The cats' worst nightmare

Maceo And Julian Race!

Our friends Julian (9 months), Eben (age uncertain, but old enough to buy beer), and Erin (about the same age as Eben) live up the street. (You might remember them from such blog posts as "Octoberfest.") In any case, yesterday, we all wandered up to a brewery in the neighborhood which has started selling growlers on Saturdays. A growler is a 64 ounce bottle of beer.

We bought a few and then took the kids home to have a few beers. This turned into baby races. And Julian cheats.

Destructor!

Maceo has learned to crawl forward, and his favorite thing to do is go around the living room to topple towers of blocks. Here, then, is a study in the terror of a crawling destructive force released on the world of our blocks.

Funny, but sad...

Dinner with the extended family

My mom's cousin has a step-daughter. I introduced that step-daughter to my friend from Peace Corps, Eric, years ago. They are now married and have twins. I am batting 1.000 in my setting up record. Leslie and Eric invited a number of people over to a potluck dinner last week, including Leslie's dad and step-mom who were in town, my mom and her husband, friends from Peace Corps Daniel, his wife Lilian, and their daughter Elsa; and another RPCV Jessica and her husband Daryl. There were a lot of people, a lot of kids, and it was a lot of fun. Maceo did a good job with so many kids around and seemed interested and somewhat interactive, which I'm told is not often what babies do with other kids. But you can see that all here.

Weekend excursion

Since the weather was so gorgeous this weekend, we decided to get Maceo out of his new favorite room of the house--

and out into the real world. We packed up the car and drove the two miles or so to the National Arboretum. This is a large park in Northeast DC with a bonsai house, azalea gardens, trails, trees, and it's just lovely. People were all walking around and walking their dogs, pushing their strollers, and riding bikes in the warm sunny afternoon. There is also an installment of columns from the Capitol building that were used for one of the porticoes. It looks like an ancient Greek ruin in the middle of a field.

It was lovely and Maceo took a little nap in the stroller (which he often does) and then was in a terrific mood for the rest of the outing.

Crawling backwards

 

Somehow, he always ends up under the couch...

Halloween--a photo essay

A Fitness Instructor, getting in some pushups.

With his new pirate hat. And looking fierce!

He's got Mama's sweet tooth, we suspect.

"Are you sure I can't eat it?"

Doing the leg workout while looking out the front window.

No babies were harmed...

in the making of this film.

New highchair

Mom and Maurice's neighbors and friends, Adriana and James, gave us their kids' old highchair. Maceo got his first meal in it yesterday. He seems to really enjoy it, mostly because there's a large flat area to smash things on.

He likes yoghurt now, too. And pumpkin.

Fall is sprung

It has been just a gorgeous weekend in DC. Nice days of warm fall sun. We had to protect Maceo from the bright light, plus he had to look cool. He's into it, we think.

I like how you can see his eyes here, as he tries to figure out what sunglasses are.

On Sunday, we had some families/friends over--Eben and Erin brought Julian and Matt and Melissa, whom we had met in our birthing class, brought Cameron. All were super cute and it was, I hate to admit it, interesting to sit around and swap developmental stories.
Here're Julian and Maceo. Cameron arrived a little late and missed out on the photo shoot.

All in all, it was very nice, and it was obvious that Maceo enjoyed himself, as did Kate and I.

Octoberfest

We have friends up the street named the Gilfenbaums who have a 7 month old boy named Julian. Julian and Maceo go to the same daycare and both families have gotten together numerous times--dinners, cookouts, and walks throughout the summer vacation. Erin emailed and invited us out to a pumpkin patch not far away in Maryland, so we all drove out (in our separate cars, of course) to Queen Ann's Pumpkin Patch. There was a donkey and a miniature horse, a hay ride, fields of sunflowers and pumpkins everywhere. We estimated the average age to be about 15, since there were so many 30 somethings with their various 3 year olds and younger. There were not many 15 year olds, unsurprisingly.

There was also a Maize Maze, though the trail was marked out in the field, so it wasn't too difficult.















And then we got right down to the cuteness!

Getting bigger and bigger!

Maceo is nearly 6 months old (October 12th, if you're counting) and he's starting to hit more developmental milestones. He can sit up now, for awhile, all by himself. He has two teeth that are coming in (and more on the way!); he can grab things and pat the things he likes, like Kate and me and Tupelo and his own reflection. He can roll all over the place and back up, though he really wants to go forward, which he can't do yet.
And he can look super cute at bath time.

(See the teeth?)

Mami in the house!

My mother comes once a week to take care of Maceo and give him that grandparent unconditional love. Maceo digs it; it's very evident. Yesterday, when I arrived home from work, they were sitting together at the dining room table, eating applesauce and reading the NYTimes while chicken stock cooled on the stove. Not a bad deal for all of us!

Labor Day

We realize it's been a while since our last post. In that time, coaching volleyball and teaching have started for Nick, Kate is back to her normal grind of work and aerobics, and Maceo has begun day care at a Catholic center near our house called St. Ann's. But here's some recent news from the beginning of September, and we will work on getting back into the swing of posting family news, especially now that sleep training for the three of us is going so well (Can you say 7 pm to 6 am? We can!)

An on-again, off-again tradition was back on this summer, as we rented a house for the long weekend with a large group of friends. The large group now includes a gaggle of children, all under 16 months, with Maceo the youngest. The house was on the water, just north of Baltimore, and it was really lovely. All the kids get along as well as 1 year olds can get along, and the parents get along even better.

Most of the weekend is spent hanging out, with various delicious meals prepared throughout the day. This year, with the river right out in front of the house, people went out kayaking and sailing, too.

Head Control

Maceo's a strong boy. At least, that's what people are telling us; we don't really know. In any case, Kate found that he's strong enough to enjoy the swing. And she enjoyed it more than he did, I think!

Go Sawks!

Maceo received some pretty cool presents from the McMurrers of Amherst, MA. Who are Bruins fans. And Cletics fans (gah). And Red Sox fans.

Maceo is taken in, and his father, a Mets fan, isn't happy about it.

Trying some new things...

We took Maceo in to the doctor's last week and she suggested that he could start sleeping unswaddled and on his belly. She also said we could try feeding him some solid food and recommended a few. We went with avocado, I think more for the possible disgusting factor hours after the feeding, rather than rice cereal or banana. So be it.
Here're some scenes from the event.

Then he got cleaned up, and I gave him a Richie Rich hair style.

The Challenger!

And in this corner, the challenger in a grey shirt, blue shorts, and new shoes--weighing in at 16 pounds, 13.5 ounces, 27.5 inches tall, and undefeated in all his previous bouts with Sophie, his little rubber giraffe---Maceo, looking nervous about the entire situation!

Notice shoes are on the wrong feet; typical rookie mistake.

Working Vacation

Kate is ecstatic to have more responsibility at work, and it's paying off right away. She was sent to Lincoln University, outside of Philadelphia, to speak to an incoming group of Fulbright students, and Maceo and I were able to tag along.
We left on Sunday and drove to Philly itself where we stayed overnight with friends, Liz and Stefan, and their three adorable and precocious kids.

Kate and Maceo snacking, while Oliver and Josephine play with an iPhone.

Evan, the middle son, was off to zoo camp at the time of this photo. Stefan is a photographer and we are lucky enough to have a number of his photos in our house. For the birth of Maceo, he has given us another print and we are super excited to get it! He's having it matted and then I will build a frame for it.






Stefan also gave me a flash for my camera and I got to play with that in the hotel room while I watched Maceo and Kate went out to make money.
Overall, for our first trip with Maceo, it was quite fun. He had a rougher ride up in the car than coming back, but he was pretty good the whole way. He didn't sleep as well as he has been at home, but that seems easily attributable to the changes in schedule and routine. And he seemed to like going in the pool, though, sadly, there are no photos of that.

Reading times...

The boy reads.  He's exceptional in every way.  And by exceptional we mean he does an excellent job looking genuinely interested in something that makes no sense to him.

All he does is bathe

I messed around a bit with Kate's new camera which allows for taking video.

Dr. Tinymouth takes a stand against pretension

Sometimes we call Maceo "Dr. Tinymouth."   It stems from when he was little, oh so little, and his mouth was even smaller, preventing him from breastfeeding until he was 14 weeks old.  The doctor part? Well, who doesn't want to know a doctor, I ask?! When he's older and plays on sports teams,  I trust that the back of his shirt will have "Dr. Tinymouth" as his nickname.  I hope local articles about him will read:  The winning 3-pointer came from Maceo "Dr. Tinymouth" Manolakos-Loewen with one second to go!  His mouth may be tiny but his talent is not!

That would amuse the heck out of his mother. 

But, this post is not about that; it's about how Maceo eschews pretension at every single opportunity, and his European baby spa is no exception.  I see a little activist in him already. He'll protest anything that smells of the upper class. No Europeans baths for him.  No spa days, only cold, one-minute showers with homemade soap.  I simply hope his future activist escapades are not done in the buff as seen below.  Warning:  this video contains nudity.

Mornings with Maceo

Maceo is a relatively easy-going guy. He doesn't, at least not yet and at least it seems to us, get very upset except when he's hungry or tired. So, that fussiness is pretty easy to manage. And he is in a good mood most of the time, apart from those two cases.
However, he's at his best when he first wakes up: see Exhibit A and B--

I have started playing a game with him when he's in this good mood called "Oh, No! You're Falling!" He stands on my stomach and I tip him slowly over until he plants in a pillow, all while I cry out the aforementioned title. He seems to like it. In fact, he seems to like it so much that he started playing it himself!