As We Like It

Summertime! Tomorrow is the 4th of July, which may end up being Graham's favorite holiday after Christmas. He is quite adept at spotting American flags, telling us he sees them, and that they are there "Because our country is America!!" Yes, I used two exclamation points on purpose. He's really into it. In our neighborhood there is a July 4th bike parade, which Finn had a blast at last year, so we'll doing that again.

In other news, while Katie was in Anaheim at a library conference, I potty trained Graham in 2 days. Yes, I'm that good! OK, in reality Graham just finally decided that he wanted to wear underwear, and that was that. It's been 10 days now, with very few accidents, and even nice work in the #2 department. It's really quite amazing compared to his brother, who wasn't quite doing this well at age three, as you might recall. Graham, at various times this week after doing his business: "Are you so proud daddy?" "FANNN-TASTIC" "Do I get a fruit snack?" "Are you so happy?" Then later: "What does proud mean?" This no diapers thing is all I hoped for and more.

Graham is also growing out of being a fantastic sleeper. (Not as we like it.) Usually both boys go to bed at 7:30 pm, and wake up at 6:15, which has worked fine because Finn doesn't take a nap but Graham still does. He's of course always needed more sleep since he's younger. Finn is still on this schedule, but as Graham gets older, he apparently is needing less sleep. He hasn't been falling asleep until probably 8:30 pm lately which has necessitated moving him and his bed into the playroom. There he can kick around and play after Finn has gone to sleep. This really isn't ideal for anyone, but as long as he keeps napping, I don't see any way around it. Sigh... It was such a perfect system, people! I don't have any pictures to correspond to these stories, so here are some other photos:

Dressing up "like daddy"

Finn IS growing up, isn't he!!!

Superheroes enjoy watermelon

Thanks daddy for finding my fishing pole, buying some worms, and taking us down to Westlake Park (down the street)... Finn hasn't asked to go since, so it may not have been all that he'd hoped for.

A Gentle Soul

For those of you who don't know Graham very well, I think it is fair to say that he is a quite a bit different than Finn. Maybe not as different as my brother and I (Hi Justin!) but they are very distinct. Graham is a sensitive little guy who wants to make you happy. He takes slights very personally. He will give you as many hugs and kisses as you need, and will ask you for them. He dances. This is one of the cutest movies ever.

Dancing to Ella from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Actually Finn is a lot more sensitive in some particular ways. If Finn hurts himself he will wail and let you know about it for 20 minutes. And many band-aids will be required. Graham will forget that a bump or accident ever happened in about 20 seconds, and just go on his merry way. The children-addled brain I have makes it hard to sensibly compare the two, mostly because it is hard for me (already) to remember what Finn was like 2 years ago. But that's the beauty of the blog! :)

The most important news of the week is that we got Graham a big boy bed, very much like Finn's, from IKEA. The two boys are back in the same bedroom, probably for many years to come! He had been sleeping in the pack-and-play in the office for the past several months, because that was easy, and the boys would never wake each other up. He's now slept in his bed back-to-back nights, and he loves it. Finn has been showing him the ropes, including the VERY KEY rule that you can't get out of bed to come wake up mommy and daddy until the moon light comes on at 6:15. That is the key to everyone's sanity. When we're in the Midwest in August, Graham will be too big for the pack-and-plays there, so we had to get him trained sleeping on a bed before then. Finn likes having his brother in their room, but he needs to stop piling so many stuffed animals on Graham when Graham is trying to go to sleep.

For comparison, here is Finn sleeping in his bed from the same time of year in 2009, but he was about 6 weeks younger.

Below is one of my favorites from two week ago---Graham sitting with Cato, our neighbors' cat. Cato looks just like Mona, but likes attention from small people more than Mona does. Just a very peaceful scene.

Here are brothers being brothers:

We visited Alex and Laura up in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, and during brunch the boys each got balloon creations. Graham got a flower, but the balloon artist suggested it could also be a hat. I think he was right.

Sittin'

Over the past week or so, Finn has decided that if he is standing somewhere, and feels something behind him, that he can just go ahead and sit on it without looking. Sometimes it is a lap, if we're sitting behind him. Great! Sometimes it is a pile of folded laundry. OK. And one time it was his friend Arthur Beyer, who is big for a 9-month-old, but still. Arthur got sat on, but he's so good-natured I'm not sure it made an impression.

Also, Finn's sleeping has been very strange the last few days. Very short naps in the daytime (45 min or less, total), and then last night he was awake most of the time between 2:30-6 a.m. Yep.

Just me and the boy tonight!

First off, congrats to Ellen Carlson who gave the world boy #2, Abbott, 2 days ago. Yay Carlsons! Tonight Katie is staying at the Beyer/Mastrapa house; since Ross is out of town all week, Rachel could use some company. Tonight I put Finn to bed myself. Bath time was an epic splashfest, for the very first time! He was very awake and attentive during story time, which is his last thing before bed. Sometimes he sleeps right through it for Katie--never for me. In fact he was so awake he just stared and yelled at me when I set him into his crib at 7:15, 15 minutes later than usual. But after I shut the door, he went silent within 5 seconds. I can only imagine that he really knew it was time for bed. He really seems to like his bedtime routine. If only we had something similar for naptime...

I got him this balloon at the grocery store, and he's been a big fan. I think there is only a couple more days of helium left in it, though.

Yay Grandma!

My mom came out for another visit to see Mr. Finn! It was well-planned, as Katie left for 5 days for her library conference. Finn was healthy and fun the first few days, but then by the last day he was sick and cranky. :( So let's only show pictures from the happy times. We went to Filoli Gardens, up on the peninsula. As you can see from the picture, Finn had a rockin' good time. The gardens were beautiful!


Finn liked hanging out with grandma Mary, who was on full-time baby duty when I went to work for a couple of days. They visited Starbuck's, the grocery store, and the two parks in downtown Los Gatos. The last day, when he was cranky except for when he was outside, grandma walked perhaps 10 miles all around Los Gatos! I'm also very thankful that several days my mom got up at 6 a.m. with Finn, so that I could sleep for another hour or two. It's hard going back to real life!

So, he's sick again, with a bad cough and congestion. AND, his two top teeth are coming in, and that is also bothering him. So happy times are a bit fewer and farther between the past several days. But he is sleeping great, and has only woken up once at night the past 5 days in a row! Keep it up Finn!!!

I'm going to Disneyland without Finn; he's complaining

This afternoon I'm going to Anaheim for an American Library Association conference, and I won't be back until TUESDAY NIGHT. It's the longest I've ever been away from Finn by far, and I'm a little nervous. I'm focusing on the chance to see Nina, Mom, and Teri, going to Disneyland, and some uninterrupted sleep (Finn went 10 hours between feedings last night, by the way - a new record). I'll definitely miss him a lot. Missing bedtime will be especially hard. My favorite part of every day is right before we put him down, right after reading stories, when I rock him and sing to him and he lays his little head on my shoulder. But I'll be back on Tuesday.

In the meantime, I was checking out some baggage guidelines online yesterday and happened across American's rules for checking racks of antlers. They must be "as free of residue as possible" and "the skull must be wrapped and tips protected." My cousin Mariah's coming to visit us after the 4th, and she's flying Northwest, so I thought I'd check their guidelines in case she wanted to bring some antlers. It turns out Northwest charges the same, but doesn't have as many rules about cleanliness and the like - something to keep in mind, I guess. And Northwest will accept pole vault poles as checked luggage, whereas American will not. This information has to be useful to somebody, right?

Grandma Mary got here on Tuesday (sans antlers) and will be here pretty much the whole time I'm gone, which makes things a lot easier. Finn's having a great time running around town with her, and I think he's keeping her pretty busy. He seems to think he's ready to crawl, but hasn't quite figured out the mechanics yet. He's always trying to get us to put him down so he can lurch off after something, but once he's there, he's stuck, and this seems to confuse him. Here's about a minute and a half of footage from last week of him down on the floor, thinking about getting mobile.



He also finally figured out he can combine consonants and vowels to make syllables ("da ya ji!") and is doing some honest to goodness babbling. I caught some at the park last week, and here's a clip. So far he'll mostly only do it if he's kind of annoyed and bored, so I had to sit off to the side and ignore him for a while to get him going. He's easily fixed, though, as you can see.

Trains & Fathers Day

We've been spending a LOT of time outdoors lately. Finn has a pretty short attention span indoors, but outside he's happy as a clam. Plus, it's been really hot out (no rain here!), and we don't have AC. Saturday we went up to Roaring Camp Railroads with Ross, Rachel, Helen, and Arthur. It was much cooler up in the mountains, and Finn had his first train ride (if you don't count the T in Boston) on a narrow gauge steam train. He loves trees, and apparently they're just as good speeding by a train as they are rolling past a stroller or waving overhead in the park. He did give them a few dirty looks, as if wondering what they were in such a hurry for, but mostly he was pleased. Helen's a big fan of trains, too, so a good time was had by all.Last night we had Thomas (who's promised to post new Finn photos soon) and Amy over for dinner, and this new "pretend we're people who have free time after Finn goes to bed" seems to be working pretty well. I'm currently caught up with all my homework, and may even resume knitting this week, assuming I can handle having a giant pile of afghan on my lap in this weather.

We had a pretty mellow Fathers Day. I had some school-related stuff to do, so Jonathan had volunteered for primary Finn duty. Finn was the fussiest and neediest I've seen him in ages, so we decided to ditch our stay-indoors-and-be-studious plans and head for the park - where I was still kinda studious. The photo on the right is Jonathan and Finn at the park this afternoon, with Finn doing his new goofy grimacing face. You can see that his teeth are full-fledged biters now - not that he uses them. The road back to solids is bumpy. We got him to take milk from a spoon yesterday, but once we started mixing in cereal he stopped opening his mouth. We had a little better luck with some cooked egg yolks today, especially when we let him "drink" (read "backwash") from a glass of water in between bites. We've got some bananas ripening in the kitchen and hopefully we can re-introduce those later in the week.

Sleep habits are still... kind of okay. We've had a couple nights where he only got up once, but usually it's 3 times. We're trying to gradually move his bedtime closer to 7 to stop this whole getting up for the day at 5:30 thing that seems to happen a couple times a week. And my favorite: Jonathan's taking one of the feedings all by himself, so that I'm more likely to be able to stay in my own lane on the way to work in the mornings.

Videos from Boston

Better late than never, here are some real giggly videos of Finn in Boston, first with Dave and a shark puppet, then with Jonathan. The shark one is something like a minute and a half long, but I didn't know where to cut it - so many giggles! The other one is only about 10 seconds. They're from the camera because we didn't take the camcorder on the trip, but at this size, the quality is pretty similar.



We've been plenty busy, still. I started my summer class last week, and it should be a relatively easy one, I hope - legal research for librarians, basically. Thanks to everyone who inquired after my (obviously precarious) mental health after spring's finals; I'm feeling much better and got As in both my classes.

Finn and I have enjoyed getting back into our usual groove (rut?) this week - we took nice long walks downtown both Tuesday and Thursday. Thursday we mixed it up and spent the afternoon with Jessica and Caitlin, where Finn spilled (iced) coffee all over himself, and my lap, and their carpet. Good times.

Yesterday Finn had his first trip to IKEA, which he enjoyed, and then this afternoon the three of us ran a few errands and then went for a picnic & nap in the park. We had people over both last night and Friday night, and ate tasty, leisurely, wine-soaked dinners with excellent desserts while Finn slept in his room. All in all, one of the most relaxing and most fun weekends I've had in a long time - happy birthday to me! Friday night he slept for a SEVEN HOUR stretch and a four and a half hour one. Here's hoping for a repeat of that.

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.

Fatherhood and the No-Hitter

A week ago Monday Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester threw a no-hitter against the Royals. We were at the game! (Until the 4th inning!) See, Mr. Finn had been having trouble sleeping in strange rooms and strange cribs, so we made the decision to leave to get ourselves back at around his normal bedtime. We left after the 4th inning. I was aware that there was a no-hitter going, but it didn't make much of an impression on me because it was early in the game.

However, when we got back to the hotel the laptop told me that Lester was one out away from completing the no-hitter! As Katie readied Finn for bed I stared in disbelief as the last out was recorded. Stared. In disbelief. Katie fed Finn and put him down while I quietly lay on the bed, shell shocked. I really like baseball. Katie went about her schoolwork and assumed I'd fallen asleep. I'll spare you the details of our conversation, but then, and now, I'm still coming to grips about how I feel about missing the game. Probably now I'll never see a no-hitter in person--I had my chance and now its gone.

I'm a big fan of having my cake and eating it too. I'm really quite good at it. I rarely have to compromise since I can usually figure out ways do everything I want to do. But now this is coming up against the hard wall (and giggly tummy) of Finn, and life has changed. Is it for the better? On the whole, absolutely. But just not in every instance. You owe me Finn! I better get some big giggles on Father's Day! (He does look so very cute in his Red Sox hat....)

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...

Pulling the Plug

One of the "lesser joys" of having Finn in our lives is that we're well acquainted with with stumbling through our darkened house to find out why he's crying instead of sleeping. Before the crud set in 3 months ago, he was waking up 2-3 times a night. OK, fine. Since the crud, this increased to 4-5, as he would sometimes cough himself awake or have trouble breathing easily. There was a bout of super-crud (worse than usual) 2+ weeks back, and he stepped it up to waking up 8-10 times a night! Yeah... However, by the end of that run, all it would take to put him back to sleep was sticking the pacifier back into his mouth. It was instant-back-to-sleep that rocking, patting, and bouncing could not bring. The pacifier would drop out while he slept, then when he woke up, he would wonder where it was and started wailing. Nothing else was wrong.

The solution? No more pacifier. We started on Monday and life has improved considerably. It is harder to get him to go sleep without it? Sure. But when he wakes up, we know since there is no pacifier there is nothing that WE can do to help him go to sleep. He's gotta learn on his own. And he is. His wake-ups are shorter and they're more whimper now than wail. Katie is still feeding him 3 times a night, and I change a diaper during feeding 2, but that is WAY better than 10 times. (We have been caving in on the pacifier from 4-6 a.m. because he's a terrible sleeper then, but soon we'll take that away too.) Hopefully soon we'll move to 2 feedings, and then if the crud EVER leaves, we can probably get down to 1.

It's a little know fact (well known to some) that I had a pacifier until I was X years old (actual number withheld due to embarrassment, but it is less than 5), so I'm fine with him stopping now and managing on his own. We'll see what I think on our 5 1/2 flight to Boston next week.

Congrats to Auntie Jeanna!

Jeanna and Craig are getting married! March 28, 2009! Yay you guys! They live in DC but are coming to Minnesota to get married. It'll be a good time.

In Finn news, we're past 2 1/2 months and the crud is still with him. He seemed to be getting better, but then he caught my cold, we think. His chest x-ray came back normal, which is good. Katie is going to try altering her diet (no milk and soy) to see if that helps him, too.

He wheezes, coughs, smiles, and giggles all through the day, and wheezes, coughs, cries and whines all through the night. Yeah.... We're going to Boston/Harvard for 11 days in mid/late May, and we HOPE he is in better shape by then.

Here we are on Finn's first hike, from about 10 days ago. We went to the Montalvo Arts Center in nearby Saratoga. An old-timey California senator left his hilly vacation home and grounds to be used as a center for the arts. In a break in the forest there are great views of Silicon Valley.

(Second) Longest. Night. Ever.*

Jonathan out of town + unseasonably warm weather + baby who won't sleep unless swaddled (and has a cold)
=
1 very tired Katie

If you see my husband, please send him home. I'm so bleary-eyed I may not recognize him, but if some guy shows up to watch the baby and tells me to sleep, I'll assume that's him.

Finn and I did have a lot of fun during daylight hours, out shopping, at the park, and making cookies. Today my goals are simpler: bath; making it to bedtime.

*the longest night ever was the first night home from the hospital.

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.

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.

Finn has a cold, but he doesn't let that keep him from having a good time.

Finn's caught his first cold. It's mostly just a throat/sinusy-sounding-thing- no fever, hardly any runny nose, and it doesn't seem to bother him too much most of the time. He has been sleeping more (though not as soundly) and eating well. He just gets cranky a little more often, for which I can't blame him, since it must suck to not be able to control when you cough or sneeze, and then to add insult to injury we keep sticking stuff up his nose.
It was officially more than normal baby snortiness as of about Saturday, so we started running the humidifier and having him sleep at an incline then (well, actually, he sleeps in an inclined position most of the time, so we were a step ahead on that one). The cough and congestion got a little bit worse every day over Presidents' Day weekend, and we weren't sure how long these things were supposed to last, so we called the doctors' office yesterday. They said that it sounded like a basic cold, but since he was so little, we could go ahead and come in and they'd squeeze him in to check on things. Dr. Lee confirmed that his lungs sounded fine, much to our relief, and there really wasn't anything to do but keep an eye on him and wait it out. So that's what we're doing.
But - as a bonus of making the trip to the office, we have more official weight data: 15 pounds, 13.something ounces. Big Finn!
In other news, Finn is officially ticklish. Here's proof:


The best and biggest giggles, of course, we never have the camera handy for. For instance, just now he was getting cranky while I was writing this, so I danced and sang a bit to the Cake song that's playing on the stereo, and he thought that was hilarious.
To be fair, it probably was.

A Diaper Dance Party!

Sometimes, late at night, when he really should be going to bed, little Finn decides he is wildly happy and has no need to sleep! A few days ago we had such a night, when he was quite excited to get his diaper changed. I snapped some pictures as fast as I could! Here is one. There are more at flickr. Party on Finn!

Pinned again

Finn sleeps in his own room at night, technically in his crib (just not on the mattress). And for a two-month-old he sleeps pretty well. Last night he went about 5 hours between his pre-bedtime feeding and the first time he woke us up. He goes right back down after I feed him, and will usually keep going back to sleep until 7 or 8 if it's a day where we're not scurrying out the door to school and work.
But daytime naps are another story. So here I am, under a sleeping baby, not quite willing to risk waking him up by moving. I mean, if I did, what would I do? Another load of dishes, maybe put some laundry away, read a book, check friends' blogs, read the news, watch a movie, play Scrabulous. And if I don't get up, I can read a book, check friends' blogs, read the news, watch a movie, play Scrabulous... so that's why I've been in this chair for about an hour, was here for about an hour this morning, and will probably be here on and off for much of the afternoon. Fortunately, before I sat down I made sure the camera & USB connector were nearby in addition to the usual computer-novel-burpcloth setup.
More at Flickr, as usual.