Adrina crawling at 7 months!

Slippery floor Adrina!

Military crawl!

Boston Trip

We survived our first trip with baby, I can't say it was easy, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. The hardest part of the trip was dealing with the dreaded diaper change. Gary claimed his title as Daddy of The Year for the diaper work he did on our cross-country flight! He managed to keep Adrina clean, I can't say the same for his arm and my sweater! By the end of the flight to Boston, both Adrina and I had a change of clothes, and a plastic bag filled with a mess!

We went to Boston to visit friends, one with a daughter born two weeks after Adrina and another with a one year old daughter. We had a great trip touring the city, drinking wine and watching the babies play. Here are some pics from our trip.

A Colombian Ear Piercing

In the Colombian culture newborn baby girls' ears are pierced before they leave the hospital. It's a right of passage and stamp of femininity, making it obvious for any passer by to distinguish a baby as female, even those baby girls with the beautiful shiny bald heads. I had my ears pierced at 3 months. Adrina, being 5 months old, was way behind schedule. Gary and I finally decided to carry on this Colombian tradition by piercing Adrina's ears at 5 months old.

Getting the okay from the Pediatrician, I thought about the best places to get the piercing done. My first inclination was to have Adrina's ears pierced at a tattoo parlor. Why not? They specialize in piercings and they run a nice sterile operation! After all, I did get my navel pierced at a tattoo parlor in the 90s! By the way, bad idea in retrospect, especially after having a baby! I  thought of going to Newport Tattoo, the place where Gary got his tattoo on his foot, ouch! Turns out, they don't pierce infants, not even with parental consent!

With the tattoo parlor option out, I decided on Claire's in Fashion Island. Claire's specializes in the pre-teen market, and they are game to pierce infants! Walking into Claire's is an intoxicating sensory overload. Every square inch of Claire's is cluttered by Justin Bieber t-shirts, One Direction posters and Hello Kitty jewelry  The ear piercing station was near the front entrance, actually, it was practically in the front window display for all to see. We walked in on a 4 year old girl getting her ears pierced. She was waiting patiently for the piercing gun to trigger, and when it did, we heard her horrible cry! I almost called it off, but then I saw that the girl was just fine, she was safe in daddy's arms with a mouthful of Swedish Fish. Okay, now Adrina was up. We picked out a pair of sparkly CZs and the two nice Claire's ladies placed Adrina on the chair in Gary's lap, market her ears, positioned the guns, counted to three and bam, Adrina had a shiny new pair of earrings. The shriek Adrina let out was absolutely horrible. I didn't want to witness it happen, but the ladies got trigger happy and did the piercing while I had one foot out the door. I didn't want to hear the inevitable wail. Luckily, her cry only lasted 30 seconds. After that she was happy and blinged out with her new earrings. Overall, she did great, what a Colombian trooper!

Adrina before her piercing

Adrina just after her ear piercing