Marin is 11 months old!

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What a week

It's been a busy week and Marin learned several new tricks. First, he is making great strides into table food. After the taco experiment he ventured into broccoli, potato, pork chops, rice, green beans, ham, pickles, several types of bread, and pasta salad. His two favorites out of this list are pork chops and ham. I guess he likes meat.

Tonight Marin figured out that the light switch in his room controls the light. He had a blast flipping the light off and then looking at us as if to say "turn it back on!" MaLeah took a video. I hope to put that up later.

Marin continues to develop his walking skills. He has yet to take an unsupported step, but he can burn it around the house with something solid to hold on to. We bought him a toy car thing that is supposed to give him something to lean on so he can walk around. My initial assessment is that it's an accident waiting to happen. I hope I'm wrong.

On a completely non Marin related note, we got our first iPhone today. I am not a big fan of Apple and I think the iPhone commercials are stupid. But, I've come to realize this is one of those rare life changing pieces of technology on par with the Internet and DVR's. It is impossible to describe what I mean. You just have to experience it to understand (kind of like parenthood). For those of you with iPhones you know what I mean and I guess we're a little late to the party. For those of you without one, you should really check it out. It will change your life.

Table food adventure

Marin's been in the process of upgrading from stage 2 to stage 3 baby foods the past few weeks. For whatever reason, he doesn't do well with the chunkier food. I think it's a texture thing. He thinks it's going to be all mush and tries to swallow and then comes across a hunk of something and gags. Since it hasn't been going well, we're trying to figure out what works for him. Amazingly enough, it seems he can handle many table foods. We recently introduced Cheerios ... OK, not real Cheerios ... some generic, organic Cheerio knock off (it was MaLeah's idea). Well tonight we deviated far, far away from his wholly organic diet. Tonight Marin ate tacos.

We've given him tid-bits of cheese before, so as we were eating dinner I gave him a couple bites. We eat a very mild seasoned ground beef for our tacos, so we decided to give him a small taste. HE LOVED IT. So we gave him some more. We also threw in a little lettuce to balance it all out. He did pretty good until I got over zealous and gave him a bite that was a little too big and made him choke. He still wanted more, but we want to see what kind of diaper we're dealing with after this foray before fully committing.

Tomorrow we're going to try brocolli and potato (I know that sounds boring, but it's one of our favorite meals ... everything is covered in massive amounts of CHEESE !!!).

Another new trick

We've been wondering how long it would take Marin to figure out he could pull up on the baby gates.

Pictures

Pictures

Second tooth

Marin has a second tooth pushing through next to his first tooth. It's too small to get a good picture yet. Just documenting it here for posterity's sake.

Passport

We applied for Marin's passport today. Here is his passport photo that I shot using the white background technique discussed previously on this blog.

Another day at the park

We're not sure what the lower lip was all about ...



















... but Marin's expressions are priceless.

Somebody learned a new trick

Good morning!

It's not easy being green

Cheers!























































Marin's tooth

Disaster waiting to happen

Long day ...

Pictures

Thank goodness for warmer weather.



















"I wanna go fast!"



















Marin playing the wind chime



















A classic "Marin expression"



















This picture is especially for Adele ...



















Pinch proof chain - the greatest invention on earth























































Marin figured out how to walk around this thing ... pretty cool.





































Boldly going where many have gone before ...

Pictures

A couple days at the park ...

Copy cat super heros

A friend of ours had an interesting post on her blog with a picture of "her super hero alias." Apparently there is a website where you can build your own super hero. I got such a kick out of her post that I decided to copy her idea. Here are our super hero aliases ... although I couldn't come up with a name as cool as "THE TARA-RIZER."

THE MARIN-ATOR

























SUPER MOM

























THE ARMED EXECUTIVE

First tooth

Marin cut his first tooth. We think it might have been there for a couple days, but we just noticed it today. Try as we might, the pictures didn't turn out great. We'll have to let it grow in a bit and get better ones later.

You can just see a corner sticking out of the gum below



















I had to use a flash and nearly blinded the poor kid ... it ain't pretty, but you can see it



















The tooth is so small at this point it almost looks like a reflection on his gum in this picture