Today being the first day of winter I figured it was about time I recapped fall.  As mentioned in my last update, after our philly trip, my Mom came up to CT with us to take care of Chen Chen since my paternity leave was just about over.  The following is a brief overview of the highlights of Roman's first fall.

 

11.3 Exersaucer!

Back in the summer before Roman was born, some of Leona's former coworkers got together and gave us an "Excersaucer" for Roman.  However, since it was for "3 months and up" it had been in the basement for a while. Realizing that Roman was well past 3 months, and since my paternity leave was drawing to a close, we thought it would be a good time for me to put it together and get Roman started on it.  He seemed to really enjoy it. 

       

11.11, 11.16 Mom's bday

On Nov. 11, Mom's bday, we took Mom out for dinner, but the real treat was that Mary Beth and Sven came all the way out to Connecticut that Sunday to take Mom out for a nice brunch at River House Tavern.  It's kind of an upscale restaurant, so I was a little worried Roman might get fussy, but during the entire brunch he was either sleeping or giggling.

11.18 Vimco reunion

Some of Leona's former coworkers from VIMCO had been wanting to get together and meeting Roman for a while, and we finally scheduled to meet up at Post Corner Pizza in Darien on Nov. 18th. We lean a little more towards casual restaurants now with Roman, so a Pizza joint on a slow Tuesday night actually worked out quite well.  He was a bit fussy at first (and not just because I didn't have the right sized diapers in my diaper dude bag - thank god there was a CVS a block away), but was good for most of the rest of the dinner.  It was nice catching up with those who could make it.

11.19 First solids

At Roman's 4 month checkup, Roman's pediatrician gave us the go-ahead to start Roman on solid food, so the Wednesday night after the VIMCO reunion, per doctor's orders, we mixed some "rice cereal" with milk and fed him with a spoon for the first time.  It was a bit difficult to manage at first, a) because Roman didn't seem too interested in changing what had been working for his entire life, b) I was afraid to put the spoon too far into his mouth for fear of choking him, and c) when he got the food into his mouth, he didn't necessarily feel the need to swallow, so lots of it would eventually drip out onto his lips and down to his bib.  He eventually got used to it and Leona did a better job of putting the spoon in far enough.

 

After the requisite 3-day waiting period before starting the next type of food, we started him on pears.  He still allowed lots to drip, but seemed to enjoy the pears more, as he would open his mouth wide in anticipation whenever the spoon got close.  In fact sometimes he gets so excited to eat the food, he snaps his mouth closed on the spoon before it's even fully in his mouth, leading to lots of drippage.  Oh well. 

 

At the time of this writing (1month after first starting solids), he is eating pears, apples, carrots, sweet potatoes, peas (grudgingly), and bananas.  For some reason, whenever I feed him bananas, I feel the need to paraphrase Gwen Stephanie and chant: "This baby likes bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S! This baby likes bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!" over and over and over during the whole feeding and for about half an hour afterwards coz I can't get it out of my head. I like to think that he enjoys it, but it's probably more for my own entertainment than for his.

Here he is trying carrots for the first time:

11.22 xmas tree

Leona has always admired my Mom's Xmas tree- how classy and consistent it looks year after year - especially in comparison to our tree festooned with its mishmash of disparate ornaments and lights every year. So, taking full advantage of having Mom stay with us, Leona requested that Mom help revamp our decorations this year. Mom already got us started with her gift of a bunch of "christmas village" paraphanalia xmas gift to Leona last year. After a long day of shopping for a lot of new ornaments and tossing the ornaments that we didn't need, and getting a fresh tree from Stew Leonards, we spent the evening trimming the tree to our Louis Armstrong xmas CD. 

 

Mom didn't like the idea of trashing ornaments that we weren't going to use again, suggesting that I should keep it because someone somewhere might be able to make use of it.  I felt that it would be more trouble than it was worth to do so, and we should just trash things.  Specifically there was a box of about 12 blue balls from Walmart that she thought were worth keeping.  I said, "no, we should throw it away- we only paid like 5 bucks for it, so it's not worth the trouble to keep it" then mom flipped over the box to reveal a "1.99" printed on it, and responded, "well if you paid 5 bucks for it, you got RIPPED OFF!"  We had a good laugh over that one.

 

11.23 Stamford Parade

The Sunday before Thanksgiving was the last year of the UBS-sponsored Stamford Parade.  It's not Macy's but pretty impressive for a "small town" parade.  Cartoon character floats and everthing.  Parking was a problem, and trying to change Roman's diaper in a public restroom while I was weighed down with bags, and winter closthes was quite a challenge.  We enjoyed the part of the parade we saw, but it was FREEZING, so we couldn't stick around long (maybe 40 minutes) before having to head out.  Roman didn't seem to mind the cold that much, perhaps because he was bunded up so welll, but we didn't want to take any chances and it wasn't pleasant for us either.  One of the highlights of the parade were the "Zooperstars" which my mom tells me were featured on "america's got talent," and the floats. 

 

11.27 Roman the Turkey; Thxgiving w.Ning

We had actually tried to go to the parade with Ning&Jun&Ayi, the family that would be watching Roman during the day after my mom was to go back to Philly, but got separated in traffic on the way there.  Still, given that we weren't going down to Philly again (the ride was just too draining during out last trip) for Thanksgiving, and Leona was cooking but none of her other new huaren mom friends were able to make it all the way up to CT, we were hopeful that Ning&family could join us for Thanksgiving, which they did.  Roman lit up when he saw A-yi, and she was able to keep him laughing all night. I think that A-yi must remind him of Wai Po (Leona's mom) so he feels comfortable with her.

From Thanksgiving08

Leona cooked a Turkey "Asian-style,"  I don't really know what that means but it involved marinating in something with Soy Sauce and using sticky rice for stuffing.  She also cooked sweet potatoes for the first time (and they were delicious!), and some Sichuan dishes on top of that, I think.  Ning brought some noodles and a lamb dish I believe.  Everything was delicious and we had leftovers for many days afterawards (due to the volume of food, not that ppl didn't eat it at the dinner). 

From Thanksgiving08

I was really happy that we were able to have some friends over to share the holidays.  I was also happy that it forced us to organize and clean the house thoroughly for the first time in a while.

 

Also, a little while before Thanksgiving, we discovered that Roman was able to sit up on his own (under very close supervision) so Leona thought it would be a great idea to have him sit in the big serving platter we were going to use for the turkey, which made for a great photo op.

 

12.7 First Snow

We had been planning to just dress up and take a photo in front of our xmas tree to use as our xmas card this year.  However, on the morning of 12/7 we woke up to see that it had snowed!  Leona had the fantastic idea that we should do a photo shoot int the snow to use for our xmas cards.  So once we got dressed and bunded Roman up, that's exactly what we did.  Got some good pics too.  Unfortunatley, not having a tripod we had to enlist the services of our neighbor who we just found out had a hand injury (but was still more than willing to help).

12.8-10 AK

On 12.8 Leona had to go to Alaska for business, leaving me to take care of him during non-work hours all by myself for the first time.  It wasn't too bad though.  The hadest thing was giving him his bath without anyone else to hold him, but I was able to manage somehow.  Can't complain- Leona had things a lot tougher given the MANY hours of travel, the super dry air in the hotel, trudging through an Alaska snowstorm to get a cooler for ChenChen's food supply... what a trooper.

 

12.11 bday

Dec. 11 was my birthday, and even though Leona offered to take me out, but the weather was so dreary I took a raincheck. Then that FRIDAY we went to outback, which was awesome.  Also, Leona got me a very nice Ebel watch. 

 

12.13 xmas cards

We managed to put together on 12.13 and sent them shortly thereafter.  Leona found a way to do our xmas cards through Costco online, using the pictures we had taken in the snow just for this reason.  I had picked them up when Leona was in Alaska and when I pulled them out of the envelope just to chekck we had the right one, I  litterally exclaimed "Oh my god!" when I saw the one with Leona and Roman (that I took) because it is so great.  The scanned image below doesn't do it justice 

12.19 Big Snow

And of course on Friday we got the first massive stow storm of the season (about 6-8 inches in our area).  Therefore, I had to spend a large part of my afternoon shovelling our cars out.  I guess winter really is here.  On the bright side, since today was the shortest day of the year, at least we're going to have progressively more daylight every day from now until late June.