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.