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.

And speaking of bribery...

A while back Finn somewhat suddenly stopped being a kid who always sleeps through the night. It generally wasn't anything he really needed us for - fixing his blankets, getting him a drink of water (there's a water bottle by his bed), or just saying hi. We were not pleased, as you can imagine. So when we were in Pismo Beach recently, we got ourselves a small and affordable seashell collection. Now, when the boys (i.e., Finn) make it through the whole night without waking up Mommy and Daddy, they get "seashell time" in the morning. Making it through the night is defined as from when we close the door at bedtime until the light-on-a-timer turns on at 6:10 am. Here are the boys during a recent seashell time.


Yes, that's a shell on Finn's head. It's not junk food like the cookies, extra trash like stickers, or expensive like the bike, but it works. This was the carrot; there was also a stick, which I could explain to interested parents, but it wasn't nearly as effective.
For those of you looking for a status update on the poop bribes, the bike chart is nearly full, and the bike is ready for weekend pickup. When we ran out of girl scout cookies we somehow got conned into single bites of ice cream. Sigh.

One is good in the daytime, One is good at night

Yes, this is a daddy update. I'm here! After spending two weeks, minus the weekend in between, down at UC Santa Barbara, it is very nice to be back HOME. I was down there for two extrasolar planets research conferences.

The situation at home is pretty good. Finn has really started to be a bit more of a challenge, as he nears 2 1/2, compare to when he was closer to 2. He'd rather do what he wants to do, rather than listen to what his parents are telling him what he can and can't do. He's purposely messy at the dinner table. I wouldn't really call him a terror, but we can certainly tell he difference between now and two months ago.

He's been getting interested in plants and dirt, and he now has a spade (that he "shares" with Katie) and a little hand-held rake. We planted a flower in the front yard that my uncle Gregory gave to us. And here he is with his little tomato plant sprouts, which came up only a few days after we planted them. Somehow 5 seeds yielded 7 plants!

We're also working on Finn being able to put on his clothes and take them off. Being able to pull down your pants is an important aspect of being potty trained. Pants are really tough because of his big cloth diaper, but we're making some progress on shirts and sleeves. We'll keep you posted.

As Katie mentioned, we got an emu egg from the Mountain View farmer's market. It was mostly for me, because I wanted to eat it. We did that in Tucson with an ostrich egg (omelet party!) and I still have the intact egg shell in my office. Finn has a book on shelf where a green emu egg is quite important, so he needed to spend a lot of time holding my egg, after I got the white and yolk out. And of course eventually he dropped it and it got a little shattered. Sigh. I was a little surprised that I wasn't more upset. Maybe it was a sign that I don't need an eggs-of-large-flightless-birds collection....but really I do!

Graham is like a jolly and snuggly little squeezy robot who is powered by your smiles, and he wants to make you smile. He LOVES his momma, and must be in her arms when he is not eating or playing with toys, or watching Finn. But he needs to work on his sleeping. He is mostly great from 7:30 pm til 2 a.m., but then after that he can be kind of a mess. We're taking a different approach to his waking, compared to Finn as his age. We're letting him work it out on his own, a bit more. But he gets himself in trouble because he can flip over and get wedged against the bars, and he can't get unstuck to go back to sleep. (Katie informed me that he rolled over today, back to front, like it was nothing, but we'd never seen it before. We'd only seen him end up weird positions in his crib, which implied that he could do it!) He is actually doing much better at sleep than Finn was at his age, as I recall, but I'm ready for him to be as good as Finn is now: no peeps until 6 a.m.!

Graham is a big fan of all forms of solid food so far. He's a very loud and grunty eater, and gets mad if the food doesn't come fast enough. And I mean really fast. We call it the between-spoonful hungries. What a cutie!!!

2 boys who are silly

Well, there haven't been many posts in awhile. A terrible cold has ravaged the Fortney family for much of the past two weeks. Finn brought it home from school, but he is very much on the mend, and his constipation is all gone. Yay! The worst has also just passed for Katie and me, although we're not out of the woods yet. Graham, who is small, will probably have the longest path back to wellness, since his immune system is also little and new at this. He's gone from being a great sleeper to a poor one, waking up many times a night, because he coughs and is also not breathing well. But in the daytime he is fun and jolly, with a runny nose. Here is Graham prepping for his nap a few days back. What a cute baby! Swaddling for Graham, as with Finn at the same age, has been essential. And he doesn't seem to mind.

Finn is growing up and looking like a little boy now. He's moving from 2T to 3T clothes. He can say some two sentence combinations when needed. And he can be polite. He's becoming a pickier eater. Lots of yogurt. We took him to the dentist and his teeth are looking good. We're starting with the fluoride toothpaste now. He picked out his own toothpaste at Target: Pixar "Cars" themed---not that he has seen the movie.

O Father, Where Art Thou?

Jonathan is in Texas - Texas! This is his first trip since Graham was born, and I've been pretty afraid of it, but I got the boys to school this morning more or less on time, and got both of them through their bath and bed routine two nights in a row, so the hard parts are over. I even did a load of diaper laundry and a load of dishes.

On the other hand, I got less than 6 hours sleep last night (thanks, Graham, for choosing that night to decide to get up twice as often). The baths weren't much more than a quick rinse. Finn has only asked for Daddy once, but has been extra whiny and clingy, and today we got our first ever report of hitting at school. And last night Finn pretended to pee on the kitchen floor on his way from his bath to his bedroom, and tonight he actually did. ("pee! pee!") So there we go. Hurry home, Jonathan! Tomorrow afternoon can't get here fast enough.



As with every time Jonathan travels, I'm in awe of those of you who do this solo parenting thing for more than a few days a year. Yikes.

Oh, What a Night

Graham turned two weeks old yesterday. We celebrated by attending the Ardenwood Harvest Festival with Jessica, Daren, Caitlin, and Liam (which Finn pronounces approximately "kitten" and "lemur"). While there, Graham got to go on his very first second ever train ride (apparently we go on a lot of trains).

And Finn got to climb hay bales and a big dirt pile, pick out a pumpkin, pet goats, and pick up sheep pellets (that last wasn't exactly on the program). More pictures of harvesty goodness are up at Flickr.

Then we came home and relaxed for the afternoon and looked forward to a good night's sleep, because Graham's started only getting us up twice a night. Unfortunately, Finn woke up around 3 with nightmares or something, and didn't go back to sleep until 4:30, and Graham projectile-spewed a whole feeding all over me at about 4:15. So we're hoping for a better night tonight.

In other news, Graham learned how to suck his thumb today, something Finn never got around to.

Big boy bed and random videos

Milestone #1 for this month - Finn slept in his big boy bed for the first time Saturday night, and then did it again on Sunday. Then the past few nights he's decided it's more important to sleep on Paula, his hippopotamus (which is another story for another post), and has been in his crib instead. The important thing is, he's in favor of the idea generally, and we think we'll have him more or less settled in by the time we travel back to the midwest in August, which is good since he's probably too big for the pack and play now. Here's a picture we snuck in and took while he was sleeping on the first night.

Milestone #2 - we have had pee in the potty! It wasn't exactly intentional - we make him sit on his potty while he brushes his teeth after bathtime (so he doesn't pee on the floor), and the other night he made a deposit. He does like to sit on the potty (usually fully clothed) and say "Pee! Pee!" so that's fun. (We'll spare you the photo of that.)

Random movie #1 - Finn at the fountains downtown on Sunday. Hard to believe it was just about 8 months ago he could barely stumble around in them. The best part is right at the beginning.

In the fountains again from Katie on Vimeo.

Random movie #2 - Finn likes to ask if he can watch Sesame Street, and he does it by asking about various Muppets. Usually he'll go through a stream of 5 or 6, but when I tried to take a movie he decided it'd be more fun to jump on my stomach and get a close up look at the camera.

Asking about Sesame Street from Katie on Vimeo.

And here's me in San Francisco last Sunday, getting a couple things signed by Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors.

Jonathan gets back from Pasadena in less than 48 hours. Think I can make it?

Our growing family

Remember how we're having another baby? That's only about three months away now (late-September-ish), which suddenly seems REALLY SOON in lots of ways. I can definitely tell that my innards are not all where they are supposed to be, and that I'm warmer than usual (I'm not even cold at work), and that I have a little more trouble catching my breath. The last two are great, by the way, when it's already 95 degrees out and you've had a cold (or sinus infection, or something) for about 4 weeks (last Thursday and 3 weeks ago were the low points; I'm breathing better this week and can once again climb stairs, and hope I'll be 100% soon). I also get kicked a lot, which is still fun and not painful, and we're going to start thinking about names any day now. Maybe next week.
Since someone else will eventually be using Finn's crib, we got him a big boy bed last weekend, hopefully early enough that we'll have plenty of time for him to make the transition. We put it up in his room yesterday, and so far he's a BIG fan. He likes to climb on it, and lie down and pretend snore, and point out all the animals on the blanket: monkey! fish! elephant! unintelligible jabbering! (In the photos, please also note his new dinosaur pajama shirt, which he would wear all day every day, if allowed.)
Generally speaking, Finn's a great napper these days. He goes down reliably, at a predictable time, sleeps for 1-2 hours, and is pretty okay when he wakes up, especially if you have a glass of milk waiting. And maybe a graham cracker. And a dinosaur book. And patience for dirty looks. But he's still more likely to sleep longer if he sees someone in the room with him when he comes half awake, so the best thing for now about the new bed in his room is that I get to take naps when he does now, instead of just hanging out in there and reading. I'm psyched.

Minnesota and Back

My little (5'11") baby sister Jeanna got married on Saturday! Mr. and Mrs. Craig and Jeanna Vaughn will be heading out on their honeymoon tomorrow, to a location that everyone knows, except for Jeanna. Ha ha! It was a good time, although there was of course lots going on, so it seemed like we were home for more like 3 1/2 hours than 3 1/2 days. Below is a picture of the happy couple before they left on their separate bachelor/ette parties. As it turned out, the two groups caught back up with each other a few times. None of our pictures from the wedding were particularly good, but I'm sure some exist, and I will find them.

Finn was a hit the whole weekend. He even went to bed for my Mom on Thursday night and Katie's Mom on Saturday night--Sheryl had come up just to see Finn and take care of him during and after the wedding reception. Thanks Sheryl! It was a fun reception and it was good to catch up with the extended family, including blog readers such as Pang and Milena, who are the SOs of my cousins Jim and Mike. My actual cousins probably don't read the blog. They're too busy thinking about their band.

Anyway, as I was saying, Finn was a popular guy. Everyone liked his little happy dance (which is the bath mat dance w/o the bath mat). Hopefully we can find a pic of him in his cute wedding outfit. White shirt, black vest and pants, red Chuck Taylor-style shoes. He was GREAT on the flight to MN, but got a little overtired and cranky on the flight back. Here he is below being snuggly on the flight to MN. We bought him his own seat, and now I think there is no going back. It was SO worth it.

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.

What's new?

I feel like I haven't been posting as much this month, and I was trying to think of what you guys needed to know - like what Finn's doing now that he wasn't doing a month ago. The answer is, not much. He's been walking for ages, he's eating the same things, playing with most of the same toys, and still doesn't say much (lately we get a lot of "dah!" (dog!) when we're out on walks).

But I don't think we've mentioned how much better he's sleeping than he did 2 or 3 months ago. Generally we put him down at 7 don't go back in there until 6, and often don't hear more than the occasional short whine in between. Last night's another story, but we'll ignore that for now. Fortunately, those nights are the exception rather than the rule now, so if we have a bad night, we have sleep reserves to fall back on and aren't zombies the next day. The next projects are to get him to sleep (or at least play quietly) until 6:30 instead of 5:30, and to improve his terrible napping skills.

The other change I've noticed lately is that he's started to test some limits, try to figure out what he can get away with, and how often we really mean "no." He'll pause in the middle of doing something he's not supposed to and give us a look, kinda like this one:

Then he throws the toy, or steps on the broiler, or whatever he's thinking about doing, and waits to see what we're going to do about it. Fun times, and just a taste of what's to come, I'm sure.

More photos at Flickr.

Happy Thanksgiving

Just a day late. Here's Finn in his fancy Thanksgiving duds, giving thanks for our finally completed new driveway.

As of this week, Finn can:

• clap
• walk backwards (and pull doors shut behind him - watch those fingers!)
• dance at least 3 different ways
• sleep over 10 hours at a stretch (he's done this twice)
• make us think he's saying things like "ball" and "okay" when he apparently isn't really

Also, tooth #6 has officially arrived, and he seems to be working on #7.  I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted!

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.

A few pleas

1. Finn and the cats, please get on board with daylight savings time. I realize I may have been getting spoiled lately, but the other drivers on my commute would really appreciate it if I got more than 5-6 hours of sleep a night.

2. Please go out and vote today if you haven't already.

• On the off chance that you're both a) persuadable and b) reading this while you still have time to go vote, I urge you to vote for Obama. The Economist and Colin Powell say it more calmly, thoroughly, and persuasively than I could. If you're already an Obama supporter, don't get lazy. Get your butt out there. Lines may be long - take a book or a video game or some knitting or something.
  
• If you live in California, please vote no on Proposition 8. Voting yes writes discrimination into our state constitution. Voting no does absolutely nothing - the law tomorrow will be the same as it was yesterday. It does not tax churches. It does not make schools teach kids about marriage.

3. Send your thoughts, hopes, prayers - whatever you've got - to my little nephew Jacob. He's not having a good week. Please get well soon, buddy. [UPDATE - Allen called me this morning. Jacob started eating during the night and will likely be discharged today. Yay!]

Back from Bern, See More Chubs

Apparently Finn sleeps better when I'm home. Why that might be is not clear. Maybe I wear him out more, and he enjoys the peace of mind (not piece of mind) of having daddy at home. We're still not at "no wakeups," but a few nights recently his only wakeup was at 3 to 4 a.m. Of course, he woke up for the day at 5:45.

Bern, Switzerland, was . . . pleasant. A nice and pretty town, but not one of the jewels of Europe. It is on a river. It's old town is famously nearly unchanged since the 1300s. Below is the tallest building in town--a church. I went up about 2/3 of the way and got some nice shots.

The best part of the church were the fantastic stained glass windows. The sun came out when I was inside, and I got some great shots. This one below is my favorite.

Finn is pretty much a little maniac now. He can pull himself up on anything, sit back down, and do it again and again. He can move from chair to chair, and move across small gaps. A chubby little Spiderman? His excited noises range from loud squeals to loud Darth Vader breathing. He's trying to give up the army crawl for real crawling now, too. Also, his 5th tooth is coming in, so drooling is at its highest levels in 6 months. Katie brought him to his 9 month checkup recently. 48% height, 62% weight, 84% head circumference. Big noggin!

Standing and smashing and reading and sleeping

Hey, look at Finn!
Tuesday (and part of today) the only way he was happy was standing, so the only way I could get anything done was to get out his play pen and prop him up. Then he stood while I did dishes, until he fell over, and then he'd play for a while, until he got bored, and then I'd have to stand him up again.

Speaking of playing, for the most part Finn interacts with his toys one way: smashing! Smashing them into the floor, his lap, or his favorite, another toy. It's best if this makes a good noise, like smashing a maraca into a tambourine, or a rattle into ... something hard. Like my head.

There's also chewing, but mostly it's all smash around here these days. A few things escape the smash. First there's a balloon Jonathan bought him a few days ago ("he promised me he'd be really good all week if I bought it for him") - too floaty. But he did do the smashing motion with the balloon string, and there's a two-minute video of that and him demonstrating how he doesn't know how to crawl yet at Vimeo if you want to watch it.

The other non-smasher (usually) is his books. He LOVES fun textures, like the thick corduroy of our couch or the fuzzy throw pillow that's on it, so he loves his That's Not My Monster book (thanks Jessica, Daren, and Caitlin!). He'll paw studiously at its pages ("Its paws are too bumpy" "Its eyebrows are too hairy") for surprisingly long stretches of time. So of course we bought him That's Not My Dragon, but so far have resisted the temptation to get That's Not My Robot, That's Not My Monkey, or any of the other Touchy Feely titles. Now he feels the pages of all his books, and seems mildly confused and disappointed when they're just flat.

You may have already noticed, but the crib cam linked over on the right is now the living room rug cam. Finn's usually there at least a little while every morning and evening, and doing more interesting things than sleeping. If we forget to turn it off, you may see Murray or Mona wander by. Did I mention they both may have urinary tract infections? Yeah, so that's fun.

Oooh, and our other exciting news: we managed to go to the Beyer/Mastrapas' last night for dinner and a gathering of out-of-town friends and put Finn to bed in his play pen. This was a first for us (the previous attempt was a giant FAIL), and may open up all sorts of exciting possibilities. Not that I mind staying home for dinner usually - I'm actually kind of a decent cook these days. You should stop by sometime. :)

Cousins and peaches are both awesome, says Finn.

My cousin Mariah came to visit us last week from Iowa. She braved her first plane trip, scary San Francisco hills, 100+ temps, and a heart-breaking lack of Mountain Dew with considerable fortitude. We took her to the city, the forest, the beach, the movies, the mall, the theatre, and the mystery spot, and took lots of pictures of our adventures. Finn was surprised and delighted to see her each and every morning, and stared at her more or less nonstop. Perhaps he meant it to be welcoming. Kid really needs to learn how to blink. Unfortunately, we spent a little too much time in the car for Finn's liking, so he's now doing the thing where he arches his back and goes stiff as a board when we try to put him in his car seat. But he's always happy about 2 seconds after we take him out. See?

This week we're back on our normal routine for a while, which is actually kind of nice. Yesterday we took a nice long walk to run some errands, and then stopped in the park downtown to watch kids play in the fountain and eat some peaches. The peaches were apparently both delicious and hilarious.

Finn likes peaches from Katie on Vimeo.

Tooth count is now more or less officially up to four.

Acceptable foods are up to about a dozen.

Wakings at night were reliably down to one, but have been back up to two or three the past couple nights - but he's been sleeping later, and has finally figured out where the button is on his crib aquarium. Yay!

In other news, I made spanakopita the other night, Jonathan and Finn went to an Oakland A's game on Sunday, and Mona's claws have reached an all-time length record.