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.

Making a liar out of me

I just have one thing to add to Jonathan's post. The other day I said Finn couldn't roll over from back to front. So what did he do yesterday? Rolled over from back to front! I laid him down on his space blanket and then got on the floor next to him, like I've been doing for weeks, because me & the kitties are generally the only things he wants to grab badly enough that they seem like good rolling motivators, and just like that, he was right there!

I think it was his way of celebrating his six-month birthday. If so it was kind of a poor choice, because once he found himself on his tummy he was pretty upset and couldn't remember how to get back. Oops. So then there was crying, and a nap.

He celebrated by sleeping for a six-hour stretch the night before, which was awesome. And I think he slept that long because he managed to roll himself onto his stomach in his crib. I think we've got some interesting times ahead.

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.

He's a big boy

He looks like he should be able to stand up and walk around, right? No luck. He can't even crawl. His head is so big that he isn't even all that good at tummy time, either. He needs a stronger neck. But we're working on it. He *STILL* hasn't remembered how to roll over onto his back again yet, so we're lucky we got video of it a few weeks ago. Silly baby!

Easter at the Reeves-Fortney's down in Salinas was fun. Finn was enjoyed by all, especially by my uncle Gregory. Finn liked to be outside on his blanket in the grass. Although we have a little yard, it is entirely taken up by shrubs and such--no grass!

Grandma Mary comes tomorrow! Yay my mom! We're all excited.

Roll over!

It's been a big week. After feeling kind of like we were treading water for a while, suddenly it seems like so much has changed. First, the exciting audio-visual material:

Sunday afternoon I was awakened from my nap by the sound of Jonathan giggling like a little girl. So I came out to the living room to see what was going on, and this is what I found. We kept putting him back on his tummy, and he kept rolling/falling over, I think about ten times. Then he forgot how to do it and put his head down and cried. But he enjoyed it while it worked, although I don't think he knew exactly what was going on, and he hasn't repeated it since. Very exciting stuff for the kid who wouldn't put up with tummy time flat on the floor just two weeks ago.

Also, we're making progress in the sleep department. The bouncy chair has been out of the picture for weeks, but I didn't want to jinx it by saying anything. I think I can honestly say now that he's outgrown it, and prefers sleeping flat on the mattress now. Again, like all our great parenting accomplishments, this was basically an accidental discovery. We're making progress on the napping front, too. Naps are starting to occur unwrapped, flat on back in crib. If you don't understand why this is a big deal, then ... well, I'm very happy for you. I keep seeing pictures of our friends' babies sleeping in these relaxed, accidental looking poses. That is not our kid. Other than putting him back after a middle-of-the-night feeding, Finn sleeping is almost never accidental. It is a deliberate multi-step process. At night it involves multiple layers of very specific, very tight swaddling. But he's outgrowing our swaddling materials, so now that he's getting a little older we're trying to help him form some new habits. The main obstacle is that he startles anywhere from one to three times a minute and keeps waking himself up. But we've had multiple unswaddled crib naps every day this week, so there's hope.

What else? He's spitting up less. He's better with his hands. He's drooling a lot and may be starting to think about getting some teeth. The combined result of these last two is a lot of wet fingers (his) and a number of (mostly failed) attempts to get other things in his mouth - my fingers, his toys, whatever happens to be in reach. And he continues to giggle more and more - he's ticklish in the neck as well as the armpits now - and make more and more funny faces. I think I call him "goofball" now more than anything else. For instance, the other morning we put him in what we decided to call his "interview clothes" - a button down shirt and some baby khakis - and take a nice picture. These are the five shots we got:
Seriously, with those last two he has a career in front of him playing maître d's on sitcoms, right? We're going to try to take him for portraits next weekend. Wish us luck.

More pictures on Flickr.

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.