Chicken, it's the new gum

Tonight when I gave Graham his toothbrush he stuck it in his mouth, then took it back out and spit out a wad of chewed up chicken. From dinner. Which had ended over half an hour earlier. Apparently when you don't have all your molars, you can just work on a few bites of chicken all through tummies time, bath time, pajamafication and the like, without ever swallowing or giving up. He's a persistent kid.

Graham's a big chicken fan now, as Jonathan discovered while I was gone. I think the boys had a pretty good time without me, although I was told (and could tell) that I had been missed. Finn says I was gone for "soooo many days, Mama" but politely asked me "how was your day in Philadelphia, Mama?" He's so polite sometimes, I hardly recognize him.

Less than 3 days after I got back, Jonathan left again. The boys seem to be taking it all in stride, although Graham did look around for Jonathan to get his good night kiss after bedtime stories tonight. Here's a picture we took on one of the days we were actually all here, and a couple I took before my trip in case I got homesick.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the potty training bribes have gotten a bit out of hand. The peeing has long been easy, but like many kids, Finn's had intermittent struggles with #2. We started out with 1 M&M rewards, which quickly increased to 2 M&Ms, swappable for 2 chocolate chips, which were somehow more exciting. Somewhere in there things got crazy, and now he's getting daily girl scout cookies and has a chart that, when filled (4 weeks total, 12 days to go), is redeemable for a bike. I mean, we were going to get him a new bike this summer anyway, and the cookies will stop when the boxes are empty, but... geez. The way Finn usually works is that he responds really well to incentives (okay, bribes), and then once he does something long enough, he eventually forgets to ask for his reward. Toothbrushing, peeing on the potty, and I forget what else have all gone that route. I just hope we make as graceful an escape from this one, because it is a *big* one. Wish us luck.

Graham is gargantuan. And growing.

Graham is ten months old now. He wears 18 month clothes, and is as big as a number of two-year-olds we've met. He crawls with is belly raised off of the floor (sometimes). He cruises (a bit). He steals Goldfish crackers from his brother. He just cut his third tooth on Monday. Yesterday I stuck my hand out and asked him to give me five, and he refused, shaking his head and grinning. What a joker! Not that you'd know it from this recent photo session (courtesy of my mom. Thanks, Mom!).


If you like that, there's more. Note that that link is not the "cute ones" that we got prints of. It's the blooper reel.

And here's "that huge baby" (per Finn) in the infant room at the Children's Discovery Museum yesterday. He had a blast.

Graham at the CDM from Katie on Vimeo.

Tomorrow is MOVING DAY. Stay tuned.

Graham's officially big now

Graham had his six-month checkup Monday. He weighed 19 lbs., 4.5 oz, measured 26.5 inches tall, and had a head circumference of 44 cm. This puts him ahead of Finn, who was 18 lbs. 11.1 oz at his six-month checkup. Hooray charts!

Dr. Lee was impressed with how well he sits, unconcerned about his complete lack of interest in rolling over, and predicted the arrival of the second tooth any day now. And the day after his appointment, there was the second tooth. More will be coming soon, I'm sure. This week he's going to try avocados and carrots, and last week he added sweet potatoes to the list. We have yet to find anything he doesn't like. This includes paper. Mmmmm, paper.

Finn just came in soaking wet from playing in the "raindrops," which he enjoys immensely. I dumped about half a cup of water out of each rain boot - very effective accessory, obviously. He seems very glad to have both of us around so much (Jonathan even stayed home most of Tuesday and Thursday), and is back to his standard hijinx. Current favorite phrases include "Ready to play ball," "Sock it to me," "Don't play with me Graham!" (when Finn's upset and Graham smiles at him) and "What are you talking about, Mama?" (when I've been discussing things like smartphones or carseat specs with Jonathan).

Busy busy!

Looks like Jonathan beat me to the blog tonight, but I'm going to post anyway - there's been too much going on to wait! Graham got his first tooth on Sunday, the day after he turned six months old. He now eats rice cereal, applesauce, bananas, and broccoli, and loves it all.
Finn, of course, had to get in on the action when he saw us attempting to take the photo above. He has many teeth, and will show them to you if you ask. Or, you know, if you don't.
My mom went home yesterday. Having her here was so wonderful - I almost didn't miss Jonathan at all! (Just kidding. But she does wash more dishes. Hint, hint.) We watched New Moon, and it was just as awful as I was expecting, so that was fun. Last Thursday we went to the newly reopened Happy Hollow, where Finn was very excited, after hearing about all the animals they have there (jaguar! lemurs!), to hear that he would get to see a DONKEY. Here he is feeding his new friend Maybelline.

Feeding the donkey from Katie on Vimeo.
And here's my mom with the boys, the best shot we got with these wiggly boys the one time we thought to get the camera.
Fortunately, things haven't descended into complete chaos because my friend Angie has come down for a few days to help out and squeeze my cute children. Yay help! More goodies at Flickr.

Like a regular little person

Yeah, he's a talker. "Banana, dog, ball, mama, dada, hot, kitty." Some of these would be a little hard for an independent observer to pick out, but we can. "Hot," he really likes a lot. "Hot-tah." And you can tell him to do stuff. Go get the monkey book. Open that door. Close that door. Bring to mama. It's fun. In the mornings instead of wailing til 6:05 when I come to get him, he more often sits in his crib and yells from time to time. When I finally come in to get him, he sits up and grabs his blanket, ready for his morning banana!

It's been rainy a lot lately, so we've been going outside a bit less. On Saturday we went out in the rain anyway, for over an hour. We went exploring in the neighborhood! We jumped in some puddles, found a soggy 3-foot stick and pushed it around, poked his fingers into rain runoff spouts, stomped on some drainage grates, and yelled REALLY LOUD at a little black pug who was trying to do his business in the front yard. People driving by in their cars pointed at us and smiled. It was a good time.

We're up to 10 teeth now. 8 in front and 2 molars. No canines yet.

Here we are at our 4th annual Oscar party. We had a good crowd, drained some magnums, and best of all, I was the big winner in the Oscar pool. Finn had a fun time and enjoyed sitting on the big people chairs. He was NOT pleased when bedtime came around at 7 p.m.

Surviving the weekend alone with our Destructo

Have we mentioned lately that Finn's a maniac? He is. We've officially upgraded him from "imp" to "fiend."So I was a little worried when Jonathan left for his most recent trip. When he was in Berne I usually ended up eating dinner around 9, about 2 hours after Finn went to bed, and it was always cold because I kept thinking of One More Thing I had to do, urgently, before I could eat it. That was back when you could still turn your back on him. Now his playpen is apparently cruel and unusual punishment, and if you set him down in the middle of the floor he will pick the one thing in the room that, if you had half an hour to think about, you would least want him to touch, and go stick that in his mouth (we've been doing a lot of trash can relocation lately).

The upshot: I haven't been getting any dishes washed or food cooked while he's awake, so I decided I just wasn't going to do any at all while Jonathan was gone. Poof! Frozen burritos, takeout Chinese (thanks, Margaret!), here we go. I was much more pleased with myself last time, and I do feel guilty about the leeks and peppers languishing in the fridge, but my feet, back, and blood pressure are thanking me, and I've been getting some homework done.

Also for Jonathan-less sanity, this weekend we just focused on playing rather than on getting things done. We checked out the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose on Saturday. They have an area that's just for kids under 4, and within that, a room for "infants and crawlers." There are carpeted ramps and stairs, a fake fish tank, and a little cube with a cushion floor and mirror walls. It was definitely worth the price of my admission - Finn's was free! Here he is digging the mirror box:

More photos from our weekend at Flickr. Videos of squirting Finn in the face are on Jonathan's computer and will hopefully be posted later in the week.

Crawling, for realz

Just a quick one: Finn's officially ten months old now; he has five teeth; and he can crawl on his hands and knees. Like a real baby. Last night he went about 15 feet that way before deciding to flip over and park on his butt.

We went to a midwestern-hot-dish themed party this weekend. I failed to take any pictures, but Dave took a bunch. My favorite is this one, where Finn looks like he's about to impart some very sobering life lessons to Jonathan.

Here he is in a less serious mood:

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!

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.

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!!!

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.

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.

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...

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.