Four month checkup!

Graham had his four-month checkup last Monday. He's about a pound lighter at 18 weeks than Finn was at 19 weeks; we think Finn's gigantic head is responsible for most of the difference. 16 lbs 8 oz., 25 inches tall, head 42.5 centimeters around. Other than his current cold, everything looks great. Look, new chart!

And Graham has a a new hobby: blowing raspberries. He mostly does it when bored or frustrated. It seems to be his way of saying "I tire of you. Something else, please." Other times he does it just for fun while sitting in his chair riding his invisible bike. Here's a movie:

Graham says ppbbblllt. from Katie on Vimeo.
Finn had his first parent teacher conference on Friday. Well, I suppose Jonathan and I did, since Finn wasn't there. We learned all sorts of interesting things - did you know Finn can count to ten? We didn't. Apparently we had never asked right. It seems like every week he's doing something new - this week he suddenly seemed to get the hang of first person pronouns ("I like Liam." "I would like some more water." So much better than "more water! more water!") and this morning he rode his bike all the way to and from the farmers market instead of riding in the stroller. That's a little over a mile and a half total, hills and all - a long ride for someone who'd never really made it off the block before. On the way there the pace was pretty slow, but on the way home he really kept us moving, especially on the hills. I left my camera at home so I could carry more goodies, but here's a shot of the kind of attitude that got him there.
More at Flickr.
One more thing, speaking of the conference - I mentioned earlier how Finn has a giant head? We heard from his teacher that he likes to follow some of the 3 and 4 year old boys around to try and play like/with them. They wear buckets on their heads to be "soldiers," but Finn's head is too big for the bucket to fit. Poor Finn!

2 boys who are silly

Well, there haven't been many posts in awhile. A terrible cold has ravaged the Fortney family for much of the past two weeks. Finn brought it home from school, but he is very much on the mend, and his constipation is all gone. Yay! The worst has also just passed for Katie and me, although we're not out of the woods yet. Graham, who is small, will probably have the longest path back to wellness, since his immune system is also little and new at this. He's gone from being a great sleeper to a poor one, waking up many times a night, because he coughs and is also not breathing well. But in the daytime he is fun and jolly, with a runny nose. Here is Graham prepping for his nap a few days back. What a cute baby! Swaddling for Graham, as with Finn at the same age, has been essential. And he doesn't seem to mind.

Finn is growing up and looking like a little boy now. He's moving from 2T to 3T clothes. He can say some two sentence combinations when needed. And he can be polite. He's becoming a pickier eater. Lots of yogurt. We took him to the dentist and his teeth are looking good. We're starting with the fluoride toothpaste now. He picked out his own toothpaste at Target: Pixar "Cars" themed---not that he has seen the movie.

Too wet to go out and too cold to play ball

Happy MLK Day, everybody. This is one of those rare days when both my and Jonathan's offices are closed, but the boys' day care is open. We usually start out by doing productive things around the house and then gradually work our way up to a nice lunch and a movie, feeling deliciously like we're getting away with something and playing hooky. This time we were going to finally see Avatar. Alas, it was not to be. Saturday Finn had a fever of 102-ish, and he's still kinda gross. Also...
***Please skip this paragraph if you're not a parent, TMI ahead.***
Finn is really constipated. Normally the kid poops twice a day, and while it's gross and stinky, it doesn't seem to bother him. He's hardly pooped at all since Friday, or possibly Thursday, and has spent much of the weekend piteously wailing "hurting, hurting," every 5-30 minutes. We're trying everything we can think of, and have a call in to our pediatrician, but so far we're having limited success.
***Okay, done talking about poop.***
So Graham went to day care today, both to get him further from Finn's germs and to reduce craziness around here a bit, but the rest of us are finishing up the longest three day weekend ever. Most of the day he's been watching movies, because he's a pile of mush when he's not yelling, and it's the easiest way to distract him, at least when he can decide what to watch. I think it took him half an hour this morning, as Jonathan repeatedly offered him things and a shrill, distressed Finn kept insisting "different show! different show!" For the first time in nearly a year, Finn wouldn't nap on his bed, and instead fell asleep on Jonathan, waking up periodically with the "hurting."

I think it'd do him good to get outside and run around a bit, because we're all getting a bit stir crazy, but it's been raining and gross all weekend, and now I'm hearing "severe thunderstorm warnings."
Graham has been extra fussy on and off as well, either in sympathy or for his own obscure reasons, but at least he's healthy. And last night he slept reasonably well again, which was nice. He's a big giggler now. The best ways to get him going are to tickle him, or to wave your hands around like you're a second grader doing fake karate. Since it's hard to hold a camera while doing the latter, here's a video of him being tickled.

Tickling Graham from Katie on Vimeo.

200th post!

Hi everyone. Yes, we're still alive and kicking out here. I'm teaching a big introductory astronomy class for the first time, so that has been taking up a lot of my time, which means less time for stuff like science and blogging. I'm enjoying it so far. I think it better suits my talents than highly technical graduate classes. I'd rather just stand up and talk about planets than spend an hour at the whiteboard doing math. Also, I have a fantastic TA, so I don't have to grade, and she runs two recitation sections per week. It's win win for me!

Sadly, we don't have any fresh pictures of the boys from this past week, but Katie will post a movie soon. I *do* have a new picture of Mona though. She's a good cat. Over seven years old now. It is nearly time to start her on senior-cat food apparently. She's adjusted well to the even less attention that she gets since Graham was born. It helped that she is indoor/outdoor now, which helps make her life a little more exiting. Although now that it is cooler and wetter, she mostly just stays inside.

Since Finn is Finn, she gives him a WIDE birth. And she has no interest in Graham, from what I can tell. She'd never snuggle up against him for warmth, that much is clear.

Are we back now?

I think we're finally settled in from our ten days away from home, just in time for Jonathan to leave again - DC this time. If you'd asked me a week ago when we were still in Iowa, I might have been afraid there was no way I was going to survive this trip, but since coming back home and settling back into our regular routines, things have been going pretty well. For instance, yesterday I was home with the boys all day and didn't once have the urge to strangle Finn, or find myself trying to remember why it was we thought we wanted to have kids. We even had a very fun trip to the library and an afternoon play dough session. So then I took cute pictures of them while they were napping. Don't they look peaceful? (Lies, all lies.)


We're so much busier now that we have two kids that we're not chronicling Graham's babyhood as obsessively as we did Finn's. That's probably unavoidable to some extent, but I can at least give you an update on how he's doing these days: first, he's started laughing, in case you missed Jonathan's last post. Second, he vocalizes a LOT. And often loudly. I guess he has to if he wants to get a word in edgewise in this house. Third, he can grab things sometimes, and will often put them in his mouth. And finally, he's working on sitting up. So he's busy! He's also hilarious and adorable and huge (busting out of the 3 month clothes, and with a neck too chubby for some of the 6 month outfits), but I don't know if those are new developments. Here's a video of him yesterday morning that includes him being delighted to see a cute baby in the mirror, chatting with that baby a bit, and grabbing a toy.

Graham grabbing from Katie on Vimeo.
Bonus video: Finn tearing into a Christmas present at my mom's place. I also uploaded a 5-second one of him testing out his new light-up slippers from that same evening.

Opening prenents from Katie on Vimeo.

I just updated Flickr with a hefty helping of our Christmas photos. Annoyingly, they uploaded all out of order, but they're there, and I'll fix them if I have a reeeally slow day at work on Friday. But you should check them out in any case, because they include stuff like this: