Gabe Cruises and Happy Birthday, Billy!!

We found ourselves without any obligations today, for once, so we decided to take it slow. Gabe is still a bit under the weather, so we thought this would be a good opportunity for him to rest up. He seems to have a very low grade temperature that goes away when we give him Tylenol and his nose is running constantly. He took a super-long nap today and hasn’t been eating quite as much, things that he will only do when he’s not feeling quite right. Clearly, this is playgroup’s fault. He’s handling it well though and isn’t complaining at all. He is his usual gregarious self.

That fact was demonstrated to us today as Gabriel did something for the first time. This morning he was crawling around on the floor as he often does. He crawled over to his walker and pulled himself to a standing position. This isn’t unusual for him anymore, even though we still think it’s pretty amazing, standing while holding on to something is old hat for our little almost-ten month old. After standing for a few seconds while grabbing onto the walker, Gabriel started pushing it around!! This is the first time that Gabe has taken steps while not in a walker (at least as far as we know, who knows what the Chipster does when we’re not looking). He cruised all the way from the living room through the kitchen and into the bedroom. He seemed pretty stable and he seemed to really be enjoying himself. We think that it won’t be long before he’s walking unassisted.

Patty thought it was time that Matt started baking some bread of his own since there is plenty of flour to go around. The experienced baker walked Matt through the steps of making Alton Brown’s Very Basic Bread, the very first bread Patty made. It came out pretty tasty if we do say so ourselves. Here’s the picture evidence to prove that Matt can make more than white chocolate pudding:

We managed to watch Raging Bull in only three sessions, as opposed to the 10 or 11 that it took for us to watch Ray. We gave a very solid 54 (out of 64, natch) to this early Scorsese work. We thought the acting was outstanding, DeNiro good as always but also an impressive debut for everybody’s favorite Goodfella Joe Pesci. The movie could have scored higher, but it really was a downer. Jake LaMotta was not a nice man, nor was he a very good comedian, apparently. Kid could box, though, couldn’t he? We’re not sure we’ve seen Detroit mentioned so often in a movie since Robocop.

We want to wish Billy a very happy 18th birthday. It’s really hard for us to believe he’s a real, live adult now and could realistically go to jail if he ever did something wrong. Not that he would. We hope he has a great birthday and forgets for a moment the responsibilities that come with the age. Now get out there and vote, Billy!