November

Between two trips to Southern California (one for a work-related conference and the other for my high school reunion), a hearing, Thanksgiving, a car that refuses to pass its smog test, a cold and an ear infection, lots of sleepless nights, and a very stressful brief, I am still recovering from the whirlwind that was November.

I imagine that my only remaining readers are people related to Lola.

Thus, I bring you Thanksgiving photos.



Lola refused to let me get a good photo of her cute Thanksgiving shirt. Rest assured you traditionalists, it reads, "Baby's First Thanksgiving."



Our Thanksgiving dinner consisted of Italian turkey, jalapeno cornbread stuffing, cheesy garlic mashed potatoes, bacon green beans, and cranberry orange chutney. Oh yeah, and I made bread and a pumpkin cheesecake. Everything turned out great, except for the bread.

I swear that I must have pissed off a bread baker in a former life or something because I am absolutely incapable of making decent bread. I'm pretty sure my issue has to do with sensitive yeast (and my inability to add water at the correct temperature) because my yeast never bubbles. And yet, I always continue with the recipe in hope that the final product will rise. (It never does.) I'm sure at this point Ann Stice has already started an email to me with tips on how to fix my bread and so let me take a moment to give and advance THANK YOU because all the women in the Stice family (and Grandma Bergseid) make darn good bread.

Josh, the good guy that he is, was oblivious to our flat bread.



Later on, Lola decided to work on checking off another milestone. I'm not quite sure what it is about holidays, but Lola likes to accomplish milestones on them. Remember, how she started crawling on Halloween? Well, Thanksgiving was no different.



Over the last two weeks, Lola has pulled herself on just about anything that she can wrap her tiny baby fingers around. Her favorite objects are the couch and the kitchen chairs. On Thanksgiving, she upped the difficulty level and started pull herself up on walls and the sliding glass door.

The sliding glass door became an instant favorite because, to an almost ten month old, there are many exciting things that go on in our backyard: swaying trees, tweeting birds, and racing squirrels. Also, the dogs often congregate at the sliding glass door anxious to chase squirrels, bark at the neighboring dogs, and poop. And, you KNOW how much Lola loves the dogs. Unfortunately, they (and by this I mean, Archie) still do not love her. Lola, in her tenancious (and stubborn) nature, chose to hang out at the back door, knowing that Archie would eventually show up.



At that moment, Lola saw her chance to meet a new milestone. She let go of the door, turned and took a step toward Archie.



Then, she latched onto his back. He looked at me like he was going to throw up. I dropped the camera and grabbed her because, while Archie is pretty trustworthy, he's also barely tolerate of Lola and I didn't want to spend the rest of Thanksgiving in the ER.

So, there you have it. Lola took a step toward Arch. It was impressive. Well, at least, I was impressed.