evolution, baby

i’m currently in a hotel room in downtown SF, sipping wine, eating a delicious dinner of roasted chicken, veggies and herbs and relaxing for a moment or two.   i’m here on a work trip; i’ve been here less than 24 hours and i’m muthaf*ckin exhausted.   but i am focusing on the positive aspects of this trip even though i’m missing my baby like CRAZY.  
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it’s been a whilrwind of action in the past few weeks — on april 12th we took JRB on his longest road trip ever to our friends’ palm desert house.  he did pretty well – he slept for about an hour+, then woke up ready to have a conversation and about 20 minutes from our destination he started getting antsy.   so overall, he was only cranksy pants for about 20 minutes out of 2 hours, which isn’t so bad.   and mostly it was b/c he was hungry.     however, he cried for a straight up HOUR on the way home.  it was PAINFUL, to say the least.   but oh well.

the overall weekend was pretty awesome.   we went to coachella friday & saturday night while joaquin and his buddy micah stayed with babysitters.   during the day(s) we hung out at the pool and/or played in the air conditioned house.  micah is about 7 weeks older than joaquin and is super mobile, and it was SO ADORABLE watching joaquin take in all of the things micah was doing, and then try to do them himself.   they played really well together, it was sweet sweetness.

COACHELLA was pretty awesome.   over the course of two nights, we saw the yeah yeah yeahs, modest mouse, band of horses, of monsters and men, the xx, postal service and yeasayers.     the xx blew me away.  they were SO GOOD.  plus i had more wine to drink that night than i had since before i was pregnant, so that definitely contributed 😉  we watched them from the beer garden, but had an amazing view and the energy was positively wonderful.

since we got back from the desert, joaquin has started crawling much more effectively, and now he’s able to sit up all on his own from a belly position.   it’s SO COOL.   but also kind of terrfiying.   he can also pull himself up to stand!   but so far he’s really only done it in his crib.   it scared the hell out of me when i saw him STANDING on the baby monitor.  i sprinted upstairs and pulled him out of the crib while aaron started the process of dropping the mattress down to the lowest setting.  

OH MY GOD.

joaquin went in for his 8-month check-up last week and our pedi was VERY impressed with him.   he’s now in the 95th percentile for height (29 inches) and the 47th percentile for weight (18.5 lbs).    he’s approximately 2 months ahead of schedule in gross motor skills (WHAT!?) according to our dr.    in the past week or so he’s made some amazing leaps, and now our world has changed.  he wants so badly to walk, so we work on that a bit every day.  i think he still has several weeks before he starts actually "walking" using furniture and such, but we shall see.   right now he’s crawling all around and aaron reported that he had to start using the baby gates today!    !! !! !!

also, last week aaron’s little sister came to town so we hung out and did fun things like day trippin’ to santa barbara where we hit up a wine tasting room and toured UCSB which is where she wants to go to grad school.   joaquin generally LOVES to be outside, so the excursion was much fun for all.

sunday was liana’s beautiful baby shower (which i co-hosted with three of our friends) and it’s just 3 weeks until she has her baby (scheduled c-section due to placenta previa) and then work will get REALLY interesting while as our company of three shrinks to two.    !!  !!

now i’m in SF, and will be here until wednesday morning.  next week i will be continuing this project in philadelphia, which should be very interesting since i’ve never been.   so …. exciting to be busy for work stuff because we definitely need the $$ but… ahhh… i just wish i could be here and be home with my boys all at the same time.    but alas, not for now.

OVERALL:  i am pleased with how life is going and depite some frustrating finanial situaitons that have recently reared their ugly heads, i feel blessed and fortunate.   

now, some more sips of wine and i’m going to pass the eff out so i can get some much -needed zzzzs for a very busy day tomorrow.