Moving plans and a barrage of photos

Things for the move are starting to fall into place.  Ben's last day is next Tuesday, April 1, the movers are coming April 7 and 8, and we're leaving April 9.  We'll spend a few days in Houston with Ben's parents, then head to Kansas City to spend a day or two with my parents.

And then we'll move into our new home!  We've bought a brand new place (still a week or so from being finished!) in Brentwood, which is one of the really close in suburbs, one that doesn't feel like a suburb at all.  There's a public elementary school 3 blocks away, a Catholic elementary school 3 blocks the other direction, a park 4 blocks away, and it's within a mile of two Paneras, a Whole Foods, a Target Greatland, a highly rated Cajun takeout place, and a Sonic.  I will be in midwestern middle-class American consumerist heaven without having to be in midwestern middle-class American suburban hell.  So perfect.  Strangely enough, one of my mommy friends in London used to live on the street where we'll be living, so I'll also have someone to give me tips on the area.

Jack has been completely over chicken pox for about two weeks now, and it looks like the only scar he may carry is just above his right eyebrow--the only spot you can see on my previously

 posted picture.  But here's a picture of him at the height of his spottiness.  Also as you can see, his umbilical hernia is still bulging, especially with all the stress walking and wiggling puts on it.  Dr. Hay has continued to assure us that it's nothing dangerous or painful and that it should heal without surgery within the next year or two.

Speaking of Dr. Hay, Jack has his last visit with him last week.  Although it was a little early, Jack got the two 1-year immunizations and amazingly didn't make a single cry--not a peep!  I really hope that we can find another good pediatrician in St. Louis, because I'm going to miss Dr. Hay a lot. 

Our Easter was very nice and was punctuated by a weeklong visit from Jack's Grammy and Granddad.  Easter was also especially good because Ben had a 4-day weekend (Good Friday and Easter Monday are national holidays here) during which he only went into the office for a total of an hour and a half!  We seized the opportunity to take a daytrip to Cambridge and an adventure to the London Aquarium.  During the past week Jack's intermittent attempts to walk

 without his walker started coming more frequently and became more prolonged, and he is now

regularly taking 4 or 5 steps on his own!  While I still can't catch him in the middle of the floor, he walks the triangle between our two loveseats and our coffee table so frequently that I have

caught some video of that.  Being Jack, he's not doing this movement thing halfway, so instead of walking staggeringly like most babies, Jack seems to have mostly skipped standing and walking all together and has moved straight into running.

A few other random pictures:

During his chicken pox confinement, Jack developed a very strong attachment to the vacuum as his new favorite toy.  It's a Dyson, so I have to admit I like it a lot myself, but Jack's attachment transcends mine by far.  He not only runs to it screaming with excitement any time I open the hall closet, but he also pushes it along the floor as if it was his walker.  A difficult feat, but he does it well.  I'll post video of it some other time.

This is a picture of Jack's zebra after snack time today.  

One of Jack's favorite snacks are fake Cheetos--organic puffed baby food corn sticks covered in carrot powder that taste reasonably good but like their unhealthy counterparts tend to make a pretty big mess.  Today Jack decided that he wanted to share his snack with his zebra, leaving it with a nice orange smudge near its mouth.  So sweetly generous that I think I'll leave it there.

Up by the bootstraps

It's been a long, hard week and Nonna and Pops can't get here soon enough (less than 16 hours until their plane lands!). I promise to post more regularly next week while I have help here.

As a Friday treat, though, I thought I'd post a video that explains part of the reason I haven't posted all week. You see, I've been running interference between the ground and Jack's head. Since Tuesday night Jack has been pulling up on everything he can nonstop. As you can see, he goes from laying to standing in just seconds, and this video is not at all atypical of his style. You have to love his penchant for drama--I'm especially fond of the exhausted heavy breathing around second 15 of this clip.

Jack on the move

In talking to some of you, I have realized that there's been a little confusion about Jack's mobility. Let me be the first to assure you that Jack will not be tied down anymore and can get just about anywhere he wants (except off the bed--we still won't let him jump to his doom, despite repeated attempts to do so). I can no longer turn my back or go into the kitchen while he's in the living room without first thinking about the things within 10 feet of him that would potentially be dangerous to him, as that's inevitably what he'll be drawn to. Electrical cords? Loves them. Trash cans? Never seen one he didn't want to upend. What's the the torts/property law term for those things again? An attractive nuisance?

While he's not yet moving on all fours (he gets up on all fours and moves forward a little, but mostly the going is too slow that way for his taste), Jack is definitely crawling, and he has been for about a month. It happened gradually, not in the light bulb moment that baby books anticipate with their "First time I crawled" with a dateline blank next to it, so I can't put an exact time on when it happened. It's just that he does it in a way that looks like a surprisingly graceful adaptation of an army crawl--elbow over elbow, on his tummy. A little hard to describe, so I decided to post a video. I've been having trouble getting it to run in anything other than slow motion on my computer, but I'm hoping that that's just a problem with my 3 year old Dell (being replaced by a Mac at Christmas), not with the footage. Let me know. In the video it looks a little like we're coaching him, but I promise you we don't have to encourage Jack to get him to crawl.

This weekend we realized that tooth number 3 is now definitely coming through--his upper left one. I've been told that once a tooth breaks the skin it doesn't hurt as much and night waking is less common. I hope so. Forgive me if I sound like an ungrateful broken record, but a full night's sleep is going to be indescribably blissful. Only five more sleepless nights to go!

Oh, and hunger shouldn't be a problem tonight. Today Jack ate 1 cube of carrots and 1/2 a cube of parsnips for breakfast and 2 cubes of sweet potatoes with 1 of cauliflower for dinner. Hooray! This weekend Jack tried avocado, which I'm sure will make his Granddad proud, as he's always proclaiming the amazing health benefits of avocados to anyone who will listen. This week I'm going to give broccoli a try. I've been holding off on it because its one of a list of foods whose high fiber contents tend to cause stomach upset--spinach, for example, is supposed to be particularly rough on babies' tummies. But Jack has been eating lots of other foods with tastes and textures similar to broccoli, so I figure it might be worth giving him a small serving of it. We'll see.

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...

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!

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.