House Guest!

This week we were visited by Jonah's favorite Uncle Steve (the fact that he's Jonah's only Uncle Steve is just a technicality). The visit made for quite an exciting couple days, as our routine was (pleasantly) interrupted with trips and tours around the city. Here are a few highlights:

Tuesday:

On Steve's first full day in town, we spent the later part of the morning prepping a slow cooker tamale pie.  Then we headed down to Oakland to tour the university.  The ride to Oakland was Jonah's first on a city bus!  He really charmed the lady across the aisle from us.  She couldn't stop talking about how smart he seemed (is).  In the afternoon, we joined up with Bryan to visit the Mattress Factory, an uber-cool contemporary art museum full of room-sized exhibits ("art you get into") that test the limits of perception.  (If you're ever visiting the area from out of town, we highly recommend it.)

Jonah tests our spoons for durability, as Steven
and I prep a tamale pie for dinner.

Waiting in the lobby of Pitt's Alumni
Hall for our tour to begin, Jonah wiggles
in his uncle's arms the better to
admire said uncle.

Jonah, Bryan and I at the Mattress Factory,
one of our favorite Pittsburgh museums.
If you look carefully, you can see Steve,
the photographer, in this picture,
too.  Multiple Steves, in fact.

Wednesday:

We began the next day with a tour of local street art (an interest of Steve's).  It was freezing cold outside, unfortunately, so Jonah and I cut our tour short about halfway through, letting Steven explore a bit more on his own.  Steve took lots of pictures, though, so later on he shared with us much of what we'd missed.

Jonah, Steven, and I took a stroll to check out
some of the local street art.  Steve took lots of
pictures, just a couple of which I've copied here.

(Thanks, Steve!)

In the evening, we headed to our favorite Ethiopian restaurant to share a couple of entrees over a large "plate" of injera.  Yum!  We figured it's probably too early to share such spicy comestibles with our littlest diner*, so Jonah munched on some banana instead.  He's so well-behaved a restaurants!  What a trooper! (*Admittedly, lots of babies all around the world probably eat spicy foods quite early, but I think we'd rather start with something made at home--and perhaps when we're without guests in case the new food disagrees with him later.)

Jonah sits in his first restaurant high chair, from which
he enjoys the view of the rest of us eating Ethiopian
cuisine. Too spicy for a baby who's had only one
month of solid food experience (we're guessing),
but it won't be too long before he's digging in, too!

Thursday:

Thursday began with a warm breakfast of homemade waffles and scrumptious bacon (for me and Steven, anyway), punctuated by a trip to a local cafe for hot chocolates.  Not a bad start the day, really, but it left us with a few extra calories to burn.  Thankfully, the afternoon offered plenty of activity for all.  We met up with Bryan and headed to the Carnegie Science Center, where we learned that robots can beat us at nearly everything (or at least at basketball and table hockey) and also that Steve is pretty darned good at transforming himself into a human yo-yo.

We spent a couple hours at the Carnegie Science Center,
where we scored this picture of ourselves with our
favorite robots.

At Highmark SportsWorks
(part of the Science Center),
Steven showed us how to excel
at being at the "you-yo" machine.

Considering the weather was uncooperative, Bryan was working most of the week, and Jonah was having his limits tested as we exposed him to all sorts of new adventures and scheduling, I'd say we had a pretty good visit with Uncle Steve.  We hope we'll be welcoming him back soon!