BratWest photo

Jonathan went to his first Bratfest nine (eight?) years ago; Finn went to his yesterday. He seemed to enjoy his brat bits, and cheese bits, and kraut bits (no beer for him!). I was a slacker and failed to take any photos, but Jonathan took this one:
I thought I'd throw it up here 'cause his post looks kinda sparse. I'm having another of my JustABitOverwhelmedThanks weeks, so that's all you get from me today. That and that I just ordered Finn's Halloween costume today...

Blerg

I've given two lectures for my graduate stellar evolution class. The first one went pretty well, but I think I blew them away on day two. Too much material, and too much math, in a short time. Back to the drawing board!

Finn is very much how Katie described in the last post. Crawling like a madman, cruising from chair to couch to wall. Yesterday we went over to Ross and Rachel's for BratWest, and Finn couldn't get enough of Helen, who is almost 4. He doesn't know how to "play" with her, but he smiles and squeaks and crawls after her. He tries to grab her and succeeded in nomming on her leg. Helen, in return, did not step on him, although there were a few close calls. :)

OK, time to plan Wednesday's lecture!

Talking?

This week we think Finn's finally starting to get the whole sounds-have-meaning thing. He's definitely referring to me sometimes when he says "mama" (or more often, "mamamamama"). Of course sometimes he's talking to/about me when he says "ahbama" (maybe he knows how I'm planning on voting in November) or growls, and sometimes he says "mama" about cheese. But SOMETIMES, "mama" = me. And "kitty" is something like "dih," which is a different vowel sound than he uses for most of his babbling, and last night he was working on something like "daddy."

So that's super awesome and fun. No footage yet, but I'm sure it'll happen. In the meantime, here's a crawling video and one from the SUPER fun time he had in the pool on Saturday when we went to celebrate Caitlin getting her cast off. BONUS VIDEO: dim footage of gross spit up, using Murray as a crutch, and the always fun sport of door-swinging. Woo!

Now we're in trouble from Katie on Vimeo.


Splish splash from Katie on Vimeo.

For those of you who aren't into the video thing or can't watch them at work, here are some stills. More at Flickr.

Crawling, for realz

Just a quick one: Finn's officially ten months old now; he has five teeth; and he can crawl on his hands and knees. Like a real baby. Last night he went about 15 feet that way before deciding to flip over and park on his butt.

We went to a midwestern-hot-dish themed party this weekend. I failed to take any pictures, but Dave took a bunch. My favorite is this one, where Finn looks like he's about to impart some very sobering life lessons to Jonathan.

Here he is in a less serious mood:

Videos of standing and making noises

For those of you who wanted more than percentiles, Finn's stats from his last checkup, when he was 9 1/2 months old, are: weight, 21 lbs 11.8 oz; height, 28.5 inches; head circumference, 47 cm. Why that last one's in metric, I have no idea.

Our doctor asked whether Finn was pulling himself up to stand yet, and I said "yeeees, he HAS pulled himself up." He'd first done it nearly a month earlier, but now, as Jonathan mentioned, he does it constantly. He's also good at sitting himself up from a lying down position, and spinning around, and scooting, and standing on his hands and knees, and cruising. Last week he'd been standing, sitting, standing, sitting, standing, over and over again, so I went to get the camera, and got this instead:


Standing and being goofy from Katie on Vimeo.

It's a good example of his "omygod this is the coolest thing ever" face that usually accompanies the Darth Vader breathing that he does about light bulb packaging, pieces of bread, and other extraordinary objects. I've watched it about a hundred times so far. This one, from a few minutes later, actually shows him pulling himself up:

Standing, squeaking, and growling from Katie on Vimeo.

It's also got him shrieking and a bit of him making his weird growly noise. He growls A LOT. We're always expecting him to bust out with "THERE IS NO BABY ONLY ZUUL." Is this normal?

Bonus video - putting the balls in the ball drop toy:

Showing off for Mama from Katie on Vimeo.
I don't really have any new photos - just some cabbage and my cubicle at my internship. Maybe next week?

Back from Bern, See More Chubs

Apparently Finn sleeps better when I'm home. Why that might be is not clear. Maybe I wear him out more, and he enjoys the peace of mind (not piece of mind) of having daddy at home. We're still not at "no wakeups," but a few nights recently his only wakeup was at 3 to 4 a.m. Of course, he woke up for the day at 5:45.

Bern, Switzerland, was . . . pleasant. A nice and pretty town, but not one of the jewels of Europe. It is on a river. It's old town is famously nearly unchanged since the 1300s. Below is the tallest building in town--a church. I went up about 2/3 of the way and got some nice shots.

The best part of the church were the fantastic stained glass windows. The sun came out when I was inside, and I got some great shots. This one below is my favorite.

Finn is pretty much a little maniac now. He can pull himself up on anything, sit back down, and do it again and again. He can move from chair to chair, and move across small gaps. A chubby little Spiderman? His excited noises range from loud squeals to loud Darth Vader breathing. He's trying to give up the army crawl for real crawling now, too. Also, his 5th tooth is coming in, so drooling is at its highest levels in 6 months. Katie brought him to his 9 month checkup recently. 48% height, 62% weight, 84% head circumference. Big noggin!

Is it Friday yet?

Yes, we’re still here. How’s it going, you ask? Well, here’s a snapshot from last night:

6:15 pm: Finn has finished the sweet potatoes he refused to eat at school (yay!) and is cheerfully dissolving a teething biscuit and spreading it around his high chair and his face while I wash dishes so he has clean bottles for day care the next day. We laugh and sing songs.

6:30 pm: I’m in the bathroom, cleaning up a puddle of cat pee (the first in weeks! argh!) that I discovered while I went to run Finn’s bath, and he’s screaming his head off in his room because I’m not there, and I realize I’ve forgotten to give him fluoride drops AGAIN, because that’s something Jonathan usually does.

6:45 pm: Finn’s in his bath, splashing ecstatically, and I pour another cup of water over his head. He splutters and giggles.

It’s like that, multiplied by all the hours and all the days of the week. We have our ups and downs. Our days are full. I’m a walking advertisement for Multitasking Gone Wrong – I can always think of at least 6 things I need to be doing, and am never able finish any one thing before getting distracted by another. I’ve discovered that although he’s in this phase right now where he cries if there’s not a parent in the room, Mona is apparently an acceptable substitute. So that’s nice.

But all the absolutely necessary things are getting done, and a few not-so-necessary ones (I made ice cream!). Saturday we went to the park; Sunday we went to Ross and Rachel’s, where Finn had a blast in Helen’s kiddie pool; and Monday we went to Jessica and Daren’s to eat tasty food and play with Caitlin’s toys, and I took my only picture of the week.

We had Finn’s 9-month checkup yesterday, but that’ll have to be another post. Like, after Jonathan gets back, which happens … the day after tomorrow!

Week in Bern, Switzerland

Hi, I'm in Bern! I'm here for a small meeting on planetary magnetism. Bern is the administrative home of Switzerland, which I think is the same as the capital. :) It is a very pretty town--the "old city" is basically unchanged since the 1300s, or so. Here is its famous clock:

photo by Márcio Cabral de Moura via Flickr
I haven't seen the moving puppets and stuff at the top of the hour. I'll keep looking.

The most amusing thing that has happened to me so far is when I hopped off the plane in Zurich. I hadn't actually realized that Switzerland does NOT use the Euro, but uses Swiss Francs. Long story short, I converted from dollars to francs to euros to francs, which means I lost about 30% of the value in fees. Ouch!

It's been hard to be away from Finn--this is my longest time away from home. But we Skyped yesterday, and we'll do it again tomorrow. He definitely got excited seeing my face on the monitor, and he liked it when I talked to him and made funny faces.