End of Summer and off to School

David started at St. James, a Montessori school near our house, last week. Consistent with his personality and our past experience with new caregiver situations,the transition has not been a smooth one. One of his teacher's commented today that the only time he calms down and stops crying is when he is getting one-on-one attention (shocker, right?). 

I got a picture of us heading off to school for his "first" day last week. The picture is kind of a fraud because, as some of you know, this picture was taken on Monday when we got all dressed and headed out to school to find no one there. Turns out that his actual first day was Tuesday. After going through the "off to school" routine again on Tuesday, I forgot the camera.

Matt has been and will continue to be through this week in trial, so David and I have had lots of bonding time. Here are some of the fun things we have been doing....

At the waterfall park with Paytin, who came up to visit us last weekend:

Waiting on the valet after dinner with Aunt Hayley and Mommy at Central 214 (it was restaurant week in Dallas):

At lunch with Aunt Hayley and Mommy at Rise this past weekend. This is our solution to us being able to going out to dinner...the ipad!

 At the Children's Museum this past Sunday. We had to find something to do inside because it is so freaking hot here in Dallas.

  

When David and I got home today, he really wanted to play outside. I was in the kitchen making dinner, so I could see him out of the back window and let him go. He played by himself for 20 minutes. This is quite amazing since it is the first time he has ever done anything for more than a minute by himself.  As refreshing as this new independent behavior might be, David did manage to get completely soaked trying to fill up his pool and get paint all over his face.

California Love

We went out to Los Gatos, a burb outside of San Jose, to visit Matt's old college roommate, his wife Lisa and their 5-month old daughter Anna Marie last weekend. It was a great visit and Anna Marie is quite the cute baby. On Sunday, we went up to the Ritz at Half Moon Bay (a coastal town south of San Fransisco) for a short vacation. It was fabulous- the hotel is located on the Pacific Coast and the weather was perfect (60-ish in the mornings with highs in the upper-70's in the afternoons). Small trivia fact -- If the hotel looks familiar in the pictures, it was the filming location for the movie America Wedding (the third installment of the American Pie movies that came out a few years ago). We walked down to the beach every morning and afternoon to play in the sand, visit the seals and collect shells, sat around the fire pit every evening to make smores and enjoy the sunset, and ate lots and lots of seafood. It was by far one of the most relaxing and enjoyable vacations we have taken and David did wonderful.

We took Southwest Airlines out to California, which means we had two stops both ways resulting in a total flight time in excess of 6 hours (we had free rapid reward tickets that were about to expire so we figured worth the hassle). David was so great that the flight attendants on both flights commented on what a great flyer he was and the pilot even took him up to the cockpit during on of the stops to show him around and let him push buttons (how cool is that?). In the interest of full disclosure, however, we did load up the ipad with a few episodes of Mickey Mouse that we used for backup when he got restless. We still don't let David watch television at the house, so he is pretty amused when you play the cartoon card. 

On Wednesday afternoon, we headed into San Fransisco to meet up with Ruth, who I use to work with at Fulbright, and her wife, Elisa. I talked to Ruth practically every day of my pregnancy with David and she left the firm shortly after David was born to go do something meaningful with her life (I know, who knew that there were more fulfilling things in life than practicing corporate law), so it was really cool for her to meet David now that he is a mini-person. We had a great dinner and it was nice catching up. While in San Fran, we also went on a bay cruise, walked around Mission district and went shopping in Union Square. All super fun.

And now for the photographic evidence...

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