Monday, November 26, 2007

Thanksgiving

This year we stayed in town for Thanksgiving, and as is our tradition in odd numbered years, we had Thanksgiving dinner with Nancy & Danny at their house in Old Town. Katherine and Adrienne teamed up to make especially potent Thanksgiving cocktails involving rum, cider, several mystery ingredients, and numerous sticks of butter in what turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt to recreate the events that led to this picture the last time we had Thanksgiving at Nancy & Danny's. As a consolation prize, they did manage to get Christopher into his bathrobe before the end of the night.

Owen had a great time playing on the stairs with Grandpa Don, and cautiously admiring all of the antique crystal and other breakable curios throughout the house. This of course was his first real Thanksgiving meal, and while he wasn't entirely sure about the turkey, he absolutely loved the pumpkin pie.

We had a great time the rest of the weekend, visiting the Air & Space museum with Katherine and Adrienne on Friday before meeting up with Mommy for dinner and having Jeremye & Channa over that night; going to the Corcoran to see the Annie Leibovitz & Ansel Adams exhibits with Emilie; and going out to dinner Saturday night to celebrate Grandpa and Claudine's birthdays.

All and all it was a great holiday weekend, and we even found time to put up the Christmas tree.

(click here to see all the pictures)

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Caca

Owen started saying "caca" a few weeks ago. Despite its Spanish meaning, we were pretty sure that Owen was asking for a "cracker" whenever he used it, and responded by giving him something in the complex carbohydrate family and congratulating him. However, Owen's use of the word quickly morphed into whatever food he was in the mood for, including pears, bananas, tortellini and other non-cracker like substances. Yesterday, he used "caca" to refer to the brass knocker on our front door and the chain on the the storm door. Allen is convinced that when Owen uses "caca" he really does mean something and that we as parents are simply failing to understand him. I think Owen is just babbling and that Allen is full of caca. Any thoughts, gentle readers?

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Closer to Fine


Despite living less than 2 miles from a host of gratis cultural centers (i.e. The Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Capitol, the Shakespeare Library, etc) we'd never actually exposed Owen to the finer things in life. Instead, we've opted for the less finer things, like taking Owen to baseball games. And bars.

But this weekend, my very good friend Audra was in town for business. In addition to economics, Audra was an art major at NU and so we decided her visit would be the perfect opportunity take Owen to the National Gallery. Owen enjoyed the museum immensely, but was far more interested in the lights above the various installations than the art itself. Moreover, he expressed his delight in their luminosity as well as his appreciation of the gallery's acoustics by shouting what the untrained ear might consider gibberish. To be honest, it's pretty much gibberish to the trained ear as well, but enthusiastic gibberish nonetheless. Owen and I excused ourselves and headed to the cafeteria, much to the relief of the other patrons, where he admired I.M. Pei's pyramid waterfall, and ate crackers.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Tricked and Untreated


Halloween was a bit of a blur last year. We dutifully carved pumpkins and handed out treats to the ghosts and goblins that came to our door, but we didn't bother with a costume for ourselves or Owen -- at two months he certainly wasn't up for pandering for candy and neither were we. This year, with Owen being a little older and more mobile, we decided to go all out (if one defines going all out as ordering a costume on-line). We debated what Owen should be, arranged to attend his costume parade at daycare and plotted out a limited trick-or-treating debut.

But then things got complicated. Owen's elephant costume was mocked for its political implications. Both Allen and I had meetings we couldn't possibly miss during Owen's parade. And worst of all, Owen's slight cold degenerated into a debilitating fever which resulted in him staying home for most of last week (which made our missing his parade kind of moot).

Owen perked up a little on Wednesday night, and so we forged ahead and took him in all his pachyderm glory over to Grandpa Fawcett's, where he helped to hand out candy and admired the seasonal balloons before he crashed an hour or so later (and by crashed I mean became cranky as having slept a total of seventeen hours the previous day, Owen wasn't about to go down without a fight).

The upshot is we didn't get a lot of cute Halloween pictures and we didn't get any of the treats that I was banking on, but while an elephant never forgets, we're pretty sure Owen won't remember any of the deficiencies of this year's Hallowed Eve.