Busy busy growing boy

First the good news: since we live in University subsidized family housing, we need to re-apply every year for our apartment. Every year they hold a lottery to see how many people get to live in the dorm apartments again (this is the same for non-family grad students as well), luckily we were winners this year and will be keeping our apartment through next year! We are SO happy because not only are we sick of moving every year, but with our upcoming trips, it would be tight for us to move out by the allotted date.

Well, we've had a busy past few days! On Matthew's birthday (Saturday) we hosted a dozen or so people to a board game marathon which lasted 10+ hours. Bronson was quite happy to have a house full of people, and especially enjoyed the visit from 2 year old Keira from next door.

On Mothers day my baby made me a card (with some help from dad who made sure the marker stayed out of his mouth), they suprised me with a massage gift certificate and took me on a picnic at Caltech - it was a beautiful warm sunny day and so nice to spend it with my family.

Monday was the first day in more than 3 weeks that Bronson and I spent alone. I thought he'd be demanding, but he didn't seem to mind that I was the only one around to watch his antics (and sometimes not). We went shopping for garden supplies and then he watched as mom re-potted plants and rounded out our garden - it's small but should provide us with some nice vegetables soon enough.

We also got some plastic chicken fencing to line the balcony railing with so that our kiddo won't get his head stuck between the bars.

Tuesday was "Ditch Day" at Caltech, this is a tradition where the senior undergrads organize a day for undergrads to ditch classes - the other undergrads and teachers, etc don't know when it is. On said day the seniors must leave campus for the entire day - any senior found on campus is duct taped to a tree by the other undergrads. The intention is for the undergrads to mess up the seniors dorm rooms, so the seniors must create an elaborate set of clues to keep them away, at the end of the clues should be the key/combination, etc to getting into their rooms. Hopefully the clue set is so lengthy that they never get to the end. If they do find the way in to the room then the senior should have left a bribe to deter them from messing the place.

So, needless to say yesterday was a very interesting day to roam campus! CalTech provides the seniors with a budget, and things were looking very interesting. Each undergrad group had t-shirts made in the theme of the room they were working on and there were large elaborate structures all around. We saw a giant paper mache turtle on wheels with 2 bikes inside so that it could be pedalled around; when we brought Matthew back to see it, it was gone...

There were large boxes, small boxes, buckets of water balloons, a slip & slide bowling alley and more pool noodles than I could count. There were space age contraptions in the middle of fields and the highlight for Bronsons was the 100+ rubber duckies in the pond outside of the library!

Matthew got to participate a little in the fun, as his senior undergrad friend Chelsea enlisted him to play a character at one of her clue spots - his office. Matthew played Zorg the tinfoil eye patched arms dealer who demanded the students create counterfeit copies of art pieces in exchange for the supersoaker weapons that he hoarded. Such art included the standard Mona Lisa, Starry Night, etc; but also such modern classics as a 'Carrot Top' poster, Jimi Hendrix poster and the ever popular David Hasselhoff speedo shot. He had fun.

Tuesday was a big day for Bronson, too as he started crawling forwards! He'll go a few steps, then do a fish-like flop on his belly to move forwards, but today he's doing even less flopping, so we figure in a few days he'll be off! Furthermore yesterday heralded the outcropping of 2 top teeth and a third ready to break skin, too. He is pretty happy for a kid growing teeth and in addition to chewing everything in sight, he likes to click his teeth together, too.

Here is a video message from Bronson who's been just so happy lately that I wanted to share.