6 months!

It is amazing how quickly Gabriel is growing. So much change, and he has only just been around for six months. It's not so much that he is getting longer (70.5 cm) and heavier (8.4 kg) by the day, but he is starting to become a person with his own will.
For example when I am feeding him, he now grabs the bottle and puts it into his mouth by himself, so that he can drink at his own pace. He also wants to set the pace by himself when he's eating solids, which he started two weeks ago. He loves the rice cereal that is the first non-milk food given to babies in Canada, and he could not get enough of carrots and apples. Today, we tried pumpkin for the first time.

Needless to say that he liked it.

The food container is not the only thing he tries to grab. For quite a while, he has been fascinated by liquid containers, such as bottles, glasses, cups. He wants to hold them and he wants to drink from them. This is mostly funny, but sometimes, all I want to do is to drink in peace!

To finish for tonight (yes, I haven't forgotten about the Christmas pictures), here's Gabriel's state of the baby address on the occasion of his 6 months' birthday.

By the way: In case you have to rotate the videos you made with your digital camera, I can very much recommend the free program VirtualDub.

Happy 2008!

Many things have happened in the weeks since I last posted. For one, Gabriel is now 5 1/2 months old, and, fittingly for the new year, he has passed the 8 kg mark. Also, I try to feed him non-liquids since Sunday (and it's not the reason all my hair is falling out).

I am getting ahead of myself, though.

Early December, we put Gabriel's machine-readable passport to use for the first time: We went to the US. They weren't actually able to read from the chip yet at immigration, of course. Still, we wanted to make sure that we use the 150$ passport required for entry into the US a few times before it expires in less than three years.
Thus, Michelle and Gabriel accompanied me to the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in Washington DC.

The flight was no problem whatsoever, and we were very happy with the Bed&Breakfast we stayed at, the Meridian Manor. We had been promised a baby bed, so we were a bit surprised when the owner had prepared an adult's bed for Gabriel. He apologized, saying he didn't actually know how to put the baby bed together. Gabriel slept like an angel, so fortunately I didn't need to show off my talents as an engineer.

While I was at the conference, Michelle and Gabriel visited the city, enjoying many of the amazing sights and museums.

Then, they would come and pick me up at the conference and tell me all about their great day.

After a dinner in one of the excellent restaurants in the area, either only the three of us, or together with our good friends Dinah and Raffi, whose great idea it was to try out the B&B, we would spend the evening in our room, relaxing...

...or playing.

This was not a bad arrangement. Normally, I would have spent all night meeting people, which one of the reasons ASCB is so draining. Now that I actually slept at the hotel instead of napping during a boring talk, I only had to survive the several thousand posters.
Fortunately, I could spend one more day in Washington to relax and cool down - it even snowed! The entrance to the B&B was pretty when we came home the night of the snowstorm, and we were glad we hadn't tried to fly back that night.

Fortunately, Montreal had us well-prepared for the chilly temperatures, so Michelle, Gabriel and I tremendously enjoyed the day off (Gabriel is actually inside the stroller, not in the net below).

Then, we had to go back to Montreal and prepare for the arrival of our Christmas guests. But that is a story for another day.