House Hunting

Well, we haven't dropped off the face of the earth, but we've been really busy looking for houses. Besides, we know everyone just wants pictures of Gabriel, and we still don't have a camera cable to replace the one he ate.

Anyway, we put in a bid on a house today, so we will find out tomorrow what the sellers think of it. Our closing in Ann Arbor is on 13 June, so we'll be up there next week for that. We'd like to be in a new house by the middle of July. It will be Gabriel's birthday present, maybe.

Gabriel is growing so quickly. He hardly uses his walker anymore, because he can get closer to things if he crawls over and stands up on them. He slept for 10 hours straight last night, but it's looking like he's going to be up all night tonight. Right now, he is jumping up and down on his bed, holding on to the rail. He's shaking his head like a weirdo and laughing about it. He's also pushing his face against the mesh and trying to lick his mommy's face and then jumping up and looking down at her, laughing. He needs to get to sleep!

We saw that the Miss Universe pageant is live in Thailand. We really miss it there. Even though we were glad to come home to our comforts (like a bed without ants and a familiar bathroom), we have missed it so much ever since we got back. Our plan is to go back there for our 5 year anniversary, if we can wait that long.

To the Garden! Twice.

Today seemed to be dedicated to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. We're doing our best to get everything we can out of our membership and I have to say we're doing a pretty darn good job of it. Today was playgroup for Patty and Gabe and for something different the group decided to meet at the Botanical Garden. Today it was just Patty and Gabe, Diana and Jake, and Maria and Zoe and they all had a great time exploring the Children's Garden. They found some impressive bullfrogs and some that were still in the tadpole stage. They were all enjoying things so much that they ran over the normal playgroup end time of 4:00 and didn't break things up until 4:45. On such a beautiful day, who could blame them?

That made things interesting, however, because Matt's softball game was at 6:00. Of course traffic decided not to cooperate, it never does when time is short. Matt started the game wearing his khaki work pants (Matt would like to point out that they were actually stone color, not khaki tan) and his brown cap-toed work shoes. Even though the mighty Intimidators started out down by a six runs after the first inning to the boys from Flight Test, they battled their way back behind a massive fourth inning. Matt was the last run across the plate in the sixth inning when the team had scored enough runs to invoke the "12 runs after 6 inning" mercy rule. For the day, Matt was three for three with two singles, a double, two walks, one RBI and three runs scored. The final was 19-7 and it turned out to be a really fun game, especially after Matt got a chance to change into shorts and cleats during the third inning (Patty and Gabe made it in time for the game, Matt just didn't get a chance to change until then). It felt really good to win again and even our record at three and three. The first half of the season is now over and we'll start the second next week.

After the game the Angles boogied back down to Midtown to go back to the Botanical Gardens. Why? Well, because it's the last Wednesday of the month! Every month on the last Wednesday the Gardens has Cocktails in the Garden and they stay open until 9:00. It costs six dollars for members even to get in, but that price includes one free cocktail and free munchies. Tonight they featured a drink called the "Loose Caboose" in honor of the train exhibit going on there right now. The food was some really tasty shrimp and one of our favorite desserts in the entire city: chocolate soup from Soto Soto! The chocolate soup alone would have been more than worth the $6! Mmmm... chocolate soup... garlgarlgarl...

Before we left Patty wanted to show Matt where she and Gabe had hung out over in the Children's Garden. We walked up to the entrance to it (it's sort of separated from the rest of the ABG) and the gate was closed. We went to the front desk and asked if it was closed, but the woman there said no and that we should go over if we wanted, only to be careful because the lighting isn't very good over there. As we were crossing the bridge over the parking lot (it's like a kiddie overpass), the high-strung security guard that we had noticed earlier barking orders into his walkie-talkie saw us and yelled brusquely up from the parking lot that the Children's Garden was closed. Matt answered, loudly, that that was not what they had told us at the front desk. The guard went off to check and Patty and Matt went on their way, shrugging their shoulders. We breezed through, checking on the frogs (still there) and were on our way out when the guard materialized. Matt had bet Patty that he wouldn't apologize to us if we saw him again and Matt now owes some money to his wife. He turned out to be really nice and told us that the woman at the desk wasn't aware that there was virtually no lighting in that part of the ABG and they had decided to close it so no one would get hurt. He didn't order us to leave or anything, but we were already on our way out and didn't want to press our luck. The whole experience made us chuckle.

Patty and Matt have really found themselves exhausted the past couple of days and it has hit us quite hard today. After getting home we pretty much only did the basics (all involving Gabe) and are ready to hit the bed. Gabe has been waking at strange times during the night and throwing off everyone's sleep schedule, which is making for a lot of drooping eyes around the Angle household. Matt had to resort to *gasp* chocolate during the day at work today to give him a shot of energy. We know that things will settle down eventually, but we've got a lot of work to do before we get there. We're looking forward to it, actually.

Sorry that we still are unable to put up any pictures. Matt looked at the USB cable that Chip decided to bite with the eye of an electrical systems corrective action engineer and noticed that the little chomper even bit through the metal shielding that wraps the actual wires inside the cable. Very impressive! Rest assured that we are still taking pictures and will post them as soon as we can get a new cable.

No Photos

Well, we won't be posting photos tonight. Our little hamster crawled under the desk and chewed through the camera cable. Guess we should buy him some chewtoys...

The little guy had quite a day today, so we're going to take the opportunity while he is sleeping to relax in the living room for a while. We'll have lots to blog about tomorrow - playgroup, softball, and social irrigation.

Our Little Rock Star

It’s getting to be Hotlanta season. The temperature was up to 87°, but it was so breezy that it really didn’t feel too hot. Patty took Chip across the street to Midcity Café and had a couple of espressos. They spent a long time sitting out on the sidewalk watching the people and cars go by.

Later, they went out to Piedmont Park. The goal was for P to get a run in, but G had other ideas. After the run, he made it quite clear that he wanted to get out of the stroller and play for a while. He had lots of fun feeding the squirrels, and they got pretty close, as you can see in the photo.

Gabriel has been getting pretty skinny, we think, so we have been trying to get him to eat more at mealtimes, since we don’t like for him to snack between meals for health reasons. He ate a pretty big dinner, and his tummy got huge.

He was so dirty from crawling in the dirt at the park that Daddy gave him a bath after dinner. He also styled his hair. We call this style "Billy Idol": see for yourself!

The Trinity of Bread

We started out today by walking to the Botanical Garden to see the bonsai show (check out the shorts that were small even before pregnancy!). There were a lot of beautiful bonsai there, but we aren’t going to buy another one until we have a house and can keep it outside. We also stopped by the pond to see the bullfrogs and the Locomotion exhibit to watch the trains. Gabriel was enthralled. When he sat on Mommy’s shoulders, he could see the trains on the high tracks.

Patty had to tutor, so we walked back to the apartment. It was a total of about 5 miles. Somehow, it was uphill both ways. We couldn’t figure that out.

For dinner, we had chicken curry and rice with fish sauce again, because we had leftover curry sauce. We threw the sauce and a lot of onion in the wok, added the chicken, and cut a couple of rat s*!% peppers for the fish sauce. It was a pretty spicy dinner. In fact, we had to practice some pretty extreme kitchen sanitary rules, because if those peppers come into contact with anything, even a tiny bit of the oil can burn your lip or eye. Gabriel had eggplant with pear juice (which he didn’t eat), melon with wheat cereal (which he liked), chicken, and carrots for dinner. He was pretty cranky when we tried to get him to eat the eggplant, so by the time he got to the carrots, he was pretty fed up (with us). Matt finally gave up on the meal and held him until he drifted off to sleep.

In a happy coicidence, on Trinity Sunday, we made a trinity of bread. From the front: nutty hearth bread with flax, organic cracked wheat, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds; braided challah with poppy seeds; and basic hearth bread. The nutty bread was sort of a take-off we invented, and the challah rose so much that the braid sort of came out, but they all look really good, we think. Each has its own distinct smell. The challah smells like eggs, the nutty bread smells nutty (duh!), and the other hearth bread smells like flour and yeast. We are going to turn doughy with all the bread we have to eat!

Yesterday, while Patty was at the gym, Matt found Gabriel in his toy box. He must have had a hard time reaching something and decided to crawl in. He’s getting more and more adventurous with the standing, climbing, and cruising.