Waterlogged boys

Summer, or what passes for summer, is in full swing! Highs of 67! Lows of 52! What?! Anyway, at least it is sunny in the afternoons when the fog burns off. A few days ago when Katie was in New Orleans the Fortney boys went with some friends to a fun neighborhood pool in Sunnyvale, on the warm side of the Santa Cruz mountains. Both boys enjoyed the 1-foot-deep kiddy pool and the main pool (with parental assistance--thanks Rachel!). Here is Graham getting warm and dry after a fun afternoon. In other news, they inhaled paella on trips out of the pool.

The boys were supposed to fall asleep in the car, since we left at 7:40, just before their bedtime. Graham held on for 25 minutes, and Finn made it all the way home, plus another 45 minutes. He was rattling around his room til 9:15, probably the latest he's even stayed up. He was on a swimming high.

As for more local water, I put a little too much bubble liquid in a few nights back, but of course that just made bath time even more fun.

Finn was unable to attend school yesterday due to a fever (which had already broken), so the two of us went to see Cars 2. It was Finn's 2nd movie, after Toy Story 3 from last summer. He did pretty well, and only moved seats or rows a few times.

In other boy news, Graham has been stringing 2-word phrases together, like "Up high," "my turn," "bye cows," and "mean daddy." The last one was from when I changed his diaper without his permission! I'll remember that one forever.

Oh, and here is Graham dancing with Elmo at Toys 'R Us. :)

Elmo and Graham, Buddies from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Graham's first hair cut!

Graham's hair has grown in a lot more slowly than Finn's. But finally, here at 20 months, we decided it was time for him to get his first trim. We found a 1-chair Dr. Seuss-themed place that is a ways down towards Monterey. Finn went first and showed Graham how it was done, and then Graham took his turn, sitting on Katie's lap. He was a real pro!


For a comparison, here is Finn's first haircut, when he was 18 months old. He was much shaggier, and apparently we'd already done two little trims at home when he was a bit younger.
In other news, summer is taking its time in arriving. 63 is a nice temperature for January, I will admit, but in June....not so much.

Boys being boys

Wow, that month got away from us pretty fast here on the blog. But now I'm at 30,000 feet, and have some free time. (This is also my last science trip for the next few months!) Katie will be be posting about some new very tiny animals that live in our house, so I'll leave that to her...

Graham is growing up fast and likes to do what his brother does. He wants the toys Finn is playing with and sometimes the books Finn is looking at. ...and the cereal he is eating.... He has been nabbing various books around the house as "mine" and he carries them around. His favorites are a dinosaur book (that is mine!) and a bird book (that is Katie's). He likes to hold them in the car too.

Graham has a reasonable array of all of his teeth, and is talking up a storm---mostly one-word phrases. But he can sneak in the occasional two-worder, like "mine book!" He certainly can follow a wide array of complex multi-part instructions. And he is STILL a really snuggly little guy!

We have two musical instruments, as far as I know. A kazoo and a harmonica. Both are orange (like Finn's bike) since that is his favorite color.

The Fortney Band from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Here are two pics from the boys at various parks. The top one is from Los Gatos, where they have a giant model airplane. We visited there right after we got some family portraits taken in and around the forest in the park.

Here is Finn trying out a new tree at Westlake Park, which is just down the street from us.

For a friend's 2-year-old birthday party, we make the hour-drive up to Redwood City, to Ryan and Sally's house. They have this fun little horse that I think Finn sat on the last time we were over there. Sadly, I think that our boys' room is pretty much at toy capacity, at least until they get bunk beds in the year 201X. We'll see!

Dad, why don't we have one of these? from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Little Scam Artist

I'm at the Denver Airport but I thought that Graham's shenanigans needed to recorded on the blog while they were fresh. He has ascended to toddlercy, and life will never be the same. It is amazing that someone so small and so young (20 months) could be so crafty.

Sometime late last week Graham contracted some sort of virus that gave him a slight fever and skin rash. Saturday and Sunday he was definitely under the weather, and didn't sleep or nap as well as usual. He got a little more personal attention than usual, mostly because he demanded it. Monday, he seemed better, so we brought him to school. That lasted only a few minutes, and he was very sad and upset. I spent the whole day with him at home, and, except for an extra long nap (on me) seemed quite normal, but liked spending the day with me and watching a Sesame Street. He requested it by pointing at the TV and saying "Mooie."

Then came Tuesday---I wasn't in town so I'll let Katie's Facebook post tell the story: "Cried and refused to eat the whole 1/2 hour between when I dropped him off and picked him back up. Ate his muffin in the car on the way home, then came in the house, climbed on the couch, pointed at the TV, and said "Mooie!" I am sincerely hoping the doctor we see this afternoon will clear his rash as "not contagious" and the little faker can go back to day care tomorrow." (Dr. said he was fine.) Here is a pic from that day:

Today, according to Katie he went into hysterics again at drop-off today, but, just like yesterday, he is no longer sick. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice....nah, won't happen.

It is beginning to dawn on me that Graham may have been scamming us since day 1. This easygoing personality, chipper attitude, and good napping thing was all just an act, and he's been waiting patiently to take advantage of us.

Finns are taking over the world

Speaking of charts, look how many more babies were named Finn last year than, say 2006. 1081 vs. 590.

The next graph is popularity in the US - i.e. Finn was the 457th most popular name for boys in 2006, the 300th most popular in 2010. Before 2000 it wasn't in the top 1000, so the Social Security Administration doesn't give us the data.
Back before we were even pregnant, I started playing with the website and following the blog of Laura Wattenberg - a baby name data analyzer. I still do, even though I'm not planning on naming any more babies, because it's often fascinating. If you read Freakonomics and liked the baby name chapter, you'd like this stuff. Come over for dinner sometime, and I'll let you look up your name in her book. Her most recent post said that her readers had predicted that FINN would be the fastest rising baby name of 2010. It wasn't - not even one of the five fastest rising - but it caught my attention.

In case you're wondering, no, we're not people who picked Finn's name because we were sure it would make him a unique and special snowflake and who get mad as it gets more common. We just wanted something rare enough that he wouldn't have to use his last initial in class (ahem, Katies born in the late '70s?). If we've caught a rising trend and he won't have to spell his name for people, and no one will have to agonize over whether to address his correspondence to Mr. or Mrs., I think that's great. The quote from the blog that caught my eye was "More than anything, this sounds like a class list from a Mommy-and-Me gym class in a fashionable upscale neighborhood." Reminded me of the article from a while back that listed Finn as one of "the best names coveted by style-conscious parents." This amuses us. Sure, we're educated. We have Lived In New York. But at root we still think of ourselves as Midwesterners. Slobby ones. But Finn, apparently, is destined for greater things, or at least will be able to pretend to be without changing his name.

Graham is also on the charts above, although he hasn't been getting the same kind of press. Graham held steady in numbers and popularity for years, but has been climbing the last few. But I don't think he'll have to use his initial after his first name at school.

Your bonus for wading through/past the above: a story from Finn, to the best of my memory and paraphrasing ability.
F: I'm going to go and visit the chinchillas. In... where do chinchillas live, Daddy?
J: South America.
F: I'm going to go see the chinchillas in South America. They are very soft. And very delicate. You have to be very careful with chinchillas. And my airplane will go fast! Faster than a bullet. Faster than a bullet! And then I will go to Africa. To see the animals. And they will not bite me. And I will stay in a tent. They will not bite me because I will not try to ride on them. And then I will go to Japan. To see the train. The train called... what's the train's name, Mama?
K: Hiro?
F: ...Hiro...(looks doubtful)
K: Anpanman?
F: The Anpanman train. I will buy another Anpanman train* for my baby. And it will (various things, involving going very fast, all directions, etc., etc.). And then I will go to Florida. And my airplane will go SO FAST.
K: What will you see in Florida?
F: Weeelll, I will go to a meeting. A three year old meeting. All of the three year olds will be there. But not the four year olds.
*Jonathan got the boys toy trains as souvenirs from Japan. Finn's was Thomas, Graham's had an Anpanman face.

Covering the above destinations probably took 5-10 minutes. I forget where we went from there, but it was very enlightening.

Graham says "meat" and "beach" and other things

You know how it had been about ten months since I updated the height/weight chart? Yeah, it's been about a year since I updated my Flickr photos. So today I picked two photos a month and caught that sucker up. Restricting myself to two a month was tough, but made it a manageable process. And also means it's really easy for you to scroll through and see how much the boys have changed in the past year. Really. Look, go try it.

We are not the obsessive documenters of our family that we used to be. You, the blog audience, are woefully behind on Graham's progress on learning to talk, for instance. He says TONS of words now. I don't know, maybe a hundred? My favorites range from necklace ("nechiss") to couch ("shote"), both of which I need to capture on film. I totally missed my chance to capture how he used to pronounce zebra as "bizzahbizzah." Now it sounds more like zebra, and isn't nearly as cute. What *is* cute is when he demands, out of nowhere, that you "STOP!", complete with raised hand a la traffic cop or the Supremes. We don't know where he picked it up (teachers think maybe "Frosty the Snowman"?) or, often, what he's talking about. Usually nothing. There's a little bit of that one in the clips below.

He's big, huh? He is also snuggly, and fun, and a favorite at school, and a person of increasingly strong opinions.

Return of the charts! G = 18 months, F = 3 years

Apparently it has been TEN MONTHS since I updated this sucker. Pathetic. Insert usual disclaimers here about them not necessarily having their appointments at the same week of age, etc.

Probably we also need a disclaimer about taking the measurements with a grain of salt because of the small numbers we're dealing with, the fact that we've switched doctors a couple times and they measure a little differently, and also that small boys are wiggly. I think the main takeaway is that our boys are large, and will continue to be large. What you can't see here is that Finn's added another couple inches to his height since last November. The kid is TALL, or at least he seems that way to us.

My mom visited last week. This was great fun, as always, but this time it was also extraordinarily fortunate because the boys' day care closed for a week for spring break. Spring break!! Don't get me started. One of the days she was here we actually remembered to take a few photos. This is probably the best one.

And here's one of the outtakes that should give you a flavor for how the session went.

Jonathan is out of town again for a chunk of this week. The boys and I aren't letting it get us down, though. For one thing, Finn is very excited to be moving up to a new room at school, the Busy Bees. He has been itching to get over there, and apparently his "visit" to that room to start settling in today lasted from an hour after he showed up at school until the time I came to pick him up. Both the teachers told me he was a lot of fun to have in class.
In case that wasn't enough, the weather has finally turned gorgeous. We ate outside tonight even though the logistics were a little daunting for a single parent evening. Well worth it, I think.

My Spoon is too Big!

Going out to restaurants with the boys takes a certain state of mind. You have to want to go out to eat (fun!) while wrangling the boys in an unfamiliar environment (maybe!). We're gradually finding places in Santa Cruz that are kid-friendly. That can range from the restaurant being loud (a plus), to having books for kids to look at (new books!), to giving each child their own ball of pizza dough (a huge winner).

A couple weeks back Jessica and Daren, and their kids Caitlin (age 4) and Liam (age 2) came over the hill from Sunnyvale to spend the afternoon with us. We went to the Surfrider Cafe in downtown. We'd been there once before (they have books) but managed to keep it quiet that the kids meals came with ice cream. But not this time! Both boys really loved their vanilla ice cream, with Graham really taking to his "I'm a big boy now" status. There isn't much that is cuter than little boys with big spoons.




We've been making it down to the park 2-3 times a week, depending on the weather. Ducks are there in tremendous numbers. And coots. "What is a coot?" you might ask? (I sure did.) It is like a duck, but smaller. Instead of webbed feet they have what looks somewhat like green leaves that extend from either side of their three toes, to help them swim. Both boys like to chase the ducks and coots, which usually happens in slow motion. It's rare for the ducks to have to ever actually take flight to get away.

Here is Graham coot herding. The coot whisperer?

Duck walking from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

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.

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.