Our Resident Expert in All Things Rolling, Culinary and Fashion

Yes, yes it's true. Anika has at long last liberated herself from her tyrannical parents' favorite form of torture: tummy time. Here's how:


Step One: Extend right arm and grunt.


Step Two: Cock head, flail left arm and leg. Wiggle fingers and await results.


Step Three: Success! Beam with pride, drool a little and resume work on that bald spot.

Anika is now efficient enough that she's rendered tummy time impossible. However, she's beginning to roll from her back to her side, so hopefully she will soon choose to be on her stomach.

In other news, our explorations in all things edible continue. Here's Anika enthusiastically modeling the high chair I neglected to highlight in my previous post.


Her enthusiasm quickly waned, however, when she discovered that not everything tastes like breastmilk. In this case: Mom's homemade applesauce. So cruel! Anika's second real food, sweet potatoes (mixed with milk), was more of a hit. Mildly.


And in case y'all were wondering: though the competition is steep, we ARE the proud parents of one of Brooklyn's most fashionable infants. Here's evidence:



Since so many of her belongings originated in China, I thought, "What the hell, why not embrace one's alliances?"


Uh oh, duty calls...

NYC: New Year, New Gear, and New Abilities

Finally! After nearly three and a half months of travel (out of Anika's first five), we returned home on New Year's Eve. Back in New York, Anika is enjoying her jumper from new heights: our doorways are oddly tall, and thus require the aid of an ottoman.

She also became briefly reacquainted with her bumbo seat, but was generally not into it. So, we sold it, and have been enabling her to show off her independent sitting skills instead.




Because she's sitting up so well, because Grandparents Tom and Mary gave her a high chair for Christmas, and, well, because it's time, we also fed her her first meal on January second. Here she is having a little gettin'-to-know-ya time with her new spoon.


Here comes the first spoonful (it's rice cereal and breastmilk, by the way)...

And here it is coming right back out.


Despite how it looks, Anika's actually very receptive to the whole idea of eating. Plus it's highly entertaining, and nice to have her join us for meals. More to come!

Christmas in Colorado

Here are family photos from the holidays (in no particular order).


This picture was taken up at Snow Mountain Ranch, where Mama, Daddy, and all four grandparents spent three nights entertaining the Emdrew. All four grandparents collaboratively babysat for a day so that Andrew and I could go snowboarding. The snow wasn't great, but the weather was, and luckily my first significant separation from Anika was uneventful.


Anika was calling out Grandpa's Scrabble tiles--mostly A's and I's.








In this one (and the next), Anika is dressed up in Grandma Mary's baby clothes. She looked like a doll.






Here's the crucial "Baby's first Christmas" shot under the tree. Andrew's holding on just because she has a tendency to topple, but on the whole she's quite good at sitting on her own.








Facing off with a favorite Christmas gift...


Sitting unassisted!





Thus ends the year of Baby's birth. And what a year! Travel-weary and sleep-deprived though we may be, I think these past few months have been the best of our lives. Stay tuned!

To Great-Grandmother's House We Went

After our visit to Colorado in November, the Korson clan returned to New York for exactly one day. We unpacked, re-packed, rented a car, stopped off for lunch with Great-Aunt Gwen and Great-Uncle Fred, and then made our way towards Amherst, Massachusetts.

Here we spent a lovely and very memorable evening with Great-Grandma Sabra. Sabra was, naturally, enthralled with Anika (her first great-grandchild) and the feeling was apparently mutual.




After we departed Amherst, we drove up to Hanover, New Hampshire, where Andrew interviewed at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. To my shagrin, the only photo we managed to take during the subsequent two weeks was this one of Andrew teaching Anika (who is sitting in her bumbo seat) to operate a remote control.


I swear: TV is not something we encourage or do often!

Anyhow, in the days that followed, we spent two very nice evenings with family friends near our place in New Hampshire before making our way to Boston. In Bean Town we spent a week with another pair of extremely accommodating family friends in Cambridge. While there, Andrew interviewed at Boston University and two hospitals affiliated with Harvard (Beth Israel Deaconess and Mass General). Although it was cold and the city was a navigational nightmare, Andrew came away very impressed with the Harvard programs, and we agreed that Boston is a livable place. As it stands, these two remain very high on our list, but we're still not really ready to declare a favorite.

At the end of the week, we returned to Brooklyn for four precious days of home time (during which we mostly just collected ourselves) before once again boarding a flight--Anika's 5th--for Colorado...

Thanksgiving in CO

Yes, yes, I know. I'm painfully behind. And frankly, it's going to take awhile to catch up, but I'll still do it chronologically.

We've had many adventures in the past month and a half. Here are highlights from our visit to Denver in November en route back to New York.

Anika and I departed Portland on November 17th (Andrew followed a week later). We stayed with Grandma Karen and Grandpa Wally for a week, and then all three of us stayed Grandpa Tom and Grandma Mary for four days. The whole crew had a lovely low sodium, gluten-, soy-, and dairy-free Thanksgiving over at Uncle Peter and Aunt Chrystal's, and Andrew attended a residency interview at St. Joseph Hospital. Good times were had by all.