Momentous Occasion

Momentous occasion, not because we've acquired photos of Brad Pitt's body double from the movie Troy. His in-very-much-need-of-a-tan-and-a-workout body double. No, momentous because Molly and Jacob each fed from the bottle for the first time today. Total success with each taking in about 4oz (over 100mL) with nary a complaint. Fitting in time for Kate to breast-pump is of course the next conundrum. Our plan for the coming weeks is to do one feed per day from the bottle, keeping the kids prepared for relying on the bottle when Kate is at work.

We paid a visit to Box Store Hell today down in Barrie. Purpose of the trip was to go to BabysRUs to try on a variety of baby carriers. Half our friends have sworn by the Bjorn and the other half by the Ergo. There seems to be no lukewarm, middle ground on this issue. We put off our decision and managed to walk away with only a few minor purchases of items not available at our friendly, local baby shop. Kate also went into the maternity store, possibly to gloat to herself that she's now an extra-small in maternity sizes. Given that she's no longer pregnant, some might consider this a somewhat hollow victory. Kate's husband is not to be counted amongst these ungenerous "some". And, most importantly, we came home with Indian food and lots of it. The Tara Indian restaurant on Dunlap seems to be the very best thing about Barrie, so far as we've seen.

By the way, for fans of The 40-Year-Old Virgin ...
- You know how I know you're gay?
- How?
- Cause you have homoerotic photos of Brad Pitt on your blog.

The Kids in the Great Outdoors

Here are a couple of photos of the kids in the backyard from yesterday morning. In the evening we trekked out to Tudhope Park (pictured at bottom) and did a feed on a park bench overlooking the lapping waves of the lake. Very romantic. Very romantic in that "You clean up the mess while I try to quiet her down" kind of a way.

Birkenstock - Swedish for Ridiculously Expensive Sandal

Kate says that's not a funny joke because Birks are German, not Swedish. But come on, say it again, but with a Swedish accent like the guy in this Ikea commercial and that's comedy.

Anyway, here's a photo of Kate's brand new Birks. Note the swollen little toe - a casualty of midnight stumblings in the dark.

More One-Month Photos

Here are a few more photos. Molly and Jacob in their natural habitats, on their beds getting dressed before going out for ice cream (which they only indirectly benefit from). Molly in the blue lion outfit (from my mom I think). Jacob in the red. This is a great, preppy little sailor overall/shorts outfit (from Darryl & Justine) that Jacob doesn't quite fill out yet.

Finally a new photo

Here are the kids a couple of days ago getting ready to go out for dinner. Molly is resplendent in the blue giraffe outfit, while Jacob is dashing in stripes.

My mom returned home from a few days away to find no new photos on the blog, just a "book report", so this one's for you mom.

One-Month Old!

The kids turned one-month old yesterday. We celebrated with an early morning drive to T.O. for Molly's 3rd set of casts. Everyone seems happy with the progress of her feet. And her hands continue to loosen up too, so she'll be even more perfect in the coming months. We used the cast-less moment to weigh them in the hospital. Jacob is up to 7lb3oz and Molly to 6lb13oz, so all is well. They seem really big to us, until we meet older babies. We stopped by Priya and David's for lunch in Toronto, and Rowan is twice their size at 4 months. And she has enormous eyes and actually smiles. That looks fun. Earlier in the week we actually made it out to dinner at Mike and Lisa's (who have been like the super welcoming committee for us), and the kids were practically peepless throughout. It is definitely best to begin our socializing with people who have lots of kids so expectations are low!

And just so it doesn't seem like everything is bubble gum and roses, we've definitely been through a couple of crazy-tired spells this week, where the tedium of the endless cycle of feeds and sleeps (or feeds and fail-to-sleeps) has felt like our own version of Groundhog Day. I can see that the social smile and occasional feedback will make an enormous difference when that happens. But the little guys really are fantastic.

Books

I just finished "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri. Great story about a Bengali family immigrating to the US, and the resulting impact on each generation of the family. It was a pretty good movie too, but the book naturally has more layers and depth.

Further evidence for my theory that if you're looking for a good book, you can do a lot worse than perusing past winners of the Pullitzer prize for fiction. Lahiri won in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, which I haven't read yet. My favorite read of the past year, Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead" won in 2005. The Pullitzer list also introduced me to Richard Russo, whose "Empire Falls" won in 2002. I loved that one and am about to start another of his. Roth's "American Pastoral", Shields' "Stone Diaries", Tyler's "Breathing Lessons" and McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" are all amongst my top-25 or so novels and all have won the Pullitzer in the last 20 years.

In contrast, I can rarely get through Booker Prize nominated books, which seem to be chosen for their intellectualism and "cleverness" rather than for telling a great story. Out of the 2004 and 2005 Booker nominees, I read Barnes' "Arthur and George", Isghiguro's "Never Let Me Go", Ali Smith's "The Accidental", and Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" (actually I didn't get beyond the 3rd chapter of the latter). I had issues with every one of them and none passed the tests of, "can't put it down" or "insist that everyone you know reads this book".