I'm going to Disneyland without Finn; he's complaining

This afternoon I'm going to Anaheim for an American Library Association conference, and I won't be back until TUESDAY NIGHT. It's the longest I've ever been away from Finn by far, and I'm a little nervous. I'm focusing on the chance to see Nina, Mom, and Teri, going to Disneyland, and some uninterrupted sleep (Finn went 10 hours between feedings last night, by the way - a new record). I'll definitely miss him a lot. Missing bedtime will be especially hard. My favorite part of every day is right before we put him down, right after reading stories, when I rock him and sing to him and he lays his little head on my shoulder. But I'll be back on Tuesday.

In the meantime, I was checking out some baggage guidelines online yesterday and happened across American's rules for checking racks of antlers. They must be "as free of residue as possible" and "the skull must be wrapped and tips protected." My cousin Mariah's coming to visit us after the 4th, and she's flying Northwest, so I thought I'd check their guidelines in case she wanted to bring some antlers. It turns out Northwest charges the same, but doesn't have as many rules about cleanliness and the like - something to keep in mind, I guess. And Northwest will accept pole vault poles as checked luggage, whereas American will not. This information has to be useful to somebody, right?

Grandma Mary got here on Tuesday (sans antlers) and will be here pretty much the whole time I'm gone, which makes things a lot easier. Finn's having a great time running around town with her, and I think he's keeping her pretty busy. He seems to think he's ready to crawl, but hasn't quite figured out the mechanics yet. He's always trying to get us to put him down so he can lurch off after something, but once he's there, he's stuck, and this seems to confuse him. Here's about a minute and a half of footage from last week of him down on the floor, thinking about getting mobile.



He also finally figured out he can combine consonants and vowels to make syllables ("da ya ji!") and is doing some honest to goodness babbling. I caught some at the park last week, and here's a clip. So far he'll mostly only do it if he's kind of annoyed and bored, so I had to sit off to the side and ignore him for a while to get him going. He's easily fixed, though, as you can see.

Look, we've moved!

So, we changed our address for a couple reasons:

• Sometimes I feel like we're profaning his baby book when I want to tell stories about how, like, the other day I was half way to day care before I noticed that THE WHOLE TOP HALF OF THE STEERING WHEEL WAS FILLED WITH A SPIDER WEB. And I didn't even scream and veer off the road - I just grabbed a wipe out of the glove compartment and wiped the sucker off, spider and all. Apparently I drive with my hands at 4 and/or 8 rather than 10 and 2, and I've never been so glad. So, yeah, that happened, and it's not really about Finn. Or like Jonathan's post last night about the pizza (I had tabouleh, by the way).
• When/if we have another child, we are NOT maintaining another blog. We can hardly keep up with this one.

Don't worry, though, this'll still be 90% Finn. Our lives aren't that interesting. And I'm going to tag all the Finn posts, so you can always search by his name if you want to filter us out.
So, speaking of still being 90% about Finn... Today, we went to Santa Cruz for a barbeque with some folks from Jonathan's department, and Finn had his first visit to a beach. He'd seen the ocean before, just not up close and personal. He gave the waves some very stern looks:
And he thought the water was much too cold. He was right. Still, Jonathan and I didn't get to stand in the ocean until we were much older than this, and I don't think he really appreciates the specialness of the moment.
Don't worry, only his feet got wet, and he was snuggled warm and dry shortly after.
More at Flickr!

HOT

It was 104 degrees here today. NorCal is "temperate" so we have no A/C. Right. It is currently 93 degrees in our kitchen at 7:45 at night. Great. Also, I just burned myself on our oven (we were trying to make it hotter, maybe?) and I dumped a whole pizza, toppings side down, all over the floor. What will we eat now? Life is hard. (The baby is fine and asleep.)

I'm eating the pizza, sans toppings. Katie is not.

Finny and the Cats. (Finnay! Finnay!)

Finn is very interested in the cats. I think that he likes that they're low to the ground, like him. He tries to pet them when he gets the chance, but he has very little coordination, so he often ends up smacking them on the head or back. Sometimes he is gentler, and rubs their fur, but then he clenches his first and get a big fur handful. Surprisingly, Mona has been more patient with him than Murray. She is pretty smart, and knows that she can't treat him like an annoying adult, who might get swiped at. Probably Murray feels a bit replaced by Finn. And he wouldn't be wrong, I suppose. Finn mostly only "pets" Mona, because Murray scurries off too quickly. Which makes this pic odd and funny:


Murray just walked up and laid down next to Finn. He even got kicked by Finn's little legs, but he wasn't going anywhere. I guess he wanted to feel included. Then Mona came by to say hi. It was like a little party!

Finn is getting better at maybe almost crawling, and he's pretty good at standing when he can hold on to the couch or a table. I liked this movie because it shows him trying to stand and trying to grab at Mona; Mona gives Katie and the camera good looks. She tries to get away from him without actually giving up her spot. He usually does a better job standing, but he was getting too excited. :)

Trains & Fathers Day

We've been spending a LOT of time outdoors lately. Finn has a pretty short attention span indoors, but outside he's happy as a clam. Plus, it's been really hot out (no rain here!), and we don't have AC. Saturday we went up to Roaring Camp Railroads with Ross, Rachel, Helen, and Arthur. It was much cooler up in the mountains, and Finn had his first train ride (if you don't count the T in Boston) on a narrow gauge steam train. He loves trees, and apparently they're just as good speeding by a train as they are rolling past a stroller or waving overhead in the park. He did give them a few dirty looks, as if wondering what they were in such a hurry for, but mostly he was pleased. Helen's a big fan of trains, too, so a good time was had by all.Last night we had Thomas (who's promised to post new Finn photos soon) and Amy over for dinner, and this new "pretend we're people who have free time after Finn goes to bed" seems to be working pretty well. I'm currently caught up with all my homework, and may even resume knitting this week, assuming I can handle having a giant pile of afghan on my lap in this weather.

We had a pretty mellow Fathers Day. I had some school-related stuff to do, so Jonathan had volunteered for primary Finn duty. Finn was the fussiest and neediest I've seen him in ages, so we decided to ditch our stay-indoors-and-be-studious plans and head for the park - where I was still kinda studious. The photo on the right is Jonathan and Finn at the park this afternoon, with Finn doing his new goofy grimacing face. You can see that his teeth are full-fledged biters now - not that he uses them. The road back to solids is bumpy. We got him to take milk from a spoon yesterday, but once we started mixing in cereal he stopped opening his mouth. We had a little better luck with some cooked egg yolks today, especially when we let him "drink" (read "backwash") from a glass of water in between bites. We've got some bananas ripening in the kitchen and hopefully we can re-introduce those later in the week.

Sleep habits are still... kind of okay. We've had a couple nights where he only got up once, but usually it's 3 times. We're trying to gradually move his bedtime closer to 7 to stop this whole getting up for the day at 5:30 thing that seems to happen a couple times a week. And my favorite: Jonathan's taking one of the feedings all by himself, so that I'm more likely to be able to stay in my own lane on the way to work in the mornings.

Sit and Play!

Finn is by now really good at sitting up. It really helps his attention span; we can leave him be for quite awhile with a pile of toys around him, and he'll be happy to be by himself.

His arms are also very strong so he can get in a position where he looks like he might be able to crawl. I've also seen him try to push himself up on his hands and knees to look up over the edge of his crib. At night he tends to move around in his crib by a foot or two over several hours, so he must be able to creep---but we haven't seen it in action.

We've had some problems with the solid food. He loved rice cereal and bananas, but then he didn't like sweet potatoes. After that we tried avocado, and that was a disaster. He actually looked really angry at me after his first bite of avocado. The avocado made Katie's mouth itch pretty bad, so we think that might have been the problem with Finn too. Since the avocado incident several days ago, he has refused all solid food, including rice cereal, oat cereal, and bananas! So we're going to take a break from it. Hopefully if we eat a lot in front of him this weekend he'll get interested again.

Videos from Boston

Better late than never, here are some real giggly videos of Finn in Boston, first with Dave and a shark puppet, then with Jonathan. The shark one is something like a minute and a half long, but I didn't know where to cut it - so many giggles! The other one is only about 10 seconds. They're from the camera because we didn't take the camcorder on the trip, but at this size, the quality is pretty similar.



We've been plenty busy, still. I started my summer class last week, and it should be a relatively easy one, I hope - legal research for librarians, basically. Thanks to everyone who inquired after my (obviously precarious) mental health after spring's finals; I'm feeling much better and got As in both my classes.

Finn and I have enjoyed getting back into our usual groove (rut?) this week - we took nice long walks downtown both Tuesday and Thursday. Thursday we mixed it up and spent the afternoon with Jessica and Caitlin, where Finn spilled (iced) coffee all over himself, and my lap, and their carpet. Good times.

Yesterday Finn had his first trip to IKEA, which he enjoyed, and then this afternoon the three of us ran a few errands and then went for a picnic & nap in the park. We had people over both last night and Friday night, and ate tasty, leisurely, wine-soaked dinners with excellent desserts while Finn slept in his room. All in all, one of the most relaxing and most fun weekends I've had in a long time - happy birthday to me! Friday night he slept for a SEVEN HOUR stretch and a four and a half hour one. Here's hoping for a repeat of that.

Back from Massachusetts!

There's going to be some overlap with Jonathan here, because I see he just posted as I was writing, but I'll put in more pictures. :D

Boston, Part 2

Because I can't have a post called "Boston part 1" and then never have a part 2. It'd be weird. Friday we went to the zoo. Finn liked it pretty well (particularly the gorillas, the leopard, and THE FISH), but not as much as the aquarium. The animals were farther away and often not moving, so he didn't really notice them. He did get very excited about the enclosure railings, though. Whee.

Saturday we left Boston to go spend Memorial Day weekend with Ben and Martha. They have a labradoodle, Barcelona, and Finn wasn't quite sure to make of her - definitely interesting, but bigger than the cats and a much faster mover. He seemed to enjoy getting his hands licked, but not so much on the face. Saturday night I caught an awful cold - a send-Jonathan-to-the-drugstore-at-2am-for-cough-drops-and-Nyquil cold. Suddenly all the fun stuff we had planned for Sunday seemed (like "leaving the house" and "walking around") seemed way too ambitious, so everybody else went for a picnic while I napped. The worst of it was over within 24 hours and it was nice to just hang out with them and catch up for a while.

Monday we headed back to Boston and spent another night with Anne and Troy, who grilled us another lovely dinner. We were all set to leave for the airport the next morning (almost half an hour ahead of schedule!) when I picked Finn up and noticed that there was Poop Everywhere. Ugh. That was the third blowout of the trip, I think, and definitely the worst. We just took him to Anne & Troy's tub and hosed him down. He thought it was all great fun. We caught our plane with some time to spare, and Anne and Troy can probably enter their bathroom without a hazmat suit by now (thanks guys!).

Lots of people have asked how Finn is at traveling; it's a mixed bag.

• Finn has the opposite of stranger anxiety. He gets bored of being in the same place with the same people for too long, but if someone at the next table, or in the next row of the plane, starts making faces at him, he'll sometimes snap out of a bad mood. He loves making new friends. He had a pretty good time at the airport.
• Six hours is a LONG flight. Finn did pretty well. We entertainted him as best we could (yay free magazines for ripping!). I nursed him a lot and was very careful to keep him sleeping once he got that way. Jonathan kept him for most of the time he was awake, and did all the diaper changes (with no changing table. yikes.).
• Hotel cribs are not cool. Finn needs his own room. More sleep would have been better. On the bright side, we did keep him more or less on Pacific time, so we were able to go out to dinner and sleep in some.
• Hotel rooms get very boring very fast. But walks are always good.

So that's our trip. Many many photos on Flickr, plus ones from yesterday's trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with Bridget, Keith, Tanya, Kiley, Sasha, and Tanya's parents.

Sleeping

Finn goes to bed these days around 6:30 and sleeps until 6 or 7 (or 8 on Saturday, or 4:30 Sunday - we're still working out the kinks). He's been getting up about 3 times, usually once before we go to bed and twice after. It's not ideal, but it's pretty workable, especially the long stretch at the beginning of the evening. We have nice, baby-scream-free dinners now, and Saturday night Gwen came over for dinner & the first stretch of sleep and Jonathan and I went to a movie. Like real people. This makes Gwen just about the awesomest person ever.

Getting older

The teeth are bigger. The sleep is better. The sitting and rolling skills continue to improve. He's a VERY strong lurcher. And he's getting more self-entertaining. I can definitely get more dishes washed/laundry folded/showers taken than I used to, which is nice. He's "talking" more, although instead of the "ba" or "da" type of sounds that books and websites claim are typical, his two favorite words seem to be "bvvvvvv" and "ghkehhhhhhhi." Jonathan's been standing him at the coffee table, which is pretty cool to see. He LOVES eating, not that that's new, but the cereal and bananas both are, and both have been a big hit. He only had half as much milk as usual at day care last Wednesday, and Ms. Lourdes said she fed him a whole bowl of rice cereal and he wanted MORE, and was not really interested in his bottle. This week we're trying avocados and sweet potatoes. His hair is getting thicker and darker.

Also? Cuter every day. I think that's mostly it for now.

Back to our regularly scheduled life

The photo above is from Poet's Seat, in Greenfield, MA. (Hi Ben and Martha!) Well, we're back and getting adjusted to life again. To those who may have been wondering, Finn got over "the crud" several days before we left for Boston, and he was fine while we were there. Katie got a cold when we got back to California, and it seems like Finn may have that now...but he's certainly better than he was in say, April.

Finn is getting better at sitting and standing. Sitting up is no problem, and he can even steady himself sometimes when he starts to fall. In the past couple of days I've been letting him stand up next to the coffee table, and he can hold himself up and even grab at stuff on the table. Any movement left or right and he loses it, though. We took a little movie which we'll post very soon.

Yesterday we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with some of Katie's NYU Law School friends. As expected, Finn loved it. His favorites were the silvery anchovies and the pink and orange jellyfish. He tries to grab them and even bonks his head on the glass.

Hey, it's June?! Yikes.