Average weekend

In case you've been wondering "what have the Fortneys been up to lately," the answer is work, travel, birthdays, and a lot of weekends like this (although not often with this much contact with other humans outside our family):
Yesterday was grocery shopping and swimming lessons. Then there was a walk in the woods with friends.

Then there was a sitter, and Jonathan and I went out for dinner with more friends to celebrate his birthday. We didn't take a picture, but trust us, we looked fantastic.

After breakfasting on Jonathan's Birthday Pie, today was mostly devoted to chores. The Roomba remains exciting a month later. I don't think laundry has ever been exciting.

Murray's contribution to chores was to keep Jonathan company on the stepladder.

 The boys' contribution was... washing the trampoline.

Meanwhile, I made this.

There are generous amounts of eggplant and winter squash in it, and there may be generous amounts of wine in me after all that time in the kitchen. I resisted the temptation to put on the Christmas music, but I'm not making any promises for next weekend.

The Cat Came Back... from Fresno

From 2004 to 2009 we were a two cat household. After Finn was born our younger cat, Murray, wasn't happy, and generally demonstrated it by peeing on lots of things outside the litter box (including, on two memorable occasions, Jonathan and me). I wrote about it here, here, here, and here, among other places. For the last few years we've been supporting his upkeep at Cat House on the Kings, south of Fresno.
Last month I went to visit Cat House with some friends who wanted to see it. (It's famous.) They do amazing work there, and I think that if you're a feral cat, or a cat who likes to be surrounded by cats, or a dog who likes to run in a small pack, it must be heaven. But they have hundreds of cats and a limited staff who have a LOT of work to do, so if you're a cat who likes a lot of human attention, it's a little sad. I found Murray among the hundreds of cats, and held and petted him for about half an hour. Then I found myself hatching a plan to bring him home, now that our living circumstances have changed. Jonathan, after some thought, came around.  Last weekend I went and got him (btw, SUPER AWESOME road trips both times, ladies).

Here's the setup, for anyone wondering about how we can keep a cat we can't trust not to pee on stuff:

1) Kennel in the garage. We built him a fenced in area inside our garage, so he'd have some space that was his alone. It's supposed to be 4x4 feet, but since we were using the garage as one wall, we rearranged the panels to make it 4X6. Unless we're out there with him, the fenced off part is the only part he has access to.
2) Door to access the kennel in the garage. This fancy schmancy cat door only unlocks for an animal wearing a special tag with an RFID chip. What's more, we can program it so that during the day he can go in or out at will, but at night he can come in, but not get back out. It took him 3 or 4 days to learn how to use it. If you get one, make sure to find the section in the manual on "training mode."

3) Cat tree for in the kennel. This way he can have a little more space, see out the window, and be more cozy. This one is regularly on sale for under $100. Jonathan's modified it so it fits in the kennel, which is not as tall as the description would lead you to believe.

4) Heated cat bed/pad. Most heated cat beds are indoor only, but K&H makes some that are indoor/outdoor. It was really hard to find a cat tree that would accommodate one of these giant things, but the lower "condo" in our cat tree does... once Jonathan sawed some gaps along the floor of it, because that part comes pre-assembled.
5) Secure cat food storage. I saw this at a friend's house recently, and knew I wanted one. Not only is it cat and dog and raccoon proof, it claims to be ant-proof.
6) Litter box. Our preferred litter box is still the one recommended by the cat behavior consultant we dealt with way back when we were early in the process of trying to resolve Murray's issues: a 66 qt giant Sterilite bin.

And there you have it. It's expensive, I don't particularly recommend it if you have other options, but it's working for us. Murray had better access to a fully heated house at Cat House, but here he's got personal space, posh cat food... and his family. There are no current plans to integrate him into the indoor household. Aside from the whole peeing thing, Mona is now ten years old, kinda flipped her lid when she saw him outside, and hisses and runs away when he comes to the back door. Although the novelty may wear off, so far the boys ADORE him. He's much more interested in their attention than Mona has ever been, and they are puzzled and delighted by that.

Plus, I mean, look at him. The guy's adorable.

A Gentle Soul

For those of you who don't know Graham very well, I think it is fair to say that he is a quite a bit different than Finn. Maybe not as different as my brother and I (Hi Justin!) but they are very distinct. Graham is a sensitive little guy who wants to make you happy. He takes slights very personally. He will give you as many hugs and kisses as you need, and will ask you for them. He dances. This is one of the cutest movies ever.

Dancing to Ella from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Actually Finn is a lot more sensitive in some particular ways. If Finn hurts himself he will wail and let you know about it for 20 minutes. And many band-aids will be required. Graham will forget that a bump or accident ever happened in about 20 seconds, and just go on his merry way. The children-addled brain I have makes it hard to sensibly compare the two, mostly because it is hard for me (already) to remember what Finn was like 2 years ago. But that's the beauty of the blog! :)

The most important news of the week is that we got Graham a big boy bed, very much like Finn's, from IKEA. The two boys are back in the same bedroom, probably for many years to come! He had been sleeping in the pack-and-play in the office for the past several months, because that was easy, and the boys would never wake each other up. He's now slept in his bed back-to-back nights, and he loves it. Finn has been showing him the ropes, including the VERY KEY rule that you can't get out of bed to come wake up mommy and daddy until the moon light comes on at 6:15. That is the key to everyone's sanity. When we're in the Midwest in August, Graham will be too big for the pack-and-plays there, so we had to get him trained sleeping on a bed before then. Finn likes having his brother in their room, but he needs to stop piling so many stuffed animals on Graham when Graham is trying to go to sleep.

For comparison, here is Finn sleeping in his bed from the same time of year in 2009, but he was about 6 weeks younger.

Below is one of my favorites from two week ago---Graham sitting with Cato, our neighbors' cat. Cato looks just like Mona, but likes attention from small people more than Mona does. Just a very peaceful scene.

Here are brothers being brothers:

We visited Alex and Laura up in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, and during brunch the boys each got balloon creations. Graham got a flower, but the balloon artist suggested it could also be a hat. I think he was right.

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? ;)

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.

Cat & black eye update

The cats are fully indoor/outdoor now. The good part of this is that they love it. The weird part is that the other night I went to the kitchen for a glass of water, heard a noise, and looked up to see Mona looking down at me through the skylight.

The absolutely disgusting part is that yesterday Murray brought me a lizard tail so freshly removed from the lizard that it was still... squiggling. I wasn't in any hurry to get rid of it because that would require picking it up, so I took a short movie for you.

I'm trying to look on the bright side: at least he didn't put it in my purse, which is where he was initially headed.

Here's your chaser photo:

The bruise is really dark in person, but he doesn't seem to notice. 2 more black eye pics at Flickr. Speaking of Finn & surprises, I told someone the other day I thought Finn said about a dozen words. Jonathan told someone else the same day he said probably 20 or 30. So we sat down and counted, and so far we're at 31. I'm a terrible mother and/or estimator. His current favorites are "berry" and "help." "Berry" because we keep getting strawberries from our CSA and he wants them ALL, and "help" because it gets him handy big-people assistance, especially used in conjunction with the sign for please, which for most people is patting your chest, but for Finn means patting your belly. It's too cute to say no to.
2 finals down, one to go...

Funn Finn times with daddy

Katie is finishing her grueling 9 credit semester in the next two weeks. Right now she's sitting next to me trying to polish off a 20-page paper, so that she can get to the work that is actually due in the last week of class. This of course means that Finn is more my responsibility than usual. Yesterday went fine, and was fun. Today Finn broke his record for lateness before finally succumbing to his nap, at 1:45. His usual is around 11:30. My original try for a nap led to him yelling for 10 minutes, then quietly playing in his crib for another 25, before he decided that he was done. Part of our fun times yesterday was Finn eating an apple all by himself, like a big boy. Apple is also one of his favorite words.


Last Friday when he was kinda sick, but not really (the fever had broken earlier that day), we went to Vasona County Park, in our town of Los Gatos. It was our first time in this part of the park. What a good time! There is a rather famous "real" small-size train to ride around on, which probably holds around 100 people. Finn really only got excited enough to make some noise when the train whistle went off. Here is a pic of us on the train---note Finn's two-tone Twins hat.

In addition to normal playground equipment, they had an airplane that was there specifically for clambering on. There were a lot of bigger kids on it, but Finn held his own! When we're at the playground I try not follow him too closely, so that he can make his own way, meet some kids, etc. The pull is always there to keep him "safe" and follow 3 feet behind him the whole time, but I think the minuses way outweigh the pluses.

Oh, and one more thing. The cats have learned (or at least Mona has learned) how to get on the roof. Mona looked down at Katie 2 nights ago through the kitchen skylight. :)

The Outdoorsy boys

If you know anything about our cats, you'll know that we've had terrible troubles with Murray peeing inappropriately around the house for about a year now. I wouldn't wish this problem and its associated stress on anyone. There have been many visits to the vet, many products have been purchased and used around the house (happy cat scent diffusers, anyone?), and many fliers were put up around town to try to entice someone to take him off of our hands. But alas, even the humane society wouldn't take him. It has been a mix of real medical problems (6+ months ago) and real annoying mental problems (the whole time). Alas, not even the "cat whisperer" we brought in could fix him.

We were at the end of our rope, and Murray was in all seriousness not long for this world. We had the final appointment made. The absolute last thing that we hadn't tried yet was just to kick him out of house and see how he did. Thanks for the suggestion, Sarah. In the past, we didn't want him to get lost and not come home, or get eaten by coyotes. But when it is that, or the other option, why the heck not? Well, after three weeks, things are going very well. Murray is outside now the vast majority of the day between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. and comes in to eat and sleep at night. When he's inside he is on his best behavior. He sticks to our yard or the one adjacent and spends a lot of time under the house. Katie snapped this picture below of Murray soaking up the sun. Anyway, so far, so good. Interesting, Mona shows no inclination to go outside. She likes having the house to herself.


Finn can now probably say about 15 words, include tough ones like raisin and apple. His favorites are still "hot" and "ball." He can point to his tummy and yours, or your nose, ears, and mouth. He has also taken a very personal interest in the cats and will follow them around the house or the yard, just yelling their names over and over. Maybe he thinks they're just ignoring him. I mean, they are, but what would he want them to do anyway? Now, the words Mona, Murray, momma, moo, and more, often sound quite similar, but the context helps. When he's outside yelling "Murr!" he sounds like he's got a Boston accent. (Murr! Murr! MUUURR!) Last week he also found this stick in the yard, and now it never leaves his side when he is out the door. The rainy season is past, so we are outside quite a bit now!

And he's started liking hats! I managed to convince him to be like daddy and wear his baseball cap last week, and since then he's really enjoyed it. And he looks SO CUTE!

Gulp, gulp. Air? Gulp?

Oh my. Well, things have been happening. I turned 32 today. Not a particularly interesting number. Finn turned 1. Yay! He's very good at using his pointer finger to show you what he wants you to do, but he won't hold it up to indicate his age. He won't copy me when I do it, either. He continues to be a maniac. I wonder how he'll do on the plane home for Christmas. Best not think about that yet. How about Halloween? Yes! Finn and I got all the guts out of our Half Moon Bay pumpkin.

Murray was at the vet for 3 DAYS after suffering a urinary blockage. He seems to be moving things well now, but he'll likely be on prescription food forever. Which means that Mona gets to be, too. So far they hate the food, so hopefully they'll lose a few pounds. Both of them have bulked up a bit since Finn was born--they just don't get played with as much.

It was great that my parents came to town over the weekend for Finn's birthday. We had a fun party! More details on that later. Here are the oldest Fortney men across 3 generations. Only one of us has a Mr. Silly t-shirt, but I'm still looking around. I can fit into a size 4T, right? Speaking of silly, in the past day Finn has started sticking his lips way out in some sort of Mick Jagger monkey face. And he can now "dance." Katie got a short video that she'll likely post.


Word to the wise: teaching a graduate course on a subject in which you are NOT an expert is quite difficult. I think by the 4th time I teach it, it'll be good. But it's not there yet and I doubt it will be next time. I can only learn the material so fast. And when the students decide to ask questions, then it's really hit and miss. Only a few more weeks til finals.... If only Mr. Finn could learn to sleep all through the night. I mean, it's been a year, kid!

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!

We have forward motion!

I wouldn't call it crawling, more like scooting. But it works. When he remembers he can do it. Footage:

Scooting from Katie on Vimeo.

At first he mostly just seemed to think of it as an extra stretch, and was just as likely to give up as he was to scoot. But apparently this morning he crossed six feet of rug to go for Jonathan's shoes, so there you go. The house will never be the same again. First order of business after we get back from vacation is child-proofing, or else we're going to be wrestling a lot of dusty old Nintendo controllers out of his hands.

I was going to get this up on Thursday, when it happened, but I think our craziness level is slightly higher than usual right now. We leave for 10 days in Minnesota and Iowa on Friday (here we come, family, friends, and Iowa State Fair!). Friends are moving out of town. Out-of-town friends are visiting. Finals have arrived for the summer class that I'm taking. And I'm worried about Murray.

You may already have heard or gathered that although Finn loves the cats, it's not exactly mutual. Recently I've had to start facing the fact that although Murray's been part of our family for four years, he really hasn't been very happy since we brought Finn home, and that he might actually be better off without us. We've tried extra affection, drugs, sprays, diffusers... everything we can think of. If you know of any childless homes that might need a really loving, snuggly kitty, let me know, and we'll talk. When Jonathan took him to the vet recently, he jumped right up on the table in the exam room to meet her and give her a sniff, and she said that had never happened in all her years of practicing; he's a special guy. [okay, stopping the crying now].

In happier news, Finn continues to excel at standing up, loves his new xylophone, babbles more (and more strangely) all the time, and ate Cheerios yesterday for the first time. Eating Cheerios is really hard work if the look on his face was any indication. He wouldn't put any in his own mouth, but kept opening up for Jonathan to give him another. It was very "I have people for that."

I'm overdue for updating Flickr, and will try to get it done before we leave town. Did I mention the crazy?

Standing and smashing and reading and sleeping

Hey, look at Finn!
Tuesday (and part of today) the only way he was happy was standing, so the only way I could get anything done was to get out his play pen and prop him up. Then he stood while I did dishes, until he fell over, and then he'd play for a while, until he got bored, and then I'd have to stand him up again.

Speaking of playing, for the most part Finn interacts with his toys one way: smashing! Smashing them into the floor, his lap, or his favorite, another toy. It's best if this makes a good noise, like smashing a maraca into a tambourine, or a rattle into ... something hard. Like my head.

There's also chewing, but mostly it's all smash around here these days. A few things escape the smash. First there's a balloon Jonathan bought him a few days ago ("he promised me he'd be really good all week if I bought it for him") - too floaty. But he did do the smashing motion with the balloon string, and there's a two-minute video of that and him demonstrating how he doesn't know how to crawl yet at Vimeo if you want to watch it.

The other non-smasher (usually) is his books. He LOVES fun textures, like the thick corduroy of our couch or the fuzzy throw pillow that's on it, so he loves his That's Not My Monster book (thanks Jessica, Daren, and Caitlin!). He'll paw studiously at its pages ("Its paws are too bumpy" "Its eyebrows are too hairy") for surprisingly long stretches of time. So of course we bought him That's Not My Dragon, but so far have resisted the temptation to get That's Not My Robot, That's Not My Monkey, or any of the other Touchy Feely titles. Now he feels the pages of all his books, and seems mildly confused and disappointed when they're just flat.

You may have already noticed, but the crib cam linked over on the right is now the living room rug cam. Finn's usually there at least a little while every morning and evening, and doing more interesting things than sleeping. If we forget to turn it off, you may see Murray or Mona wander by. Did I mention they both may have urinary tract infections? Yeah, so that's fun.

Oooh, and our other exciting news: we managed to go to the Beyer/Mastrapas' last night for dinner and a gathering of out-of-town friends and put Finn to bed in his play pen. This was a first for us (the previous attempt was a giant FAIL), and may open up all sorts of exciting possibilities. Not that I mind staying home for dinner usually - I'm actually kind of a decent cook these days. You should stop by sometime. :)

Finny and the Cats. (Finnay! Finnay!)

Finn is very interested in the cats. I think that he likes that they're low to the ground, like him. He tries to pet them when he gets the chance, but he has very little coordination, so he often ends up smacking them on the head or back. Sometimes he is gentler, and rubs their fur, but then he clenches his first and get a big fur handful. Surprisingly, Mona has been more patient with him than Murray. She is pretty smart, and knows that she can't treat him like an annoying adult, who might get swiped at. Probably Murray feels a bit replaced by Finn. And he wouldn't be wrong, I suppose. Finn mostly only "pets" Mona, because Murray scurries off too quickly. Which makes this pic odd and funny:


Murray just walked up and laid down next to Finn. He even got kicked by Finn's little legs, but he wasn't going anywhere. I guess he wanted to feel included. Then Mona came by to say hi. It was like a little party!

Finn is getting better at maybe almost crawling, and he's pretty good at standing when he can hold on to the couch or a table. I liked this movie because it shows him trying to stand and trying to grab at Mona; Mona gives Katie and the camera good looks. She tries to get away from him without actually giving up her spot. He usually does a better job standing, but he was getting too excited. :)

Big week, featuring: TEETH!

The chaos continues here at Casa Fortney. I have one project left, and it's about half done. Hopefully in another day or two I'll be turning it in, and then I can return to being a reasonably stable, functioning person who responds to e-mails, reads books, and goes outside. In the meantime, the breaks to feed Finn and play with him and hang out with him and Jonathan help me stay slightly sane.

This week marked the appearance of Finn's first tooth, followed closely by his second:
I think the new weird face he makes is tooth related... it's this weird wide mouthed smiling-grimace-with-chomping-motion. We'll try to get a picture. Also growing: the hair! Not going to be long any time soon, but definitely getting fuller and fluffier.

Another first this week: solids! Well, semi-solids. It's just about the six month mark, so we've tried a couple rounds of rice cereal. Finn's a big fan.Then we got too busy, and too grossed out by the diapers, so we might not try again until after Boston. We'll see.
Because they feed him so much more at day care than I can pump when I'm away from him, he's also had formula for the first time this week. I know lots of wonderful mothers who've fed their babies formula for one reason or another, so I'm not guilty about it (not really), but I AM annoyed that we've had to introduce this complication into our routine. Formula requires mixing, and has its own set of rules, and costs money (theoretically - our free samples should last us quite a while at this rate). Also, since formula is either milk or soy based, this really isn't helpful as we try to figure out if Finn has milk or soy intolerance issues.

Wanna see how well he sits up now (and how little he cares when he falls over)? Watch this movie of him playing with Murray:

Tummy time is pretty infrequent and short-lived these days, though, because he's gotten so good at the front-to-back rolling over. No interest in the back-to-front, though. He's generally either perfectly content to stay exactly where he is, or completely sick of the entire house/room/state and DEMANDS IMMEDIATE AND EXTREME RELOCATION.

Did Jonathan mentioned the mucous is back? It's some completely different snot sickness this time - he had a fever on Friday and I had to go pick him up from day care early. But the bedtime routine is going great, and we're getting more sleep than we were three or four weeks ago.

I've had a good first Mothers Day. Mostly it's been homework, but I did make some cookies, and Jonathan and Finn ran a TON of errands that were stressing me out. I got some kitchen stuff (and LASIK) and later this week I'm getting a trip to Boston. :) Keep your fingers crossed for me and I may just make it through these next few days...

Interaction & Distraction

I'm often asked how I manage school, work, and a baby. The answer is that sometimes I don't, which is how Jonathan got in two posts since my last one. I realize that's hardly the end of the world, but I try do to make this a priority since our loved ones are so spread out. It's been a full couple weeks around here, and things are only going to get busier.

Finn turns 5 months old in a week, and he's definitely growing more interested and knowledgeable about the world around him. Whereas before his reactions seemed mostly categorizable into "pretty!" "bright!" and "face!" he's become much more discerning. Some objects (like brightly colored toys) are more interesting than others; people are generally more interesting than objects; and cats are more interesting than people. He's differentiating among different people more, too: he can be in a perfectly good, smiley mood with Jonathan or Mary while I'm off getting homework done, and then I walk in the room and he sees me and just overloads, at least smiling, but several times smiling briefly and then dissolving into tears - often tears mixed with laughter. Fortunately the tears can usually be stemmed by feeding him or taking him to wherever Mona is. Murray just sits around sometimes and is apparently boring, but Mona is rarely still, and has even let Finn grab her ears. It was a big hit.
Here's a video of Finn playing, taking a break to admire Mona across the room, and then going back to what he was doing. It's a little hard to see his face at this size, so I tried uploading it to Google Video as well, where it appears to be pretty pixelated, and therefore not much better. Obviously this is something I need to look into a little more. Anyway, there you go.
"Toys... kitty!... hey, look, a star thing... kitty!... yawn...kitty!..."


Mostly his increased interest in the world around him is a good thing, but there is at least one drawback. My boy, who has always been a champion eater, now usually has to have something draped over his head to nurse. Otherwise Jonathan's or my voice, the sound of my spoon against my oatmeal bowl, or nothing at all, can cause him to pop off and turn to see what's going on. Sometimes he'll take a long break to tell me what's on his mind before he resumes his meal. It's adorable, but can be a bit frustrating. Here he is on one of his meal breaks.
He's got really good torso strength these days, and I feel like it won't be too long before he's sitting up. He hasn't yet repeated his rolling over feat, but he's getting closer. He also still has the cough that started in mid-February, which means none of us are getting a ton of sleep; some nights I don't get more than 90 minutes at a stretch. Before the cough I think 3 or 4 hours at a time was not unusual. We've been to see Dr. Lee a few times, and we're sure eventually he'll kick it. In the meantime, the Children's Benadryl got us a couple nights with five or six hour stretches (now he's apparently Benadryl-resistant), and now we're trying a special baby inhaler three times a day which he just LOVES, as I'm sure you can imagine.

More photos, including some cute Bumbo shots, at Flickr.

Finn's house & kitty

Hey! You should come visit!

But if you can't, you can pretend, and tour the house via this little video. Well, kind of little. We kept it to about 2 minutes. Please feel free to turn down (or preferably, off) my rambling audio commentary.

And for our Flickr photo for today, here's Finn considering his plan to someday make the cats his minions:

Back to normal... kind of.

I started working again - this week from home, and as of tomorrow, from the office. Tomorrow will be the first morning where we try our new routine of getting everyone up and dressed and to their respective van pools/day cares/jobs by 8 am. Wish us luck.

In other news, the cats' impatience for lap space have, at least for the time being, won out over any sort of trepidation about being near the baby.

8 hours. No, really.

That's how much sleep I think I got last night. Not all in a row, of course, just between the hours of 10 and 10, but when you're used to getting up every hour or so to pee, that's kind of irrelevant. Two to three hour chunks are an IMPROVEMENT. In the category of "things we're going to keep trying to get away with as long as our luck holds," here's a picture of Finn right before bed last night. Last night and the night before, we put him in the seat, shut out the lights, and went to sleep. And so did he. We didn't expect it to work, but we thought it was worth a try - and it was! Two nights in a row! No, I'm not bragging, nor am I counting on it lasting. I'm just feeling the Thanksgiving spirit, and milking this for all the sleep I can.

Speaking of feeling thankful, have I mentioned that Jonathan has changed EVERY diaper so far? Or that we've decided to go with cloth, and it's going great? So right now it's still hilarious that Finn LOVES a fresh clean diaper to poop in.
Also: best eater ever, for which I can take no credit. Finn has mad skillz, and the nurses at El Camino hospital were great - SO supportive of breastfeeding, and never left the room after handing him off until they made sure we had a good latch.
And Mona almost seems to like him. She was just perched on the couch two feet away watching him, and she stays on the bed when I bring him there screaming to nurse. Murray's still terrified, though.

So things are good. My baby's awake now, and I'm going to go play with him. Before I go, here's a bonus photo: Finn and Mom yesterday before she left.