Another month for Beatrice - this one started with Beatrice's first airplane flight, a trip to Seattle to visit our friends Chris and Lindsey and their daughter Charlotte, and then to attend Chuck and Monica's wedding. On the flight home from Seattle she was so cheerful and charming that nearby passengers actually thanked us as we disembarked deplaned.
The biggest news this month (at least for me) is that Beatrice is now watched by a babysitter one day a week. I drop off Beatrice every Thursday from 9-5pm at Mina's house, where Mina's sitter Leticia watches both B and Rosemary. That means I get eight uninterrupted hours to work. (The rest of the week I work while B is napping or after she goes to bed.) If I plan carefully, I can get almost a week's worth of work done in that one day.I get so much done on Thursdays, in fact, that I can spend Tuesday mornings at the excruciatingly named "Mommy and Me" - which Beatrice adores. About thirty babies and their mothers gather in a room at 10am every Tuesday for singing and games for young infants. B's two favorite activities are bubble blowing and parachute time. For the former, the teacher plays soft music while filling the room with soap bubbles; for the latter, all the babies lie on their backs while the mothers take hold of a rainbow-colored parachute and wave it back and forth over their heads to the babies' evident delight.
In addition to bubbles and parachutes, Beatrice's favorite things are reading Fluffy Chick and Friends, listening to Paris Combo, watching the fountains at the Americana shopping mall, and going to the aquarium. Joanne and I took B to the Long Beach Aquarium and Beatrice was mesmerized by the brightly colored, well-lit, and continuously moving fish, very easy for even an infant to see. The hot pink jellyfish were her favorites - she liked them so much that Dev and I took her back to see them again the following week. 
Sadly, the Los Angeles Zoo's petting zoo (or, as they have dubbed it, the "contact yard") wasn't such a big hit. Beatrice seemed blandly indifferent to the many goats, pigs, and sheep - at one point I tried to rub her hand over a sheep's wool but she didn't even turn around. Maybe next month...
Meanwhile Beatrice has stalled a bit on rolling over. After rolling over eight or ten times last month, she seems to have tired of it already - she hasn't rolled over in weeks. I assume she is storing up energy for the Next Big Thing. Watch her fail to roll over!
And here she is, endeavoring to put her whole fist into her mouth (also available on the Baby Fail Blog).
Beatrice is now sleeping in her own crib, in her own room, and you can watch her do so by clicking here.
As always, there are many more photos on Facebook and Flickr.
Next month -Baby's First Halloween!
We've had a busy month of Halloween-related activities, starting with our annual Block family trip to the apple farms near Placerville in northern California.
We also went to a pumpkin festival in Pasadena with Mina, James, and Rosemary,
and to see the fall foliage at Descanso gardens.
Then Dev and I helped out with the Mom's Club children's Halloween party on October 24. 
The following day we had some friends and family over to have an all-pumpkin dinner and carve jack o' lanterns.
Then at last it was Halloween itself - we had a big open house with friends from all over the city while also handing out candy to the many trick or treaters in our neighborhood. More than thirty people dropped by plus a total of seven babies.
and I made Louis an ultrasound costume.
And of course, I also made Beatrice's costume, a stack of pancakes. 
Shackleton was a middle manager.
Cromwell was an old-timey motorist.
Dev was a ghost (again). 
And I was Medusa.
See more of our fall and Halloween photos on Flickr and Facebook, including some great photos of our party guests and their costumes.
