Luca's First "Great Minnesota Get Together"

We love the MN State Fair. We go for the ridiculous food and drink, the people watching, the music/shows, and for some inexplicable reason, the animal barns. In these barns, one encounters unbelievable tastes, sights, and sounds, along with numerous gigantic Minnesotans prodding and poking numerous gigantic baby animals which are prodding and poking the gigantic teats of their gigantic mothers. Oh, and it smells like deuce. I know, I know, it sounds like I must be falsely billing the greatness of the experience, but trust me, I wouldn't do that.

This year, A got a whole new perspective on things in the human barn known as Lactation Station.Lactation Station is a tent outfitted with fans, light music, and rocking chairs filled with baby Minnesotans feeding from their mothers (both prize-winning and otherwise). Last year, we didn't even notice it. This year we orbited around it.

While our Fair experience was very different from years past in some ways, it was the same in many others...

Raise Your Hand if You're Californian

When we lived in San Francisco I was one of the city's most elusive type of residents: a native Californian. And though I didn't live in the City until my mid-20s, my mom made sure that the "born in _________" line reads "San Francisco" on all four of her children's birth certificates. So it's been a little heartbreaking for me that Luca's birth record not only won't say San Francisco, but won't have anything Californian about it.

Even so, and even if we lived in Oregon or Montana, I consider the little guy to be half Californian and half Minnesotan, just like he's a little bit Irish and a whole lot Italian. T & I both have a lot of home state pride, so wherever we go we won't let Luca forget his dual Pacific and Midwest citizenship. Thanks to Luca's Auntie BFF, he has a wardrobe of MN- and CA-themed onesies to back this up.


This week Luca had his first exposure to his California roots during an unbeatable visit from his CA cousins, auntie & uncle. We visited the MOA, played at the lake, had an in-car picnic during a huge thunderstorm, and generally enjoyed time together in the Minnesota summer. We're so thankful that they came all the way here to meet the little guy. The only thing that made their heading back home bearable is knowing that we'll see them in California this Fall.

My Baby Can Eat Your Baby

In the blue corner, wearing the orange G-diaper, and weighing in at 11 lbs 14 oz., future welterweight champion of the world, Luca "The Bruiser" Giganto!

Luca at 4 Weeks

A whole month has passed since Luca broke out and joined us on the outside. In the interest of recording his development for posterity, we'd like to make a practice of monthly highlight reels. Here's the first, covering what he's being up to these four weeks.

Hazmat

Luca is an expert poop producer and wall sprayer. There were two early omens of his proficiency that we might have heeded more carefully. First, he produced some meconium in utero - a cause for concern during delivery that turned out to be no big deal. Then there was one particularly long trip to the nurses' station. They'd had a clean-up on their hands after Luca made a pee fountain to entertain all the nurses.

Since then we've lost count of all the incidents of wet walls, wet clothes, and ill-timed diaper changes, but there have been a couple of memorable occurrences worth mentioning:

- At one trip to the doctor's office, Luca peed on the examining table not once, but twice. Since the same doctor performed Luca's circumcision, the peeing seemed purposeful and perhaps punitive.

- Airing out the baby is a good idea, but it's one that should perhaps be executed on the lawn and not in the front room. I had him on my lap, wrapped in what turned out to be a permeable blanket, and was rewarded with a soaking in baby poop.

- And you've seen the picture of the sopping mess Luca made of T.

Babar

In the middle of the night, Luca makes sounds more appropriate to a baby elephant than a human baby. Curiously, he doesn't seem to make these noises during daytime naps, but only when T & I are trying to sleep.

Luca "the Bruiser"

Luca is a fairly easy going baby. He'll cut you some slack on diaper changes, and he lets me drag him all over town to run errands. But get in the way of a meal, and you're in for it. He's ferocious about feeding.

The result is an impressive weight gain. During one six-day period he gained almost a pound, going from 9.4 lbs to 10.25 lbs. The 2.4 oz per day increase this represents is more than double the 1 ounce expected max daily weight gain.

Yes, we are planning his NFL career.

Rewards

In just the past few days, Luca has started to punctuate his usual expressions with occasional smiles for T & me. It's the greatest.



Here's Luca working very hard to build neck muscles.