Decemberween, Santa Monica, and the Aquarium

Rounding up pictures of this year's holiday fun has proven more difficult than I thought. As my break meanders towards it's final push I realize how much I'm going to miss all this: the getting to spend as much time as is available with my Boy, hindered only by sleeping and boobies.

Corrie's folks, Ron and Carol, arrived on the 20th, after our holiday party. The party was a cleaning dry-run. It was awesome motivation.

It was nice to see them and for them to get to meet Cassius. Corrie's sister Mary arrived late on the 24th, and was picked up by Corrie on her way home from the crab feast and my Auntie Peg's.

The next night, after Norm and I went swimming in the ocean earlier in the day, we all got to visit at our base of operations for Decemberween activities, my Auntie Peg's.

Here's a nice family shot from that night, the 25th, with Norm, my mom seated, Mary, Ron in the background, and me watching Cass attack a hanging stuffed animal while being held by Dan.

Why my mom isn't wearing her glasses is lost on me. Here she is posing with the Boy:

The 26th was a blur. Everyone left who was down visiting and had driven, but Ron and Carol and Mary stuck around. Mary was determined to get to the our aquarium, the Aquarium of the Pacific, and we were determined to get a dual-person annual pass to said aquarium. The technical term for the relative cost of a two-adult annual pass is "stupid-cheap."

We also wanted to get to see "Rogue One" and let Carol do some babysitting. That seems like maybe not the best consolation, but Carol had missed out six months of doting, and Corrie and I needed to test ourselves on being able to function after leaving the Boy with someone besides us.

Our first attempt at a Star Wars movie trip failed miserably. We sauntered down to the movie theater on the 26th with twenty minutes to go before the movie and quickly came to realize that both our desired time and the next show were sold out.

Eventually we made it and had great reclining seats. How long have those been there? Where the hell have I been?

The Aquarium trip was pretty fantastic, and now that we can go every week for a year is pretty awesome as well. Cass was funny, kicking and panting loudly as we would approach the various huge glass slabs holding back the ocean life:

I don't think he understood the water-swimming aspect of how fish and sea creatures move about, but he'll get there:

It didn't matter who was holding him---he was transfixed. Here he is with Mary:

We took him out to a bird sanctuary and he got to enjoy the birdsong:

And that was mostly it. If you know six-month-olds you know, and this is another reason for the annual pass. He won't be able to be awake and alert for long enough to absorb everything for a while. But he sure enjoyed this large portion of his time there.

I took him into the otter-show zone and immediately an enormous otter showed up, swimming playfully right by our parcel of window. "Wow!" I exclaimed and glanced down at my boy in my arms. He was totally focused on a standing toddler who was leaning on his own parcel of glass.

Tony came by for a visit, and he and Carol and Mary all spent lots of time encouraging Cass to crawl. He's so close, it seems like with just the right amount of egging-on and clapping he'll figure out how his arms are supposed to move. Believe me, there is no lack of trying around here, before they all arrived or since they've left.

But still...

See? Somebody may have pictures of Norm and I swimming in the bracing waters of Santa Monica, and I haven't even mentioned my cousins visiting from out-of-country.

Out of country, by the by, is the basic conceit of our next adventure, one we completed just today.

The Boy had his first International Adventure.