Little Scam Artist

I'm at the Denver Airport but I thought that Graham's shenanigans needed to recorded on the blog while they were fresh. He has ascended to toddlercy, and life will never be the same. It is amazing that someone so small and so young (20 months) could be so crafty.

Sometime late last week Graham contracted some sort of virus that gave him a slight fever and skin rash. Saturday and Sunday he was definitely under the weather, and didn't sleep or nap as well as usual. He got a little more personal attention than usual, mostly because he demanded it. Monday, he seemed better, so we brought him to school. That lasted only a few minutes, and he was very sad and upset. I spent the whole day with him at home, and, except for an extra long nap (on me) seemed quite normal, but liked spending the day with me and watching a Sesame Street. He requested it by pointing at the TV and saying "Mooie."

Then came Tuesday---I wasn't in town so I'll let Katie's Facebook post tell the story: "Cried and refused to eat the whole 1/2 hour between when I dropped him off and picked him back up. Ate his muffin in the car on the way home, then came in the house, climbed on the couch, pointed at the TV, and said "Mooie!" I am sincerely hoping the doctor we see this afternoon will clear his rash as "not contagious" and the little faker can go back to day care tomorrow." (Dr. said he was fine.) Here is a pic from that day:

Today, according to Katie he went into hysterics again at drop-off today, but, just like yesterday, he is no longer sick. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice....nah, won't happen.

It is beginning to dawn on me that Graham may have been scamming us since day 1. This easygoing personality, chipper attitude, and good napping thing was all just an act, and he's been waiting patiently to take advantage of us.

A Real Toddler Now

Graham and Finn have really been enjoying their time at Happy Days, their daycare. Graham has been in the infant room up until now, but since he's 18 months he's moving up to the toddler room, known as the Ladybugs. Finn is nearing the end of his run in junior preschool (the Superstars) and will soon be off to the Busy Bees. Below is Graham sitting around the table after his first day with the Ladybugs. He loves sitting at a chair, like a big kid, rather than in a high chair. But he still has some baby qualities---the infant room teachers were really sad to see him go, because he is still very cuddly.

We came in while he was eating his afternoon snack, and instead of running to greet us like he's always done, but he just looked up at us and said, "no." He took his time to eat his last cracker, got up and put his napkin into the trash, and THEN he came over to give us hugs. He is a big kid, and big kids aren't in a hurry.

This one below was a nice one during a diaper change before bed. He likes toys.


And, just for fun, another one from when my mom was here. She came over to Happy Days to see their school.

Katie is leaving tonight for a 4-day stay in Philadelphia for the ACRL meeting. Have fun!

Walking around

Graham has been mastering the art of the continued forward stumble. Known by many as "walking." He really is pretty good at it now and likes to walk around just for fun. He can easily end up in the other side of the house if you're not paying close enough attention.

Walking around from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Finn is in the neighborhood of being potty trained. At home or at school he is usually at around 1 accident per day, but some days are zero. When we're other places, like museums or restaurants, the failure rate is higher. Also, bowel movements are always a disaster. But there is a good progress. His excitement to wear underwear has been a positive driving force, as well as the teachers at Happy Days, the boys new daycare. We HOPE that the boys will be there for a long time.

The pic below doesn't need any further comments. The cuteness is evident. Graham is enjoying car-life more since we turned him around last month.

The horror! The horror!

Hey, guess what the big Fortney family news is for this week? The boys' daycare is closing and they only gave us and the staff 8 days notice! "What?!" you say? "W-H-A-T?!?!?!?!" is what we said. Over and over again. Katie managed to find out (just yesterday) several hours before any other parents because she dropped Finn off a few hours late. It was supposed to be an "end of the day" announcement....via a letter....pity you if your kid doesn't go on Th or Fr, then you wouldn't even know yet. Yep!

I'm in Germany, at a, um, castle, in the, ah, Alps, at a little workshop about the James Webb Space Telescope. Katie, who I've leaned on a lot these past couple months, and I powwowed over google video chat and we decided that we had to act fast. On Katie's lunch hour (2 hours after the news dropped) she drove a deposit check over to another daycare center in town (which we really liked when we visited) and now Finn is all signed up, 5 days a week, but Graham can only get in M, Th, F, so now we'll have to figure out what happens on Tu-W. But it is better than nothing. I bet if we'd waited a day that this new place would have been all filled up with new kids, and we'd have been in REAL trouble.

So, the boys were only at the new school, A Child's Reflection, for 2 months. Finn had a really fun time there, and Graham seemed to like it pretty well. Katie and I never really found our comfort level. It was bigger and more impersonal than we were used to. It was just OK. But scary to have it leave so fast: Poof!

I'm getting all worked up again just writing about it. To calm myself down I'll think of the nice view from the castle. I'll share the view with you too. Yes, it snowed.

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? ;)

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!

Puddle season

Yesterday when Jonathan picked Finn up from day care he wasn't wearing any of the same clothes as when we dropped him off - including shoes. Turns out he fell in a puddle. (I'm not convinced "fell" is what really happened, but we'll take their word for it.) We don't have a camera crew at school, but here he is last weekend enjoying a puddle across the street.


Puddle stomping from Katie on Vimeo.
Unfortunately, we didn't get the boots on him until AFTER he'd gone in the puddle, but better late than never.

Biting off more than we can chew

One of Finn's favorite things lately is putting on "Big" things - Daddy's coat, Daddy's shoes, oven mitts, Daddy's gloves, you name it. Not so much my shoes - apparently they're not comically huge enough. Here he is trying on Jonathan's jacket:

Soon after that he ended up on the floor, but he didn't seem to mind. Oven mitts and gloves are a little safer. Here he is with the gloves, right around the time he started to get bored with them (of course):


Giant hands! from Katie on Vimeo.

As for me, I'm taking nine credits again this semester. Am I going to be as busy as last semester? Magic 8 ball says: signs point to yes. Right now it's especially tough because I'm still trying to figure out the flow of my new classes, and Jonathan's leaving town for half of next week. On the bright side, he doesn't start teaching again until the end of March, and this is probably my last semester of classes (just my portfolio and an internship in the fall, and nothing this summer), so I've got that light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel thing going for me.

In other Finn news, he's back to excellent sleeping, and apparently had a blast at the Super Bowl party he and Jonathan went to yesterday. He's also doing great at day care. Usually he cries when I go to leave, but I can look back from the gate and see that he's stopped before I get to the car. The past few days he hasn't cried at all (dinosaurs! blocks!), and Friday he wasn't sure if he wanted to go home when I came to pick him up, or stay and play some more! Oh, and tooth #9 has appeared, so now he's got all his incisors, plus his random molar.
A few more photos at Flickr.

Sleeping through the night?

I don't believe it! I don't be-lieve it! He made it through the night! First time ever, at age 54 weeks. We only even heard a little peep from him at 10 pm, and then at 5:40 a.m. the whining started, but since we get up at 6, this counts as making it! It'd be pretty sweet if we could assume that he'll stay asleep, so that we could go to bed at 10 often, instead of, say, 9. Also, at daycare today he napped for 1:45. Only my Mom has ever got him to sleep longer than that. He apparently wakes up calmly and looks around, rather than screaming bloody murder. Strange. So maybe we need a napping mat at home, too.

Finn was in good shape for his 1-year checkup with Dr. Lee. Finn was a little afraid of him, though. 65% weight, 55% height, and 84% head. So, he's slimming down a bit, and the height and large head are tracking about the same. Seems good to me.

When my parents were out for his birthday we made a little trek out to a neighborhood park that has swings on a couple of slides. He'd never done either one. Both were fun, but his favorite was the slide. We'd just set him up there, and he'd decide when he wanted to go down--he did the slight inching forward by himself. It was really interesting to see him make the decision (time and time again) to throw caution to the wind to throw himself down the slide. He LOVED it. It strikes me as a very different decision than, "I want to eat this," or "I'm going to walk over there." It was very cool to see.

All grown up, with someplace to go

Well, Katie brought home the forms from daycare on Friday. What forms? The transitioning from the infant room to the toddler room forms! My baby, a toddler? I think not! We just had him! I guess 1-year is the standard transition time, but since he's walking around a bit, and could potentially step on (or has stepped on) the other babies, he's gotta go!

This means: He has to be able to feed all of his food to himself. For Finn, this means 100% finger foods and no spoons. So, goodbye baby food. Also, no more sleeping in the crib at daycare! AND, only 1 nap per day, instead of two. There is a 90 minute block of "quiet time" for napping, on a mat, with a blanket. I have a feeling that this will be comical. He often naps for only 30 minutes, and I can't see him being quiet on a mat for the other 60. Especially because he starts yelling early in the wake up process and takes quite a while to calm down. There is a month of transition time; at first he'll only spend 1/4 of the day with the toddlers, then 1/2, etc. It's a brave new world.

In other news, he's still a maniac. He likes he new pumpkin and enjoys (occasionally) chewing on the stem. I cut the gross parts off the stem. Since the weather is getting marginally colder, he's wearing cutie long-sleeve shirts, and now he's also got several pairs of pants. The diaper changes are a bit more challenging.

His new-found walking ability has coincided with better sleeping at night. He's been waking up only once, between 3 and 5 a.m. I think a no-waking night is certainly possible.

I really missed him when I was out of town a couple weeks back, practically for the whole week. It's much better to be home.

We were sick; he's taking over

Last Monday night Jonathan had a wicked vomity stomach thing. Tuesday night I got it. Wednesday night he left town for two days. And this weekend I had things due in all three (yes, three. yes, that's too many) of my classes. So last week was a tiny slice of hell in some ways. Fortunately, Finn is generally good for a bit of distraction. You can really see the wheels turning in his chubby little brain these days.

• We are currently without a driveway. There have been jackhammers outside our house on and off for a while now (did I mention about the hell?). Friday morning we left the house to go to work and day care and there was some kind of compact excavator in our car's usual spot in the driveway. Finn looks at me. Looks at the machine. Looks at me. "No, Finn, we're not taking that to school." Then he cried when I put him in his car seat, but when I said "Don't you want to go to school and see Ms. Carly? and Ms. Lourdes? and Ms. Graciela?" he started smiling. He likes the ladies.
  
• You cannot eat bread in his presence unless you're going to give him half. He will scream. He will attack, and topple you, and claim the bounty for his own. See?
• He likes to lay on things that are soft and squishy, like our mattress. He rolls around on 'em and giggles. Last weekend he pulled his fluffy blanket off of his toy chest, threw it on the ground, and flopped down on it face first, making a noise like "hmmmmm." Then he did it about six more times. By the time I went and got the camera, he was getting kind of bored, but you get the idea.

Soft! from Katie on Vimeo.

I have high hopes that Flickr will be updated this week, and that Jonathan will post soon about Sunday's brunch and/or other things. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Back from Massachusetts!

There's going to be some overlap with Jonathan here, because I see he just posted as I was writing, but I'll put in more pictures. :D

Boston, Part 2

Because I can't have a post called "Boston part 1" and then never have a part 2. It'd be weird. Friday we went to the zoo. Finn liked it pretty well (particularly the gorillas, the leopard, and THE FISH), but not as much as the aquarium. The animals were farther away and often not moving, so he didn't really notice them. He did get very excited about the enclosure railings, though. Whee.

Saturday we left Boston to go spend Memorial Day weekend with Ben and Martha. They have a labradoodle, Barcelona, and Finn wasn't quite sure to make of her - definitely interesting, but bigger than the cats and a much faster mover. He seemed to enjoy getting his hands licked, but not so much on the face. Saturday night I caught an awful cold - a send-Jonathan-to-the-drugstore-at-2am-for-cough-drops-and-Nyquil cold. Suddenly all the fun stuff we had planned for Sunday seemed (like "leaving the house" and "walking around") seemed way too ambitious, so everybody else went for a picnic while I napped. The worst of it was over within 24 hours and it was nice to just hang out with them and catch up for a while.

Monday we headed back to Boston and spent another night with Anne and Troy, who grilled us another lovely dinner. We were all set to leave for the airport the next morning (almost half an hour ahead of schedule!) when I picked Finn up and noticed that there was Poop Everywhere. Ugh. That was the third blowout of the trip, I think, and definitely the worst. We just took him to Anne & Troy's tub and hosed him down. He thought it was all great fun. We caught our plane with some time to spare, and Anne and Troy can probably enter their bathroom without a hazmat suit by now (thanks guys!).

Lots of people have asked how Finn is at traveling; it's a mixed bag.

• Finn has the opposite of stranger anxiety. He gets bored of being in the same place with the same people for too long, but if someone at the next table, or in the next row of the plane, starts making faces at him, he'll sometimes snap out of a bad mood. He loves making new friends. He had a pretty good time at the airport.
• Six hours is a LONG flight. Finn did pretty well. We entertainted him as best we could (yay free magazines for ripping!). I nursed him a lot and was very careful to keep him sleeping once he got that way. Jonathan kept him for most of the time he was awake, and did all the diaper changes (with no changing table. yikes.).
• Hotel cribs are not cool. Finn needs his own room. More sleep would have been better. On the bright side, we did keep him more or less on Pacific time, so we were able to go out to dinner and sleep in some.
• Hotel rooms get very boring very fast. But walks are always good.

So that's our trip. Many many photos on Flickr, plus ones from yesterday's trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with Bridget, Keith, Tanya, Kiley, Sasha, and Tanya's parents.

Sleeping

Finn goes to bed these days around 6:30 and sleeps until 6 or 7 (or 8 on Saturday, or 4:30 Sunday - we're still working out the kinks). He's been getting up about 3 times, usually once before we go to bed and twice after. It's not ideal, but it's pretty workable, especially the long stretch at the beginning of the evening. We have nice, baby-scream-free dinners now, and Saturday night Gwen came over for dinner & the first stretch of sleep and Jonathan and I went to a movie. Like real people. This makes Gwen just about the awesomest person ever.

Getting older

The teeth are bigger. The sleep is better. The sitting and rolling skills continue to improve. He's a VERY strong lurcher. And he's getting more self-entertaining. I can definitely get more dishes washed/laundry folded/showers taken than I used to, which is nice. He's "talking" more, although instead of the "ba" or "da" type of sounds that books and websites claim are typical, his two favorite words seem to be "bvvvvvv" and "ghkehhhhhhhi." Jonathan's been standing him at the coffee table, which is pretty cool to see. He LOVES eating, not that that's new, but the cereal and bananas both are, and both have been a big hit. He only had half as much milk as usual at day care last Wednesday, and Ms. Lourdes said she fed him a whole bowl of rice cereal and he wanted MORE, and was not really interested in his bottle. This week we're trying avocados and sweet potatoes. His hair is getting thicker and darker.

Also? Cuter every day. I think that's mostly it for now.

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...

Three Months Old

Hi everybody, and happy Valentine's Day!
Finn turned 3 months old yesterday. He celebrated by going through all the bottles he took to daycare by ONE IN THE AFTERNOON, so I had to leave work early to go get him. We send him with four, and for the first month he would go through 3 of them by the time I picked him up at 4:15. I'm hoping this is just a temporary thing, because if he keeps eating more in a day than I can pump while I'm away from him, we're going to have to start supplementing with formula or something, which would be a pain.
Today Finn went to his first movie. It was *not* good, but we weren't expecting it to be, and the walk downtown was nice. Finn wore his Cyclones cap to keep the sun out of his eyes while he rode in the carrier, and as usual, stared wide-eyed at everything we walked by. He still hasn't figured out that he should turn his head when the sun's in his eyes, so the hat's very handy.
I don't have any new pictures today, but if you like cute babies, new arrival Colden has a blog with tons of photos that you can check out instead.

So far, so good.

This whole "going back to work" thing is so crazy it just might work. I was only 15 minutes late on Monday, hardly late at all yesterday, and remembered to bring diapers, spare clothes, bottles, AND the baby to daycare both days. I think Finn likes it pretty well, because he's never crying when we show up, and he's been eating. There are 5 (or 4?) other kids in his class. He's the youngest, at 2 months old, and then there's a 3-month-old, and the rest of the kids are bigger, I think more like 9 months. There are two teachers, and he seems to like them both. He doesn't sleep much for them, though. That's fine for us - his average nighttime sleep stretch is now something like 3 or 4 hours instead of 2, which was what we were dealing with over Christmas.
One of the many things we like about our daycare is that they're agreeable to the cloth diaper thing. If they weren't it would be a lot less cost effective, especially once he starts going more days a week, and we might not be able to do it. For those of you who've been asking "How are the cloth diapers working?" and "Are you still using the service?" the answers are great, and not anymore. After doing disposables through all of our holiday travels, I've decided they kind of gross me out, and at least with our kid, they lead to a lot more poo-stained-pjs. So that's neat, and nicely compliments our desire not to add any more to the landfill than we already do. And we switched from the service because even though it was handy to have someone else wash them, we wanted something a bit less bulky, more daycare-friendly, and easier to put on a kicking baby (Diaper services just do the rectangles you have to fold to make more baby-shaped and put a cover over. They work, and we have some of our own we still use, but... well, see above.). Plus shopping for them was fun.
A friend recently said he'd heard that all cloth diapers had cutesy names about butts. Sure enough, the majority of ours, like the one Finn's modeling above, are Happy Heinys. We also have some bumGenius and Fuzzi Bunz (no, I'm not making this up). We tried the Fuzzi Bunz first because we know people who are fans and they worked fine. Unfortunately, Finn's pretty near a size break, and I just couldn't bring myself to buy a bunch of $18 diapers that we'd only use for a couple of months, but I didn't want to keep the service for another couple months while we waited for him to grow. Happy Heinys and bumGenius make one-size diapers that, thanks to some ingenious snap placement, expand to fit babies from newborns up to about 35 pounds. We started with three of each and ended up buying 6 more of the Happy Heinys. This brought our total fancy-diaper collection to 16, and now 17, so we do a load of diaper laundry every 1-2 days. We went with the HHs because of product reviews about longevity, certain construction features, and other practical things... but I suspect that deep down I was predisposed to like them better because they have a far superior color selection. I mean, neon green! Come on! We've got red and royal blue, too. We are having issues with leaking/wicking of moisture around the legs sometimes, but based on what I've read on message boards this isn't a problem many other people have, and it might be a detergent issue. I hope so, because I'll feel like a big dummy for buying 9 of them if it's not something we can fix. And if it is fixable Finn can wear them until he's potty trained, and our next (theoretical) baby can wear them, and we can save a ton of money. Yay! So anyway, for the five of you that were actually interested in this issue, there you go. I could go on for several more pages, and I will over e-mail if you're considering going this route yourself, but I think you probably get the idea.

And now Jonathan can tell you about our super-fun time this morning with the pediatrician - who admired Finn's lovely royal blue diaper.

Growing up!

Tomorrow we enter a brave new world of jobs, commutes, and child care. Gulp. I'll be taking the vanpool "over the hill" to UC Santa Cruz every day. Walking to the van, taking the van, and walking from the van will probably be an hour each way every day. Katie will be in charge of dropping Finn off and will fight traffic to drive up to her job in Palo Alto, 3 days a week. Finn will be in daycare only 2 days though, since I'll be working from home on Fridays, as least to start.

Finn is 2 months old today! I thought I would share a couple of pictures from the past week. More are at Flickr. Although he likes to be held *a lot,* that is not always practical for us, so we're trying to find ways he can just sit and be. The Boppy and the Bumbo (too many B words...) are key items. He is a little too small for the green Bumbo chair, but I think it'll be a favorite once his neck gets a little stronger. Notice the prominent 2nd chin! Henrik Carlson was the first lucky kid I ever knew who had a Bumbo.

Tids and Bits

We're back home in California. I'm sure that we'll post even more about Christmas in Minnesota and Iowa in the comining days. Finn was even better on the flight back than he was on the flight out, so that was a great relief! Today I thought I'd write on the status of various Finn aspects, as I see them, from the past couple of weeks.

Weight: Although we thought he was about 11 pounds by now (almost 7 weeks), jumping on and off the scale with and without him this last week yielded something around 12.5 pounds! I suspsect it is mostly in chins 2 and 3. Last week we met Owen Schnell, son of Sarah and Evan, who is a very big 18 pounds at age 4 months. I was describing his, ah, incredible girth to my Mom when she cut me off to tell me that I was 20 pounds (!) at that age. We'll see where Finn ends up.

Sleep: We may have tricked you into thinking that he sleeps in his crib. Ha! Actually he sleeps on his bouncy chair in the crib, which is a habit that we need to break ASAP. He likes the vibrations and the slight incline. Luckily we had such chairs in MN and IA.

Car seat: He's not very good at it. The back-seat rear-facing car seat has got to be pretty lonely for him. More often than not, Katie sits in the back with him and he holds one of her fingers. So I feel like a chauffeur. It also allowed us to monitor his temperature in the back seat. He, um, kinda overheated in Iowa while wearing his super-thick winter sack during a long car ride. We felt pretty bad and pretty stupid.

Eating: He was doing great with the 1-bottle-of-pumped-milk-per-day program until about 10 days ago, he just stopped without warning. He'd eat 1/3 of a bottle scream a lot and give up. This is not a good situation, since he'll have to eat via bottles all day at daycare. Katie decided to buy some nipples that allow for a faster flow into his mouth, and that seems to be going much better, although it has only been 2 days.

Smiling: He likes to smile! He does not scowl all day long! I promise.

Activities: Mornings and evenings are fun and happy with lots of kicking and noisemaking. Afternoons are grumpy times with sleeping and crying. You'd have thought that this would have become clearer to us sooner, but it took the trip to the midwest to make his patterns clearer. Jeanna (my sister) and Mary (my Mom) said that he managed to flip over from his back to his tummy on the bed, an advanced "5-to-6 month" maneuver. I was skeptical, but then Katie and I saw him flip to his side. I think that the soft bed allowed for an easier flip. He really has a strong kick.

The most important thing for our family over the next 2 weeks is to get into a good routine such that we can all go to work (Katie: 3 days a week, Jonathan: 4) and daycare (Finn: 2 days a week) without being harried messes.