Happy Cinco de Mayo and Happy Birthday Emily!

Can you find the baby in this picture?

First of all, a big Happy Birthday to Emily, who turned 20 today. We're sure that her friends surprised her with a delightful non-alcoholic punch to celebrate, ha ha.

Yesterday was softball Wednesday. The Intimidators won! Woohoo! Matthew was 1 for 4 but was on base 3 times (twice due to fielder's choice) and had 1 RBI. They won by one run, 9-8, so you could say that the game win was due to our favorite first baseman.

We didn't do anything special for Cinco de Mayo today. We didn't even eat dinner. Patty had to tutor, so it was 9 o'clock before we even got to sit down together.

Gabriel must be going through a growth spurt. His appetite is through the roof, and he has an amazing amount of energy. He's been crawling all over the apartment, and we caught him in an interesting place today, as you can see in the photo. He's also getting more clingy. He follows his parents around everywhere. He seems to be beginning to understand the word "mommy" and uses it often. He calls his daddy "Baba." He likes to show us the things he's holding, and he likes to play tug-of-war with them. He has been leaving a trail of destruction wherever he goes. We will soon have the strongest thighs in the south from all of the squats we've been doing to pick up his books.

Jack called home today to say that he's doing well. He's on a 12-hour night shi ft, and his captain apparently gave them his calling card to call home. He said that he is ready to come home but is in good spirits. It was about 2:00 am for him and 6:00 pm EST.

Since we didn't do this yesterday, here is our weekly

AR7 Watch

Warning: spoilers ahead!

Only one more week to go!

We thought we'd learned a new strategy from Joyce when she pointed out that direct flights are a better bet, even if there's an earlier flight with a layover, because there are fewer chances for a delay or unexpected setback. However, the teams that took the earlier flight did get there without incident, so we don't know what we would do. Here's the team-by-team breakdown:

Gretchen and Meredith: Well, finally they are out. We're impressed that they made it this far, especially since they'd given up at least 17 times, but the sanskrit was on the wall. And just as they'd stopped giving up...

Uchenna and Joyce: They're working really well as a team and could possibly pass up Ron and Kelly on the next leg. It's hard to believe that they had marital troubles before joining the race. It seems to be doing them a lot of good.

Ron and Kelly: Why is she still clinging to the idea of marrying him when he obviously isn't interested? And why, for the love of Maybelline, did she share lipstick with the woman at the airport counter? We don't know if it's more vain or disgusting, but EEW! They were the first team in all of the seasons we've watched that didn't whine when they were yielded and take it personally. At least there's that.

Rob and Amber: If they don't win, we'll be surprised. Their idea of finding a local person in many of the legs is brilliant. We don't think that anyone else has done that in the game's history.

Stay tuned for the season finale next week!

Four Generations

Mom A flew down to Atlanta on Saturday to stay with us for a day before Grandma and Grandpa got here on Sunday. Her flight got in about 2 hours late, because storms here caused delays for the plane to get from Atlanta to Toledo and then again from TOL to ATL. Finally, after spending the entire morning on the plane, she got here safe and sound. Gabriel seemed to remember her right away and was excited to see her. We went to dinner at Figo Pasta, an Italian place with fantastic food and quick service. Since Mom had never had gelato (gasp!), we took her to Paolo's (check out the webcam if it's working) in the Virginia-Highlands neighborhood for dessert to go. Paolo wasn't there that day, but he's quite a character. But that's a different post.

When we got back, Patty started a ciabatta and the two of us went out on the town. Since it was rainy and we were stuffed to the gills with food, we didn't go to Baraonda, our favorite restaurant, like we'd originally planned. Instead, we focused on the drinking. We went across the street to Midcity Cafe, or as we once thought, DCI Cafe, since the "Mi" and "ty" aren't too visible on the sign. It's the best place to find the earth's snobbiest people who have no reason to be. Every time we're there, all the conversation we hear revolves around whom they know and where the happening places are and how [insert place here] is so dead. We actually heard a guy say Saturday night that there's so little to do in Midtown that it's exhausting, poor guy. We like it because it's cute, it has drinks, and it's across the street. After a chocotini (M) and raspberry vodka spritzer (P), we headed over to a new bar a couple blocks over called McCray's 6th Street Tavern. It looked like an older, get-together-with-your-friends-and-drink-away-your-divorce-woes crowd (although the review in the link makes it sound great - maybe we'll have to give it a chance next time), so we turned around and went back to Toast, our friendly but upscale neighborhood restaurant. It's a nice place, small and not too loud, with The Food Network playing behind the bar and both Alton Brown and French Laundry cookbooks on the counter. M had a Manhattan, and P had a Jameson's on the rocks and a Kahlua/white chocolate/heavy cream concoction. We were only gone close to 2 hours, but it was a really nice time. We almost didn't know what to say without a little boy to keep our attention every second, but we happily managed.

On Sunday, G&G Kranz met us at a Cracker Barrel south of the city. Matt drove their car through the most dangerous part of their drive, downtown Atlanta, and we met back at the apartment. We had a nice visit and had a great supper. We got food from Cedars Mediterranean for us and St. Charles Deli for everyone else. Grandpa and Matt went up to Marietta to check into the hotel, while Patty, Grandma, Mom, and Gabriel took a nice walk around the apartment complex and over to Tech Plaza. It was a little cool, but it felt nice in the sun. Grandma and Grandpa were excited to see Gabe Luke, and we could tell that he was happy to see them, too. It was nice to have 4 generations of Kranz blood together at once and funny how strong the family resemblance is.

Monday, we were back to a 3-person family. We met up at the Botanical Garden after work, but they're closed on Mondays (would have been good to know before the 2 mile walk!), so we went to nearby McClatchy Park instead. Gabriel had fun swinging in a baby swing, sliding down the slide, and practicing walking (with Daddy's help, of course).

Today, we had a brainstorm. We'd suspected for a while that Gabriel doesn't sleep well because he is uncomfortable. Yesterday, we'd noticed that it takes very little weight to feel the board under his playard mattress, so he is essentially sleeping on a board. Hmmm... We know that the playards aren't supposed to be permanent beds, but we thought that we could save money by using it that way. Anyway, we couldn't really test our theory, because what else would we put in there? Babies aren't supposed to have pillows, and he doesn't like to sleep with us, nor do we want him to get into that habit. Well, today, we noticed that if we turn them sideways, two pillows fill up his playard nicely. There's a little gap right in the middle, but it's nothing that seems to be a safety hazard. We let him take his naps in there today, and now he is sleeping that way, and it's like a miracle how well he has seemed to sleep today. He fussed for just a few minutes the first time, probably from habit, but after that, he's been really good about falling asleep. In fact, tonight he played in there quietly until he fell asleep like he should have been doing all along. After his naps, he's woken up with a big smile and lots of energy. It's too soon to get too excited, but we'll see how this works in the next couple of days. We are going crib shopping on Friday anyway.

We hear that Grandma, Grandpa, and Mom made it back to Maumee safely this afternoon. Apparently, no one was thrown out of the car, so that's a good sign. G&G like their new place, so again, phew! Also, Jack just e-mailed us to say that he's doing well despite the fact that the pressure is getting to some of the guys and that he's getting out of the camp a couple of times a week and still working out the other days. He intends to get in better shape for his return home but that it would be rude (ha ha) not to eat all the goodies that he's gotten recently from home. He dreams about being home almost every night and tries not to get too upset when he wakes up in Iraq. He says that his morale is good, so we're happy about that. Any number of years ago, we would have said goodbye in February and hello again in September, so we're really privileged to be in so much contact with him.

Choo Choo!

Today, Gabriel and Mommy met Daddy at Piedmont Park, since it was such a nice warm day. We were going to go running, but when we were walking by the Atlanta Botanical Garden rear gate, it looked like there were tons of families there having a great time. We could hear music and see some model trains, and we figured out that tonight was the members' preview of the Locomotion in the Garden exhibit. It looked really, really neat, and Gabriel loves trains, so we decided to go around the front of the garden and find out what was going on. Patty had some birthday money burning a hole in her pocket, and it seemed like the perfect way to spend some of it would be to get a membership to the garden. That way, for the next year we will always have somewhere to go. Besides, we've talked about doing that for a long time. It's a beautiful place, and on our frequent mommy/son trips to the park, we can go there as well, or instead. The gardens are beautiful, and they have a phenomenal orchid house and a conservatory where poison dart frogs roam free. We are incredibly excited about our membership.

We decided to walk around a bit while we were there, and the Locomotion exhibit was really cool. When we were on our way out, Gabriel was laughing at his mommy's "Choo Choo" noises, and we heard a woman say to her companions, "Did you see that precious boy?" He also had a laughing fit when we were waiting for Matt to change into his running clothes. Almost everyone walking by started laughing too. It was so nice to see how this little boy has the power to bring a good mood to complete strangers who have seen him for only a brief moment. One woman thought it was pretty funny that Patty was teasing Chidip with his water bottle, acting like she was going to give it to him and taking it away at the last second saying, "Just kidding!" We play that game all the time.

Programming note: Everything from here to the end of this post was erased somehow, and we couldn't figure out how to get it back. It was probably about an hour and a half of #$*%#@ work, during which half a shot of tequila was consumed. We'll try our best to get it as it was before, which was perfect by the way, and we'll see if a half a shot of Dutch chocolate vodka can help the old memory... at least it will help the anger!

Anyway... another woman walking by said, "Hey, I recognize you!" We recognized her, too, but we couldn't remember where we'd met her. We think it might have been either church or playgroup at church, but we're not sure. We'll just have to see where we see her next. Since she didn't stop, we figured that she couldn't remember, either.

After we left the ABG, we went back to the park, where we went for a run. It was a shortish run but a good one. We headed back to the apartment for some beef stir fry and some dinner for Gabriel. When we got on the computer, we saw that some of our photos from film, mostly from our trip to Virginia, had been put online by Snapfish. They can be found here.

Gabriel has been getting better at waving, and we're working on teaching him "nose" and "mouth." We'd also like to get "gentle" into his repertoire, as he is fond of touching people in the eye, and most people don't like that. We decided to give his water bottle another try today, since it's been a while since we decided that he wasn't ready for it yet and his doc says that he needs to start drinking water. He really got it this time. He even went over to get it off of his bookshelf and started drinking out of it. He probably drank over an ounce today, which is pretty good for a little guy who's just learning to feed himself! Of course, that isn't including the water he either spit out onto himself or squirted out of the bottle onto himself.

A quick aside: we are proud of Gabriel's friend, Nook Logan, for hitting the game-winning triple for the Tigers in the eleventh inning against the White Sox. Go Nook!!!

Now let's rewind to yesterday. We didn't do too much that was interesting, but Gabriel continues to get quicker and quicker. It's getting harder and harder to keep up with him. He spends a lot of time going from his bookshelf in the living room to his drawer in the bathroom, over and over, leaving behind a trail of books, blocks, and the occasional hanger or bottle of mouthwash. He's so funny.

We two grownups were in the kitchen working on bread (white, sandwich, buttery) and dishes with Gabriel in there with us, when we heard a little bit of a whine. We turned around, and he was lying face down on the concrete floor. He had been reaching for a bag and climbed right out of his walker in the process! He wasn't hurt at all, and we thought it was pretty funny.

Here are a couple of pictures of the Chipster, one reaching for a book on his bookshelf and one climbing out of his walker to get our mail out of the stroller (if only he'd pay the bills). Here is also a picture of the bread that we made together yesterday.

Chicken and Pears

This is audio of Gabriel laughing at his Mommy's funny voices.

Just A Quick Post Today

Today wasn't too incredibly thrilling, but there were a few things to write about. The most interesting thing that happened today was that the Chipster had playgroup at his friend Jonah's house. We tried to get a picture, but the batteries went dead - sorry. We will definitely get a picture or two tomorrow, since we haven't put any up in a couple of days. Bear with us! Anyway, the picture would have been great - Gabriel, the two Jonahs, and Jake were all sitting around a bunch of balloons playing with them. They were trying to hold them down and shaking the ribbons. They don't understand sharing yet, but they were all playing together. It was so cute.

Chipdip seems to be all better today. He played on his own much of the evening, walking around and getting his books from the bookshelf and his blocks from the drawer. He waved at us a few times today when we waved at him, and he went to bed without a fuss. Hallelujah!

He had turkey today for the first time, and we made him more squash and Golden Delicious apples. We didn't think to check the price tag on the organic squash at Whole Foods, and it turned out to be $20 for the bagful! It better give him superpowers (we'd settle for the superpower of changing his own diapers).

Tomorrow, we plan to do more cleaning and straightening up both because it really needs to be done and in preparation for Mom A and Grandma and Grandpa Kranz to visit this weekend. We're so excited to see them and for them to get to spend time with Gabriel!