We nearly forgot to post the biggest news of all for this past week! Just in time for his first birthday, Andrew has taken his first unassisted steps. Dan and I were encouraging Andrew to try and walk from one of us to the other--and a couple of times he actually did it! Of course, he also fell over many more times than he walked. He's developed this rather funny habit of tilting over backwards with his knees locked (kind of like a trust fall) when he tries to walk forward.

We don't have too much to report this week (and anyway, most of our faithful readers will be seeing us within the next week or so). Dan spent longer than usual hours at work this week (hopefully to good effect!), which meant that Andrew got to spend more time than usual with his mother--a mixed blessing for both, I'm sure. In the build-up to Christmas, everything else seems kind of "blah"; Dan and I both spent a lot of time this week trying to tie up loose ends before we head home for the holidays (extra hours at the writing center [although most of those early in the week were left open, thus the extra hours Dan had at work], more experiments, last-minute Christmas shopping, one more revision of dissertation chapters, etc.). All of which kept us quite busy, but none of which makes for interesting blog reading!

Andrew continues to devise new ways to tear apart the house. The other day, I made the mistake of putting a box of magazines in a spot of particularly easy access (especially now that Andrew has climbed on things). You can see some of the resultant chaos below. The only good thing to come out of it (besides Andrew's entertainment), was that I discovered a Time magazine issue that had arrived while I was home in Utah this summer, with a particularly interesting article on the effect siblings have on us. Apparently, scientists are beginning to think that our siblings--more than even peers, parents, or genes--influence the way that we develop. (That explains so much!).





Andrew is also becoming more and more adept at escaping our makeshift blockades. After Christmas we may have to think about investing in some expanding doorway gates. Here, you see him making good his escape.



We've been having a hard time deciding on what kinds of toys Andrew likes best. We've narrowed it down to things with moving parts (or that move)--balls, doors, books, etc. Sometimes this issue is obscured when Andrew is around other kids, because then he tends to want whatever it is that they have. Both of these interests were highly in evidence last night, at Dan's advisor's Christmas party. Andrew and Selma (Dan's advisor's three-year-old daughter) competed with each other to see who could open the top of the silo and move the corral doors on Selma's Fisher Price farm. (Note to my mother: do NOT buy this for Andrew. We already got one on sale at Target a few weeks ago, although we're waiting until after we put away the Christmas nativity to unveil it). Since Selma is bigger and more mobile than Andrew, she usually won (despite her mother's attempts to encourage her to "share.") That didn't prevent Andrew from trying, or smiling in delight every time he opened the doors (which emitted an alternating "neigh" or "moo"). He repeated this over and over until Selma pushed him out of the way, or he might still be there.

Unfortunately, I don't have much to comment on the party, as Andrew and I left early (the difficulties of an early bedtime!). Dan, however, stayed and reports that the gifts that we brought to the white elephant exchange (or Yankee Swap as it is alternately known) were highly coveted gifts. The biggest letdown of the present exchange was also the largest present--a mini fridge that one of Dan's labmates hauled out of his basement. Incidentally, we were also the unofficial winners of the "ugly Christmas sweater" contest, courtesy of Goodwill. (Although this was the ostensible theme of the evening, only a handful of party-goers actually wore ugly sweaters). Unfortunately, we don't have pictures for the blog. Dan maintains that his sweater was simply too ugly to photograph (which means that he wouldn't let me take his picture). However, so you can try and visualize this yourself, I'll describe the sweaters. Mine was black with sparkly green and red holly leaves and bells. Dan wore a blue sweater-vest (also a woman's sweater) with sequined stars, Santa, and reindeer. While wearing said sweater, he looked "either gay or not straight." Enough said. (Except that Dan did say that if he only had leiderhosen the look would have been perfect!) The frightening thing is that one of Dan's labmates prevailed on him to give the sweater to her (reluctantly, I'm sure) because she wanted to wear it. On her, it looked like a glammed-up Walmart employee vest. (I think he gave it away so I couldn't take his picture in it). Andrew's sweater was a lovely red pooh sweater with sparkly threads and snow-flake buttons (I'm pretty sure it was also a girl's sweater). All in all, we looked fabulously horrible.

So, after not having much to say initially, it turns out that we have at least something to say. As we're going to be out of town for the holidays, I don't know when we will next be able to update the blog, but we'd like to wish all our readers a happy holiday! (If we don't extend those wishes in person).

Yesterday was our ward Christmas party. I can't say necessarily that we enjoyed it, but it did seem to go well. Since we are both on the activities committee, we were a little too involved in the planning of said party to relax and enjoy it when it came right down to it. Dan and I also ended up being in charge of most of the food for the party (it was a brunch, by the way)--doing price comparisons, buying the food, distributing the cookable parts to other members of the committee. The morning of the party Andrew and I went to our local Wegman's to pick up the baked goods (six dozen muffins, three dozen danishes, nine dozen rolls). It wasn't until we got back to our apartment that I realized that the food might present a bit of a logistical problem: how to fit myself, Dan, Andrew, several gall0ns of juice, three boxes of clementines, yogurt, granola, the baked goods, one cooked ham, some cooked potatoes O'Brien, several bunches of bananas, several containers of cut fruit, etc. all into one not-so-large Honda Civic. We made it, but only just barely. Upon arriving at the church, Dan unloaded all the food while I put Andrew down for a nap in his pack-n-play in a room adjoining the cultural hall. This actually worked pretty well, since Andrew slept until just after the opening prayer had been said for breakfast, allowing us to help set up!

Below, you can see Dan showing off Andrew's lovely Christmas outfit (picked up at a garage sale this summer for approximately $.50. It's a good thing it was so cheap--this was the first and last time Andrew will wear it, as he's quite definitely too big for the outfit. You can't see it in this photo, but the shirt is actually a onesie that wouldn't close over Andrew's long torso, and Andrew spent most of the morning wearing what looked more like a skirt than overalls, as the snaps on the crotch refused to stay shut!).



As part of the party, Santa Claus came for the kids. Thus, we were able to record Andrew's first encounter with Santa Claus. As you can see, he's not very impressed. (A side note: our friend, Brett Lunceford, was playing Santa--he actually currently has a corneal ulcer and was wearing an eye patch for most of the party and for church today. We think he should have worn the eye patch as Santa Claus, but Brett thought that this would scare the kids even more than the Santa suit does).



Yesterday was also our day to be social. In addition to the brunch in the morning, I had a baby shower to attend for a friend in my department (we share the same advisor and are in the same dissertation writing group). I took Andrew with me, and he was quite charming and entertaining. He made friends with another little girl who was at the shower, and, once he had warmed up to the new locale, crawled all over the place at a fairly quick pace (several people commented on how fast he was) and pulled himself up on whatever legs happened to be available--usually they weren't mine.

In the evening, another friend of mine from school had a small Christmas party that we all went to. Dan and Andrew only stayed for about an hour or so, then went home and put Andrew to bed, while I stayed and got a ride home with some friends. It's nice to feel somewhat social again.

Our last word for the week also comes with an advisory warning: this contains some reference to fecal material and is not for the fainthearted (meaning Wendy). Yesterday, between social excursions, we stripped Andrew down to his onesie (we were going to change him out of the ill-fitting Christmas attire) and put him in his highchair to feed him. As he sometimes does, he proceeded to make his red face during the feeding. Normally, this wouldn't be much of a problem. However, upon investigation we realized that he had hit the motherlode (lode being the key word)--there was poop everywhere: in his onesie, on his onesie, on the high chair, under the high chair covering . . . needless to say, we threw the high chair covering in the laundry almost immediately and washed the boy down quite thoroughly. This was quite possibly the most spectacular blow-out of Andrew's short but distinguished career.

Anyone looking for a healthy, rambunctious, destructive, almost-toddler? We're looking to sell, cheap. :) Somehow, as Andrew gets closer to actually walking, his destructive capacities increase exponentially. (It probably has something to do with learning he can climb over and around obstacles). This means that in the last couple of days I've felt more like clean-up crew in the aftermath of a hurricane than a mother. It's pretty exhausting! Below, we offer two recent examples of Andrew's capacities for mayhem. We thought about calling him "Destroyo," but that name's already been taken.



Yes, he's actually sitting in the cupboard.


Here, Andrew managed to clear fully a third of our DVD shelves before we corralled him. He also managed to slide off his precarious perch mid-operation because he was standing on so many DVDs, landing, rather startled and upset, at the foot of his highchair. With true infant resiliency, he was back at his task within seconds.

This week marks a week of unseasonably warm weather (the highs earlier this week were in the low 60s) and, not incidentally, the end of November and the beginning of Andrew's twelfth month. As Andrew approaches the one year mark, his skills and abilities seem to proceed apace. He's still not walking, but he's compensating with his ability to move in other ways. For instance, he's discovered that he can climb on things. Tired of constantly chasing our little runaway down the hall (towards less baby-proofed regions of the house), we've tried blockading off strategic exists from the family room (i.e. a box across the doorway and strategically placed chairs in front of the other exit). This week, Andrew has begun to discover how to circumvent those--he's learned that if he crawls under the table he can exploit the weak spot in the chair placement, and, more alarmingly, he's learned how to climb on top of the boxes. Below, we offer two exhibits. Exhibit A shows the back side of Andrew attempting to get over the doorway-blocking box; Exhibit B shows Andrew climbing on another box (placed to prevent his access to our DVD and video collection--you can tell how well this is working!).







Andrew seems congenitally disinclined to order--if he sees anything on a shelf of any sort, or anything in any kind of container, for that matter--he cannot rest until he has thoroughly disordered the contents. Yesterday, I took him over to the home of some friends in the ward (and our nearest neighbors) to borrow their piano, as I had been asked to accompany the Relief Society musical program for today's lesson. While I practiced, Andrew proceeded--quite to their amusement--to denude their DVD shelves of their contents. (He went through at least two and a half shelves before he was stopped).

Andrew is also learning other important facts and skills. He has finally learned how to wave, which will, no doubt, endear him to all the old ladies in the grocery store who are constantly (and till now without success) trying to wave to him and elicit some response besides a wide-eyed stare. He also had one of his first lessons in physics this week. I had read somewhere that a good activity for babies his age is to give them a couple of bowls with a little bit of water in the bottom and some measuring cups and spoons and show them how to transfer liquid from one container to the next. This book did warn that the floor might get quite wet in the process, so I duly prepared by placing several towels underneath Andrew. What I did not foresee (but which in retrospect seems like an obvious consequence of this kind of activity!) was that Andrew's first action would be to dump all of the water on his lap! I think he enjoyed himself, nonetheless, and his distraction gave me just enough time to empty out the dishwasher.



He also learned a little bit about wind-pressure this week. I had a dissertation writing group meeting just before noon on Friday (normally this meeting is at 4 pm, and Dan just comes home early to watch Andrew while I'm gone), so I took Andrew up to campus where he hung out in Dan's lab while I met with my group. Although the weather was not particularly cold (in the high 40s, I think), it was exceptionally windy--in fact, there was a high wind advisory out all afternoon and into the evening. Andrew, if anything, seemed to enjoy having his breath taken away from him by occasional gusts of strong wind.

Andrew is also, as Dan reminds me, enjoying some anatomy lessons. He's quite fond of hair, and is known to grab the hair of unwary victims with unholy glee. Right now, while Dan is lying on the floor behind me, Andrew is trying to lift up Dan's shirt to investigate the phenomenon known as a "belly-button" (much, I'm sure, to Dan's chagrin!).

And finally, we're trying to teach Andrew a little bit about the Christmas season. I put up our tree (all 12" of it) and some stockings yesterday while Andrew watched bemusedly. But we also put out the Fisher-Price nativity that my mom sent us for Christmas. Andrew seems more interested in pulling all the pieces off whatever surface we set them on than anything else. We've tried working on recognizing important characters in the Christmas story, like Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus. After several misidentifications ("no, that's a sheep," "no, that's Joseph," "no, that's a donkey,") we think Andrew has finally learned to identify Baby Jesus (although he certainly doesn't appreciate the significance of this, as he usually puts Baby Jesus' head in his mouth). However, Andrew's absolute favorite part of the nativity set appears to be the hay in the manger, which he will tote around with him and chew on (and which you can see him holding in the picture below).



We have one other event worthy of note this week; Friday evening we went to our friends' (the Hanscom's) home to celebrate the birthday of Michael Higley. Andrew, after a little bit of a rough start (he cried for fifteen or so minutes), proceeded to sleep through the entire celebration in the adjacent room, so we both enjoyed our respective games of hearts (guys) and nerts (girls). It's nice to occasionally get out among other adults, rather than our usual Friday night routing, which consists of me reading for my dissertation for an hour or two and then watching part of a movie or TV series before retiring for an early bedtime (sounds fascinating, doesn't it?). Although some of the movies we watch are definitely more interesting than others. We recently watched the documentary, Wordplay, about the New York Times crossword puzzle. It wasn't quite as nail-bitingly suspenseful as Spellbound (about the National Spelling bee), but it was just as intriguing and also managed to pull off a surprise finish. We would highly recommend it (especially for my dad, who's also a NYT crossword fan!).

The last picture is just for fun--I call it our "choirboy" photo. As you can tell, Andrew's got a bit of growing to do before he can fit into his daddy's clothes.