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.