Happy St. Patrick's Day

...from Finnster McMonkey McBean and Grammy O'Grammersons.
Graham is officially a sitter now, sometimes for several minutes at a stretch. Between that and the gorgeous weather the past few days, we've been having some good times this week.

Shout out to the Kearney Heidgerkens for the cute matching shirts!

Me and My Boys

Finn is getting more grown up every day! Even messier temper tantrums count as growing up, I guess. You gotta go through that before you can grow even more and never have temper tantrums. Right? Right?!

He is also really fun because he's a pretty good talker. Last weekend we went down to Santa Cruz to visit my office and to see the last of the monarch butterflies, down by the beach, on their migration. Finn: "Go see butterflies in Daddy's office." While at my office he got to see my 2-foot animatronic "Dancin' Shoutin' James Brown." Scary. Finn: "I don't like him." Finn a week later: "Daddy's office. I don't like him." Here is the crew on my office couch.

I have no reason to post this next picture, except for its extreme awesomeness. Pirates love spoons! Arg!

Graham has been testing our patience with his poor sleeping habits the past few weeks. But in the daytime he is irresistible.

Finn has been slowly mastering riding his Strider bike. He has not gone down to the farmers' market again, but he does like going on the driveway, and sometimes into the neighborhood. What a goof!

Bike riding with Daddy from Katie on Vimeo.

Are we back now?

I think we're finally settled in from our ten days away from home, just in time for Jonathan to leave again - DC this time. If you'd asked me a week ago when we were still in Iowa, I might have been afraid there was no way I was going to survive this trip, but since coming back home and settling back into our regular routines, things have been going pretty well. For instance, yesterday I was home with the boys all day and didn't once have the urge to strangle Finn, or find myself trying to remember why it was we thought we wanted to have kids. We even had a very fun trip to the library and an afternoon play dough session. So then I took cute pictures of them while they were napping. Don't they look peaceful? (Lies, all lies.)


We're so much busier now that we have two kids that we're not chronicling Graham's babyhood as obsessively as we did Finn's. That's probably unavoidable to some extent, but I can at least give you an update on how he's doing these days: first, he's started laughing, in case you missed Jonathan's last post. Second, he vocalizes a LOT. And often loudly. I guess he has to if he wants to get a word in edgewise in this house. Third, he can grab things sometimes, and will often put them in his mouth. And finally, he's working on sitting up. So he's busy! He's also hilarious and adorable and huge (busting out of the 3 month clothes, and with a neck too chubby for some of the 6 month outfits), but I don't know if those are new developments. Here's a video of him yesterday morning that includes him being delighted to see a cute baby in the mirror, chatting with that baby a bit, and grabbing a toy.

Graham grabbing from Katie on Vimeo.
Bonus video: Finn tearing into a Christmas present at my mom's place. I also uploaded a 5-second one of him testing out his new light-up slippers from that same evening.

Opening prenents from Katie on Vimeo.

I just updated Flickr with a hefty helping of our Christmas photos. Annoyingly, they uploaded all out of order, but they're there, and I'll fix them if I have a reeeally slow day at work on Friday. But you should check them out in any case, because they include stuff like this:

Sit and Play!

Finn is by now really good at sitting up. It really helps his attention span; we can leave him be for quite awhile with a pile of toys around him, and he'll be happy to be by himself.

His arms are also very strong so he can get in a position where he looks like he might be able to crawl. I've also seen him try to push himself up on his hands and knees to look up over the edge of his crib. At night he tends to move around in his crib by a foot or two over several hours, so he must be able to creep---but we haven't seen it in action.

We've had some problems with the solid food. He loved rice cereal and bananas, but then he didn't like sweet potatoes. After that we tried avocado, and that was a disaster. He actually looked really angry at me after his first bite of avocado. The avocado made Katie's mouth itch pretty bad, so we think that might have been the problem with Finn too. Since the avocado incident several days ago, he has refused all solid food, including rice cereal, oat cereal, and bananas! So we're going to take a break from it. Hopefully if we eat a lot in front of him this weekend he'll get interested again.

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.

Back to our regularly scheduled life

The photo above is from Poet's Seat, in Greenfield, MA. (Hi Ben and Martha!) Well, we're back and getting adjusted to life again. To those who may have been wondering, Finn got over "the crud" several days before we left for Boston, and he was fine while we were there. Katie got a cold when we got back to California, and it seems like Finn may have that now...but he's certainly better than he was in say, April.

Finn is getting better at sitting and standing. Sitting up is no problem, and he can even steady himself sometimes when he starts to fall. In the past couple of days I've been letting him stand up next to the coffee table, and he can hold himself up and even grab at stuff on the table. Any movement left or right and he loses it, though. We took a little movie which we'll post very soon.

Yesterday we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with some of Katie's NYU Law School friends. As expected, Finn loved it. His favorites were the silvery anchovies and the pink and orange jellyfish. He tries to grab them and even bonks his head on the glass.

Hey, it's June?! Yikes.

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...

Is it vacation yet?

Look, he got bigger again!

He's slowing down, though - only 18 lbs 8.5 ounces when we took him to the doctor last week (us? at the doctor? really?).

My mom was here last week, which was great, especially with finals creeping up on me. I think if I can just make it to the end of the semester, I can breathe again, but it's been pretty intense lately. Homework, baby stuff, house stuff, work stuff, planning this Boston trip (a trip I'm looking forward to very much, by the way)... I've been going a little nuts lately, when I'm not just curled up in a ball humming loudly. The sleep deprivation doesn't help. It was nice to be able to hand Finn over to Grandma Sheryl in the mornings and grab a nap, and he seemed to have a blast. He was a real chatterbox while she was here, but seems to have quieted down a bit since she left.

The LASIK went great, and I'm seeing better than 20/20. The surgery itself wasn't painful at all, but it was WEIRD. I mean, I've walked into a candlelit restaurant in Vienna to hear tuxedo-clad musicians playing the Chicken Dance. I've moved to New York, sight unseen, from Iowa. I've been to a completely dry wedding reception. But this was the strangest experience of my life, easily. You're awake the whole time, and all you feel is pressure, just staring at these lights, and then the lights disappear, and ... I guess you just have to try it. The end result couldn't be better though, and it's nice to join the land of the seeing. Yay for no more glasses with baby fingerprints!

Finn's a great sitter these days - we got a video of him playing with Murray today that I hope to get up later in the week, but in the meantime, there are a boatload of new photos over at Flickr, and here's one with my mom:

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!

The minister of chub (and cuteness)

We're been getting a lot of good use out of the Bumbo chair. He fits in it better than he did a couple months ago. Finn likes to watch us do dishes and make dinner. When its time to pull him out his chubby legs get caught in the leg holes. Like his shirt? He also sat in his Bumbo when we did Skype with Grandma and Grandpa Fortney. This was the first time he's seen Grandma since she came to visit, and I actually think he remembered her and was confused by her face on the screen.

Katie and I (mostly Katie) have been training Finn to sit up on his own. He's mostly terrible at and just rolls over backwards. When he falls back onto his boppy pillow he usually gives us a giggle, which couldn't be cuter!

My visit to St. Louis was uneventful. As far as I know, I have no scientific travel plans (without taking the family) til September. Although IF we didn't have Finn, I know I'd have been going to London and Scotland this summer. Baby giggles vs. Scotland, baby giggles vs. Scotland.... The giggles win!