Another new addition to the family!

Hi everybody!
I'm so excited to announce the March 31 birth of my second cousin once-removed, Zoe Mandel. Her father and my mother are cousins! Zoe and her parents live in Atlanta but were coincidentally visiting Great Uncle Roger and Great Aunt Betsy (my grandmother's brother and sister-in-law) while I am visiting my grandparents. So we enjoyed a big family luncheon on Thursday. Here's a picture of Zoe and me, with our mommies, celebrating July 4!
Big congratulations to cousins David and Elizabeth for their baby!!!! And I'm a baby myself, so I definitely know how exciting this is for them.

Love,
Julien the Baby

Paris April 14, 2010 - Part 3 - Chez Julien!

Hi everyone,
We finished up our fantastic day in Paris with a dinner in my restaurant, Chez Julien. You may wonder how a baby like me can own a restaurant in Paris. That is a very valid question that you would have.

The restaurant was founded in 1780, a few years before my birth, but it's still named after me!

We had a fun dinner with Darius. The restaurant is very beautiful and elegant, but at the same time it's very relaxed and joyful - note the happy server joining us for the picture!

There's something so nice about Parisian restaurants and their chandoliers!

DOJ and Darius

The fun outdoor seating option for Chez Julien!
Good night!
Love,
Julien the Baby

Paris April 14, 2010 - Part 2 - Luxembourg Gardens!

Hi everyone,
Here are some pictures from the children's playground in Luxembourg Gardens.

Here's a fun whacky "ride" for children ages 7 and up. I doubt one will ever see anything like this in the USA.

I don't fully understand this but it looks like fun.

The children all look so happy :)

The playgrounds are active but not super full.

After we left the playground and I had a little nap, we headed to The Marais for a stroll. Here I am in some whacky grassy area that has little glass domes. It was a fun photo op, but my parents and I don't really understand what this place was all about!
Love,
Julien the Baby

Paris April 14, 2010 - Darius and a puppet show!

Hi everyone!
I still want to share my Paris adventures with you. On Wednesday April 14, 2010, I had a fun day as usual - the morning consisted of breakfast at our apartment and general kicking back. Then DOJ's friend Darius came to visit. Darius lives in Aachen, Germany and came to Paris for 3 days because of our visit. He also went to my parents' wedding in Italy in 2006. He and DOJ have known each other for many years thanks to the Saint Etienne mailing list, and they have met in person in Europe at least once a year since 2003.

Darius arrived in our apartment and we went off to a luncheon at Good News Cafe, which was near our apartment. Darius has had a large influence on my daddy's musical interests, having introduced him to artists as diverse as A1, Bobby Reed, H & Claire, North and South, The Beach Boys' album Carl & the Passions, Johnny Boy, Rachel Stevens, April Stevens, The Shangri-Las, and Nervus Nervous. He also enhanced DOJ's interest in the amazing band Steps. What a tragedy! Oh well, that's the way you make me feel.

After our luncheon, we made plans to see a Marionnette show, aka a puppet show! The puppet show was in the theatre in the Luxembourg Gardens.

Darius didn't join us for the puppet show; instead he went to his hotel to rest before we would meet for dinner. Here's a picture of DOJ and me in the Luxembourg Gardens - as you know, we've spent a lot of time here because the Gardens of Paris are just so lovely and fantastic. Note that one can rent the little boats for the ponds in the Parisian gardens. Although we didn't rent any boats, we had fun looking at the boats in the pond.

Here we are at the Marionnette show - we saw a performance of The Three Little Pigs. Mind you, it was all in French.

After the show, we went to retrieve our stroller - note how all of the strollers are parked outside the theatre. Everyone respected each other's stroller privacy. Yay!!!!!
Stay tuned for more Paris adventures!
Love,
Julien the Baby

Aunt Nancy & Uncle Glenn visit during Memorial Day Weekend 2010!

Hi everyone!
On Saturday May 29, Aunt Nancy and Uncle Glenn paid us a visit! It was very fun - they stayed with us and we did a lot of fun activities together.

We ate Mexican food at Dos Pinas, they helped us set out our deck furniture after a very long Winter & wet Spring storage, and they babysat me on Saturday night so that my parents could have a date night - supposedly they went to Cafe Jacqueline and enjoyed souffle!

On Sunday we had a fun luncheon with Billy and his family. Billy is a longtime family friend who went to the same college as Aunt Nancy. We also went to Yogurt's house and enjoyed their pool and company, although I don't seem to have any pictures from that visit. We had dinner at Chef Jia's restaurant in Chinatown - it's next door to the always-popular Nanking House, but it wasn't too crowded.

On Monday we went to a Giants ball game at the ballpark! Very fun. We sat behind 3rd Base. It was a little sunny but I wore a lot of sunscreen!

Aunt Nancy & Uncle Glenn enjoyed some tourist activities on Tuesday, but we all had dinner at Memphis Minnie's BBQ and then dessert at Mission Pie.

They flew back home on Wednesday, but we had a fun meal at Town's End. It was sad to see them leave, but I'll get to see them again over the summer. That's going to be a lot of fun!
love,
Julien the Baby

Saturday 6/12/10: Mommy Playgroup Birthday Party

Hi everybody!
Today (Saturday June 12) was our playgroup's birthday party celebration! As most of my readers know, I'm in a GGMG mom's playgroup that meets together on Tuesdays. There are 11 of us, and we were all born between May and July 2009. For the celebration, 10 of us met with both parents, which was very fun. We met at Karl Marx Meadows in Golden Gate Park.

As one can imagine with big playgroup celebrations, there were a lot of fun picture opportunities. One of the mommies suggested a joint picture of just us babies, although Ollie is missing in this picture! You may notice that we are all wearing matching shirts with our first name's initial! Very fun.

Here we are playing with a ball & ladder game. I think that one of the daddies brought it for us to play with, but at one point some of the daddies were playing with these instead!

Here are us babies with our mommies!

And then there were pictures of us with our daddies! You can see that we're on our daddies' shoulders for this picture!

This was just so fun!
I'd like to thank everybody at the party for making it so great.
The party was from 1 to 4(ish), and after the party I fell asleep in the car almost immediately! Then when we got home I probably slept for another 2 hours. Then we had dinner, I had a fun bath, and now I'm sleeping once again...
love,
Julien the Baby

Thanks for coming to my birthday party!

Hi everyone!
We had a small casual birthday party on Sunday. Thanks to everyone who came! It was fun to see everyone. My parents keep saying that they can't believe I'm 1. I don't know why because I was born on June 4, 2009 and today was June 6, 2010. So of course that means I'm 1 year old.

Yum yum birthday cupcake!

DOJ and Teresa are longtime friends - they first met at a GusGus concert in 1997!

I haven't seen Lily for a little while, so it was great to see her again! Her birthday is later this month.

Veronica was keeping an eye on Lucas and me while we played.

It was fun to see Tom - he and DOJ used to attend a lot of music concerts together and now meet for lunch. They went to England to see Saint Etienne in concert in 1998 and still talk about it!
I crawled and played a lot today, so I should be sleeping!
Good night,
Julien the Baby

May fun with Ruby!

Hi everybody,
Thank you for your birthday wishes. It's really very nice. I can't believe I'm 1 year old right now. It feels just like a year ago that I was born. Time sure flies.
My good dear girlfriend Ruby turns 1 on Monday! I want to wish her a happy birthday!
Here are some fun pictures from May 11 and 12, when we had fun playing together!


Here we are in St Mary's Playground, which isn't far from Holly Park. Mommy's playgroup met here on Tuesday May 11 - I think that everybody had a great time. This is a wonderful park (I'd already been here before with DOJ the week before, but that's another blog post) which had an amazing renovation.

Here we are playing at Ruby's on Wednesday May 12.

I helped push her on her tiger car.

After playing with the tiger car, we were both feeling hungry so we enjoyed a yummy buffet of foam letter blocks. We worked together to devour the foam, just like how hungry tigers chow together when they have their lunch!

After snacking, we decided to have dessert and again worked together to separate the foam block letters. I don't think that our parents were very thrilled, but they were both laughing a lot!
Happy Birthday Ruby - we'll get together soon!
love,
Julien the Baby

More about Julien's first day...

June 4, 2009 is Julien's birthday. He was born at 6:25pm and we left the hospital around 5pm on Friday June 5. Here are pictures from our departure:


Julien is packed in the car seat. Note that he not only has the infant head insert, but *also* an additional head insert for newborn babies! He's looking at us, ready for action!

As I take the carseat, ready to put it in our car, I was probably still amazed that the hospital was actually allowing us to leave with our baby. We loaded ourselves into the car and drove towards our hotel... until we realized that we were hungry, so we turned around and drove to El Pollo Loco.

Sitting at our table at El Pollo Loco. Several diners gave us their well wishes for our new baby! Although I'm photographed with a snell phone by my ear, I have no idea with whom I'm talking!

Baby tootsies - in fact, newborn tootsies. Note how well our baby can flex and separate his toes from one another. This is what I'm trying to now do, after 5 years of Pilates. I'm still not as able to do it as Julien could at just 1 day old!

Later that night, in our hotel. We gave Julien his first bath in the sink, to give him a fresh start.
We didn't have a bed or crib for him, but my friends John and Aimee Ricci gave us a *lot* of suggestions; they have 2 young children. They explained about how a towel could be good padding as well as a good insert so that Julien wouldn't feel inclined to roll or turn over. It was important that he sleep on his back. And the drawer was right by our bed so that we could respond to any of his possible needs.
That first night together, I remember waking up at least twice to change his diaper and reswaddle him. The following morning, we drove home... the journey had already begun and was only just continuing...
Thanks for being part of Julien's first year!
love,
Michael

June 4: Happy 1 year birthday!

Hello everyone,

It's hard to believe but Julien is 1 year old. 12 months. 365 days. How did time fly so fast? All I can say is that we've been loving the journey of Julienhood, and we are thankful daily for the precious gift of parenthood. Life is better than ever thanks to being DOJ (daddy of Julien).

Here are some pictures from his first 24 hours of life.

It's amazing to think of how small he was - it's hard to believe how much he's grown!

One of his many naps during his first day of life... newborn baby heads exude warmth and need utmost protection so that they'll retain their body warmth!

MOJ and I are posing with our baby. We've gotten a lot of mileage from this picture! An article about travel in the Washington Times had a quote from me, and this picture was included in their online edition. This picture was also reprinted in my elementary school alumni journal; I can't remember if it was also used in my high school alumni journal.

One of Julien's many swaddles; despite paying attention *and* filming the swaddling instructions, we definitely needed a *lot* of practice to swaddle him well. It's always amazing about how well babies (newborns but even older babies) will sleep when swaddled.

After being swaddled, Julien yawned and fell asleep - despite being the subject of many more photographs that day.
We left the hospital around 5pm or so, when Julien was just 22 and a half hours old. He wasn't even a full day old.
Happy Birthday Julien!
Love,
Daddy