Two grown-up boys

Finn of course has his own wants and needs. (yogurt, The Incredibles movie, bike riding, Gorilla Munch cereal). But Graham, little chubba jolly Graham, alas, also has wants, besides just being squeezed and tickled by his parents. The cutest is his sassy "Nooooooo!" in his little squeaky voice, if he disagrees with you. He's remarkably good at making animal noises, and has a few actual human words he can pull out as needed. But yeah, he's starting to have his opinions. He also is quite willing to "attack" Finn if he wants to have some fun, but that basically never goes his way in the end, since Finn is big and not afraid to be the victor.

Lately we've been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Happy Hollow zoo in San Jose, and to the beaches in Santa Cruz and in Pismo Beach, which is 3 hours south down the coast. (Hi to Sarah and Joel!) Being outside is certainly great for family sanity.

Finn is full of questions, as always. Lots about Mr. Incredible and the Incredible Hulk, which he certainly now knows are different people. We spent a considerable amount of time at the dinner table last night discussing how, often, big things can be faster than smaller things (horse vs. cat, say) but then something can be so big, that it can be slower than small thing (elephant vs. horse, say). I'm not sure that he bought it. Anyway, lots of active discussions, which can be repetitive, because he just won't care that we had the very same discussion the day (or minute) before.

Here is Graham at the aquarium last month. Both boys had a great time, although the Outer Bay tank is closed for refurbishment.

This is one from bath time just last night! Maybe a haircut for Finn this weekend? One thing that Graham can ask for (and does) is a bubble bath. "Bubbo!"

These last two are from on the beach in Santa Cruz. Finn spent most of his time under the boardwalk, while Graham preferred the open sand, after he finally woke up from his nap. It is about a 30-40 minute walk from our house to the beach, so that is a good weekend activity when the weather in nice. Finn even rides his bike all the way there. Coming back home uphill is a different story!

Brother Bathtime Bonanza!

It's beginning to become apparent to us that Graham may be a bit more even keeled than Finn. He is often content to just sit or lay down and kick around. He is quick to smile and coo. He isn't too phased things like being plunked down in the bathtub next to his brother...

As part of Finn's bathtime routine, he's in the bath from about 6:30 til 6:45, before stories and bedtime. We've been doing this for a long time, and he likes it. I'm not saying that we always get him particularly clean, but it's what we do. We've been thinking of getting Graham into the bathtime mix, since he's now two months old and we're trying to establish a routine for him. Katie found him this great chair on amazon, and it came today so we tried it out! It was GREAT! He and Finn both loved it. And tonight both boys were asleep at 7:15!

If you're interested in learning "The Fortney Way" to baby bedtimes, you can fly us out to see you! We like free trips to visit family and friends. So think about it. There are some downsides to "The Fortney Way" of child rearing. They may include, for instance, one black eye per child per year, your wet child wildly shouting "Nakey Boy!" while he runs around the house after bath, and a lot of poop to be personally dealt with from the cloth diapers. Just let us know when you want us to visit. :)


(Do the Borat fans out there like the photo edit?)

Cousin Jessica Fortney is in town for a visit (mostly with cousins Alan and Margaret in Mountain View) and we all headed down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium today. Finn was tired and hungry, but did enjoy the touch pools, sharks, and the octopus. The visit ended when Finn switched from talking about octopuses to macaroni. Then it was time for lunch.

Firsts and Photos

I don't have anything really profound to say about how things are going around here. Things are going well. We have a pretty good routine at night since Graham tends to wake up after 3 hours for more eats. Between 9/10 p.m. and 6 a.m. we sleep 7-8 hours, so we're doing pretty well. It'll be nice when he sleeps longer, but this is very doable. Finn woke up early last night yelling "Linon! Linon! Linon!" It appears that he dropped his little plastic lion while sleeping, which woke him up. We've learned to NOT go in there, almost no matter what, because it just make things worse. After 5-10 minutes of yelling for Linon, Mommy, and Daddy, he went back to bed. If you go in there, he can keep you up for an hour for stories and milk.

Finn got a fantastic rain outfit that I'm sure we'll show off at a later date. Here he is showing off his frog boots (with frog eyes) and his space pajamas from Grandma Mary and Grandpa John.

Here is the first bath that I gave Graham. It was maybe his third overall. It was successful, in that he got clean. He eventually settled down when I let him lean over forward, on my arm. Speaking of leaning over on my arm, see the next pic:

Graham is a good eater and is chubbing out nicely.

This is Graham's first bottle! He did OK, but bottle #2 was very successful. I'm VERY glad that both our boys have been so good at bottles. Makes life for Katie easier.

That picture above almost makes it look like I'm losing my hair. Good thing I know better.
It's fun to lay on the mat with your brother.

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...)

Bathtub excitement

Finn's been getting a bit big for his baby tub, and he always has a blast in big tubs when we give him baths at other people's houses. Now that happy-outdoor-Murray has stopped peeing in our tub, we decided to try switching him to the main tub. We figured either a) he wouldn't notice the difference between tub and tub-in-tub, or b) he'd love it. Not so much. The first night he cried through his bath - this from the kid who usually giggles and splashes water all across the bathroom.

So the next day I stopped and picked him up a new mat for the bathtub. He LOVES it. Mostly, he loves to dance on it.

Bat(h)-Dance! from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.
He also likes to get down on his belly and point at the various fish and bubbles ("bub-buh!").
Unfortunately, he got really sad when we moved it into the bathtub, panicked when we tried to put him in the water, and basically skipped his bath that night.

The next day (yesterday) I put him in the tub fully clothed at various times during the day, and there was more happy dancing, this time in the tub. I figured we were all set - we'd just do the same at bathtime, strip him there, and then turn on the water. No dice. When bathtime came, the tub was suddenly scary instead of fun, for no particular reason I could figure out. We even put his little tub back in and filled it up, but he wouldn't get in that, either. Apparently we've ruined bathtime.

We're leaving for Minnesota for Jeanna & Craig's wedding early tomorrow morning (6:25 am flight!), and hopefully after a few days in new and exciting tubs Finn will forget he was afraid of ours. In the meantime, who could get mad at this face?
More photos at Flickr, including adventures with yogurt and a giant spoon.

Bath time fun, and other pics

Last night we decided to give Finn a (sponge) bath. It seemed a like a good idea, since he was nearly a week old. He HATED it. He is not a big fan of being on his back or being naked. This had both and got him wet. He got to wear his cute little Pooh towel though.











Sometimes he likes to play. Can you tell that he has a lot of Pooh gear?