Welcome Jacob!

Finn has a new cousin! Jacob Allen Martin Bennett was born just before midnight on Monday the 28th.
Congratulations Keisha, Allen, and big brother Brandon.
We got to see the new little guy live via Skype last night (when Brandon would let him have screen time), and he's a cutie. Finn seemed impressed.

In other news, I had a cold this week (fun!), classes have started up again, and Finn seems to have hit a growth spurt, because he's eating like crazy.
Sleep? What sleep?

A Diaper Dance Party!

Sometimes, late at night, when he really should be going to bed, little Finn decides he is wildly happy and has no need to sleep! A few days ago we had such a night, when he was quite excited to get his diaper changed. I snapped some pictures as fast as I could! Here is one. There are more at flickr. Party on Finn!

Pinned again

Finn sleeps in his own room at night, technically in his crib (just not on the mattress). And for a two-month-old he sleeps pretty well. Last night he went about 5 hours between his pre-bedtime feeding and the first time he woke us up. He goes right back down after I feed him, and will usually keep going back to sleep until 7 or 8 if it's a day where we're not scurrying out the door to school and work.
But daytime naps are another story. So here I am, under a sleeping baby, not quite willing to risk waking him up by moving. I mean, if I did, what would I do? Another load of dishes, maybe put some laundry away, read a book, check friends' blogs, read the news, watch a movie, play Scrabulous. And if I don't get up, I can read a book, check friends' blogs, read the news, watch a movie, play Scrabulous... so that's why I've been in this chair for about an hour, was here for about an hour this morning, and will probably be here on and off for much of the afternoon. Fortunately, before I sat down I made sure the camera & USB connector were nearby in addition to the usual computer-novel-burpcloth setup.
More at Flickr, as usual.

Playing and squeaking

This has been a pretty neat week.
First of all, we have a game now. We've always noticed that our boy is such a ferocious kicker that any blanket you put on him when he's on the ground soon ends up under his feet. A few days ago he decided it was fun if we started the top edge of the blanket over his head instead of under his chin. He flails around and kicks until we can see him again, and then he grins at us. It's pretty darn cute, and is still fun after about 200 repetitions, both for us and for him.
Second, he'd hardly been cooing at all, but apparently covering up his face made him think it was time - maybe he's letting us know he's still there when we ask him "Where'd the baby go?!" Sometimes he just lets out with a happy squeal for no apparent reason when I'm somewhere across the room, and it's hilarious. Tickles me pink. But even though he's talking a lot more now, it's still unpredictable, so I just got a tiny snippet on video. Also included are some hijinks with the blanket:

Also, he's getting better at controlling his arms - the past few days he's been sticking his hands in his mouth on purpose, rather than just by accident. Sometimes, at least.
And the other exciting thing is that we installed Skype for some folks back home while we were there over Christmas, so grandparents have been able to watch him live and kicking. We copied the idea from our friends Rachel and Ross, and I can't recommend it highly enough for those of you with the connection speed to make it work. It's very easy to use, and the sound and video have been better quality than I would have expected.
And now, for no particular reason, here are the boys in the kitchen last night as we made dinner. Aren't they cute?

6 out of 7 babies agree: He's a big'un!

We took Finn in for his 2-month checkup. The fun news: He's in the 87th percentile in height and 85th in weight. So we'll say 86th overall. He's a good eater and shot way up in percentiles since week 2. The not-so-fun news: 3 immunizations! But he did very well, and within 3 minutes he was calm, and within 15 minutes (including some milk from Katie) he was back to normal. The doctor said that his "neck deficiency" was normal for a 2-month-old. So we can look forward to the day he has a real neck and maybe only one chin.

Finn is 24 1/4 inches and 13 lbs, 14 oz. He has a long way to go to get to 20 lbs at 4 months, like his daddy. My head was way bigger though.

Quite interestingly, one's head basically stays the same size, relative to others of the same age, with time. Finn's head circumference is in the 70th percentile, and should always stay there, approximately. Unless he hits the HGH too hard like Barry Bonds.

In other news, the professorin' is going well. It is a long commute door-to-door (55 to 60 minutes), but I can handle it. I'm excited.

So far, so good.

This whole "going back to work" thing is so crazy it just might work. I was only 15 minutes late on Monday, hardly late at all yesterday, and remembered to bring diapers, spare clothes, bottles, AND the baby to daycare both days. I think Finn likes it pretty well, because he's never crying when we show up, and he's been eating. There are 5 (or 4?) other kids in his class. He's the youngest, at 2 months old, and then there's a 3-month-old, and the rest of the kids are bigger, I think more like 9 months. There are two teachers, and he seems to like them both. He doesn't sleep much for them, though. That's fine for us - his average nighttime sleep stretch is now something like 3 or 4 hours instead of 2, which was what we were dealing with over Christmas.
One of the many things we like about our daycare is that they're agreeable to the cloth diaper thing. If they weren't it would be a lot less cost effective, especially once he starts going more days a week, and we might not be able to do it. For those of you who've been asking "How are the cloth diapers working?" and "Are you still using the service?" the answers are great, and not anymore. After doing disposables through all of our holiday travels, I've decided they kind of gross me out, and at least with our kid, they lead to a lot more poo-stained-pjs. So that's neat, and nicely compliments our desire not to add any more to the landfill than we already do. And we switched from the service because even though it was handy to have someone else wash them, we wanted something a bit less bulky, more daycare-friendly, and easier to put on a kicking baby (Diaper services just do the rectangles you have to fold to make more baby-shaped and put a cover over. They work, and we have some of our own we still use, but... well, see above.). Plus shopping for them was fun.
A friend recently said he'd heard that all cloth diapers had cutesy names about butts. Sure enough, the majority of ours, like the one Finn's modeling above, are Happy Heinys. We also have some bumGenius and Fuzzi Bunz (no, I'm not making this up). We tried the Fuzzi Bunz first because we know people who are fans and they worked fine. Unfortunately, Finn's pretty near a size break, and I just couldn't bring myself to buy a bunch of $18 diapers that we'd only use for a couple of months, but I didn't want to keep the service for another couple months while we waited for him to grow. Happy Heinys and bumGenius make one-size diapers that, thanks to some ingenious snap placement, expand to fit babies from newborns up to about 35 pounds. We started with three of each and ended up buying 6 more of the Happy Heinys. This brought our total fancy-diaper collection to 16, and now 17, so we do a load of diaper laundry every 1-2 days. We went with the HHs because of product reviews about longevity, certain construction features, and other practical things... but I suspect that deep down I was predisposed to like them better because they have a far superior color selection. I mean, neon green! Come on! We've got red and royal blue, too. We are having issues with leaking/wicking of moisture around the legs sometimes, but based on what I've read on message boards this isn't a problem many other people have, and it might be a detergent issue. I hope so, because I'll feel like a big dummy for buying 9 of them if it's not something we can fix. And if it is fixable Finn can wear them until he's potty trained, and our next (theoretical) baby can wear them, and we can save a ton of money. Yay! So anyway, for the five of you that were actually interested in this issue, there you go. I could go on for several more pages, and I will over e-mail if you're considering going this route yourself, but I think you probably get the idea.

And now Jonathan can tell you about our super-fun time this morning with the pediatrician - who admired Finn's lovely royal blue diaper.

Back to normal... kind of.

I started working again - this week from home, and as of tomorrow, from the office. Tomorrow will be the first morning where we try our new routine of getting everyone up and dressed and to their respective van pools/day cares/jobs by 8 am. Wish us luck.

In other news, the cats' impatience for lap space have, at least for the time being, won out over any sort of trepidation about being near the baby.

Growing up!

Tomorrow we enter a brave new world of jobs, commutes, and child care. Gulp. I'll be taking the vanpool "over the hill" to UC Santa Cruz every day. Walking to the van, taking the van, and walking from the van will probably be an hour each way every day. Katie will be in charge of dropping Finn off and will fight traffic to drive up to her job in Palo Alto, 3 days a week. Finn will be in daycare only 2 days though, since I'll be working from home on Fridays, as least to start.

Finn is 2 months old today! I thought I would share a couple of pictures from the past week. More are at Flickr. Although he likes to be held *a lot,* that is not always practical for us, so we're trying to find ways he can just sit and be. The Boppy and the Bumbo (too many B words...) are key items. He is a little too small for the green Bumbo chair, but I think it'll be a favorite once his neck gets a little stronger. Notice the prominent 2nd chin! Henrik Carlson was the first lucky kid I ever knew who had a Bumbo.

Big storm = no power

We're in hour 13 of not having power. The storms uprooted trees and it rained like crazy. More rain is to come. 1.2 million people lost power, and we're some of the "lucky" ones who do not have it back yet. All 3 of us are doing fine, but we're pretty bummed that we went grocery shopping yesterday....
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Power came back at 1 a.m.! Woohoo!

Christmas (Part 2)

We're back! The Iowa leg of the trip was just as fun as the Minnesota leg, except that it entailed more driving, which made Finn angry (happy and in the car so rarely coincide that when it does, we take a picture). We got to see lots of friends and family, even if we didn't get to see everyone we wanted to. And we took pictures! Finn was even better on the plane ride back west than he was on the flight east. He spent lots of time sleeping, and some lying on his back on our laps kicking his legs and flailing his arms, which we've discovered is his current favorite activity when he's in a good mood.
We got back on New Years Eve and spent the night at home, drinking champagne and watching movies. Finn went to bed nice and early after his long day, and we were asleep by 11:15. It's the first time in years that I haven't been awake as the year changed, but we were exhausted. And besides, it was 2008 in Iowa, where we woke up, so that counts for something, right?
Speaking of time zones, Finn woke up bright and early the next morning - 8 am Central time, but only 6 am Pacific. I sent Jonathan back to bed and was pacing the living room trying to figure out why he wouldn't stop crying, and then figured out the time zone thing. See, he sleeps much better swaddled, but if he's not sleepy, it just makes him mad, especially if he wants to practice the above-mentioned flailing and kicking. So I unwrapped him and laid him flat on his back, and he was happy as could be for an hour or two. He also seems to know he has arms now - not fingers to grab things with, necessarily, but arms to swipe with, and he immediately began trying to swipe at the parrot that hangs over his mat that he'd been eyeing before Christmas. Sometimes he hits it. A few of those times are on purpose. Very fun to watch. Here he is planning his attack on the parrot:

And now a (kind of) brief, mostly unrelated, rant: if you ever pass by parents with a screaming baby, PLEASE do not say "he's hungry!" Umm, no, actually, he just ate. Every time we go out somewhere and Finn starts to cry, someone does this. To me, this means a) I'm a moron, and don't know that my own child is hungry or b) I'm cruel and refusing to feed my hungry baby. God forbid I was among the many mothers who had trouble breastfeeding and already had baby-feeding-related guilt. When we went through security at the airport, the guy behind us actually offered "you've got to feed him!" as if someone had just handed us this critter and we didn't realize that eating was one of its needs. I mean, honestly, look at our boy and his chins - do you really think we haven't figured out the feeding thing? That's what I was tempted to say. Apparently Jonathan wanted to say "hey, let's strap you into a car seat for four hours and see how you like it," which I like even better. I realize he thought he was being funny, but to parents with a new baby who are probably already a little stressed, it's not a very good joke.
Anyway, if you feel you must make a comment to complete strangers about their crying baby, stick to positive or neutral comments like "how cute" or "man, it's rough being a baby." Please. For me.

Tids and Bits

We're back home in California. I'm sure that we'll post even more about Christmas in Minnesota and Iowa in the comining days. Finn was even better on the flight back than he was on the flight out, so that was a great relief! Today I thought I'd write on the status of various Finn aspects, as I see them, from the past couple of weeks.

Weight: Although we thought he was about 11 pounds by now (almost 7 weeks), jumping on and off the scale with and without him this last week yielded something around 12.5 pounds! I suspsect it is mostly in chins 2 and 3. Last week we met Owen Schnell, son of Sarah and Evan, who is a very big 18 pounds at age 4 months. I was describing his, ah, incredible girth to my Mom when she cut me off to tell me that I was 20 pounds (!) at that age. We'll see where Finn ends up.

Sleep: We may have tricked you into thinking that he sleeps in his crib. Ha! Actually he sleeps on his bouncy chair in the crib, which is a habit that we need to break ASAP. He likes the vibrations and the slight incline. Luckily we had such chairs in MN and IA.

Car seat: He's not very good at it. The back-seat rear-facing car seat has got to be pretty lonely for him. More often than not, Katie sits in the back with him and he holds one of her fingers. So I feel like a chauffeur. It also allowed us to monitor his temperature in the back seat. He, um, kinda overheated in Iowa while wearing his super-thick winter sack during a long car ride. We felt pretty bad and pretty stupid.

Eating: He was doing great with the 1-bottle-of-pumped-milk-per-day program until about 10 days ago, he just stopped without warning. He'd eat 1/3 of a bottle scream a lot and give up. This is not a good situation, since he'll have to eat via bottles all day at daycare. Katie decided to buy some nipples that allow for a faster flow into his mouth, and that seems to be going much better, although it has only been 2 days.

Smiling: He likes to smile! He does not scowl all day long! I promise.

Activities: Mornings and evenings are fun and happy with lots of kicking and noisemaking. Afternoons are grumpy times with sleeping and crying. You'd have thought that this would have become clearer to us sooner, but it took the trip to the midwest to make his patterns clearer. Jeanna (my sister) and Mary (my Mom) said that he managed to flip over from his back to his tummy on the bed, an advanced "5-to-6 month" maneuver. I was skeptical, but then Katie and I saw him flip to his side. I think that the soft bed allowed for an easier flip. He really has a strong kick.

The most important thing for our family over the next 2 weeks is to get into a good routine such that we can all go to work (Katie: 3 days a week, Jonathan: 4) and daycare (Finn: 2 days a week) without being harried messes.