The Santa Cruzians

A quickie on my way out of town! The boys really love their new swing set, which we got for FREE from Kim and John. Thanks! Graham, being a baby, loves peekaboo, which we play a lot. (Especially after I've strapped him into his car seat, which is sometimes not fun.) [Speaking of not fun, it is TERRIBLE changing that kid's diaper. He hates being on his back. He writhes and bucks like a bronco, all the while trying to grab himself "down there." It is an experience *not* for the amateur diaper changer.] The video has the background noise of Finn constantly chatting. This is what most of our days are like. One very long run-on sentence from morning til night. :)

Peakaboo! from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Here are the boys down at the pond at Westlake Park. There are ducks. Many many ducks. 40? And of course, they like bread.

Graham is a great cruiser, but I think actual walking is still a few weeks away. It is pretty rare that he'll stand unaided, and that only lasts 1-2 seconds.

New stroller, and other excitement

New Gear
You know how we keep saying how huge he's getting? It finally hit us a week or two ago that that meant more than outgrowing his clothes - he's approaching the weight limit on his car seat! Convertible car seats researched; car seat ordered; arriving today. Check!

Up to now, our car seat (+ a handy frame) has also been our stroller, so we had to get a new stroller, too. Again with the research, again with the shopping, and we're now the proud owners of two shockingly neon colored baby transport devices. There's a bright orange very basic folding one we're keeping in the car for short walks on smooth surfaces like the floor of Target until he gets big enough to sit up well in the cart, and then there's this awesome monster:

It's not the clearest photo, but it seems to be the best wide-angle shot I have so far. More glamour shots of the new ride, including one where you can see how much Finn likes it, at Flickr.

I love it. Since we go for multiple-hour-long walks 2 to 5 days a week over bumpy urban terrain, we (I?) decided we needed something a little more robust than little plastic wheels, and these 12" inflated ones make for a much smoother ride than the old stroller. It's like going over sidewalk cracks on a bike instead of roller skates. The only drawbacks are that this has a smaller storage bin (how am I supposed to go grocery shopping?) and not-too-great sun protection, so the first accessory we purchased was the sun cover. Also, it makes me wish we had a garage to stick it in. But you know what's cool? You can stick a second seat on the back. Or the front, actually.

New Skills
We're getting closer and closer to sitting up. He does great at it, actually, as long as I put toys by his feet so he leans forward instead of back, and sit behind him to serve as a bumper for the inevitable falling over.

Not that he minds the falling over. Apparently it's hilarious to suddenly find yourself lying back on the Boppy. But then, so many things are hilarious when you're Finn.

Finn also thinks he's ready to branch out from breastmilk. He's been eyeing our food pretty intently, especially my morning oatmeal, and likes to try and grab for my glass when I get a drink of water. I've let him try to drink from the glass a couple times, but that just gets drool in my water and water on his clothes. So actually this is more of an "interest" than a "skill" at this point. We're waiting for the six month mark to officially start on other foods, which is just a few short weeks away. Should be interesting.

Same Old Cough

Dr. Lee finally resorted to antibiotics to try and help Finn get rid of his... whatever it is that is/was causing his coughing and mucus issues (cold? sinus infection? asthma?). The primary and immediate result of this was diarrhea (silly antibiotics, killing off good bacteria with the bad), which led to the worst diaper rash EVER, which led to our first disposable diaper purchase in months because you're not supposed to get creams all over the wicking layer of our cloth ones. Happy Earth Day!

I'm not sure about the cough. He's definitely less mucus-y, but he still coughs more and sounds kinda thicker than I think he ought to, or than I remember from what he was like when this started two months ago. So we'll see.

More Grandma Visits

My mom gets here Thursday afternoon and will be here for nearly a week. I'm looking forward to getting caught up on homework and taking some serious naps. And guess what? I'm getting LASIK on Friday. Whee!

Look, he got bigger!

A friend recently recommended the practice of taking regular pictures next to the same giant stuffed animal. Then she added "I should have told you that a couple months ago, huh?" Never fear, we may not have giant stuffed animals, but we have a big chair. And a medium sized stuffed animal for future scale reference.

Look how chubby he is now! Doesn't he look so different?! I wish you could see his skinny little legs in the first picture. You can see his hair, though, and that's falling out.


On the subject of growth and change, I've recently admitted I made a judgment error on the diaper front. We're giving up on the Happy Heinys - we realized we were using them last, and basically planning on a change of clothes after putting him one, due to the inevitable moisture wicking. So now we have a ton of Bum Geniuses, and all is well. We'll pull the HHs out again when he's bigger and give them another try, but right now with them folded down to be the smaller size, the fleece sticks out a LOT, and we blame that for the wicking. Or maybe not. But we LOVE the Bum Geniuses, and have picked up quite a few on sale, and think they're going to see us through. No leaking, even overnight, and they're holding up great after the first couple months with washing every couple days.

Everyone keep your fingers crossed for me - Jonathan's leaving town for two nights starting tomorrow, and Finn and I will be on our own for our longest stretch yet. I don't know how single parents, or friends of ours in couples where one spouse leaves town a lot, do it. I've already talked Gwen into coming over to keep us company Thursday night when I have an online class meeting. Partly I'm nervous, mostly I'm jealous of how he's going to get an uninterrupted night's sleep. And then another one. And then another one next week when he goes to New Mexico. And then Hawaii.
Did I mention I'm jealous?

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.