It's a . . . boy!

We're going to have two little rapscallion boys! Katie is due September 24th!
Click on the image for the big version. Left middle pic has the helpful "boy parts" arrow.

The problem with talking

Finn's adding more and more words all the time. Mostly, he still sounds like a cross between a chipmunk and the hamburglar, but his intonation and the way he looks at you are different - like he really thinks he's communicating something of substance. We spend a lot of time agreeing with him and saying "oh really?"
His new favorite word, one he can get very insistent about, is "show," pronounced "ho," or most often, "cho," while pointing to the TV, waving a remote, or grabbing a DVD case. Here he is saying it. Endlessly. Welcome to our weekend.


Cho. from Katie on Vimeo.
As a general rule, Finn doesn't get to watch TV. We have a borrowed 1/2 hour Baby Einstein DVD that we let him watch in emergency situations, like plane rides, or, say, Tuesdays. And if he's sick, we pretty much let him watch as much as he wants, because it keeps him distracted from feeling icky. Here he is watching Babe, and letting us know what he thinks about it. Note the plague cough.


Yelling at a show from Katie on Vimeo.

We want to encourage him talking, and let him know that we understand, so we like to give him things he specifically asks for, like raisins and "more." But the "show" thing is out of control, and we had a lot of conversations this weekend that basically consisted of "Cho." "You want to watch a show. No show." "Cho." "No show." until we figured out a way to distract him. It's gotten better since the fever went away, but I'm sure I'll be hearing it again soon.


And on an unrelated note, here he is looking all grown up, reading his cat magazine (some random catalog we got in the mail and he claimed as his own) on his way to day care in the morning. A few more at Flickr.

At home with Mr. Fever

I was going to work from home yesterday, Thursday, since Katie is at home doing school work that day and Finn is at daycare. We were even going to go out for lunch! But then about 11 a.m. we got the dreaded "Finn is sick--come and get him" call. So there went our plans...except we still went out for lunch with Finn, after Finn's nap and his liquid Motrin. :) He's had a fever off and on, but today he's been feeling better. I stayed home with him again all day. I even had to cancel my lecture! It'd actually been awhile since we'd had a "Daddy Friday." Since September, probably.

Finn has a love/hate relationship with hats. Firstly, only baseball caps will do. All others are removed. I think it's because I wear that style of hat. But even caps get taken off after maybe a half-hour, then after that it is off and on every minute. You really gotta fight him. Katie ordered him this quite stylish Minnesota Twins hat which showed up at or door at 7 a.m. today. We tried it out this afternoon at the park, with positive results. Here you can see him showing it off while playing with a cat toy. I could tell he wasn't his normal self at the park: when given the options of going on the slide some more, or going home, he clearly favored calling it a day. (BTW: Ah, communication--it makes parenting easier.)

Back home to a fairly sane life

Finn and Katie made it the 2 1/2 days without me! I'm not too surprised. :) It's very nice to be back in the flow of my standard life. Teaching is going very well this quarter. It's much more relaxing to teach undergrads. I feel like I'm putting on more of a show, which I'm good at. And I don't need to feel like I'm an expert on every minuscule topic, which I'm not.

Finn's list of words is expanding, like "night night" and "moon." Here's a fun close-up in his high chair. Check out the dimple!

Here is Finn listening intently (between breaks to run around and play with toys) to Fox in Socks by Doctor Seuss. Let me tell you about tweetle beetles...

Finn, as you may have heard, is a pretty silly boy. He likes to have a good time. And to run around the house.

Running around the house! from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.
We've got him an entirely new wardrobe for summer! (What, you didn't realize that it's summer already?! It was 90+ the past 3 days. But it won't last...) Lots of new t-shirts and cute little shorts from Target and Crazy 8. You'll be seeing more of them!

Ah Denver

Man, I hope that I don't get stranded at the airport here tonight. IT IS SNOWING IN APRIL here. A lot. My flight is delayed 2 hours and I'm worried it's going to be canceled, and I'll have to find a hotel at midnight. Check out the radar:

I've been in DC for 2 days (Hi Jeanna and Craig!) for a panel that reviews funding proposals. That part was OK. This part is not. Sigh....

OK, computer battery running low and I left my power cord in DC. What a day.

Happy Easter!

It was another chock-full weekend for the Fortneys. Saturday we stuck around the house and mostly did boring stuff (and made a pie!), but also found time for dyeing Easter eggs. Here's the highlight reel, featuring both "oooh" and "whoaow."

Dyeing Easter eggs from Katie on Vimeo.
Sunday we headed down to Salinas again to spend a delicious day with the Reeves-Fortneys. We tried to get Finn involved in the Easter egg hunt, but since the average age of the participants was about 10x his own, he mostly just watched everybody else run around like maniacs. He did pick up a few eggs before the madness started, and he enjoyed throwing eggs we gave him into Daddy's "basket."
Also good: bubbles.Then we came home and tried to imagine a time we would ever be hungry again. Turns out: this morning. Hooray pie for breakfast, and hooray potato salad for lunch.
More pictures at Flickr.

Yelling and Weddings

When Finn gets excited about something he often says "Whooaw!" some sort of hybrid of whoa and wow. It's cute. Just last week he added "Oh boy!" to his repertoire, but it really comes out not quite right. I'm actually not even sure if he was that excited about Wallace and Gromit on the ipod, since he didn't seem too jazzed, except for the yelling.


Oh, bo! from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.


We're starting to get into some different eating habits, which I'm not yet excited about. Bread, once the ultimate in edibles, isn't interesting anymore. Finishing an entire banana in minutes merely leads to a desire for "more nana." I only got 1/2 a banana today because someone need 1 1/2. We'll have to do the banana vs. raspberry taste-off one day.

Here is a picture that my mom took of Jeanna and Craig's wedding. Top row, L to R: Jonathan, Finn, brother Justin, Dad Jon. Next row: Katie, Becky (Justin's wife), Jeanna, Craig, Mom Mary, Grandma Dolores, Grandpa Joe (Mary's parents). Next row: Jamie (Justin's daughter), Deja (Jeanna and Craig's daughter). The search for a picture of Finn's outfit, with shoes, continues....

Goats!

Yesterday we went on our much-anticipated trip to Harley Farms Goat Dairy with Rachel, Ross, Helen, and Arthur. As predicted, Finn had an absolute blast, from the moment we got out of the car. He wouldn't have even needed the tour - he'd have been happy yelling at goats from the parking lot.

Goat yelling in the parking lot from Katie on Vimeo.
The rest of us were very excited about the tour, though, which included learning about the farm, milling around in the pasture with goats and llamas, hanging out in the barn with the kids (the goat kids, that is), milking a goat (Helen went first - go Helen!), and sampling some delicious goat cheese. Here are a couple shots of Finn out in the pasture, communing with goats and trying to bend them to his will. I can't decide which is my favorite.

And here's a video of him in with the baby goats. I've got several more cute goat/Finn photos up at Flickr - including one with a llama!

Just another kid from Katie on Vimeo.

Then after the goats we all headed over to Ross and Rachel's to let the kids (human kids, no goats were abducted) chase each other around while we ate burritos with Jason, who was back in town for a limited one-day-only engagement.

In other news, bathtime is once again an occasion for splashing and being goofy instead of crying - apparently a couple days away from our tub cleared up whatever the problem was.

And last week Jonathan took off for a short trip to LA - just two mornings and one bedtime's worth. Finn and I did pretty well, except I had a big piece of homework due on Thursday, and ended up working on it right up until the midnight deadline. I haven't done that in ages, I didn't miss it, and I hope it never happens again. Jonathan started teaching again last Monday, which of course conveniently coincides with my semester ramping up towards finals and our CSA box starting up again so we have to actually COOK in the evenings.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept, we get a box of vegetables from a local farm every week for the whole summer (or in our case, April-November). We love that we eat healthier and try things we might not otherwise be brave enough for, but it can be a bit of work some weeks. Definitely worth it for the deliciousness, though. This week we got, among other things, carrots and radishes. I don't like carrots, and I have a somewhat irrational fear of radishes. But I found this great recipe for lemony rice salad with carrots and radishes that's just delicious, and I'm looking forward to similar adventures all summer. Once the semester ends I may even get around to reinstating the "What's on our table" sidebar... but probably not until then.

Also? Yesterday we got some DELICIOUS dark-red-up-to-the-stem strawberries at the farmers' market. Ah, California. (Sorry, midwestern folks, I did hear about yesterday's snow...)