Dante Month 9 and 10 (11/5/2003)

September

Daddy's birthday marked an important first as we went to Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Sandy's and left Dante alone with them while Mommy and Daddy drove all the way to Puyallip to see one of the last showings of Matrix Reloaded in an actual movie theater. The first hour was apparently reasonably painless. The second was filled with tears, and the next two were spent sleeping off the tears. Grandma and Grandpa were taking bets as to whether or not we would call to check up on them! We didn't call, and neither mentioned calling to the other, but we both thought about it silently and decided to wait until the other suggested it.

After Daddy went back to work, Dante and Mommy were left to their own devices. Daddy's absence from our home office encouraged Dante to ensure that when Daddy returned home, his mouse would always be hanging by its tail. It also meant Mommy grew eyes in the back of her head and 3 extra arms. Among her many new talents, she learned to endlessly create towers of blocks that would promptly be demolished, she learned to read upside down in both English and Polish, she finally learned the words to many of the childrens' rhymes she never knew when she was a kid, and she actually watched her first (and unfortunately not last) episodes of Teletubbies and Barney.

October

October has been one big whirlwind. We visited Annie, Sophia, and Trish. Dante has always liked freshly grown tomatoes from Mommy's garden, but when he saw Annie's harvest, he just had to have every tomato he could get his hands on. Dante had so many seeds on his clothing that Annie threatened to plant him! Visits with Sophia and Trish were of course filled with furry animals to observe and tackle. Mommy made a new friend, Liza, whom she met through Friendster.com thanks to Sophia, but who turned out to have been at her prenatal yoga class a few times, whose little girl, Maddie, taught Dante to clap after their first play session together. Brianna came to visit as well, and had a great time playing with Dante and his many toys.

We drove to Spokane for a weekend to visit with Great Grandmas, Uncle Matthew and the Foges (Brent's family). We ran into Great Aunt Kaye, Great Uncle Robert and Great Aunt Michelle and First Cousins Once Removed Sydney and R.J. at Great Grandma Juanita's home. We stayed two nights and discovered everything that Daddy used to call home in Spokane was gone except for the Horseshoe Pits that he built for his Eagle Scout project. Junior High - converted to Middle School, High School - leveled and replaced by some architectural monstrosity, movie theater - converted to a youth center, mall - ghost town. We were able to visit the house he grew up in (on 8th) and the family living there was nice nough to let us in and see the changes they had made to the place. Daddy was very pleased, especially with the growth of the maple tree that he had planted with Grandma Lynette when he was about 11.

Grandpa Pawel came to visit for several days to finally get a glimpse of his grandson. We spent some of our time trying out pianos. Dante seemed to agree that the more expensive they were, the more inclined he was to play on them, to Daddy's great annoyance. We also started going to a Kindermusik class, to which Grandpa came while he was here, and Dante loves playing with other children while dancing and singing and playing on various age-appropriate instruments. The only boy in the class, he is thrilled by all the female attention.

We continued to purge items Dante has outgrown at Elizabeth and Steve's baby shower, at which Dante discovered the amazing power of being able to make adults clap their hands by clapping his own and waiting for everyone to respond. He soon learned that overuse of the power could diminish the effect reasonably quickly.

Tooth number 9 (upper right molar) first broke skin on October 5th and has been coming in piece by piece. Tooth number 10 (upper left molar) emerged on Dante's 10 month birthday.

Foodwise, Dante seems to eat almost everything. He loves Yogurt and seems to have no trouble digesting whole milk. He doesn't seem to have my egg white allergy and loves eggs every way they can be cooked. He discovered strawberries at Great Grandma Hazel's. He likes a lot of foods he can't quite chew yet so they end up falling out of his mouth, like snap peas, but to date the only foods that he doesn't like are provalone and cooked spinach. He wasn't too thrilled with Thai Curry Chicken sauce, but at a spicyness of 5 stars, I wouldn't expect him to like it quite yet. He's never screamed quite like that before...

The final event of the month was Dante's first cold. Over in a few days, he proceeded to get both Daddy and Mommy sick. They are in recovery.

Anyhow, enjoy the pictures!