Theo Running Laps

Theo's latest fun game from the past few days has been to run laps around the fishtank. He stops long enough to occasionally pick up a different object to accompany him on his journey. He did this for a good 20 minutes this evening!

A Quick Video From a Christmas Present

Sarah got me this really cool gadget which ends up shooting a 360-degree video using the iPhone camera. I played around with it a bit this past weekend, and shot this video of Theo running around in our basement.

Theo's Day Today

December has set records in how little it's been raining. The gorgeous sunny days we've been having also lead to cold nights (Seattle's temperate winter temperatures are helped by a generous layer of clouds without which it often frosts overnight as it has been doing). Anyway today we took him to the South Lake Union park just outside my office for lunch. He had a blast running around:



And later this evening, Theo mightily entertained us both by retrieving two things he sleeps with -- his jez and a cloth diaper he sleeps with -- and walking around, shaking both, throwing them on the ground, picking them up, shaking them, throwing, and on and on. He did this so many times we finally decided to take a video:



Sarah is in the background, taking her own video:

Seattle Street Scramble

This past Sunday we took part in the Seattle Street Scramble. It's something we've never done before but all three of us enjoyed it. In fact, Theo enjoyed it so much he opted to stay awake for the entire event rather than taking his morning nap! The street scramble is basically a planning problem -- you're given a map with 30 checkpoints, and 2 hours to visit as many checkpoints as you can, racking up points for each checkpoint you visit. I'm pleased to report that we finished first in our category, families with strollers. That's not impressive though, because the category only had two teams. What is impressive, however, is that our score was high enough to take first place in the families with children under 8 category (but the kids need to move under their own power), fourth place in the family category, and in the top five for a number of different categories. Most importantly, we were 40th overall (out of 103 teams), and a couple teams were obviously experts at this, scoring a perfect 1,000 points! See all the results (we're Team Theo) or learn more about the Street Scramble.

I used EveryTrail to track our progress, but I forgot to turn it on at first, so I've manually edited it to show our approximate route along 1st Ave, having started at Pike Place Market. Unfortunately the manual edit has made the start and stop look like it's in the wrong place, but you can still get the idea. Impressively we walked about 7 miles during the 2 hour period, all the while I carried Theo in a backpack (Theo now weighs more than 23 pounds, and the backpack is about 8).

Seattle Street Scramble

How Time Flies

A long time ago, on a sofa far, far away our PEPS group gathered, plopped all the children down, and took a photo. Then a couple of weeks ago we gathered the same group of kids, and the same sofa, and through some magic none of us know about, got them to sit still for the same photo.

Our PEPS group back in March 2011 (Theo was just shy of 5 months old)

9 months later: our PEPS group in December 2011 (Theo was just shy of 14 months old)

Theo Scarfs Mac and Cheese

Today's lunch:

O Christmas Tree

We finally got around to putting up the Christmas tree on Saturday night while Theo was asleep. He is not impressed.

New Car!

Not our car, but the same color!

We bought a new car over Thanksgiving. It's a wonderful brand new Mazda5. We're familiar with the car as we'd rented it several times over the past year (Hertz has it available as an intermediate size car). It seats six, and was only manufactured in 2006-2010 and now in 2012 it's back, making used ones pretty difficult to find, particularly with the manual transmission we both wanted. It's much much easier getting Theo in and out of the Mazda5 than it is with either one of our existing cars. One day we'll probably post some photos here, but in the meantime feel free to read more about the car at Mazda's Website, Edmunds, or Consumer Reports.