7 MONTHS OLD

This past Sunday, Gabriel turned 7 months old. It's astonishing that it's already been 7 months.. I'm going to blink and he'll be asking me for keys to the car.

But his seventh month was indeed a busy one. I already wrote about his first meal of rice cereal. Here's a bit of an update of latest developments:

-He enjoys a variety of fruit and vegetables now, including pears, apples, bananas, peas, sweet potato and avodado. He's not a big fan of squash.

-He now has his two bottom teeth. They're still emerging, but they flash when he smiles really big. He touches them and has started to get used to them.

-He sits up marvelously, though isn't able to pull himself upright from laying down yet.

-He enjoys time on his tummy far more now, propping his head and shoulders up high off the ground. He's not yet figured out how to move his knees up under himself to crawl - all in good time.

-He's presently in swim classes twice each week. No underwater swimming, but he's learned how to kick his legs and enjoy floating around in the water, even submerging his eyes. He's also learned how to keep his mouth shut under water and not gulp. I hope to have photos of this soon.. mine were all too dark as my flash is weak.

-He's babbling more and more now, copying noises and sounds. The other night, Great Grandma Charlotte was over playing cards and exchanging noises with Gabriel. Her oxygen unit makes an occasional puffing sound and he began imitating it.

-He's now sleeping for 7 or so hours each night reliably, though he does occasionally wake up hungry.

-He enjoys going outside and playing on his blanket when it's sunny.

And finally, he's grown to have an interest in the cats. Here's a succession of shots of Gabriel sitting next to Sundaye. He sat there for a while clinching her hair with slobbery hands - and she remained pretty calm. But clearly here, she gets a bit tired of his enthusiatic affection.

ME-MA UPDATE

Me-Ma has been out of the hospital and back in Pahrump for a while. She is able to take new heart medication and apparently is gaining strength every day. She still gets tired more frequently, but with a new wheelchair, she's getting around and feeling better about each day.

I haven't reached her yet, but we'll be visiting her in Pahrump from March 17th to 19th. I'm sure she'll enjoy seeing Gabriel - he certainly enjoys visiting.

GRAMMA UPDATE

I talked to Gramma Reid yesterday and she sounded like she was feeling better. She does get more exhausted during the day, but she seemed happy and we had a good conversation. We'll be visiting Farmington from March 19th through the 21st.

Tom and Kate will be joining us on that leg of the journey apparently.

TOM & KATE: NOT TOO EXTREME MAKEOVER-HOME EDITION

It looks like Tom and Kate will soon be proud homeowners. After shopping around in the Sacramento area for a house, they found one in an established Fair Oaks neighborhood and made a slightly low-ball offer. Here's a link to the listing. A photo of the house with the pool and spa is found below.



The current owners are going through a divorce and wanted to sell quickly and it looks like they're getting their wish. Interestingly, the house is just a few blocks away from Kate's parents' home.

It apparently will have fixer-upper projects, mostly updating, but they're excited to get in and make it their own.

Congratulations on the big step!

*SPOILER* (highlight after the dash with you mouse) - I predict a cousin for Gabriel within two years.. there's just something about owning a house. Nesting is inevitable!

MARGAUX JOHNSON ARRIVES

The Johnson True family welcomed their third addition on Monday, February 21st. A roughly 7 lb. baby girl, Margaux Johnson is happy, healthy, and apparently sleeping much better than Gabriel did at that age. Here are a couple of photos of Margaux, the first with her big sister Emma and the second with her big brother Henry.

Congratulations! It looks like the balance of power has shifted back to the ladies.

PASS THE MAALOX TO MT. ST. HELENS

Mt. St. Helens put on quite a show yesterday afternoon around 5:30. After several months of small steam plumes barely escaping its lava dome (see the VolcanoCam in the left margin), the mountain emitted a rather grand "ash burst" - an apparent vulcanology term (link goes to a photo of a fascinating team of French vulcanologists).

The plume reached over 36,000 feet.. or roughly 6 miles high! Photos of the event are below. Both are from viewers of the local TV station KATU via their website. Viewer descriptions of the shots are included in the .jpg.





As you can see, it was quite an ash burst. I guess this means St. Helens is currently the biggest ash hole in North America. Sorry - I couldn't help myself.

TOM TAKES THE CALIFORNIA BAR EXAM

Tom took the California bar exam last week, beginning on Monday the 2nd I believe.

Good luck, Tom! Sounds like you were more confident this time based on your studying.

WORD FROM BRYAN MOORE

I heard from Bryan Moore, my old Baylor friend and roommate. As poor graduate students, we managed to attend each others weddings in Dallas, Texas and Eugene, Oregon, respectively. I'll quote him directly:

We (Bryan and Renee -ed) have a 2.5 year old little girl named Sydney. She was born in Chicago and since then we have lived in many states like Maryland, California, and now Indiana. I took a new job last year with Roche Diagnostics and it is going very well. I think we will be here for a number of years. We like the town, our house, and my job...a rare combination.

Sounds like things are going well for him. I did some digging and he has a website. Pictures aren't up (yet).

LEANER, MEANER ME

After two-and-a-half weeks on the Atkins diet, induction phase, I've managed to lose 13 pounds. I still haven't reached my target weight yet (195 lbs.) but I'm only five pounds away.

I work out in the exercise room in this building every day for an hour to an hour and a half. Most of it is aerobic training on a machine that looks a little bit like a stairmaster crossed with an x-country ski machine. It works is the bottom line.

PAUL THEROUX: 1994 EYEWITNESS TO GERMAN VIOLATION OF IRAQ SANCTIONS

I'll admit that I'm a big fan of Paul Theroux's non-fiction writing about travels in various parts of the world. Many who are not familiar with him might be familiar with movies made from at least two of his fictional works: The Mosquito Coast and Half Moon Street.

I've read nearly all of his travel books, starting with The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific. His body of nonfiction work basically starts with The Great Railway Bazaar: through Asia by train, chronicling his journey by train, ship and caravan round trip from London over to Japan via India and Southeast Asia and then return through Russia. His most recent, Dark Star Safari, is about his travels from Cairo, Egypt to Capetown, South Africa by any means available except airplanes.

I got the latter from Jill for Christmas and I just cracked it - he's wandering through Cairo waiting for a visa to Sudan at the present moment.

But in the The Pillars of Hercules, his tour of most of the Mediterranean in the early 1990s - foreigners were being robbed and executed in Algeria at the time - Mr. Theroux makes an interesting observation while held up at the Syrian/Turkish border while trying to get into Syria.

The delay at the border today was caused by a group of Syrians smuggling shirts and pants in large suitcases. The absurdity of it was that while these smugglers opened their cases, revealing stacks of shirts in plastic bags, huge trucks rumbled past. They were German, and they were loaded with crates of German machinery, from a firm called Mannesmann. The crates were stamped For the Ministry of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq. Six of these vast flatbed trucks. They were headed towards Iraq, through Syria-and they were waved through by Syrian soldiers. It seemed to make little difference to anyone that Iraq was subject to U.N. sanctions and such a shipment of German machine parts was illegal. In the meantime the shirt smugglers were bullied and denounced.

Theroux is a stickler for honest observation - if sometimes characterized as cranky. But I'd say this is extremely reliable documentation of German and Syrian complicity in Saddam Hussein's abuse of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program. I suppose it isn't if you dine on military telecommunications equipment.

The book was particularly fascinating for these observations, as well as others as he sees activities and hears reports along his travels that provide foreshadowing of the names and events all too familiar since September 11, 2001. His account of travel through Croatia, Slovakia and Albania during the Serbian war is worth the price of the book alone.