Times They Are A-Changing

As Egan begins his 10th month, the Boals/Krasnow household is undergoing some changes. Waist-high objects have become Egan's Disneyland. Dive into mom's knitting bag to tangle myself in the yarn? Absolutely. Hang from the kitchen table? No problem! Need a magazine off the couch? Got it! Attempt to hoist myself out of the pack-n-plan by throwing a leg over the side? Don't mind if I do.

Playing games with Morgan remains his favorite past time and she's able to always find just the thing to make him squeal in delight.

Egan loves to move and explore and is extremely curious and fearless. At any given moment, he can be found kissing himself in the mirror, chasing the dog around the house, or playing hide-and-go-seek with one of us, wrapped in a sleeping bag. While out buying chocolates on Valentine's Day, Egan discovered a helium balloon in the shop and was fascinated by it. We bought one and he spent much of the afternoon exploring its mysterious behaviors.

We've found that showers are even more fun then baths. Egan will crawl right into the shower with one of us, so now morning showers have become routine before I head off to work. He'll sit on the ground, splashing around in the water run-off and filling his bath toys with the warm water. He loves to curl around our chest like a koala bear while we take him under the stream of shower water and isn't phased at all by the water raining down on him. Tangling himself in the big towels after his shower isn't so bad either!



At the moment, he's definitely most interested in activities which involve movement. He won't sit still for long with a single toy, but he loves banging things together, and learning how to make different types of objects move.


And for those of you wondering about teeth...he has 6! The two bottom ones have been joined by 4 on the top and yes, he definitely knows how to use them.




This spring, we've been spending a lot of time working in our garden. Inspired by the film Food Inc., we have tried to change our eating habits to consume as much organic, locally produced food as possible. In addition to the raised beds which we have behind our garage, we converted about 1/3 of our back yard into vegetable garden plots. The yard is currently covered in cardboard and newspaper to kill off the grass and weeds, and will soon be turned into mulch and ready for a summer planting. Additionally, we planted 3 fruit trees to mark Egan's first year and Morgan's teen years. This fig tree (bare root, between Egan and me) is for Egan, and on the other side of our yard is a persimmon tree for Morgan and an apple tree. Additionally, we purchased a chest-freezer for our garage and purchased half a pig and entire steer from a local, Marin farm which we are sharing with a group of friends.

When not growing our own food and brewing our own beer, we still love our great local bars, and so does Egan.
French fries are a welcome treat and Egan can hang at a bar as long as the fries are good for mushing on the table.

We're all pretty convinced that Egan has said his first "word." His inspiration to crawl was to chase the dog around the house, and it has also been his inspiration to climb. From this photo, it's only a matter of seconds before Egan climbs onto Clover's back, and that never seems to have a graceful ending. And this love for Clover has inspired a word of sorts. Whenever Egan sees Clover, or a dog on the street, or a dog in a book, he starts panting, just like she does. We like to insert the 'woof-woof' after the panting, but Egan like's his dog sounds just so.

It's hard to believe that Egan's first birthday is coming in less then 2 months. The days at my school seem to tick away endlessly sometimes (spring with 8th graders definitely isn't my favorite time of year), and yet, those same days simultaneously move so incredibly fast in Egan's life. It's funny how that works.

Man on the Run

The Little Man is mobile! After 8 months of stationary viewing, Egan is officially on the move. He'll happily show off his crawling technique to anyone who waves a crisp newspaper or a box of cheerios in front of him. Although he prefers the commando crawl for its stealth and speed, he'll get up on his hands and knees for the right price, namely some large object that he can lift up and dump out on his head. But his favorite place to crawl is right into Clover's warm embrace.



Those of you who know Clover, our Bernese Mountain dog, may not believe that she is quite gentile and mellow with Egan (she's a huge spaz when guests come over), but she takes his 'abuse' in stride. When she gets tired of him grabbing handfuls of her hair or poking her in the eye, she calmly gets up and moves to the other side of the room. You can guess where Egan goes next.

Over the holidays, Egan had his first sleepover with Granny Lu and Grandpa Ry. They stayed with him while Mike and I went to Half Moon Bay (alone) for the night. Egan took it all in stride, never crying, and after sorting out who's who with a few hard stares at Granny Lu when he woke up in the morning, he decided that all was well. Meanwhile, Mike and I did some fabulous mountain biking, ate too many desserts, and saw elephant seals and sea otters on the beach across the road from our hotel. Morgan spent Christmas with her mom this year, but when she returned to our house, we traveled south to San Diego for a visit with Grandma Jo, Aunt Jenny, and cousins Wyatt and Troy. We had plenty of laughs and Egan jealously watched his sister and cousins playing laser tag, thinking that it looked like a pretty cool place to show off his commando crawl.

Mike has rekindled an old love for beer brewing and Egan has tagged along for several batches. Under Egan's watchful eye, he's made a Trappist Ale, an Amber, and a Stout. In a matter of days they'll be bottling the next batch: an IPA. We plan to have a Paris-Roubaix party in April with more than enough of Mike's beer to go around, so mark the date on your calendars.


Our first trip with Egan on the bike had to be aborted when we tried on his helmet and found it to be quite big. We've since found an infant helmet and we'll be taking him out on the bike any day now. How to cart the 30 pound trailer and the 20 pound boy up the steep east bay hills is an enigma we still haven't solved, but by our next blog post we'll be filled with stories, I'm sure. In the meantime, we'll leave you with one final video, uncut, unedited, just raw crawling footage.