The boy likes himself some futbol

In honour of Barcelona holding onto their La Liga title (which looks pretty likely after Valladolid's own goal and Pedro finishing off Messi's assist), here's Oliver watching Barca get kicked out of the CL in what was possibly the worst match I've ever had the misfortune of seeing:

Teeny tiny television....but really great parenting.

Apologies

As it turns out, "the moderator" of our blog was supposed to approve all the comments before they could be posted. Said moderator wasn't aware that this duty existed, so I'm just now barely seeing all the comments from like July of last year. I'm so sorry for depriving you all of my pithy responses. And here I was thinking that no-one had ever even seen these posts. You've renewed my faith in technology and narcissism.

To make it up to you, here's a semi-recent video of Oliver doing his thing. If he wants to eat, he has to perform.

In the meantime, if you promise to keep making more comments, I promise to make fun of them.

January

Soooooo, January. O and I were lucky enough to get to spend the whole month in California with Dad and Abram. Andrew had to get back to work (sucker) but was able to stay around long enough to celebrate O's birthday and see him start to walk.

The big feature of the month was O's first birthday. Without any of his little friends around, he was stuck partying with his parents, Papa Petersen, and Uncle Abram. We started the festivities at the Randall Museum in San Francisco. Heard of it? Probably not unless you grew up in the city and loved spending Saturday afternoons in a room full of handicapped wildlife. The Randall is a little children's museum with a room full of rescued wildlife that can't be released back into the wild because of various handicaps. We always loved it for the ferrets that you could play with and the owls that were free to fly around the room. Downstairs is a model train room that really just makes you feel like you're in some train enthusiast's basement where he has slowly gone nuts over the years. As a kid you think it's great, as a parent you want to hug your child closer and protect him from the man grinning at you as he plays with his trains.

The rest of the party was pretty standard. Cake, some pretty sad decorations, and presents that took O a while to figure out. The cake was a mystery to O at first but once he caught the vision, it took hours to bring down that sugar high.

Other highlights of the month include getting to see the new Academy of Sciences building. I've been reading articles about it for months and while I was sad to see the old building go, I was curious what Mr. Renzo Piano could do with it. I was quite pleased and really really longed to live in SF again just to take O there every weekend. They kept all the best parts of the old building including the albino alligator and the taxidermy rooms, and upgraded everything else. I heart SF.

Also managed to hit up the MOMA, another absolute favorite of mine. Always come away feeling so inspired by modern art especially when I've started my trip with a stop at Zachary's. Muir Woods and Muir Beach. Zachary's again. SF Zoo followed by a trip to Pollyanna's. Shopping, walking and eating in Berkeley. These are a few of my favorite things (all of which we managed to do during our trip). Photos here.

December

Let's see... December. Does anything really happen then? I guess we did a few things, saw a few people, ate a little food, participated in some great American consumerism, and then tried to recover from it all.

Actually the real thing we had to recover from was our trip home. We had gone to the pediatrician and asked him for a sedative for O's flight-- he gave us valium. We figured we'd use that as a last resort but after getting only an hour of sleep before heading to the airport three hours before our flight in a vain effort to secure a bassinet for O, we gave in. Honestly all I remember from that flight is that by the time we landed in SLC we were explaining pitifully to everyone around us that we had given O valium but had been traveling for twenty-four hours and didn't know what else we could do. He was just squirming and fussing and slept I believe a total of on hour the whole trip. No no no fun. Found out later that valium just kind of lowers inhibitions but doesn't necessarily put babies to sleep. Basically O felt no qualms about letting his emotions all out.

But we made it home and got to enjoy time with family and friends. We stayed in Salt Lake for Christmas and then headed to St. George for some Benson Family Time. We were lucky enough to get Abram and Arin and Dad to Utah but missed Lauritz and Michelle-- they had some excuse about having a baby or something. I was quite grateful for the sacrifices everyone made to be there especially since it always seems that Christmas is the time to throw everyone we love in one place and then try to spend enough time with everyone with whom all you want to do is spend more and more time. There's something sadistic about it-- like putting a diabetic in a candy shop once a year.

St. George was fantastic because it let us focus on visiting with just one side of the family. There was hiking, nightly family fiestas, the big family photo, and of course, family germ sharing. New Year's Eve I came down with some really nasty cold. It stuck around until we got to California and broke down and had a doctor come out to the house. A house call-- yes, they still do that if you have our insurance. Did I mention that in order to get to Dad's we had to drive through Bakersfield? We stayed the night there and thankfully had to leave early enough in the morning that fog covered the whole city and we didn't have to see a thing.

Here are our best photos from December. Enjoy.