If Only He Could Grow His Moochie...

My boyish charms cannot be denied.

After seven months, certain parenting etiquette remains unclear to us. One of the things we've struggled with most is whether to correct strangers who mistakenly refer to Saavan as a girl. It doesn't happen all that often, because I take great care to dress Saavan up as a lumberjack whenever possible (and he just looks generally like a little pimp), but it's still an issue we face every now and then.

For example, it's been incredibly cold here in DC over the last couple of days. Yesterday, while out running errands, we put Saavan in a puffy snowsuit that is, at best, gender-ambiguous. On three separate occasions, strangers complimented us on what a beautiful baby we had and asked us how old she was. Now these are people we don't know, they're obviously just being friendly, and our odds of ever seeing them again are miniscule. Is it worth it to correct them? Does doing so serve any legitimate purpose? At an open house yesterday, the realtor, immediately upon seeing us, went into a long and what I'm sure he thought was charming speech about how the house was perfect for our little girl, how she looked ready to buy, and she was going to love living there. As soon as he finished, we told him that Saavan was in fact a little boy. You should have seen the guy's face. It looked as though we had kicked him in the balls repeatedly. He tried to save face by hemming and hawing about how he should have known, because the outfit was light blue, but it was all just a little awkward and embarrassing (he should have, as Al Pacino explained in Glengarry, known the shot before he opened his mouth). Was it worth it? We probably aren't going to see the dude again, and if we do, it'll still be weird, and I'm sure that I'll be carrying some unspoken resentment towards him for calling my son a little girl. The situation is horrible, and appears to be completely unresolvable.
Random picture of Mr. Sweatyhead goes here.

Later on in the day, we were shopping at Babies R' Us. While standing in the checkout line, Saavan was smiling at a gentleman behind us. When we turned around to say hi, the guy mentioned that "he had inadvertently caught her attention," and kept on about how cute she was. Jesus. This time though, we didn't say anything. Having gone through the awkwardness with the real estate agent, we figured it wasn't worth doing again. Especially because we were far less likely to see this guy than we were that realtor. So there was no awkwardness with that guy, but I couldn't help but think that by not making the correction, we were totally misleading this guy. We were living a lie. Why not correct someone who makes such an obvious error about the Saav-man? Doesn't our child deserve to be recognized for who he is (an adorable BOY)?!? In some ways, I feel like we failed as parents by letting it slide. Sigh. I hate myself.

There is only one possible solution, and it was the same one I reached when considering how to address the issue of the unwanted moochie: I'm going to draw a beard on Saavan's face every morning from here on out.

THE NON-SEQUITUR!

And now, some pictures totally unrelated to the post above! When he was first born, Saavan generally looked a little concerned about everything. Check out one of the very first pictures from his bath, in July of 2008:

Now check out a picture of Saavan out of the bath yesterday. The boy is chillin':

I can't believe it's the same kid.

The 7-Month Birthday Post!

I'm seven months old! And painfully aware of daddy's blogging laziness.

Saavan is now seven months old! I've realized that I never do a good enough job of describing all the awesome stuff he does (in part because I never write), so I thought I'd simply show everyone all the fun stuff he does now, through the magic of film digital memory card.

At seven months, Saavan hogs the computer (which is why I can't ever get a blog entry written). Check it out:

The frustrating thing is that rarely is Saavan doing anything useful on the computer. He spends most of the time trying to come up with clever Facebook status updates.

Saavan now eats solid foods. We started him on them almost a month ago, but our first efforts to feed him were generally unsuccessful:

Now, at seven months, he's a solid-food master, and eats rice cereal by the ton. He's now moved on to butternut squash:

Look at the intensity on the faces of both mom and baby during the feeding session. It's a bit overwhelming. Once I tried to take the spoon away from Neha and feed Saav myself, and she punched me in the face.

At seven months, Saavan is also teething (although no adorable little teeth have popped out yet). Which means he constantly needs to be putting things into his mouth. Sometimes it's a finger:

Sometimes it's a toy:

Or a foot:

Or a set of bongo drums:

Teething is serious business.

Saavan has also developed a wicked sense of humor. Check out Kabir Cha Cha's reaction to Saavan's hysterical Sarah Palin joke:
I can see the moon from my stroller, but that doesn't make me a damn astronaut!

Finally, at seven months, Saavan is dominating his exersaucer, which provides him countless minutes (for a baby, that's a lot) of uninterrupted entertainment:
Naturally, mom and dad LOVE any toy that keeps Saavan preoccupied and frees up our hands. I've decided to marry the exersaucer.

On a different note, yesterday was the inauguration of Barack Obama, our nation's 44th president. It was a historic event, one that Neha and I are grateful to have been apart of (even if we were a mile and a half away from the actual ceremony). It was too cold for Saavan to join us out there, but I told him all about the big news, and the president who will preside over the nation during his infancy. Upon hearing it all, Saavan was understandably excited:

Yes we did!