To wrap up 2006 nicely for Xander, Tam decided to try on some real solid food. Mind you, I don’t consider that goop in a jar to be solid food. What’s so solid about something I can suck through a straw stuck up my nose?

I was thinking steak might be nice, but the boy got Chex instead. I don’t know if it was the small size of the cereal or confusion on his part that we were actually letting him eat something, but he was having a tough time getting the hang of getting the squares all the way in his pie milk hole.

He does have a semi-guilty look on his face in that photo. But on to the video…

Chex did seem to be more interesting to him as a crushed substance and/or chucked onto the floor. Can you say foreshadowing? I can already envision a nice area rug around his high chair made of Chex and Cheerios.

As many times as I’ve been up and down College Avenue, I’ve never noticed Soi 4 Bangkok Eatery at 5421 College Avenue. My mom, Tam, and Xander paid a visit to the joint a few weeks back for lunch after spending some time wandering Rockridge and my mom has been raving for me to go ever since.

So to close out 2006, we made our way over there to celebrate the New Year. The ambiance was very nice darkish modern decor lit by exposed light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Yeah, it sounds kinda ghetto, but oddly, it works! The service was extremely attentive even though they were completely full. We had the shrimp cakes to start and they were fairly tasty. We then had the chicken, pork, and eggplant satay skewers which came with a very addictive peanut sauce. To round things out, we went with the pad thai, lamb chops, and snow pea shoots.

Everything was very good, but the portions felt a bit small. Not enough to be problematic but it definitely came into my mind during dinner. With that said, Soi 4 is still a worthy College Ave dining option.

So, does Xander have enough to play with? He currently enjoys pulling everything out of the toy basket and tossing them all around him.

And on another note, he’s got foot in mouth syndrome.

I made my first mileage run today. If you’re wondering what a mileage run is, FlyerTalk succinctly defines it as “trip itineraries designed solely for gaining maximum miles and/or points for no other reason than to gain the miles and/or points.” Although my motivation was to make sure I had enough miles to maintain status with United for 2007. I was less than 1500 miles short of making Premier so I had to go for it.

After a quick consultation with the FlyerTalk boards, I settled on a mileage run inside California, basically a SFO-SAN round trip with a stop at LAX on the way back. The SFO-SAN leg was completely full on a 757, which was a bit surprising. In order to get home faster, I put myself on standby flights for the next two legs. United’s EasyCheck-in was actually quite competent at allowing me to do that myself. The SAN-LAX leg was on a little Embraer 120 prop jet…arguably the most ghetto plane I’ve ever flown on. I barely made it to the earlier LAX-SFO flight, but was one of the last people onto the plane. I did have an amusing conversation with the crew as I boarded:

Me: Whew, glad I made this flight!
Them: Where did you start from today?
Me: Uh…San Francisco. I just flew in from San Diego.
Them: [Staring at me quizzically] Are you a pilot?
Me: No, I just really need the miles. I’m this close to making Premier for next year and couldn’t let it go.
Them: Ah, I’ve heard of people doing that before!
Me: Yeah, there’s more of us than you probably know.

One other interesting note during the mileage run, I got to see the Texas A&M football team boarding their charter flight at SAN after getting a severe beat-down from Cal in the Holiday Bowl the day before. Woot.

We around the seven month mark with Xander and he still isn’t showing much interest or progress with crawling. It’s still been walk or bust. Whenever we get him on his tummy, he finds a way to push himself backwards across the floor, but that’s about it. Until yesterday, that is. He decided that it would be fun to slide around on his butt. Kinda like rowing, but without the water, oars, and boat. Huh? What the hell am I talking about? Check out the video!

We drove back to the Bay Area today and made it most of the way home before Xander suddenly started to wail like there was no tomorrow. Talk about screaming. Yikes. Turns out, he started poking his lower front teeth out.

We tried to get some photos, but the teeth were really hard to see. Easy to feel, but there wasn’t enough sticking out yet. So instead, it looks like Tam is trying to disc his lip or something.

We’re back in the mighty LBC for the Holidays. Let me just say driving out of the Bay Area on Friday afternoon amounted to extreme suckage. The entire stretch of 580 from just after Castro Valley into Pleasanton was totally jammed up. I could have easily ridden my bike using one leg out there faster. And to all the friends that I made on I-5 who were hogging the left lane…I love you too.

Now that I’ve gotten all that off my chest, on to spreading real holiday cheer. The residents of Naples Island here in Long Beach go all out every holiday season to deck out their homes with blinding arrays of lights, music, animatronics, and yes, even one mini-roller coaster. It’s a huge draw as throngs of people descend on the little Venetian-styled island when the sun sets. After who knows how many years of living in Long Beach, I found out my mom had never seen this spectacle. So I fixed that up with the quickness. Here are some dark and blurry photos.

It’s no secret the little guy likes to eat. He’s absolutely fascinated by eating. He loves watching us eat and is probably counting down the days until he has teeth that he can sink into a steak. For now, he has to be content with sucking and licking handouts.

Aside from trying to jack mommy for her apple, he gets down with carrots (which seem to result in gnarly gas)

and peas. Got Peas?

Xander has figured out the art of sitting up without falling over. And he can multitask for a greater degree of difficulty: check out the extreme gnawage.

Here’s the accompanying video…