Clambering!

Graham is really learning to get around. He can rather easily climb up the 7 stairs on this playground. His new daycare has big blocks to climb on---I think that's where he has been practicing. That or he goes out at night when we're all asleep. He's been standing on his own a bit more lately but I still think that walking is a few weeks away. We'll see!

Climb it! from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Here he is eating berries. He, ah, likes them. Both boys practically gorge themselves at the Saturday morning farmers' market, and then the rest of Saturday and Sunday. It is rare for any berries to see Monday alive!

And Graham is enjoying our backyard. This is the view coming up from the creek. The stone path is new.

Graham is getting big!

Yes, he's just now past 11 months. He's a machine when crawling across the floor, and has been for weeks now. He can walk with the aid of parental fingers. He can cruise from chair to couch and back again with the best of them.

What, you want more? Well, he can already kinda say a few words: Daddy (daddada...), kitty (keih!), and Finn (Fh!). He usually won't do them on command. I would say that "Fh" is the clearest, because that is a pretty unusual noise for a baby to make. Usually he just babbles in stuff with "a" as the vowel. I think that daddy is now less clear than it was last week.

As he's eating more and more solids, he's liking finger foods more and more. O's, goldfish, raspberries, graham crackers, saltines, teething biscuits... He's becoming more annoyed with being spoon-fed baby food, since then he's not in control. Sometimes at dinner he'll flatly refuse the spoon! But I'm not giving up because we've got about 15 more jars to get through. And what is better for eating than *finally* getting those two top teeth that you've always wanted? He just had those bottom two for many months, which just wasn't cutting it for the big-time eating.

After some initial troubles in sleeping through the night at our new house, we eventually realized he was probably getting a little cold at 3 a.m., after he kicked off his blanket and before the heat came on. (Yes, in summer here you need the pilot light lit.) Now with a bigger blanket that we put on him right before we go to bed, we are all sleeping better. Since he's been sleeping through the night pretty well since he was 8-9 months, he's 5 months ahead of Finn!

The Last Days in Los Gatos

Blogging, right, we have this blog that we've been great at keeping up and posting to, for nearly 3 years! It is a record of our life and, most importantly, our sons' early years. Well, when you move into a new house, ya really got a lot of STUFF to do, and that takes up a lot of time, let me tell ya. Even when the pace of unpacking is painfully slow, life fills up with non-blogging activities.

On the plus side, thanks to our Droid Incredibles, I've been snapping a lot more pictures of the boys. It's just very convenient, and the quality is pretty good. I decided that I'd blog about our last couple of weeks in Los Gatos. I miss being so close to downtown Los Gatos, and being so walkably close to great stuff. But really, our new place is better.

But onto the pictures! Here is cute little Graham visiting Blossom Hill Park in Los Gatos. Since he can crawl, he had a great time in the tube. This was our 2nd-to-last Daddy Friday, as well. I can't work 4 days a week forever, sadly.

The four of us visited the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose, which is now 30 minutes farther away from our house. We hadn't been in awhile, but I wanted to make sure that we did, because there is a room there especially for crawling babies. Graham liked the little mirror box room. Finn liked...many things.

The night after the movers (yes the money spent was SO worth it) packed up all our things, we were left with no wine opener, only my little tool box. Thankfully Katie and I devised a way in. (Not pictured: pliers) Where there's a will, there's a way.

Finn's last bike-ride on our driveway! Thankfully he didn't hit upon the idea of trying to go up and down the movers' ramp.

Graham is gargantuan. And growing.

Graham is ten months old now. He wears 18 month clothes, and is as big as a number of two-year-olds we've met. He crawls with is belly raised off of the floor (sometimes). He cruises (a bit). He steals Goldfish crackers from his brother. He just cut his third tooth on Monday. Yesterday I stuck my hand out and asked him to give me five, and he refused, shaking his head and grinning. What a joker! Not that you'd know it from this recent photo session (courtesy of my mom. Thanks, Mom!).


If you like that, there's more. Note that that link is not the "cute ones" that we got prints of. It's the blooper reel.

And here's "that huge baby" (per Finn) in the infant room at the Children's Discovery Museum yesterday. He had a blast.

Graham at the CDM from Katie on Vimeo.

Tomorrow is MOVING DAY. Stay tuned.

Watch out, Finn

Because Graham will soon be getting into all of your stuff. Behold:

Army crawl from Katie on Vimeo.
Look at those teeth! The forward movement starts about a minute in. I thought about editing it down, but then I decided I wanted to post it before he was walking. FYI, Finn started doing this at almost exactly the same age - 8 1/2 months.

What a fun thing to come home to! All 3 guys gave me a very VERY warm welcome, and it was even better to come home than it was to get away. I had a great weekend in Chicago, seeing sights, catching a Cubs game, and just generally enjoying the luxury of uninterrupted sleep and of not planning, worrying about, cleaning, or arranging anything. If you're in the area, I highly recommend tours from the Chicago Architecture Foundation. Also, beer and jagerschnitzel from the Berghoff. Here is Finn with his souvenir (which prompted his declaration "I'm gonna scratch some bears!").
And here are the boys being cute on a bench last week, just because.

Talking?

This week we think Finn's finally starting to get the whole sounds-have-meaning thing. He's definitely referring to me sometimes when he says "mama" (or more often, "mamamamama"). Of course sometimes he's talking to/about me when he says "ahbama" (maybe he knows how I'm planning on voting in November) or growls, and sometimes he says "mama" about cheese. But SOMETIMES, "mama" = me. And "kitty" is something like "dih," which is a different vowel sound than he uses for most of his babbling, and last night he was working on something like "daddy."

So that's super awesome and fun. No footage yet, but I'm sure it'll happen. In the meantime, here's a crawling video and one from the SUPER fun time he had in the pool on Saturday when we went to celebrate Caitlin getting her cast off. BONUS VIDEO: dim footage of gross spit up, using Murray as a crutch, and the always fun sport of door-swinging. Woo!

Now we're in trouble from Katie on Vimeo.


Splish splash from Katie on Vimeo.

For those of you who aren't into the video thing or can't watch them at work, here are some stills. More at Flickr.

Crawling, for realz

Just a quick one: Finn's officially ten months old now; he has five teeth; and he can crawl on his hands and knees. Like a real baby. Last night he went about 15 feet that way before deciding to flip over and park on his butt.

We went to a midwestern-hot-dish themed party this weekend. I failed to take any pictures, but Dave took a bunch. My favorite is this one, where Finn looks like he's about to impart some very sobering life lessons to Jonathan.

Here he is in a less serious mood:

Videos of standing and making noises

For those of you who wanted more than percentiles, Finn's stats from his last checkup, when he was 9 1/2 months old, are: weight, 21 lbs 11.8 oz; height, 28.5 inches; head circumference, 47 cm. Why that last one's in metric, I have no idea.

Our doctor asked whether Finn was pulling himself up to stand yet, and I said "yeeees, he HAS pulled himself up." He'd first done it nearly a month earlier, but now, as Jonathan mentioned, he does it constantly. He's also good at sitting himself up from a lying down position, and spinning around, and scooting, and standing on his hands and knees, and cruising. Last week he'd been standing, sitting, standing, sitting, standing, over and over again, so I went to get the camera, and got this instead:


Standing and being goofy from Katie on Vimeo.

It's a good example of his "omygod this is the coolest thing ever" face that usually accompanies the Darth Vader breathing that he does about light bulb packaging, pieces of bread, and other extraordinary objects. I've watched it about a hundred times so far. This one, from a few minutes later, actually shows him pulling himself up:

Standing, squeaking, and growling from Katie on Vimeo.

It's also got him shrieking and a bit of him making his weird growly noise. He growls A LOT. We're always expecting him to bust out with "THERE IS NO BABY ONLY ZUUL." Is this normal?

Bonus video - putting the balls in the ball drop toy:

Showing off for Mama from Katie on Vimeo.
I don't really have any new photos - just some cabbage and my cubicle at my internship. Maybe next week?

Back from Bern, See More Chubs

Apparently Finn sleeps better when I'm home. Why that might be is not clear. Maybe I wear him out more, and he enjoys the peace of mind (not piece of mind) of having daddy at home. We're still not at "no wakeups," but a few nights recently his only wakeup was at 3 to 4 a.m. Of course, he woke up for the day at 5:45.

Bern, Switzerland, was . . . pleasant. A nice and pretty town, but not one of the jewels of Europe. It is on a river. It's old town is famously nearly unchanged since the 1300s. Below is the tallest building in town--a church. I went up about 2/3 of the way and got some nice shots.

The best part of the church were the fantastic stained glass windows. The sun came out when I was inside, and I got some great shots. This one below is my favorite.

Finn is pretty much a little maniac now. He can pull himself up on anything, sit back down, and do it again and again. He can move from chair to chair, and move across small gaps. A chubby little Spiderman? His excited noises range from loud squeals to loud Darth Vader breathing. He's trying to give up the army crawl for real crawling now, too. Also, his 5th tooth is coming in, so drooling is at its highest levels in 6 months. Katie brought him to his 9 month checkup recently. 48% height, 62% weight, 84% head circumference. Big noggin!

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?

Growing up

Our friends Ross and Rachel have two kids, Helen (age 3 1/2 years) and Arthur (age 3 1/2 months). We stopped by on Saturday to drop off a few baby things that they had loaned us. Arthur is a large boy and nearly as big as Finn! Arthur enjoyed the exersaucer that Finn had been using for several months--which is rightfully Arthur's. Finn kept playing with his favorite toy, the spinning clear plastic globe. (He enjoys all clear plastic things with smaller plastic things inside that roll around or rattle.) Unfortunately he got a bit too into it and smacked his two new top teeth. But on the way back down from daddy he saw his friend Arthur and said hi one of the only ways he knows how.


Making Friends from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Lately Finn has been most happy when he's standing up. Especially today. The only problem is that he CAN'T stand up, at least not by himself. He has terrible balance, but he can hold himself up on the couch or the pack 'n' play. But he still can't pull himself up on anything, and I think crawling is still a few weeks away. He's just now starting to get up on all fours, rather than just doing baby push-ups. Loyal reader, in the picture below he's subtlety leaning against the mattress to give you the impression that he can stand. But we know better.

Wow does he have a big head!