Yesterday, Sheils and I left early to head to Waco for the day.  We made our first stop at the home of my Baylor friend, Heather, to visit with her and her 2 1/2 year old daughter, Emily.   Heather and I had a wonderful time catching up on all the scoop while Sheils went into full Grammie mode with Emily.  We were on the couch chatting when all of a sudden, we realized that Sheils and Emily had crawled under the coffee table and were singing “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”  Emily actually decided to call her “Julia” but whatever the name, it was clear that Sheils was her new BFF.

The 4 of us then went to the famed Buzzard Billy’s Armadillo Bar and Grillo for lunch.  Although most people choose to have fancy or formal rehearsal dinners, Seth and I had ours at Buzzard’s….and it was fabulous!!   We had to stop by for some tasty treats and some good Texas atmosphere!

We then went on to visit another dear friend, Kelly, whom I actually have known since preschool in Houston and then spent Baylor years together, too.  It was great to meet her baby, Darcy, and catch up with them!

After buying some new Baylor gear and getting my third Sonic slushie of the week, we hit the road to Fort Worth to visit Carolyn, a friend from Corning who moved to Texas right when we moved to Maryland!  So in the span of one day, we visited a Houston friend, a Corning friend, and a Baylor friend.  All the stages of my life!

Now we’re off to my mom’s fave place for lunch and then to track down a store that Lindsay told me about called “A Tiny Hiney”!!!  

See, look at what the heat is making me do!  I’m getting crazy with the hair ribbons!  (Or maybe that’s just being back in Texas.)  Anyway, the Monday report is certainly a positive one.  I met my Baylor friend, Barrett, for lunch and had a great time catching up.   Then Sheils and I were off to several cute baby-related boutiques and ended up escaping to North Park mall (with our bubble tea) to get out of the 106 degree (I’m not exaggerating) heat!   We then ended up at Good Eats for a chicken fried steak and fried okra dinner and then headed over to see Fran’s cute new condo.  All in all, a perfect Dallas day…

Somehow, Travis and I ended up with a baby who is in the 95^th%ile for height.  Owen had his 1 month checkup last week.  He’s 10 pounds 4 oz and some height that makes him officially tall.  I’m not exactly tall (5’3” or maybe 5’4”) and Travis is just under 6 feet. I wonder if this means Owen will be taller than us by the time he’s 7 years old?  We’ll see.  He was pronounced ‘perfectly fine’ at the doctor with a recommendation to try to get him to start looking to the left, as Owen likes to look mainly to the right.  So we’ve been trying to trick him into looking to the left, which is not easy to do with a 1 month old.  He’s been cooing more and also makes sounds like a baby pterodactyl (or what we think a baby dinosaur should sound like).  He also smiles more now, which is really cute, and surprisingly difficult to properly catch with the camera.  We did, however, figure out how to record video with our digital camera and have recorded Owen’s first tub bath for posterity.  He was really cute and seemed a little surprised by the warm water at first.  He mainly cooed and looked at me while I was bathing him.  O also christened his bathtub by peeing on it, as he does with all things he loves (Mom, Dad, panda picture on the nursery wall).  In other O news, he actually woke himself up farting this morning. That’s my little trucker baby. 

So Owen likes music, particularly when people sing to him.  He likes Travis to sing him ‘This Land is Your Land’ and folk songs, preferably in a Bob Dylan/Woodie Guthrie hybrid voice.  O likes me to sing the Oscar Mayer ‘My bologna has a first name’ song’ when he gets his diaper changed.  I’ve modified the lyrics so that he doesn’t develop an unhealthy obsession with bologna.  Travis does have a cousin with a child who eats only hot dogs, so I figure it’s in the genes and I should be careful.

After what should have been a 30-minute trip to Grapevine that took 2.5 hours due to an accident on the highway, I arrived at the house of my Baylor roomie/Maid of Honor, Lindsay.  (Oh, her husband, Jason, lives there, too!!)   We have had quite the fun time catching up, eating all kinds of tasty treats, and playing with their not-yet-4-month-old Goldendoodle named Dakota.  Last night, Lindsay hosted an amazing dinner/shower for Baboo and invited 3 of our best Baylor friends.

If you look closely at the first picture, you’ll see that Linds came up with an ingenious (and inexpensive) way to anchor the flowers:  green peas!!   The picture on the right shows the neutral-colored (and somewhat Baylor colored) cookies that were incredibly tasty.  And in the middle, we have the guests:  my BU roomies Rachel and Lindsay on the top, the infamous Rosemond, who lived across the hall from me freshman year, on the left, and Fran, with whom I started kindergarten in Houston and got to spend our college years together as well, on the right.   About 30 minutes into the chat-fest, we realized how old we sounded discussing recipe swaps and breast pumps.  A far cry from our conversations of a decade ago when we first met!

So I flew back into Dallas on Thursday evening after being able to jump on an earlier flight from Amarillo.  I arrived, found the car my parents had left me, and took to the roads as fast as I could to make it to one of my favorite Texas destinations that probably makes the skin crawl of many of my contemporaries.  Yes, it’s Luby’s cafeteria, where I lower the average age by at least 20 years.  And yes, they stop serving at 8 PM!

I snapped this picture before I ate so I could document the ultimate meal that I’ve been eating for many, many years.  Here’s the winning combo:  fruit salad, a LuAnn platter with baked cod almondine (w/tartar sauce), macaroni and cheese, and broccoli, some sort of bread product, and the piece de resistance– the custard.   Ah, a little bit of Texas heaven…

Okay, 19 weeks and Baboo is a small zucchini, or courgette for you french-speakers!  Since we are regular purchasers of both sweet potatoes and zucchinis, I would generally say that a “large sweet potato” (18 weeks) is bigger than a “small zucchini” but what do I know?  I just want to see how long they can keep up with the veggies!

In an effort for this brief blog entry to be totally Baboo-focused (we’ll revert back to food later!), I have two other things to report:

1)  After what was some initial movement last week on the Amtrak bench, I hadn’t felt anything more….until Tuesday night on the airplane.  I think Baboo did NOT like me walking all through the airport hauling bags, etc.  There was all kinds squirming, albeit faint, once I was seated onboard.

2)  Such movement would seem to require space and sure enough– I’m getting WAY larger WAY faster than before.  It’s like all of a sudden, I really am preggers.  I don’t think there’s any hiding it any more…

Oh my.  So cute, and yet so angry.  Owen clearly woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.  His day started at 2 am and he ate at 2, 3, and 4 with fussing in between. Then he took a quick nap and then ate again  at 6:00.  Since then he’s been Mr. Furious, unless he’s eating, milk-drunk, or grabbing a brief nap.  Otherwise, I can’t put him down, and he only wants to be held certain ways.  We also have to be moving or he howls.  Hopefully his daily mega-nap is improving his spirits.  I’m ready for my sweet, smiling (occasionally) baby to return.  Hmm,  I can hear young Crankenstein stirring now…

Greetings from Canyon, Texas!  I left BWI last evening and flew into Dallas and then took a connecting flight this morning to Amarillo.  With all my Texas roots, I’ve never been here before so I was excited to see a new part of the state!  I’m doing some work here today and tomorrow and then will fly back to Dallas tomorrow night and stay through next Thursday morning.

This trip is all about family, friends, and FOOD so I must keep you all apprised of my encounters with each!  :-)   It’s already off to a great start–  my parents picked me up at DFW last night and we ended up at Jason’s Deli for a snack.  I really, really want Jason’s to head our direction.  It would be such a wonderful option for post-church meals as well as any other kind of group meals!   For the first time ever, I didn’t appropriate chocolate mousse from the salad bar.  Points go to me for not being a thief.

On my drive through Amarillo on I-40 this morning, I kept my eyes peeled for a Sonic so I could get my first fresh strawberry-lime slush.  I didn’t find one, amazingly enough, but I did spot a Fazoli’s where I may just have to grab dinner this evening.  Ironically, the one Fazoli’s in Maryland is in Hagerstown and Seth has designs to eat there this Friday on his way back from football camp at Frostburg State.  Who knew we could both enjoy the fast-food Italian delicacy in the same week?

We just took a break from work to go get “real” hamburgers from a local hamburger stop called Hil’s.  There does just seem something quintessentially Texan about loading up a burger with all the fixin’s at the authentic local jaunt.  I was sad to miss out on the proper accompaniment of a Dr. Pepper but I’d already had an iced chai today and I am trying to watch the caffeine a bit.

Back to work I go!  

This is Restaurant Week in DC, a semi-annual affair that we try to take advantage of when we can.   Today was the only day we could make a meal work, and lunch is always a better value since it’s a 3-course meal for $20 rather than dinner, which is $30.  I made reservations at Ten Penh which is part of a local restaurant group that is known for offering lots of options during RW.  I’d been to each of the other 3 restaurants in the group so this completed the set.

I didn’t realize that the name comes from the address: the restaurant is at 10th and Pennsylvania.  (I guess they threw on the final ‘h’ to demonstrate its Asian persuasion.)   As someone used to driving all over DC, I always prefer to drive into town but we decided based on the parking situation to take the metro (pictured above).   It’s weird how long it’s been since I’ve been on the metro– when my office was downtown, I was on it several times a week.

 Anyway, lunch was tasty.  Seth selected the spring rolls with a trio of dipping sauces, red curry shrimp with jasmine rice, and a coconut rum panna cotta.  I had a chilled watermelon soup with thai basil, pecan-crusted halibut over japanese eggplant, and a chocolate mousse cake with banana cream and mandarin oranges.  It was all extremely yummy, except the chocolate mousse was really salty for some reason.  Perhaps my taste buds are just not quite refined enough for the fancy chocolate!!  Or maybe someone knocked over the canister of Morton’s…