babyfest

i have very few (okay, exactly one) direct friends with children who live in the bay area. however, the number of "one degree of separation" friends-of-friends who have children born within six months of ava is quite high. now that they are all mobile, talking and fun to hang around with, shannon, arantxa and i having been trying to organize some sort of multi-baby outing for awhile now. we finally succeeded today, taking a trip to the discovery museum with evan (five weeks younger than ava) and his mom kelley, and ronan (six weeks younger than ava).

ronan is the son of shannon's neighbours, and a last minute addition to the festivities. shannon wandered by her neighbours 5 minutes before departure and asked to borrow ronan for the morning. wise parents that they are, they responded "hell - yeah", packed him a diaper bag and buckled him in to kelly's car. ronan experienced such high anxiety about this situation that he drifted off to sleep for the drive over. when he woke up, he initially looked a little dazed and confused, but got more and more enthusiastic throughout the trip.

ava is typically very opinionated about where exactly she's going to go, so getting her to follow along with a group can be challenging. we did very well on this expedition though, by bribing her around with "crunchies". "crunchies" , in ava's world, means "snack food with a high fat and/or salt content that mean mommy won't give me very often. i have better luck with daddy." in this particular case, it meant an organic, baked and much healthier version of "cheetos" that kelley happened to bring along. ava was a big fan, and consequently was a docile little angel the whole morning. see full, annotated gallery here.