Merry Christmas!

Auntie Caitlin's Christmas Moose Suit

Dear Auntie Caitlin,

Thank you very much for my Christmas moose suit. I really like it a lot, especially the tuque! It fits my head just right, and I like having jammies that are long enough for my legs. My dad has a hard time picking out clothes that fit me properly because he gets hung up on the labels that say "6-9 months." He's just surprised by how big a boy I am at 8 months old.

Thank you for the moose suit, auntie. Hope I get to drool on you soon.

Love,
Tate

Snowy Morning

20 Weeks :: One Year Later

Monica and I went to Sierra Women's Health a year ago today...excited, nervous, filled with anticipation about what we would learn about the little person we now know as Tate Bradley Robertson. He sleeps as I write this, dressed in yellow fleece pajamas, his favorite blanket wrapped around him, another covering him for some extra warmth. He may quite literally have his two front teeth for Christmas, plus as many as about four others. A year ago his ultrasound showed us this little person who appeared to be running in the womb. He continued kicking his legs throughout the pregnancy, pushing on Monica's diaphragm until she fainted at Silver Peak one night. Now I hold him in my arm--he's getting too big for just my hands--and he kicks his little feet together in the very same way we saw him moving his much smaller legs and feet in the ultrasound one year ago. Same nose too.

Sounds @ 7 Months are Funny

Tate is now just over seven months old. Can you believe that!? I hardly can. He weighs in excess of 22 pounds, and he's somewhere in the neighborhood of 27 inches long. He has his first "toof," an incisor in his bottom gum, and several others appear to be pushing into place--the primary proof of this are the dark rings under my eyes and Monica's. He's learning how to use his new equipment without hurting Monica while he's nursing, which he seems to have mastered in a few days' time. He's endlessly entertained by dancing--mine, Monica's, ours, Dancing with the Stars--and he loves funny sounds: clicks, raspberries, motorboats, as you can see in this little clip of him from Saturday night...this after he successfully smeared peaches all over his clothing and face, and even managed to swallow some.

Thanksgiving 2007

Thanksgiving 2007 was hosted by Rebecca and Davida and Karin in Los Alamos, California. What fun we had, enjoying the food and wine of the weekend. Great squash soup, turkey dinner for 16, boardwalks across Oso Flaco Lake, and wine tasting at Roblar outside of Los Olivos in Santa Barbara County. We had a great time, no question. Mom, however, had to go to Ohio Friday morning to be with Grandma Ireland--she had successful quadruple bypass surgery Friday. It's of course very worrisome, but so far, it sounds as if the result is positive.
The photos here were taken at Rebecca and Davida's house, and out at Oso Flaco Lake near the Oceano Dunes. Enjoy!

Family in Tacoma + Adventures in Solid Food

So last week, we took Tate to Tacoma, Washington, to the Western Literature Association Conference being held there. I gave a paper about the Japanese immigrant artist Chiura Obata, and dad came to give a paper on the photographer Robert Adams and the poet William Stafford. That made the WLA a family affair, and three generations of Robertson boys were in attendance, along with mom, Caitlin, John, and Monica.
Our hotel room must have had drugs in the sheets, because we slept hard after a couple of hard weeks. Tate found the bed a good practice ground for his first efforts at practicing crawling!


Grandma and Grandpa R. and Aunty Caitlin babysat Tate on Thursday night so that we could go out for dinner on our fourth anniversary--we had a great night out at a cool restaurant called Stanley & Seaforts.

Aunty Caitlin brought Tate a fun outfit (thanks, Aunty!).


We all tooled around in the rental minivan, a.k.a. land yacht. G and G R. rode in the back seats, mostly, to fawn over the grandbaby.



Since we got back, we've been enjoying watching Tate practice crawling. He' s able to do army crawls today, reaching forward for a toy, and dragging along his legs behind him--what fun! He's also had his first bites of food other than mother's milk, children's orajel, and tylenol tonight: rice cereal apparently has a traumatic taste, as these photos indicate...this from a boy who sucks on his own toes for recreation.

Four Smiles + A Frown

My joy comes wuth big smiles...

and the occasional frown...

and lots of giggles! Off to Tacoma next week for WLA, and visits with Grandma & Grandpa & Aunty Caitlin!

@ Five Months Old

@ the Great Reno Balloon Races

We took Tate to the Great Reno Balloon Races last weekend. I plan to go every year, as it's one of those things that reminds you of the wonders of your childhood, but we got to bed late Friday night, and the idea of a 5:00 a.m. alarm was sounding a little less than wonder-ful at midnight. I had even turned the alarm off. But when Tate woke up, unusually early at 4:45 a.m., we figured we were up already...so we packed him in the stroller and walked out into the twilight of the dawn. He watched the silhouettes of the trees against the sky for a few blocks, and then sacked out again. When he woke up, balloons were flying directly over us, as in the fifth picture down from the top--and he was fascinated! He threw his head back to study them, and we were fortunate that the light morning breeze blew several balloons right over the top of us. He was clearly very interested, as you can see in the second picture above. Hope you can come visit over the second weekend in September sometime--it's a magical experience.

Labor Day Weekend 2007

Hi. I'm Tate. I'm going to tell you about my Labor Day weekend with my mom, dad, and Grandma Vicki and Grandpa Brad, and a bunch of other family and friends...


I learned that I like to look at trees a lot. This one was silhouetted against the blue sky Saturday afternoon, and I looked at it for a long time from my vantage point on the lawn...

And mommy was lying next to me, watching the tree blow in the wind. She's pretty, isn't she?

Grandma Vicki was there too...

And Grandpa Brad. I have a hat like his.

This is what Daddy was looking at and enjoying most during our visit...


...Mommy and me!

@ the 90th Percentile

Tate went for his four-month checkup this week, and these are the resulting statistics:

17 pounds, 12 ounces

27 inches long

This represents an increase of 5 pounds, 12 ounces, and three inches, since June 21, the date of his two-month checkup. This places Tate in the 90th percentile of infants his age--two months ago he was in the 50th percentile. Yay for la leche!
What else...As I type this, Tate is grabbing on to my wrist, having learned how to reach for things and grasp them with his increasingly strong fingers. He has also learned to roll over onto his stomach from his back. He's not yet mastered rolling back over onto his back, and he gets frustrated with his little arms, but he's getting stronger every day, and it will only be a matter of time before he's rolling all over the living room floor, I'm sure.

Tate @ Nearly Four Months Old

This weekend, many of my mom's side of the family are gathering for a Pratt family reunion in Middletown, Ohio. Monica and I couldn't be there, but we wanted to be able to show Great Grandma Ireland some moving pictures of Tate...turn the speakers on, sit back, relax, and watch Tate laugh.

Visitors from California

Great Grandma Robertson and Great Aunties Rebecca and Cindy Rae traveled from Santa Maria, Los Alamos, and San Rafael yesterday to come see Tate. What a treat it was to walk out the front door when I heard the car drive up, walk out to them, and introduce the little guy. Smiles all around! We had a lovely day visiting here at our house, passing Tate around from one lap to another. We headed to Silver Peak for more conversation and good food, before they headed to a Circus Circus hotel room we can see from our balcony! They're coming back for breakfast this morning, by which time I hope I can show them this video:

A Special Gift

Our good friend Elizabeth is not only the very best colleague that I could really ask for at the museum, but she is also a talented artist, a great humorist, and a loving adoptive aunty. While Monica and I are both really happy and excited for her that she's been accepted into the graduate printmaking program at the Rhode Island School of Design, we're also sad that she'll be leaving for the other side of the country. She'll be missed a great deal, and, I suspect, she'll be missing little Tate. She made this wonderful print of the little man over the last couple of days. Note the little peanut shapes in the green field behind Tate's figure. She has been perfecting her practice of a mode of printmaking called cast acrylic monotype, a kid of relief monotype printmaking developed by the Bay Area artist Joseph Zirker, who had an exhibition at the NMA in 2005.
Also, Tate has begun laughing at 10 weeks of age. He's been practicing with his diaphragm muscles for a couple of weeks, but for the first time this week he had an honest to goodness laugh at tickles to his second little chin, and funny little sounds his mom and dad make for him now that their sole goal in life is to provoke such sounds and smiles. Great Grandma Robertson will be arriving Saturday to witness it all.

An American River Trip

Tate had his first trip to the American River yesterday. We drove up and over Luther Pass along the West Fork of the Carson River, along Highway 88, and around Highway 50 past the Angora Fire burn area. Once over the pass, we dropped into the watershed of the North Fork of the American River to get to our friend Ann's cabin. The American River is pretty amazing. Perfectly clear, and cold. It's flowing reasonably well yet, despite the fact that we're in a pretty serious drought year. The forest fire danger is already "extreme" everywhere in the Tahoe Basin. Further to the east 60,000-70,000 acres are on fire near Winnemucca. But July 7, 2007 was a beautiful day in the mountains, bright and warm, with a nice breeze. We had a great time hanging out with friends from the museum, and enjoyed temperatures 10-20 degrees cooler than they are down here in Reno. Tate even kept his sunglasses on!

Sweet Grinning Boy

It's sort of shocking how fast time goes, really. Before Tate's birth, I had gotten in the habit of writing most mornings at dawn, prior to Monica waking, and during the quiet dark hours. Now I see I haven't written in almost two weeks. It's a strange kind of time warp to be in these days. But what a wonderful warp it is. Tate went to the Bay Area last weekend with his mom to see three college girlfriends, two of whom have infant boys. They gathered for a weekend of food, fun, and reminiscence, and had a great time. What was most amazing being away from the two of them for four days was that by the time they returned, Tate had learned to grin. He had grinned many times already, but they were frequently uncontrolled or uncontrollable facial expressions. Suddenly we can now make a funny noise at him or sing a song and his mouth opens up and he'll smile and gurgle--his big eyes will narrow, and you can see his familial smile lines at their corners.

Aunty Caitlin

Today is Aunty Caitlin's birthday. She is 27 years old today, and is growing more and more beautiful. She came to see Tate last week, and what a nice visit we had. Her visit coincided with the end of my family leave, and so we got to spend a lot of time together--we haven't spent that much face time together since she and I moved to Cooper Landing, Alaska, together five years ago this summer. We see each other pretty regularly, but it's not often just time with my sister. I can hardly believe that five years have passed since we were first in Alaska together, either--it truly feels like yesterday, and here it is a half a decade ago. Happy Birthday, hermana. We love you.
Monica and Tate have gone to see some friends in California--her four closest college girlfriends are gathering from all corners of the country to see each other. Three of the four have had new babies in the last year, and two of those babies are the first ones in their respective families. So there are four girls--Monica, Kirsten, Sara, and Shauna--and as it turns out, three baby boys: Tate, Cash, and Henry. There's a fourth boy, too, Bracket, who is Kirsten's older boy--some of you might remember him as the little red-bow-tie-wearing infant from our wedding--but his dad is taking him to Legoland for the weekend. That these girls have maintained such a close tie to one another after ten years is really quite a nice thing to see. They left yesterday morning, and I had the house to myself last night, which was a very strange feeling, let me tell you. After two months of punctuated sleep, it was very strange to wake up in the morning wondering why I had not heard Tate's cries in the night. I'll miss them this weekend, but I'll be waving a stick at the waters of June Lake trying to catch a fish with my friends Josh and Shelly.

Morning Coffee and a Baby Boy

I'm sitting at the table sipping coffee as I write this morning, my son resting in a snugli I'm wearing around my shoulders and chest, and I'm humming to him the theme song from the '80s film Crossing Delancey. He's talking to me and bouncing up and down on his little feet, trying to learn that his feet are his feet, and that his hands are his hands. He frequently swings his arms around and hits himself in the face with his little fist, and then looks as if he's considering who just hit him, and whether or not he should cry. His eyes are growing heavy now, but he's fighting sleep at this moment...one of the ways I know he is my son. I remember very distinctly fighting sleep or Ginger, our childhood babysitter, who wished for Caitlin and I to take our naps. Tate and I have been hanging out together this morning watching the finals of the 2007 French Open, where Raphael Nadal has just defeated Roger Federer in four sets. We're trying to let Monica get a few more winks of sleep this morning.
Tate's also been studying the sculptures of Deborah Butterfield with me, as I prepare to go to work this week and next to be ready for the NMA exhibition of her work, which begins next weekend. It seems fitting that Rags to Riches, the first filly to win the Belmont Stakes in 102 years, secured her win yesterday as Tate and I sat together looking at pictures of sculptures with the names shared with such famous race horses as Rondo and Ferdinand. Seeing such beautiful movement in those wonderful horses changes the way you consider Butterfield's sculpture, I think.
On Monday this week, we had a do-over for Mother's Day--Monica's first Mother's Day had been in the hospital with the boy, so we planned our own. Tate and I celebrated with a fun present for mommy and a drive to Truckee to introduce Tate to our friend Meg, and to have dinner at Jake's on the Lake in Tahoe City. It was a beautiful evening, and we enjoyed stuffed rainbow trout together. We watched the light grow long across Lake Tahoe as it illuminated the sails of a dozen dinghies racing in a regatta in the last of the day's winds.
Tate is thriving, and I now believe that his head could no longer be birthed, it's grown so much. His hands and feet appear larger to me, and he seems longer still than he had been just a week ago. He's now asleep against my chest, breathing rhythmically. Here's a cute shot of Tate and his mommy...

After the Blue Moon

A picture of my boy and me....My dad took the photograph when he and my mom were in town last weekend for the holiday. You can read my dad's account of the visit's meaning at his blog, Blue Wheelbarrow.
A blue moon rose in the late hours of May 31 (on the west coast)--the first one in two-and-a-half years. It feels like a small but special event early in Tate's young life. He is six weeks old today, and all indications are that he's now thriving. I'll need to take him to have his blood tested for bilirubin and liver enzyme levels toward the end of this week, but, thankfully, we won't otherwise have to visit the doctor's office until his healthy baby checkup on June 26.
Many thanks again to everyone for their thoughts and prayers for our little one in recent weeks. Aside from sharing the peace at church, my favorite time in the liturgy is the prayers of the people. There really does seem to be a channeling of energy at the time that the prayers are read, and I find it to be a powerful expression of peoples' faith in action, and to know that so many were thinking of Tate in this time of need feels comforting.
He's learning to control his facial expressions ever-so-slightly now, and we can see what his smiles will look like from time to time now. He's a sweet boy.