New baby tricks

This week Geneva started playing pretend. She takes a little measuring spoon, sticks it in a plastic container, pretends to eat a little food and goes "mmmmMMM!!!"

She's starting to get a sizable vocabulary, although her use of it is erratic and sometimes misleading. Cat, car, truck, up, Dada, apple, uh-huh, cheese, mmmMMM (for what noise does a cow make?), ssssss (what noise does a snake make?). She also signs milk and more. The problem is you say "Geneva! Would you like some milk?" And she signs "milk" because she knows we're so excited when she repeats what we say. So you have no idea if she signed it because she wants milk or not. Anyway. I think her first word was officially cat. Just for the record.

My mom got her scanner up and running and I asked her for a few photos of me at Geneva's age. Enjoy.

She learned to climb ladders today

First ponytail

Bike trailer

On the road

Results of our chocolate tasting

We had a chocolate tasting party last night and I thought I'd publish the group results for the benefit of posterity. For the record, my favorite was the 3rd place. Pretty much all of these were purchased at Whole Foods. Also, I thought it was interesting that the higher priced chocolates generally had more complex flavors, but the cheaper chocolates tended to be the favorite.

1st place: 365 Organic Swiss Dark Chocolate, 52% cacao. Descriptors: Nutmeg, pie, coconut
2nd place: Divine 70% Dark Chocolate. Descriptors: Blue cheese, asiago, savory spices, butter.
3rd place: E. Guittard Ambanja Bittersweet 65% cacao. D: Blueberries, hint of cedar. :-)

The other chocolates, in approximately the order we tried them in:
TCHO "Nutty" 65% cacao
TCHO "Citrus" 67% cacao
Ghirardelli Intense Dark Twilight Delight 72%. Smokey. Boring.
Madecasse 75% cocoa. Citrus start with a hamburger/sushi/nori mid-palate and a chalky finish.
Michel Cluizel Noir de Cacao 60%. Extremely smooth, milky, sweet, boring.
Hershey's Special Dark 45%. No comment.
E. Guittard Nocturne 91%. Strong anise start, very bitter finish.
Trader Joe's The Dark Chocolate Lover's Chocolate Bar, 85% Cacao. Cherry start with a strong finish of cleaning supplies.
Scharffen Berger 70% Bittersweet: Smokey with a bandaid finish. (Chris and I talked about it later and we both think this bar was very off from what we remember about SB chocolate.)
Endangered Species Extreme Dark Chocolate 88%. Extremely chalky and dry.
---- Post official tasting tastings:
Dagoba Dark Chocolate 59%: Very creamy with a strong mushroom mid-palate
Endangered Species Supreme Dark Chocolate 72%: Strong flavor of cookies
NewTree Pleasure 73% Cacao: Hilariously strong and long lasting flavor of alfalfa/hay/grass/barnyard
TCHO Fruity.

A new human

Graydon at 3 weeks

Attacking daddy

Cupid baby

Scary...

Food Challenge Over

That food challenge is so over. I did it for three days and the result was already completely and totally obvious. My food falls into exactly three categories.
1) Fruit and vegetables that I bought at the farmers market. These don't violate any of the rules.
2) Contains sugar as one of the first three ingredients. This is a lot of things. I would be tempted to try to find other things to eat, except for pretty much everything else in the world violates:
3) "If it's made of a plant eat it. If it's made in a plant, don't." I mean, maybe I'm missing the point, but even the farmers' market olive oil was probably made in a plant. A small plant, but a plant. Even if I try to say, "Okay, that's probably not what he was going for..." these same things all probably violate the rule about not eating anything made where the employees have to wear surgical caps.

I think I'm a person who can't half follow rules. I'll use his book as something to think about, but it makes me peeved actually to think about these rules. I mean, what does he eat? Where does he find salt that wasn't made in a plant of some kind? And if there's one rule that's basically impossible to follow, why does it even get listed?

Chatty baby

Poor little thing. She's getting a pack of molars right now and you can just tell her mouth hurts. I mean, not from this video, but in general. It's a good thing daycare is so distracting because otherwise she'd just be miserable.

She went up a classroom (to the 1-2 yr olds) on Monday and the teachers all say how great she's doing. That if she sees her old teacher Ms. Guicela she gets really sad and wants Guicela to hold her, but in general loves that there's more kids and different toys and she gets to go outside twice a day. Yesterday she cried when we were leaving and this morning she ran right in the door. I can't even tell you what a relief it is to know that she's someplace during the day where she's so happy.