All in One Room

This past weekend we drove up to Sacramento to go to my cousin Elise's wedding. It was a good time, and Finn and Graham were the only kids there out of maybe 150 people. They got a lot of attention from my grandparents, parents, my sister Jeanna, and many of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Here is Graham with his great grandpa, Papa Joe. (Thanks to my aunt Sue for the pic.) Graham is 7 months old now!

The rough part of the trip was the night in the hotel room, which the 4 of us shared. Finn had his own double bed and Graham had a crib. Finn certainly took advantage of having us nearby. He woke up many times to ask what Graham was doing, or to have me "clean his face." Eventually I just moved over into his bed, but that just made things worse because then he could kick me when he was sleeping. So I probably slept 3 hours. Graham did great though! The plan is to move Graham's crib into "Finn's room" on Saturday, since both boys can now sleep the whole night til around 6 a.m. Yay! We'll keep you posted on how that goes.

On another topic: I had always gotten the impression that little kids didn't really listen to what their parents talked about to each other, so that you could just talk about adult stuff pretty easily. Not with Finn. He wants to know what is going on. "What is daddy talking about? What is mommy talking about?" He doesn't want to be left out!

I'm going to Cornell University to give a talk, so I'll be out of town for 2 1/2 days. If I hustle back from the airport on Friday I can see my boys just before they go to bed.

Daddy Friday Returns!

As you may recall, from the time that Finn was born until he was 9 months old, I stayed home with him every Friday. (I was home more often right after he was born, of course!) This was aided by not having any teaching responsibilities at the time. Well, this quarter I have arranged family leave, and now that I'm not gone all the time, and I have my priorities back in order (cheek squeezing), we're back! We decided that Finn get's a lot out of his MWF routine at Peppertree Schools, so he will keep doing that.

It is pretty novel. I haven't spent much time with Graham all by himself. How could you with Finn around all the time? I honestly don't remember what Finn and I did all those Fridays. I mean, Graham is really cute and smiley, but, ah, he just kinda sits there. :) Right now we're sitting out on the front porch with Mona, enjoying the beautiful weather. Previously we established that he like avocados, and he polished off half a banana with ease. I think we'll go for a walk a little later, before nap #2. So that's a full day.

Graham is BIG FAN of his mother. BIG FAN. He will often track her across the room, since it is critically important for him to be looking at her at all times. This little movie gives you a flavor:

Baby loves his momma from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

I'm good too, but it is hard to compete with the food lady!

Today is Crazy Hair Day for Finn at school. Since his hair is pretty short and hard to make crazy, Katie hit on the idea of colored hair spray. She even let Finn pick out the color--neon yellow. This is our morning prep for school today, at 6:45 a.m. I'm *sure* you all were up that early today. Graham prefers 5:40 these days, so we stick pretty close to that....

Crazy hair day! from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Here is the finished product. Very neon. Tomorrow morning we're off to my cousin Elise's wedding up in Sacramento. Maybe the yellow can return for that special occasion? ;)

One is good in the daytime, One is good at night

Yes, this is a daddy update. I'm here! After spending two weeks, minus the weekend in between, down at UC Santa Barbara, it is very nice to be back HOME. I was down there for two extrasolar planets research conferences.

The situation at home is pretty good. Finn has really started to be a bit more of a challenge, as he nears 2 1/2, compare to when he was closer to 2. He'd rather do what he wants to do, rather than listen to what his parents are telling him what he can and can't do. He's purposely messy at the dinner table. I wouldn't really call him a terror, but we can certainly tell he difference between now and two months ago.

He's been getting interested in plants and dirt, and he now has a spade (that he "shares" with Katie) and a little hand-held rake. We planted a flower in the front yard that my uncle Gregory gave to us. And here he is with his little tomato plant sprouts, which came up only a few days after we planted them. Somehow 5 seeds yielded 7 plants!

We're also working on Finn being able to put on his clothes and take them off. Being able to pull down your pants is an important aspect of being potty trained. Pants are really tough because of his big cloth diaper, but we're making some progress on shirts and sleeves. We'll keep you posted.

As Katie mentioned, we got an emu egg from the Mountain View farmer's market. It was mostly for me, because I wanted to eat it. We did that in Tucson with an ostrich egg (omelet party!) and I still have the intact egg shell in my office. Finn has a book on shelf where a green emu egg is quite important, so he needed to spend a lot of time holding my egg, after I got the white and yolk out. And of course eventually he dropped it and it got a little shattered. Sigh. I was a little surprised that I wasn't more upset. Maybe it was a sign that I don't need an eggs-of-large-flightless-birds collection....but really I do!

Graham is like a jolly and snuggly little squeezy robot who is powered by your smiles, and he wants to make you smile. He LOVES his momma, and must be in her arms when he is not eating or playing with toys, or watching Finn. But he needs to work on his sleeping. He is mostly great from 7:30 pm til 2 a.m., but then after that he can be kind of a mess. We're taking a different approach to his waking, compared to Finn as his age. We're letting him work it out on his own, a bit more. But he gets himself in trouble because he can flip over and get wedged against the bars, and he can't get unstuck to go back to sleep. (Katie informed me that he rolled over today, back to front, like it was nothing, but we'd never seen it before. We'd only seen him end up weird positions in his crib, which implied that he could do it!) He is actually doing much better at sleep than Finn was at his age, as I recall, but I'm ready for him to be as good as Finn is now: no peeps until 6 a.m.!

Graham is a big fan of all forms of solid food so far. He's a very loud and grunty eater, and gets mad if the food doesn't come fast enough. And I mean really fast. We call it the between-spoonful hungries. What a cutie!!!

Chicken and noodles

Act I
Yesterday morning, our kitchen. Finn watches from his step stool as I put veggies and a chicken in the crockpot. We discuss dinner, how Finn should under no circumstances touch raw chicken, etc.

Act II
A few hours later, out for a walk
FINN: Go to the park!
ME: Yep, in a few minutes. We have to stop at the store for noodles first.
FINN: Noodles!
ME: Yes, noodles. For the chicken tonight.
FINN: Noodles for the chicken. Where the chicken?
ME: At home in the kitchen.

Act III
Back at home after the park
FINN: See the chicken!
ME: Okay, come out here and climb on your stool. There it is. Doesn't it smell good?
FINN: (saddened, horrified) NO! NO LIKE THAT CHICKEN!
ME: Huh? ... Ohhhh. Um. Huh. Honey, we don't have the kind of chicken that walks around. We just have a chicken for cooking. The noodles are to EAT WITH the chicken.
FINN: (after short pause for recovery) Go to hardware store!

Graham's officially big now

Graham had his six-month checkup Monday. He weighed 19 lbs., 4.5 oz, measured 26.5 inches tall, and had a head circumference of 44 cm. This puts him ahead of Finn, who was 18 lbs. 11.1 oz at his six-month checkup. Hooray charts!

Dr. Lee was impressed with how well he sits, unconcerned about his complete lack of interest in rolling over, and predicted the arrival of the second tooth any day now. And the day after his appointment, there was the second tooth. More will be coming soon, I'm sure. This week he's going to try avocados and carrots, and last week he added sweet potatoes to the list. We have yet to find anything he doesn't like. This includes paper. Mmmmm, paper.

Finn just came in soaking wet from playing in the "raindrops," which he enjoys immensely. I dumped about half a cup of water out of each rain boot - very effective accessory, obviously. He seems very glad to have both of us around so much (Jonathan even stayed home most of Tuesday and Thursday), and is back to his standard hijinx. Current favorite phrases include "Ready to play ball," "Sock it to me," "Don't play with me Graham!" (when Finn's upset and Graham smiles at him) and "What are you talking about, Mama?" (when I've been discussing things like smartphones or carseat specs with Jonathan).

Happy Easter?

Okay, so we're just a few days behind.
We had a great Easter, and a very full Easter weekend. Finn's been asking for Easter eggs for dinner for at least a month now, and I had to hide his egg dyeing kit so he'd stop asking every 5 minutes, so he was pretty excited when the time actually came to do eggs. Here he is in action with Jonathan, along with a few shots of Graham looking on.

Easter eggs, 2010 from Katie on Vimeo.
In case the four minute video is too much for you, here are some stills, and if it's not enough, you can watch last year's video of 1-year-old Finn doing the same thing.The bottom right photo is Finn with Jonathan's emu egg (what can't you get at the Mountain View farmers market?), which he was extremely excited about... and may have later broken. Ahem.

I spent most of the day happily buzzing about the kitchen making pies, hard boiled eggs, cookies, sauce for rhubarb bellinis, and everyone's April favorite, egg salad. I was particularly excited about the pies, because the Reeves-Fortneys, who we always spend Easter with, are rhubarb people, so I can go all out on the rhubarb. I made my usual favorite rhubarb custard, and a raspberry-blackberry-rhubarb I've been promising to try for Jonathan for a couple years now. I also did two different crusts to see whether the easier one I've been making for the past couple years was really as good as the more labor-intensive mostly-butter version I used to make all the time. (The next day's tasting panel results indicate a solid "probably.")

Then the boys went to bed, and got up to find their Easter baskets and a modest egg hunt. Finn was impressed that the Easter Bunny had eaten the celery we left him, but only for about 5 seconds. Graham was excited to be awake and surrounded once again by his family.

Finn was an absolute wreck after his chocolate binge (a whopping 3 Lindt chocolate bunnies), to the extent that we're going to try to keep it away from him in the near future. Seriously, unprecedented screaming fits brought on by things we usually do all the time. Ah, well, More for me!

Then we went to the Reeves-Fortneys' in Salinas for yet another excellent Easter dinner, and suddenly the weekend was over. Graham had his 6-month checkup first thing Monday morning, but that's another post, because I need to update the chart first.