J at the Christmas party

Although J had been more fussy than usual during the day yesterday, when we took him over to a neighbor's Christmas party, he was wide awake and happy. I carried him in a bjorn carrier facing outwards, so he could enjoy looking around and meeting people. He was so excited, kicking and waving his arms, that he threw up a little, but after that he was fine. He loved all the attention, shamelessly making eye contact and smiling at everyone who cooed at him, for the whole two hours we were there. At this point at least, he is far more sociable than his parents. After all that excitement, he slept soundly for five hours.

J's first real mushroom hunt

A couple times earlier, we went to places where we thought there might be mushrooms, but no luck. On Tuesday, we went up in the East Bay hills to one of our favorite chanterelle spots, but there was only one old chanterelle. We found several oldish Boletus truncatus before J made us go back to the car to change his diaper. I went back out by myself while L fed J in the car, and found a decent batch of Amanita calyptrata (or lanei, depending on who you believe), which was nice since I had found only one or two of this delicious mushroom in the last couple seasons.

Today, we went to another East Bay hills spot where I found a very nice bloom of A. calyptrata a few years ago. There were a nice bunch waiting for me there, so, more tonight. Also, from a stump we passed by, I plucked a beautiful cluster of Armillaria mellea, honey mushrooms.

My vision, which has been pretty good, is finally deteriorating somewhat. I reflected on the hunt today that I looked forward to J becoming a new sharper pair of eyes on the mushroom hunts.

Dancing with the babe

This is, not so surprisingly, the first time in my life that I've said, "Hey, baby!", to a literal baby. So now the calmer of all those groovy dancefloor moves are now being used to soothe J to sleep. For a soundtrack, I like streaming audio from SomaFM, especially the Spacestation or Cliqhop channels, or KFJC (depending on show). L seems partial to baroque, though, and to my surprise the Musical Offering actually worked quite well. J himself, as far as I can tell, doesn't care much about the music itself, just the motion it inspires.