So a couple of weeks ago, David asked me if Andrew had started saying any consonants yet. And as I posted here, I told him I wasn't sure. Because I wasn't sure.
Well, the very next day, as if he knew what we'd been discussing, Andrew began saying "da de de da da." Isn't he so very thoughtful? So, yay for consonants!
And he blows lots and lots of raspberries, practicing the "b" sound. More consonants! I think we will have another round of enthusiastic "ba"-ing here in another month or two.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
I was right!
Do y'all remember when I sneered at the expensive designer diapers that Target was selling earlier this year?
Well, I was vindicated. Cruising past the baby section a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a big endcap full of those designer diapers, with the original price slashed down to a much more reasonable "clearance" price. Of course, the clearance price was still more expensive than you'd pay for regular old diapers, even the brand-name kind. No wonder no one bought them.
I'm guessing they won't try that little experiment again.
Although I will say this....I know a lot of parents (myself included) who already didn't like the way that diaper companies put little designs on the diapers, like Pooh Bear or Elmo. The designs show through light-colored clothes. For example, in order to keep Cookie Monster's googly-eyed face from beaming through Andrew's white linen baptism outfit, I had to put a plain white onesie on him first. It would have been nice to just have a plain old white diaper. But even the lower-cost diapers like Luvs put pictures on their diapers. (Yes, I probably could have used cloth diapers which are nice and plain. I didn't. That's a discussion for another time.)
So the Pampers folk were especially missing the mark with the designer patterned diapers: they were charging MORE for something than many parents want LESS of. Tsk tsk tsk.
I love it when I'm right.
Well, I was vindicated. Cruising past the baby section a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a big endcap full of those designer diapers, with the original price slashed down to a much more reasonable "clearance" price. Of course, the clearance price was still more expensive than you'd pay for regular old diapers, even the brand-name kind. No wonder no one bought them.
I'm guessing they won't try that little experiment again.
Although I will say this....I know a lot of parents (myself included) who already didn't like the way that diaper companies put little designs on the diapers, like Pooh Bear or Elmo. The designs show through light-colored clothes. For example, in order to keep Cookie Monster's googly-eyed face from beaming through Andrew's white linen baptism outfit, I had to put a plain white onesie on him first. It would have been nice to just have a plain old white diaper. But even the lower-cost diapers like Luvs put pictures on their diapers. (Yes, I probably could have used cloth diapers which are nice and plain. I didn't. That's a discussion for another time.)
So the Pampers folk were especially missing the mark with the designer patterned diapers: they were charging MORE for something than many parents want LESS of. Tsk tsk tsk.
I love it when I'm right.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
I don't remember
You know, you'd think I'd know what I was doing this time around. I've had one child already, raised him reasonably well so far, and nothing too bad has happened (well, other than that minivan-door incident, but we won't dwell on that because all's well that ends well, right?).
But here I am, on Kid No. 2, and I can't seem to remember much of what I did the first time around! My friend Mary Clare, who has a baby one week younger than Andrew, and I spent 30 minutes on the phone a couple of weeks ago, trying to remember how much baby food we fed our first kids at six months of age. I actually went back through this blog to look it up. And I'm still not entirely sure. I'll find myself mixing up a little bowl of baby oatmeal for Andrew and then studying it dubiously. "Does that look right?" I then will ask William, who will just shrug and keep slurping up his own bowl of Quaker's instant. Like he remembers.
Now David's doing it. "Has Andrew started saying any consonants?" he asked me earlier today. "Um, I don't know," I said, trying to remember. "Had William started saying any consonants by this time?" David didn't remember. I didn't remember either.
I'm reassuring myself that it really doesn't matter that much. I wrote down most of the big stuff last time, and hopefully I'll write it down this time, too. My motto in life has more or less been "If it matters, I write it down." (Which is better than my runner-up motto in life, which is "If something is stupid, I tend to say so.") I kind of wish now that I had written down even more the first kid around, but I'm glad that at least I wrote down as much as I did. Because while I may still be bumbling around with baby food, I at least have some frame of reference for some of the other stuff.
That is, if I can sort back through all the old posts and find it...
But here I am, on Kid No. 2, and I can't seem to remember much of what I did the first time around! My friend Mary Clare, who has a baby one week younger than Andrew, and I spent 30 minutes on the phone a couple of weeks ago, trying to remember how much baby food we fed our first kids at six months of age. I actually went back through this blog to look it up. And I'm still not entirely sure. I'll find myself mixing up a little bowl of baby oatmeal for Andrew and then studying it dubiously. "Does that look right?" I then will ask William, who will just shrug and keep slurping up his own bowl of Quaker's instant. Like he remembers.
Now David's doing it. "Has Andrew started saying any consonants?" he asked me earlier today. "Um, I don't know," I said, trying to remember. "Had William started saying any consonants by this time?" David didn't remember. I didn't remember either.
I'm reassuring myself that it really doesn't matter that much. I wrote down most of the big stuff last time, and hopefully I'll write it down this time, too. My motto in life has more or less been "If it matters, I write it down." (Which is better than my runner-up motto in life, which is "If something is stupid, I tend to say so.") I kind of wish now that I had written down even more the first kid around, but I'm glad that at least I wrote down as much as I did. Because while I may still be bumbling around with baby food, I at least have some frame of reference for some of the other stuff.
That is, if I can sort back through all the old posts and find it...
Friday, September 17, 2010
The sweet spot
Andrew will be seven months old next week. It's the sweet spot of babyhood. He's old enough to be able to really engage with us, but he's too young to go anywhere. Or to talk back to us. He sleeps through the night, and I can still pretty much drag him around to wherever I happen to be going. I do know, however, that those days are going to end before too long. So I'm trying to just enjoy him right now as much as I can.
I'm posting a few photos that I took the other night when we all got down on the floor to play with Andrew.
Augh! I just want to gobble him up when he's all bright-eyed like this:
Hmm. How'd all those rings get on Andrew? Can you tell that this little guy has a big brother?
If you look closely in this last picture, you can see that David's got one finger hooked in the strap of Andrew's overalls. That's so Andrew won't just pitch forward and land on his face. He's getting better every day, though, about sitting up on his own. He's much more stable than he was even a week ago.
I'm posting a few photos that I took the other night when we all got down on the floor to play with Andrew.
Augh! I just want to gobble him up when he's all bright-eyed like this:
Hmm. How'd all those rings get on Andrew? Can you tell that this little guy has a big brother?
If you look closely in this last picture, you can see that David's got one finger hooked in the strap of Andrew's overalls. That's so Andrew won't just pitch forward and land on his face. He's getting better every day, though, about sitting up on his own. He's much more stable than he was even a week ago.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Gross anatomy
William's been obsessed with one of David's old med school textbooks for a couple of months now. It's an anatomy book, full of pictures of cadavers and cross-sections of cadavers and peeled-back pieces of cadavers. Lovely stuff. Fabulous bedtime reading.
Of course, we did not tell William that the illustration of a skeleton that he was so carefully studying was a photo of an actual skeleton from a person formerly known as alive. Why freak him out, we reasoned. Just let him look at the pictures, and he'll eventually get bored with it.
But he didn't get bored with it. He continued to look at it and ask for explanations of the various parts. Still, we figured, why let him in on what the pictures really are?
Until one day, William hefted the book into my lap so he could ask me yet another question that I could not answer. (My standard responses are either "You're asking the wrong parent, kid" or "Hmmm. Let's see what Dr. Google has to say about this.") And as I tried to figure out exactly what he was pointing to, he said very matter-of-factly, "These are pictures of dead people."
To which I stuttered and managed to stammer out a response something like, "Uh, yes. Yes, they are."
He wasn't fazed in the least. Not in the least. Hopefully this lack of squeamishness bodes well for him as a future scientist and not as a future, I don't know, axe murderer or something.
And for the record, we bought him his own children's book about the human body. He's got a good memory. I'm not really exaggerating when I say that I wonder if he might actually be able to explain the digestive system better than I could.
Of course, we did not tell William that the illustration of a skeleton that he was so carefully studying was a photo of an actual skeleton from a person formerly known as alive. Why freak him out, we reasoned. Just let him look at the pictures, and he'll eventually get bored with it.
But he didn't get bored with it. He continued to look at it and ask for explanations of the various parts. Still, we figured, why let him in on what the pictures really are?
Until one day, William hefted the book into my lap so he could ask me yet another question that I could not answer. (My standard responses are either "You're asking the wrong parent, kid" or "Hmmm. Let's see what Dr. Google has to say about this.") And as I tried to figure out exactly what he was pointing to, he said very matter-of-factly, "These are pictures of dead people."
To which I stuttered and managed to stammer out a response something like, "Uh, yes. Yes, they are."
He wasn't fazed in the least. Not in the least. Hopefully this lack of squeamishness bodes well for him as a future scientist and not as a future, I don't know, axe murderer or something.
And for the record, we bought him his own children's book about the human body. He's got a good memory. I'm not really exaggerating when I say that I wonder if he might actually be able to explain the digestive system better than I could.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
And so autumn begins at last
My God, how did I get so behind again? Here it is, September already. I love September. I'm already waking up each morning in a better mood, knowing that it's fixing to be autumn.
But wow, a lot has happened. In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
Andrew weighed 17 lbs 8 oz and was 27 inches long at his six month (plus one week) well-baby visit last Thursday, which puts him smack-dab in the middle of the growth chart. He's in the 50th percentile for both height and weight, which also means that he's smaller than William was at the same age. And here we were, all thinking that he was this giant baby. And he's really not! I'm actually pleased about this. It means that he's much more likely to fit into all of William's hand-me-down clothes for this fall and winter. Hurray! I can't wait to put Andrew in William's sweet little green grasshopper romper, the shark sweater, and all those other outfits that I have such fond memories of.
Andrew is now gobbling down baby food like a champ. He's had rice cereal, peas, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes and carrots. We start him on a new food on Tuesday. I think I'm going to go with either oatmeal or a fruit. Maybe apples or pears. So far, I've introduced everything in the exact same order that I did with William, but maybe we'll get really crazy and go with something totally wild and unexpected next. Like peaches! I like living on the edge, you know.
William started four-year-old school on Friday. Should I call that Pre-K or four-year-old kindergarten, or what? Well, whatever it is, he started it. He loooooves it. He has the cutest little teachers, all young and energetic, and a terrific classroom and they're going to be learning more yoga again this year from their music teacher. He's allowed to bring PBJs in his lunch this year, and there are several boys in his class who love to play Batman on the playground, too. I think it's going to be a good year.
Obligatory First Day of School photo:
William also started four-year-old Encore on Tuesday. That's the school district's gifted-and-talented program for preschoolers. His schedule is going to be packed this autumn, between going to preschool five days a week and Encore one afternoon a week. I was feeling all guilty for accidentally missing the deadline to sign him up to play soccer this fall, but looking at all the schlepping I'm going to be doing anyway, that might not be such a bad thing.
Um, what else is going on with us?
I guess those are the big things. On a smaller scale....
William keeps asking lots of good questions, so I find myself spending a lot of time on Google, looking up the answers. He and I spent almost an hour the other day looking up information about the South Pole and the North Pole the other day. I don't know how much he learned, but I feel smarter already.
Andrew keeps getting more and more fun. I love this age. He's starting to really pay attention to things, he's figuring things out, and he laughs so much more, too. And the fact that he sleeps through the night reliably helps, too. :) Sometimes I like to just stare at him and stroke his cheek and drink him in. William and I both spend a lot of time telling him how adorable he is. Hopefully we won't spoil him too much.
But wow, a lot has happened. In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
Andrew weighed 17 lbs 8 oz and was 27 inches long at his six month (plus one week) well-baby visit last Thursday, which puts him smack-dab in the middle of the growth chart. He's in the 50th percentile for both height and weight, which also means that he's smaller than William was at the same age. And here we were, all thinking that he was this giant baby. And he's really not! I'm actually pleased about this. It means that he's much more likely to fit into all of William's hand-me-down clothes for this fall and winter. Hurray! I can't wait to put Andrew in William's sweet little green grasshopper romper, the shark sweater, and all those other outfits that I have such fond memories of.
Andrew is now gobbling down baby food like a champ. He's had rice cereal, peas, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes and carrots. We start him on a new food on Tuesday. I think I'm going to go with either oatmeal or a fruit. Maybe apples or pears. So far, I've introduced everything in the exact same order that I did with William, but maybe we'll get really crazy and go with something totally wild and unexpected next. Like peaches! I like living on the edge, you know.
William started four-year-old school on Friday. Should I call that Pre-K or four-year-old kindergarten, or what? Well, whatever it is, he started it. He loooooves it. He has the cutest little teachers, all young and energetic, and a terrific classroom and they're going to be learning more yoga again this year from their music teacher. He's allowed to bring PBJs in his lunch this year, and there are several boys in his class who love to play Batman on the playground, too. I think it's going to be a good year.
Obligatory First Day of School photo:
William also started four-year-old Encore on Tuesday. That's the school district's gifted-and-talented program for preschoolers. His schedule is going to be packed this autumn, between going to preschool five days a week and Encore one afternoon a week. I was feeling all guilty for accidentally missing the deadline to sign him up to play soccer this fall, but looking at all the schlepping I'm going to be doing anyway, that might not be such a bad thing.
Um, what else is going on with us?
I guess those are the big things. On a smaller scale....
William keeps asking lots of good questions, so I find myself spending a lot of time on Google, looking up the answers. He and I spent almost an hour the other day looking up information about the South Pole and the North Pole the other day. I don't know how much he learned, but I feel smarter already.
Andrew keeps getting more and more fun. I love this age. He's starting to really pay attention to things, he's figuring things out, and he laughs so much more, too. And the fact that he sleeps through the night reliably helps, too. :) Sometimes I like to just stare at him and stroke his cheek and drink him in. William and I both spend a lot of time telling him how adorable he is. Hopefully we won't spoil him too much.
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