9.5 months - late edition!

3 months have gone by and not a single entry!?

one might be inclined to think that perhaps nothing special or particularly exciting has happened to our young protagonist.
NOT TRUE!
first off, as you can plainly see, he is rapidly developing what can only be described as increasingly human-like features. and i'm happy to report that the smile you see is neither forced nor difficult to inspire. he's a happy baby... which is nice. in fact, we hear that a lot: "what a happy baby!" "such a good baby!" "you shouldn't let your baby play with that knife." stuff like that. all the time!
there has been much talk of late regarding which of us he looks like. a lot of people say me. some people say ellen. but truth be told, i'm a little freaked out by how much he looks like our mailman.
curious.
you are free to draw your own conclusion... but don't rule out the mailman. just sayin'. he's a very handsome fellow.

with mommy at the end of july at the kushi conference - a macrobiotic retreat in new jersey. ellen was the head chef and PD was the main attraction. i had the week off and had a blast playing "stay at hotel" daddy for most of it.

his first bike ride during his first trip to fire island.
fortunately he didn't get his first sunburn or his first tick.
note: that look on his face is not fear, but focus... focus on speed.

pawleys island, south carolina, september 2010
this is where ellen's family went every summer when she was younger, so much younger than today. hae-sin was the driving force behind getting all these fantastic people - and so many more - down there for uncle parker's bash-tastic 40th birthday. a spectacular week.

on the back deck at pawleys.
notice that it takes two of us to truly secure the giant baby.

the water was ridiculously warm and PD happily dove right in for his first...
TASTE OF THE OCEAN
(http://bit.ly/GMlNzs)

on september 18, our friends mark and shannon got married in a beautiful ceremony next to a lake in the adirondack mountains. PD was the "giant baby of honor", a position i'm pretty sure was created especially for him.
officiating was mark and shannon's old friend, and our new friend, steve, who excelled in the weekend's quickly popularized sport of PD-holding. trust me, it's not for the weak. the meek, maybe. but the weak, no.

nearly every week for the past 16 years, daddy has played poker with a select group of friends. in early october, we loaded up the game and moved it to the lake house where PD joined in on the fun. he won $327 before we found an ace hidden in his diaper. though by the time he was done with it, it looked more like a deuce if ya know what i'm talkin' about.

one special day that passed since i last overly-indulged you with tales from acadia, was september 4th which marked the anniversary of the first time i felt PD kick in ellen's belly, though i can't be sure he wasn't just in there eating a sandwich. either way, it was a very special moment that i may or may not have ruined by screaming, "that is so weird!"

this could have been what was going on in ellen's belly about a year ago. either way, the little man has really taken to hitting his many drums maybe because we've set him up with enough percussion instruments to make a baby neil peart jealous.

""laughing with grandpa!"
this was during yet another trip with mommy to california while daddy was working in washington DC trying to lighten the nation's woeful political discourse by throwing a few knock-knock jokes into the mix.

BABY TRAVEL TIP!
try shipping your baby in advance!
you'd be surprised how much time and effort you can save provided your baby doesn't exceed the weight limit.
(PD barely made it.)

mommy and superhero baby also flew in later that week to join me at the...
"rally to restore sanity" on the national mall.
more on that in our next episode.

today's song is by one of the performers at that rally - yusuf islam, formerly known as cat stevens. he has many songs that are beautiful for a variety of reasons, but i chose "if you want to sing out" because i hope our little man can be happy and confidant and kind by just being himself.
dig it...

Well if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
'Cause there's a million things to be
You know that there are

And if you want to live high, live high
And if you want to live low, live low
'Cause there's a million ways to go
You know that there are

a few more firsts
- swimming at the lake house. okay, floating at the lake house
- teeth! two small, but effective chompers, bottom-middle
- eating "solids" consisting of various healthy, blendable foodstuffs
- first concert! they might be giants at town hall in new york city. it's not quite the beatles at shea stadium, but he seemed to like it.
- first attempt to crawl. it's not that he can't crawl. it's more that he just doesn't feel like it yet.
which is not to say that he's not a professional-grade "stand-and-grabber"...

editor's note:
cute "first halloween outfit" omitted due to the lack of a cute "first halloween outfit".
but next halloween... oh boy!

oh, and one more thing...
on the first day of november in the year of his birth (PD, not jesus), my favorite bay area baseball squadron, the giants of san francisco, won the world series.
KICK ASS!
this is how lifelong fans are created.