Veron's Smoked Sausage

Its been a while since our last update - sorry about that. For one, we left our camera at the Smith's house. Also, yours truly has been quite busy with work and such. Anyway...

We celebrated Michael's 29th birthday again on Friday. A good time was had by all. Tate got to visit with her pal Abby while the adults feasted on Drea's delicious brisket. Michael, Troy, and I had some too. I had a bit of a headache on Saturday morning --- must have been allergies.

Famous worked on Saturday so Tate and I had the whole day together. It was a rainy day so not much got done, which made it just about the best day ever.

I raced on Sunday morning (and took a beating, again), but that afternoon we fired up the grill for the first time in 2007:

That's always a cherised event around here. One burger, one chicken breast, and one link of sausage for each of us, plus the jar of baby food. The sausage is from Veron's back in the Motherland, and it's my favorite. Tate got to nibble on grilled chicken, which she clearly enjoyed (as if it could be any other way).

On Monday Famous and Tate went for a walk which, as always, puts the little girl to sleep:

Tate's food is becoming more adventurous. The canned food manufacturers make what appear to me to be horrendous concoctions like turkey, carrots, apples, and barley, all in one jar, but the Tater seems to enjoy them:

These days we're still enjoying mostly the simple stuff, like multi-grain cereal, apples, pears, prunes, yogurt, sweet potatos, green beans, squash of various kinds, peas. She was getting lots of bananas for a while, but we think they make her constipated.

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Other than that, there's not a whole lot new around here. Tate is still not quite crawling or sitting up on her own, but she's getting close. The house isn't child-proofed yet, but I'm guessing that will happen any day now and in crisis mode. She sleeps all night, usually over 10 hours at a stretch - hurray for sleep! Grammy is coming out to visit in early May, and we're gearing up for that. Yours truly is trying to earn a year's worth of pay in one month, but I have a nagging feeling that no matter what, I'll still have to show up for the rest of the year...

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Until next time (and with more pictures!),

Sweet Potato and family

Cutting teeth, blue eyes, and a trip to the zoo

The Tater has two teeth. She's very protective of them and will only show them once in a while, but she sure is happy to bite you with them!

She's also still working on the mechanics of her crawling. She's got good stationary form and she rocks back and forth like a champ, but she can't quite get either of those knees moving forward. But as soon as that happens, look out!


She is able to scoot herself backwards without difficulty, as the next two pics demonstrate:

Our friend Jen is in town, and on Friday we went to the zoo with Michael, Drea, and Abby. Here's a pic of Aunt Jen with a teething Tater:

Here's a pic of Abby leaning over the rail to get a better look at a rhino rolling in its own filth. If you had any doubts, I can confirm that rhino urine stinks something awful.

Here's a pic of Tate and Pa. You can't really see either of our faces, but you sure can tell that we're happy.

Here's a pic of a gorilla hanging her coolie over the edge of a ledge to take a leak.

Here's two polar bears moving in formation. They paced back in forth in time to each other for several minutes. It was something to see.

We have our own zoo back at the ranch and Lucy knows a few tricks of her own.

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Turn to the right:

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Turn to the left:

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Face forward:

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Don't forget the paw prints.

Those pics were pre-summer cut. Here she is post-summer cut:



Here's one last pic. I hope your screen does justice to her brilliant blue eyes.



Until next time,
Sweet Potato and family

Don't Call It A Comeback

The Tater is Officially Healthy and back in Fine Form. Here she is after a walk with Famous on an early spring afternoon:

I couldn't save that pic until the weekend.

This is a little girl that's clearly on the verge of crawling. She seems to have it in her mind to start crawling backwards first. Don't let the framoose fool you, she's a happy girl.

Famous bought a food mill so we can make Tate's baby food (and fruit smoothies for us!). Let me tell you, a couple whole sweet potatoes turns in to more sweet potato baby food than you might imagine. Our freezer is full! She also bought me a pasta maker. Per Troy's advice, she got the deluxe Italian-made model. I'll let you know how it goes.

Last night someone drove up over the 9 inch curb in front of our house and into the front yard, plowing through our huge cactus along the way. Its fixed! The cactus was about 8 feet wide and probably 7 feet tall in summer. Bummer. It was a hit-and-run, so if you see a vehicle with cactus pads sticking out the front, please let us know.

Until next time,

Sweet Potato and family

Tater Down

We had a hard week. After her 6 month checkup and 2 shots, the Tater picked up a stomach virus. She couldn't keep down much of anything, and that lasted for several days. She was a trooper and didn't complain too much in spite of it all. For a few days she could tolerate only small servings of fluids, so we would trickle in milk and electrolyte solutions a teaspoon at a time. The worst part for me was seeing her so listless. The picture below shows her pale and tired. So sad.
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Mom missed three days of work staying home with her.

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The good news is that she's made a strong recovery. She's keeping her food down:

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And even managed to pick up a new food this weekend (bananas!). At her check-up the doctor said that we can even start giving her a little meat!

Here she is just a few minutes ago, clean and happy.
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Here she is chattin' up Little Kitty:-

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and here she is getting tummy time with her buddy Lucy:

---She prefers to be on her tummy and rolls herself from her back to her belly while she sleeps. Right now she's doing this funny belly crawl/slide, but she's almost pushing herself up to do an honest crawl. For Mom and Dad its exciting and terrifying all at once.

The weather has turned spring-like and we finally had our stucco work finished. It's about time!

Our old computer died last week (hard drive failed - fortunately our important files were backed up) and I'm typing this on our new laptop. We also got an all-in-one printer/copier/scanner/fax machine. We've finally entered the 90s!

Until next time,

Sweet Potato and family

Nearly 6 months old!

The Tater is 2 days shy of 6 months old. Wow, does time fly.

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Here's a family portrait, taken last night:

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Tate and her Pa out running errands:

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The two prettiest ladies I know, sharing some good times after a bath:

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Dad puts the Tater to sleep, again:

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The Tater loves her Daddy. I know it's true because her shirt says so:

and so does her laugh!

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Back from a run with Famous and Lucy:

The jogger is our sleep machine. She always comes home sleeping after a run with Mom.

Dining is still quite an adventure. As you can see Tate is not shy when it comes to feeding. Check out her chubby arm going for the spoon!

This pic doesn't do justice to the puckered face she made after her first bite of apples. It seems that she likes them quite a lot though. Now she can be just like Mom and have fruit with her cereal and milk!

So far she's had rice cereal, sweet potatoes, squash, apples, avocado, and carrots.

Singing in the shower!

Here's a pic of a shaggy Lucy. One of her favorite things is to lick Tate's face. Tate will see it coming and open her mouth and stick out her tongue and laugh. Someday maybe we'll get a picture. They've become good friends. Lucy often lays close by when Tate is on the floor, and Tate loves to pet Lucy. They're very patient with each other.

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Our old friend the Geefer was in town this past week, with his lovely lady friend Jen. We spent a day skiing.

For yours truly that might be the last day of skiing this year. The weather is turning warmer and my bicycles beckon. I got out for a dirt bike ride with Darren today, and it was nice enough to pull off the leg warmers. I have the sun burn to prove it! (Casey, the bike works well --- its fine for the kind of riding I'm doing!) In a typical year I'll have about 2600 miles by the first of March, but this year I'm at about 1300 miles. There were 2 races in town this weekend and I skipped them both. Wow, parenthood changes a fella. It's fixed my most compulsive habit! (parenthood and Dan moving away). Speaking of compulsive cyclists, I wonder how Bret is doing...

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Until next time,

Sweet Potato and family