I'm walking in a spiderweb...

Happy Halloween! Since the British don't so much do Halloween, today was pretty low-key. Jack dressed up as a baby spider, and I was his spiderweb. I told Jack all about Halloween in America, but it was obviously a bit hard to demonstrate. We had to settle for trick or treating around Ben's office after bringing him dinner. Then we visited our friends on the third floor, Judith, Sophia, and Jon. Phia just returned from over two months in Rome, learning Italian and working for her British law firm, and I had hardly seen Judith, Phia's mom, or Jon, Phia's boyfriend during that whole time either. Honestly, they just collect fascinating people--they always have someone interesting around, and tonight was no exception. Their former neighbor Simon, a caricature of a British partner in a law firm, arrived shortly after Jack and I did. They all of course, loved Jack's costume and oohed and aahed over how happy and well-behaved he was.

We started the day with Stacy and Kaia coming over for an American breakfast. While we were chatting yesterday, Stacy let it slip that she had never tried Lucky Charms. Since we currently have a bevy of American cereals from Skyco.co.uk (an American food importer), I insisted she come over and try a breakfast with a noticeably higher sugar, preservative, and additive content than Wheetabix. When confronted with Froot Loops, Froot Loops with marshmallows (which are too much, even for me), Apple Jacks, and Lucky Charms, Stacy took the prudently cautious choice of Apple Jacks. Must start slowly when you're going from chunks of unflavored shredded wheat to thoroughly processed sugar cubes, after all.

We spent 2 hours this afternoon at the NHS well baby clinic waiting to see a health visitor, who's sort of like a pediatric nurse who specializes in child development. When I brought up Jack's eating and sleeping problems, she realized we needed to have a much longer conversation than she had time for, so she made an appointment to come by our flat tomorrow at noon. Yes, you may have to wait in a long queue for health care here, but the service factor can't be beat in some respects. I mean, seriously, house calls? Didn't those go out in the US around 1950?

Jack's daytime naps were amazing today. He slept for an hour and a half this morning and an hour and a half this afternoon. Yesterday evening I discovered that I could unscrew the self-closing chain on our doors so that they close slowly and quietly now, a fact that might really help Jack's sleeping. I hope.

The first stand

Yesterday morning I had quite a shock. I heard Jack waking up from his nap (an hour and a half morning nap--longer than the total he slept all day any day last week!), so I went in to pick him up. I didn't have to reach far; Jack had pulled himself to standing in his crib! He looked about as surprised as I did. So all my handiwork last week lowering the crib one level had to be repeated again last night, since Jack's head was at the same level as the top of his crib when he stood up. I once again became Joanne Liebler and conquered the beast that is Jack's crib, this time with much easier success. That's why there wasn't a post last night.

This weekend was much more social than our recent ones. Ben's finally getting enough weekend time off that we're willing to do a little more than just sit around in our pajamas all day on the weekends. Friday night, I can joyfully report that after a long, hard week, Jack and I were able to walk Ben home from work a 6 in the evening! Saturday we went to a lovely housewarming for Jess King, a Virginia Law alum and one of the new associates at Ben's office. Then we came home and had a brief family cuddle time--the pictures are from that.

Sunday morning we left for church just after noon and saw that the bizarre Halloween rave at the freaky club around the corner was still going on! That was a little weird. We've been going to the Italian church just down the street recently. They speak only in Italian, including the sermons, which can be a bit hard to follow but is good for our language immersion. We're actually starting to pick up quite a bit. It's such a happy community. Much more spirit-filled than the Latin mass at St. Etheldreda's, the 13th century church we had been going to--that one's gorgeous, but they just don't seem to like babies there. Sunday afternoon, Ben's officemate Aseet and his girlfriend Cristina (pictured), who are both Canadian lawyers, came over. Cristina's here for a few months awaiting her NY Bar Exam results, so Jack and I are going to spend some time with her, probably going on a London Walks walk tomorrow and maybe starting a regular jogging date in Hyde Park with her.

Yesterday Jack and I went to see Sicko at the Electric Scream, the baby movie viewing held at the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill with my friend Jolene and her son Wesley, who is exactly 7 weeks younger than Jack. Interesting movie. Not my favorite, but thought-provoking. More interesting was the fact that we got stuck in the middle of a film crew taping a new movie called Hippy Hippy Shake about some counterculture icon in 1960s London. No interesting American-known celebrities are in it. And no chance that we'll inadvertently end up in the movie, as they were controlling the filming area pretty well and I'm pretty sure they would edit a Bugaboo out of a 1960's movie. We also ran into Siobhan, a former labor and delivery nurse from Philadelphia, whom I met at prenatal yoga class. I hadn't seen her at all since about a month before Jack was born, but we tentatively made plans to get together with her and her son Finn sometime next week.

Today, we had a brief doctor's appointment, at which it was recommended that I hire a night nanny. Night nannies are women who take care of babies for new parents at night. It's a great idea, but an expensive one. A week of 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. care will run you $2000. Not cheap. So I think we might hire Stacy's phone in nanny instead. For only 150 quid, you get six weeks in which you call/email her daily, describe your baby's habits and behavior for the previous day, and she gives you advice about how to solve eating and sleeping problems. It's worked wonders for Kaia's sleeping patterns. Hopefully it will do the same for Jack's.

We spent the rest of the day with Stacy and Kaia, first on Oxford Street, then back at their flat for dinner and (gasp) talk about things other than babies. Rich is off visiting his brother, and Ben never gets to come home for dinner, so we figured it would be good to eat together. They're only briefly home in the middle of their month-long vacation--Berlin was last week, then in the country last weekend, York this weekend, and finally a 2 1/2 week vacation in Boston ending on Thanksgiving. So exciting for them, but so lonely for us.

Exciting purchases of the day included Jack's first shoes (for Dad's benefit--I'll have pictures tomorrow hopefully) and an exersaucer, which I'm going to put together tomorrow. Can't wait for you to see Jack's costume tomorrow. I'm pretty proud of it...

Godmother Melanie

called this afternoon at a very opportune time, when I was really feeling like talking to someone but not sure if any of you back home were up yet. So in appreciation of that, today's picture is an old but good one of her holding Jack in Rome right after his baptism.

Also, here's one of our first ones of Jack, before he even had his first bath. I was thinking this afternoon as he took a (too short) nap on my chest that I can't believe that only six months ago he fit inside me. Unbelievable.

No new pics because the battery on the camera is taking its sweet time recharging.

Today's development was that Jack has now figured out how to make his Leap Frog counting maracas work (by the way, I don't do underlining, so anything underlined is a hyperlink.), so he's getting regular exposure to the numbers 1-10 and colors of the rainbow in both English and Spanish.

Exchushe me...

For some reason my family--especially Tyler--still regularly makes fun of me for an impulsive fit I threw about ten years ago in a hotel somewhere in the Midwest during a long family road trip. We had been driving all day, on about day 6 of a week long road trip, so everyone's nerves were shot. After trying about half a dozen hotels, we finally found one with an open room and settled down to sleep, only to find that the walls were paper thin and the people next door were very boisterous--I can't remember whether they were arguing or laughing, but I can remember that they were extremely loud and were keeping us all awake. Twenty minutes in, I jumped out of bed, left the room in my pajamas and retainer without saying a word to anyone, and pounded on the door next to ours. When the shocked occupants answered, I said (with my retainer in) something to the effect of, "Exchushe me, but we can hear every word you're shaying." I returned to our room, where my family had heard everything, and our problem was solved.

This morning I did somewhat of a repeat performance. The people in the flat above ours have been doing some serious remodeling for the past two months or so. They began immediately after the flat across the hall was noisily finished. Every bang of the hammer and saw through wood reverberates to no end through our all-concrete building, and most of the construction work has been done immediately over Jack's bedroom. This noise is in addition to the complete demolition of a building we overlook, which has resulted in intermittent jackhammering from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. most weekdays for the past nine months.

So at about 8 a.m., while all three of us were sleeping soundly, the hammering began. When combined with Jack's lack of sleep, my lack of sleep, and Ben's lack of sleep and excess of work, I was a not happy mommy. The poor Eastern European construction guy who answered the door didn't get a word in at all. I started by saying, "Hi. My 6 month old son is sleeping in the flat directly below you," said something about teething and something about not having slept for more than 4 consecutive hours since February, and finally said, "so do you think you could hold off on the heavy construction noises for another hour or so?" I left. He stopped until 9:30, after all of us were up. Problem solved.

I didn't have a retainer in this time, though.

Day three

Things are rough. Jack's on day three of a sleeping and eating strike (including no napping), and Ben's been home a total of about 12 hours since Monday morning. Not fun for any of us. So I'll let the pictures speak instead.

some mommy thoughts

The weekend was lovely. We had a Thai dinner out after a lazy Saturday in. I had mine super spicy, which was extra good for my sinuses, which had been bothered by some unidentified form of allergy, but may have been a little harsh on poor Jack's tummy. He's never been bothered when I've eaten spicy food before, but I think this time I had it extra spicy and didn't notice because my nose was so blocked that I couldn't smell a thing.

On Sunday we went to brunch with Rich and Stacy and Kaia, which, bizarrely, may have been the first time the six of us ever went out together. I need some confirmation on this, Stacy, but I think it may be true, because we almost always get together on weekdays, so we're usually without daddies, or at least without Ben. And I think the last time we went to brunch together Stacy and I were still (heavily) pregnant, because I distinctly recall Rich and Ben having a discussion about how they wanted to start a "Pimp My Buggy" show in the vein of "Pimp My Ride." Weird. I mean, that we haven't all six been out together, not the show idea. That's brilliant. Seriously, Rich and Ben could market anything together.

Today was pretty boring. Jack didn't sleep last night and he kind of creaked his way through the day, sleepy but with his teeth apparently hurting too much for him to sleep well. Poor thing. I've been giving him baby Tylenol and baby Motrin regularly throughout the day, but the pain always seems to come back as bad as ever after 3 or 4 hours. If tonight is bad again, I'm going to go to Boots and ask for some stronger medicine that Stacy said really helped with Kaia's teething pain (she should know--Kaia has 7 teeth already!). It's supposed to include some sort of sleep aide also, which would probably be good for both Jack and me, but it makes me just a bit nervous.

Which brings me to an issue I seem to keep confronting lately--chemicals. There's been this show on BBC 4 that is looking into all the manmade chemicals that people are exposed to. It's supposed to be some sort of expose', but basically this woman (who must be someone famous here, because they keep advertising it as "Sarah Beeny examines...") has people's urine tested for chemicals, shocks them with unexplained numbers ("Your triclosan levels were 650!" But 650 what? And what's high and what's normal?), then goes on to say, "Scientists tell us that these products don't have any discernable negative effect on people, but couldn't they really? I mean, when given in doses thousands of times higher than this to rats, they ended up gay/faster maturing/disoriented." Honestly, any credibility flies out the window then. And then I saw this article on CNN.com today about a family in California that had their blood tested starting three years ago for a newspaper article. The mom is now a huge activist because of it. The CNN article is slightly more legit. Not because it's CNN.com--they lost that credibility in my book when they lead with Don Imus for an entire week while Putin basically declared himself president of Russia for life. But because it at least mentions what the potential harms are and cites studies that have found harm.

But this whole "debate" is sort of like Fast Food Nation, which I just finished reading a few weeks ago. I have to say, I found it thoroughly unconvincing. I didn't find it gross at all, the "problems" he described with the fast food industry (which were more accurately described as problems with meat in general) didn't really bother me, and his sanctimonious tone alternately alternately annoyed and amused me. The only thing that really freaked me out was the stories of children dying of E.coli. But really, put in perspective, which the anecdotal stories were horrific, the incidence of illness or death was unbelievably rare.

At the same time, when confronted with a baby who attempts to put everything he sees (including his reflection) into his mouth, I have an uncontrollable urge to make everything perfectly clean in a way that kills all bacteria but leaves no cleaning product residue behind. Those goals seem at great odds with one another, as any "natural" product I've tried, with the possible exception of the Method line (which may not be all that natural anyway, just non-toxic), doesn't work worth anything.

So that's my dilemma. But I'm not going to lose sleep over it. At least not tonight. Jack's asleep, so off to bed I go for a few hours until he wakes up again.

Sharp words

I didn't write yesterday because for the first time all week I actually got to see my husband in the evening. Ben had been working until 3 a.m. every night this week on a surprise deal that he didn't find out about until last Saturday, but yesterday he was able to leave work at a shockingly normal 6:30 (p.m., not a.m.). Jack and I were on a walk when we got word that Ben was being released early, so we met him at the office and walked him home. Again tonight he was able to leave early enough that he was home by 7:30. Hooray! Sad that I'm excited about such little time with him, but right now I'll take what I can get.

While the three of us were sitting around after meals of lasagna with red wine and carrots and sweet potatoes last night, Jack was chewing on my finger, when I suddenly felt something really sharp from the bottom of his gums. Jack's getting his first tooth! I haven't been able to see it yet, but it's definitely there, as confirmed by several more razor-sharp incidents today. It's the bottom right-side front tooth that's coming in first, and I think there may be a top one not far behind. Jack has been surprisingly calm about it, though. His sleep has only been slightly more disrupted than normal, and he's just slightly fussy and wants to be held all day. I can deal with that--it's the baby screaming in pain that I just can't take. I have to admit, though, that I'm already getting slightly nervous about breastfeeding this baby--I can imagine it getting very uncomfortable once he decides I look like a teether.

Jack is happily enjoying his new toys. The Taggies ball is still slightly big for him to manage, and he doesn't understand how to work the flower petals (the individual notes, as opposed to the bigger buttons that play whole songs and scales) yet, but the zebra blocks are a big hit. He sat in his new chair for lunch today without trying to squirm out of it once; he at a whole banana that way. And his play mat is getting lots of use, especially the quilt square with the mirror in the middle of it. He's spent several hours over the past two days trying to bite the nose of the baby in the mirror. Biting noses and latching on to chins and cheeks are Jack's ways of kissing--we hope. I've tried to take a picture of Jack with the mirror, but I just can't seem to get the right angle to capture it.

Oh, and Jack has taken to his newly lowered bed very well. He thinks it's a blast to look out between the bars of the crib when he wakes up from his naps. Such a happy, good-natured baby--even while teething!

Christmas in October

The coffee this morning was amazingly successful. About a dozen mommies showed up with their babies, ranging in age from 6 weeks to "25 months." I found the latter to be a strange categorization (hence the quotes), as I would have just described her as "2," but this mommy has other issues about which I would sooner complain. Naming her daughter Sparkle, for instance. Seriously, I'm not kidding on that one. But I digress unnecessarily, namely about something other than Jack's antics. Point is, it was a great event, with some people sticking around from 10:30 until after 1:30. Fantastic. Jack seemed to enjoy looking at the other babies and amused himself very well playing with a few teethers while only making 3-4 grabs that threatened to send my plate or glass careening to the floor. He also managed to eat one whole banana cube and one whole squash cube without getting any food on his clothes (sans bib, nonetheless) and without spitting up any of it!

For those of you who don't know, I make all of Jack's baby food from scratch with only organic ingredients. Interestingly enough I've become kind of militant about organic, homemade stuff, which is especially weird because after the KCWC nutrition seminar where I was first introduced to the idea of homemade baby food, I came home crying because it all sounded too impossibly difficult. Of course, it's probably not all that difficult when, like most of the KCWC women, you don't work AND have a housekeeper AND have a nanny, which explains why none of the other moms there were freaking out at the idea. But actually I found out that it's not really all that difficult for me, either. It just takes a couple of weekend days (when Ben can watch Jack while I cook) to make enough food for a month or two, when made in big batches and frozen in individual portions. That method does carry risks, however, hence the two dozen cubes of pureed parsnips and two dozen cubes of pureed plums that may well go uneaten. So when I say "cubes," I'm talking about those individual portions, which are about the size of ice cubes.

Again with the digressions. Jack and I both had a great time, so I decided we should celebrate, and I bought him a stuffed flower toy that plays musical scales in the tones of several different instruments.

When we got home, Jack had even more goodies waiting for him. Since Royal Mail, the national postal service, is on and off of strikes right now (annoying, but still less disruptive and less pointless than the terrible tube worker strike of last month), I paid a few extra pounds to have the JoJoMamanBebe order delivered through Parcel Force, which is like a UK-only Fed-Ex. I had no idea it would arrive so quickly, though; I only placed the order on Sunday morning! Lots of cute things from that order to show you tomorrow.

No pictures today, though, because I had to spend the better part of the evening 1) chasing after Jack to prevent him from trying to crawl through spit up, which he had in copious amounts tonight, despite his reflux medicine, and 2) moving his crib mattress to a lower level. Therefore I had few free moments while Jack was awake. I'll make up for it tomorrow.

When he woke at 3 a.m. last night, I noticed that Jack was up on all fours with his head level with the top of the crib. Scared me to death, so there was no way I was going to let him take even one more nap with his mattress at the highest level. But I underestimated how long and complex changing it would be. After struggling with it for about 20 minutes, I started to vaguely recall that while 8 1/2 months pregnant I had a horrible time putting the crib together. Forty-five minutes after that I remembered why I had such a hard time. You see, the British like to make things difficult to put together. Jack's crib has this terrible screw lock feature that requires the assembler to get underneath the crib while simultaneously hold a nut in place with a flat head screwdriver and turn a bolt with a hex key--not an easy task period, but especially difficult when you're carrying 50 extra pounds of baby weight or trying to keep your 6 month old from following you underneath the crib. Give me an Ikea assembly line piece over that hassle any day; Swedes may make freaky-looking furniture, but they sure do make the design user-(or at least assembler-) friendly.

A recovery day

Last night I went to bed with a really sore throat, and this morning I woke up feeling not much better. I thought I was getting a milder form of whatever bug Jack had week before last. Even though he was sick I continued playing one of his favorite games--put the binky in Mommy's mouth, laugh, then pull it out and put it in Jack's mouth. He's really good at it, and it's helped him control it much better so that he can now usually put the binky in his own mouth pretty well. At any rate, it probably was risky, but I figured that if he was sick I was probably going to get it anyway, too.

But this evening I'm feeling much better, and I don't think I'm really getting sick after all. Ben took good care of me this morning, bringing me oatmeal and lemon tea in bed.Then I spent all day at home, taking two 2-hour naps with Jack and we didn't do much else. Of course, since Jack was sleeping in our bed, there were some spit up issues and we had to change the sheets. Jack was more than willing to help me, though, lending plenty of smiles and wiggles. How great is that dimple?!

Tomorrow Jack and I are the hosting the KCWC New and Expectant Mums coffee at the cafe at Mamas and Papas off Oxford Street. We're meeting up with about 10 other mom and baby pairs there at 10:30 in the morning. We may do a little shopping after that, but I've just placed one really big order of toys and clothes from JoJoMamanBebe (including one really cute set of blocks in a zebra pull toy and a Taggies ball) and a baby supply order from Boots (new, bigger size of binky and some cutlery in my vain attempt to find a cup Jack will drink from so we can drop the water from a baby bottle habit), so we should be good on baby stuff for a little while. We'll see. I'm really in the market for a new diaper bag. Never thought I'd say that with such excitement...

Jack's half birthday celebration

We've had a great weekend, not the least of which was our celebration of Jack turning 6 months old on Saturday! To catch you up, Friday afternoon Stacy and Kaia (see the embarrassingly old pic of Jack and his best friend above) came over to drink tea (mommies), hold hands and chew on books (babies), and start learning baby sign language (presumably everyone, although Jack and Kaia probably won't be able to sign anything for a few more months).

Ben was able to come home at a decent time on Friday, so we had dinner together while Jack fought a valiant battle against the curtains and a blanket. A bit hard to describe, but very entertaining to watch, and Jack seemed to enjoy himself.

Saturday we slept in then walked Ben into work (he had to go in for a few hours), and Jack and I headed to the grocery store to pick up supplies for his half-birthday dinner. Ben and I celebrated with some lasagna (Pops' secret recipe) and a rainbow chip birthday cake, while Jack had a dinner of bananas and carrots, one of his new favorites. I think Mommy and Daddy got a slightly sweeter deal.

Oh, and for the record, Jack is pinching skin on my arm in the picture above, not just flab. I'm fortunately back to within about 5 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight, but one of Jack's less desirable habits right now is holding onto just my skin rather than grabbing my whole arm. He does a similar thing with my hair, which is part of the reason I'm shedding like crazy and feel like I'm going bald.

Sunday afternoon we went to lunch in Fulham at the home of a new S&C associate. Cristoph is Swiss, his wife Alex is from a German-speaking part of France, and their 7 year old son Adrian is going to Fulham Prep, one of the best (and most expensive) schools in the world. It was really interesting to hear them effortlessly moving between speaking several different languages with one another.

Today Jack and I have washed and dried all the laundry in the world--no small feat when every (small) load takes about 4 hours. And although I'm not completely sure he understood what he was doing, I think Jack is starting to get the hang of playing patty-cake. We do three claps with his hands together (I'm moving them, of course), the three claps with our hands together, then three claps with my hands, then reverse. Today he started reaching out his hands to clap with mine at the right time!

video of a giggling baby

It's short because I didn't know how much video the blog would support, but I thought I'd try. He's been giggling all afternoon.

a new cap

First of all, I have to apologize for not giving a shout-out to Aunt Rachel yesterday on her birthday. We called to sing to her, but Jack wasn't in a very talkative mood. So, happy birthday, Rachel. Hope you like your present--it should be there this afternoon.


Second, I had to post early during Jack's afternoon nap rather than tonight, because while we were window shopping on Upper Street after lunch with the Sanderses, Stacy found the most adorable hat in the world, and I just had to get it for Jack. It's still a little big, as you can see, but it was way too cute to pass up.



Horrendous night last night, with wakes at 11:30, 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 6:15, etc. Woke up Ben (after he got home), was very not fun for me, and it didn't sound like Jack was enjoying it much either. I'm hoping this is just the final remnant of his recent illness. And that it will go away quickly...

a sitting-up baby

Last night was an especially rough night, with an 11 p.m. bedtime and wakes at something like 1-1:30, 4-4:30, 7:30-8:15, and then up for the day at 10. He's still not yet what you would call a good or even average night sleeper. The other moms in our prenatal class told stories of their babies regularly sleeping 8 hours or more by 3 1/2 months. One of them then even had the nerve to complain that she was "so exhausted." She wasn't even breastfeeding any more at the time, so she wasn't implicitly required to get up in the night each time her son did. I was not amused. Jack has thus far slept more than 6 consecutive hours precisely once. It's been at least 7 months since I've slept more than 5 consecutive hours. This is what they do in Guantanamo.

Despite that, the morning started with a wonderful whole-family cuddle session when Ben brought Jack into our bed when he woke at 7:30. I've got to hand it to them that my boys know how to snuggle.

The big news of the day is that this afternoon Jack did his first solo, hands-free sitting up session that lasted more than 2 seconds. It was amazing. Then he repeated his feat, which was more amazing. Then he let me capture it on camera, which just goes to prove what a wonderful baby he is.

I was searching around for fun new activities to do with him and decided to look to Dr. Sears for suggestions. I was flipping through the six month old section (his half birthday is Saturday for those of you who don't regularly keep track) and came across pictures about the progression of sitting up poses. When I realized Jack was at an age where he really should be able to sit up by himself, I thought I'd give it a try. Since (1) we have hardwood floors, no rugs, and very unpadded carpet, and (2) this baby loves to stand up, I haven't done much sitting up work with Jack. The shorter the distance his head would have to fall to hit the ground, the happier I am.

So with The Baby Book in hand, we headed for Jack's crib. A few leg adjustments later and he was propping himself up with his hands. When I brought a toy out, he then reached for it without even realizing that he was balancing himself, and he managed to stay upright! Super adorable.

I'm assuming the frequent, ravenous wakes had something to do with Jack's unwillingness to eat solid foods the past few days. This morning he and I both got a little too excited that he wanted to eat, and he ended up going through the better part of three food cubes. About 2 hours later, as he was waking up from his afternoon nap, the contents of about one of those food cubes came back up again. Then again this evening, Jack took a page from my projectile vomiting days, and half a milk feed came up again, very unexpectedly. I'm assuming that these are isolated incidents of overeating-induced sickness, and since he was so giggly and playful immediately afterwards and didn't really look sick, I'm not very worried. Still, I'm glad he's now a tummy-sleeping baby so I don't have to worry about him getting sick again in the night and choking.

Tomorrow we're planning on a morning coffee date at Stacy and Kaia's before heading to an indoor play gym with Stacy, Kaia, and one of Kaia's grannies. With the goal of not being a walking zombie through all that, I'm now headed to bed, in hopes of getting more than 5 or so hours of sleep. Total.

a cookie baking day

Today was one of those days where the stereotypes about London weather were dead on. It was the type of gray, drizzly day that cries out for staying in all day, baking cookies and reading library books while drinking herbal tea and listening to Norah Jones. Oh, and lots and lots of cuddly napping. Given the weather and my sorely aching quads (victims of Sunday's overzealous postnatal strength training effort), baby yoga plans were quickly scrapped, and Jack and I accomplished the napping with glowing success all morning.

Unfortunately we had to leave our bed fort this afternoon and venture out to the Southbank where there was a great trunk sale (is that a British phrase or an American one? I get confused now) on a particular luxury item that will be a perfect Christmas gift for a hard-to-shop-for relative. I think it was worth it--but just barely. Jack seemed content in his Bugaboo, under the raincover, which made me wish for the millionth time that there were Bugaboos for adults. I was walking back over the (formerly) wobbly bridge looking at St. Paul's and realized I don't really dislike London like I did last year at about this time. Don't get me wrong (and please don't freak out Mom, we won't stay here forever, or even any longer than we need to), I'm not totally sure I actively like or prefer living here, but sometime this summer I grew out of the active dislike of London.

Then we came back for an afternoon of cookie baking, while I told him all about how Nonna and I always used to bake cookies and go to the library on rainy days. Since we've just gotten a few orders from American food importers in, we're flush with big jars of peanut butter, so we decided to make peanut butter cookies. In lieu of the library, I considered going to the book store down the street, until I realized that Jack has an entire bookshelf full of his own books, many of which we haven't yet read. That's in large part because I've jumped the gun a bit on his reading level and have tons of non-board books (which just aren't tasty enough for Jack), but also because he has a few favorites that seem to satisfy him quite well for now. So we had several read-throughs of his favorite book, "Little Fish," which is about a little rainbow fish who runs into sea creatures of various rainbow colors in his efforts to his find his mummy, which are (spoiler alert) ultimately successful. When I just couldn't stand any more Little Fish, we delved into a bug-counting book that came in a lovely package we received from Grammy and Granddad today.

Jack is now refusing all solids again, including sweet potatoes. Despite my best efforts to further water them down, he acts like the food is too thick and is making him gag. I really need help from Ben, who is amazingly adept at getting Jack to eat anything, on this one, but his work hours have been nutty again this week. Hopefully we'll be able to give solids an early morning try again tomorrow.

Oh, and I forgot to mention in yesterday's post that Jack is now so wiggly that Dr. Hay kept referring him as a "little dynamo." Yes, my calm, observant, Zen baby is now back to being as active as he was in the womb. His new most dangerous trick is flipping over onto his stomach while we attempt to change his diaper. Makes me very glad we have a European-style changing table (baby faces changer rather than being on his side) that lets Jack roll over without flying off the dresser.

Trial post

Last August, my dad astutely pointed out that as of April 13, 2007, I am no longer Jessica. For the foreseeable future (and then some) I am now "Jack's mom." This morning I was thinking yet again about how I need to restart journaling so that I can remember little moments in Jack's life, when I realized that this would be the perfect opportunity for a blog. I can't promise regular updates, but I guarantee I'll post to it more often than I put pictures up on Snapfish. Maybe this will get me more in gear on that, too. Uh, but probably not.

Jack is finally getting over the awful virus that he came down with last Tuesday. We went to Dr. Hay (our normal pediatrician) this afternoon (finally), and had a very nice visit. My OB, Dr. Erskine, recommended Dr. Hay by saying, "I especially like him--he's very gentle." She's so good. I can't possibly think of a better way to describe him. He's a super-friendly expert with children whose only grandchild, a 3 year old boy, still lives in South Africa, a fact I just learned today. The way he talked about his grandson I couldn't help but think about Pops and how he glows at the thought of Jack.

At any rate, Jack's much better, his antibiotics (which I was chagrined to learn were probably unnecessary, making me one of those bad moms whose fear leads to stronger viral strains that make all of us worse off) will be gone by tomorrow morning, so we may venture out to mom and baby yoga with Stacy and Kaia.

Little progress to report on the food front. He ate almost a whole banana this morning, but he's refusing most foods other than bananas, apples, and sweet potatoes mixed with copious amounts of breastmilk. I've tried mixing other foods in with his favorites, but the only others he'll even consider so far are zucchini and sometimes butternut squash. Plums and avocados were definite no-gos, and when I tried to feed him parsnips he looked at me like I was nuts. The grandfatherly peanut gallery has already been heard from on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of feeding Jack parsnips, so I can do without repeats of those comments. Carrots are on tap for trial later this week.

This post has set the bar a little high--most of my posts won't be nearly this long--but I had a little time now and wanted to get off to a good start. Miss you all.