@ 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.