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Dylan, today you are 6 months old. Half a year! Oh, Ehm, Gee!

In the last few months you've grown a few inches and probably a pound or two. You still play with (taste) your feet constantly,  you're showing your personality in a recent stubbornness to feed without first playing a fun game of "Grab Mommy's Face," and you've started eating (what was at one time) "solids" — carrots, squash, sweet-potato and avocado (two of which your daddy is too chicken to eat) but possibly most exciting of all, you've learned how to roll over both from your back to your stomach and from your stomach to your back — although you're still having a little trouble with the latter.

You're still a strong sleeper… at home. We need to work on napping in an unfamiliar place, but all in all, we can't complain.

In this day and age of prescription eyelash enhancement and beer that tells you when it's cold (because apparently touching it is too much to ask), you manage just fine without things like Air Conditioning and toys that make lots of electronic noise. (Not to say anything negative about people who use their Air Conditioners or noisy toys, these are personal choices and ours is to go without…) I hope that one day, your generation is sitting around enjoying a round of beer and laughing about how my generation wasted our money on worthless research, and how simple it was for yours to cure Cancer, HIV, etc. It sounds crass of me to suggest, but it's true.

You're still not showing any teeth, although you've been chewing and slobbering a lot more lately, and everyone agrees that you're about due for a chomper or two. That huge belly laugh has still eluded us — let's just say you got daddy's tough sense of humor and it takes a LOT to make you laugh — but certain things (see: "Grab Mommy's Face") do make you chuckle and giggle. Yesterday, you even sort of screamed to get Mommy's attention from across the room, and you're starting to laugh at yourself. Suffice it to say, you're growing up fast.

A friend told me that we're required to celebrate this momentous day, so maybe we'll stick half a candle in your sweet potato's tonight for some pictures, and read you an extra story before bed. How does that sound?

That's what I had for lunch yesterday. Disgusting looking, isn't it? (Pardon the picture quality, it was an afterthought and taken with my iPhone.) I even tweeted that if I didn't know what was in it, I never would have put it in my mouth.

What we have here is Gnocchi in a Pesto-based sauce, with sun-dried tomatoes and ricotta cheese on top. You know how much I love tomatoes… but I have to say they went perfectly in this dish. There was a certain sweetness between the gnocchi, pesto, and cheese, and the tomatoes really rounded it out with a bit of salt and a punch of flavor.

For the record, I had lunch at Penne, at The Inn at Penn, and even though I didn't pay for it this time, I would gladly pay for it next time.

We had an incredibly busy weekend. On Saturday, I took Megan to Simon Pearce for lunch (as part of her birthday gift, delayed for an available weekend & babysitter to coincide) and while we had the babysitter (thanks again, Susan and Ed!) we were originally going to go to Longwood Gardens, but the weather forecast was pretty crumby so we decided to see Star Trek instead. The weather ended up being gorgeous on Saturday, but we had already bought the movie tickets, so we were committed. We went to Longwood Gardens on Sunday — we took Dylan with us — and took about 600 pictures. For comparison, we averaged about 200 a day when we went to Ireland.

Obviously, it's going to take some time to go through the Longwood pictures and get them posted. In the meantime, here's my Star Trek review.

We didn't get off to a great start. I originally wanted to see it in IMAX (still wouldn't mind), but by the time we were ready to buy tickets, all of the shows we could make it to were sold out; so we saw it in a normal theater instead. On the way there, we realized that I had purchased tickets for the wrong date. I blame the fact that we were talking about different dates, showtimes, and theaters, and I just got a little confused when finally making the purchase; but luckily they were kind enough to exchange the tickets for us at the box office. We also arrived about 10 minutes before the movie would start, and by that time, the only rows with 2 seats available were on the floor, down in front. (Believe me, I looked closely. If there was a row we could ask to compress so that we didn't have to sit up front, I would have.)

Thankfully, once we got seated everything went smoothly — I don't think I could have taken much more frustration.

One of the issues that Trek fans have complained about with previous Star Trek movies was that the camera work was a little too calm and steady. Even through big fight sequences, the camera was just stationary or would move around, but it felt awkwardly calm. I think J.J. Abrams overcompensated for this complaint. In Star Trek 2009, (A terrible name, by the way, as it doesn't give us a great way to reference this movie instead of others, or differentiate from the various TV Series' by the same name.) nearly every scene uses ShakyCam(TM). It's like they made the camera operators walk on beds of hot coals, or put ants in their pants.

I like the camera to have a little movement to it as much as the next guy, but not so much that you can barely recognize who's on screen during a fight scene, let alone comprehend what they are actually doing. Overall, not a horrible crime, but definitely something I noticed early and often while watching.

I'm guessing I'm about to out myself as "not the biggest trekkie anywhere" but what the heck was up with Uhura's roommate at Star Fleet Academy? Green skin? That's it? She just looks like a human in green paint. If this was some sort of throwback reference that I just didn't get, then I'll allow it. Otherwise, it was an obvious point of "well, we hit our special effects budget but we need to do something to make her not human…"

Then there were a few plot holes. I don't think I'm giving too much away, since this is all in the first 10 minutes of the movie. (But hey, if you want to avoid any and all spoilers, skip this paragraph.) What the heck was Pike doing in Iowa? Why had he read Kirk's file just before the bar brawl? And why does he know or care about the aptitude test scores of someone who hasn't even applied to Star Fleet? I talked to my dad briefly yesterday about the movie as well, so I won't steal his gripes and instead I'll encourage him to post them in the comments (or perhaps a blog post of his own?). But all of these things are just small holes in an otherwise well written and entertaining movie. I'm not saying that they couldn't be explained, just that they aren't.

Oh, I just remembered something else, later in the movie… so spoiler avoiders? Don't read this paragraph either. Having now seen this movie, I have had memories of a few shared moments between Uhura and Spock on the original TV Series and movies popping up in my head. I never really noticed it at the time (maybe I was just too young?), but they definitely had something going on behind closed doors! You really get to see how their relationship started in this movie, which I thought was a great addition. It doesn't take much time to show and it adds so much to the movie and the entire series. Well done on that one!

Ok, we're back to being spoiler-free. I think they really opened the door for a whole new series of movies from the endpoint of this one to the beginning of the TV Series, and I would love to see them. The characters were likeable, and if the dialog and plot writing stay up to par, it could be a great addition to the franchise.

Overall, I give the movie two strong thumbs up. Definitely go see it, even if you have no history with Star Trek, as it stands fine on its own.