited.

Our Flickr set from our trip is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/emilyandmike/sets/72157604420427841/.