Here is an entry sandwiched in between two slideshows. Yesterday, Jennifer and Kaleb took a little play date trip into the city with Jamison and Megan. Despite the heat he was okay and didn’t seem to mind being hot for a change. They spent most of the day down at the Public Garden just hanging out having a grand old time. Meanwhile, I left a busy work day and drove an hour up to Newburyport for a doctor’s appointment. You see a few weeks ago I cut a mole on my neck and slowly it got bigger and bigger. I think it was somehow filling with blood, and that is why it just kept growing. Anyway, it got a little too big for my tastes and I decided to go see a plastic surgeon to have it removed, per my mother’s recommendation. Once at the office the doctor took a look at it and kind of did a double take. Luckily they were able to make room in the schedule to remove it and within a half hour, I was under the knife. I warned both the nurse and doctor that I tend to be a bit squeamish when it comes to this sort of thing and they said they figured based on my reaction during the examination. I didn’t end up having any problems, thankfully the nurse let me hold her hand through the hardest part. Twenty minutes or so later and I was all stitched up with four stitches, but more importantly mole free. I hopped back in the car and drove to Amesbury to visit my mom before returning to work at around four o’clock.

When I finally got home after work I was glad to see that a new toy for Kaleb had arrived from our friends Liz and Brett, the Bebe Pod. I think it is one of the only things I helped register for and when I saw that somebody had grabbed it for us I was so excited. Basically the Bebe Pod is a hard foam plastic seat that babies can sit in even when they aren’t able to sit up. It has a curved back and a piece that sticks up in the front to hold him in, very much like the old sit’n’spin toys from the eighties. Here is a photo of the Bebe Pod:

Here is a photo of a Sit’N’Spin:

So the first thing I did when I got home was to put Kaleb into the Bebe Pod. He fit in perfectly, but his neck muscles don’t really have the stamina for him to sit in there for extended periods of time. You will see in some of the photos how he slowly leans over to one side. Since he doesn’t like tummy time, which is a good way for his neck to get stronger, this will be the perfect neck strengthening activity.

Last night we went to John Joyce’s 30th birthday party at the Cellar in Cambridge. I had never been there before, but it was a really cool restaurant with a great ambiance and some really amazing food. My two favorites were the tater tots, which should really be called fried mashed potato balls and the chicken flatbread pizza. Yummy!! Kaleb was very well behaved and pretty much slept the entire time, which was good considering the hot weather.

Today we all slowly woke up and hung around the house in the morning. I did a little work, but realized I left my power supply at work so had to drive in at noon to pick it up. Once back at home I noticed that the annual EarthFest concert was going on and we decided to go check it out. So around 1:30 we got our act together and took Kaleb to his first live music concert. We got to hear Mat Kearney and KT Tunstall. I have downloaded a ton of KT’s songs and really think she is great artist. We also walked around EarthFest and picked up some free food, like yogurt, juice and granola, although there didn’t seem to be as much stuff as last year.

Now we are at home sitting on the couch. Kaleb is squeaky clean thanks to his bath, which went smoother than ever. He actually smiled a lot, so I had to break out the camera and ended up adding the second slideshow to this posting.

Oh yeah one more thing, Ben came over tonight and we were telling him a Kaleb story that I am not sure I ever documented, but wanted to make sure I wrote it down. A couple months ago right after he came home, we were supposed to give him vitamins via an eyedropper. So after he was finished eating we took the eyedropper and put it in his mouth, squeezed it and he immediately spit it right back at us. He continued to spit it out for a couple minutes, before we put him down in his bouncy seat. Once he was in the bouncy seat he didn’t make a noise and kept his mouth locked shut for a half an hour, he was noticeably angry with us. The worst part about it though was that he ended up getting the vitamin stuff all over him and smelled like a Flinstone’s vitamin for the next two days, until we gave him another bath.