breaking news

The elusive tooth has finally made an appearance! To be more precise, both Thad and I have felt it, but neither of us has had actual visual confirmation. But we're sure it's broken through - that thing is REALLY sharp! I knew that first teeth are sharp, but ouch!

In other exciting Rochester news, it is supposed to be in the 70s tomorrow. Hooray! Just in time too, because Thad bought an air conditioner for Nate's room this morning.

heat wave

It's been ridiculously hot this summer. It feels like one of every three or four days is in the 90s, although I guess that must be an exaggeration. We live in Upstate New York, not Tahiti - what's the deal? Nate, like his parents, is not all that fond of the heat, and it made him pretty cranky last night at bedtime (or, more accurately, after bedtime). We've had the fans a-roaring, and Nate's been staying cool in his old school kiddie pool, where he happily splashes and chews his toys.

cheerios

Nate's newest favorite food is (are?) Cheerios. Up until a couple of days ago we'd pop them in his mouth, but his dexterity took a sudden turn for the better and he started feeding himself relatively well over the weekend. He used to get one of every 20 or so Cheerios into his mouth, and now he's getting well over half of them!

I usually pour a bunch of Cheerios into a little compartment on Nate's high chair. The other day while he was eating something delicious like pureed turkey, he started reaching toward the empty Cheerios compartment. We weren't sure if he could actually remember that's where the Cheerios usually come from, so we pulled the box out of the cupboard and he was estatic! A little Cheerios fiend. And that was all she wrote for the turkey.

Our dogs are also quite fond of Cheerios, which we learned not only because Nate not only drops a bunch on the floor, but because I knocked over the whole box the other day. It was Cheerios mania!

strangers - part deux

You know the song "The Stranger" by Billy Joel? Its about how you think you know someone, but they have this hidden side to them. Well, Stranger Thad appeared last night and left me stunned. Aside from the obvious, what was so strange, you may ask? I learned that Thad has never seen the Brady Bunch. This alone was reasonably shocking, but the thing that really got me was that he couldn't name a single Brady. Not a one. He'd never heard "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" He didn't know they had a housekeeper, let alone that her name was Alice. He didn't even know that there were both boy and girl Bradys. How has he made it so far in life without knowing this key part of pop culture?! Seriously, I was in complete disbelief and, for quite possibly the first time, speachless.

In baby news, Nate is now officially an omnivore, as he has had some turkey. He wasn't a huge fan, but it certainly was received more warmly than broccoli! Lucia - Nate wants to know how you keep a turkey in suspense...

who needs teeth?

Really, I think they are overrated. And they are mucking with my sleep. We were finally getting back into relatively normal human sleep patterns when the tooth monster reared it ugly head. Poor Nate's sleeping less and less as each toothless day passes, and thus, his parents become more and more groggy. I feel ever so slightly like I did when Nate was really little, but more caffinated (thank you, formula!) It started a couple of weeks ago, when Nate started waking up around 5am, screaming. He often yells when he wakes up, but this was different than his usual "get me out of here!" cries. It's slowly built up to last night, when he seemed to be awake more than asleep from 2 or 3 until, well, now. Even when we try an comfort him, he's still pretty worked up, and we're not all that helpful. He's definitely not sick, and seems close to normal during the daytime, so we're 99% sure it's those pesky teeth again. If only they'd just pop out. What are they waiting for - utter exhaustion?!

aversion

What do Nate and the elder President Bush have in common? They both hate broccoli. This was the first time Nate clearly disliked a food, and boy, did he dislike it! He screwed up his face; tried to spit it out; said (in baby talk), "I do not like this!"; looked puzzled and disgusted; flared his nostrils; and then began yelling. Luckily, our cameras were close by for your viewing pleasure!

daddeus

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there. We've had a relatively leisurely day, hanging around here for breakfast (or brunch, if eating at 11 no longer qualifies as "breakfast"), visiting Strong Museum again for Nate's first ride on a carosel, doing some small gardening projects, and now blogging and talking to the elder dads in our families. Today's also our seventh anniversary. I can't believe I'm old enough to have not only a kid, but a seven year marriage. Crazy!

all that jazzfest

It's Jazzfest here in Rochester, so we went to a kiddie jazz concert yesterday at Strong Museum, where a quartet (well, technically a sextet, because along with a guitarist, bassist, dummer, and singer there were two little kids playing a mini guitar and a toy piano) played jazzy classics like "Old MacDonald" and "ABC." We ran into our friend Braden there, because it was THE place to be if you are under three feet. Nate seemed quite interested in the band at first, and payed rapt attention for the first few songs. Then he got very squirmy, but since we were in an audience of mostly kids, it didn't matter because pretty much everyone was squirmy. We walked around for a bit afterwards and hung out on Sesame Street and also looked at the fish, Nate's favorite.

new laundry issues

When Nate was really little, he'd go through three or four outfits a day, mostly due to leaky diapers. So we (aka Thad) were constantly doing laundry. He is no longer as fashion conscious, and fits much better in his Pampers; however, we have a new laundry conundrum. Now that Nate's eating solid foods, we have a regular stream of dirty bibs. We are going through them like hotcakes! They're all pretty small, and it would take at least a week to amass enough dirty bibs to make a load of laundry. We probably have two to three messy bibs (plus food-covered clothing sometimes too!) a day, and I don't want to put them in the basement for fear of attracting fun household creatures like mice, so they've been piling up in the kitchen (clearly a much better place for mice than the basement.) For now, the dirty ones just pile up on the counter. We've tried rinsing them, but then they're wet and we don't really know where to put them, so those get spread all over the kitchen. I'm not so excited about piles of dirty bibs, wet or dry, sitting out in 90-degree temperatures. I'm still not convinced it's better to do tons of little loads of laundry than it would be to just use something disposable, but I feel environmentally unconscious using disposable stuff when we're home and could easily use the old school version. Oh, the trials and tribulations of parenthood!

happy butt

I have to admit, I am directly lifting this from Basil's blog, but it seems so clearly relevant to our current life that I thought I should share. Nate poops so often, I'd say he averages three big poops a day, and a happy butt is in fact a clean butt. I might add that happy butts also have a strong correlation with happy parents. And as Basil points out, pay close attention to the logo at the end - the graphic designer gives it two hardy thumbs up!

it's official

Thad handed in his thesis - yee haw! Now he has a month until his defense. We're acting like he's got nothing to do in the meantime, which is really not at all the case, as he is writing a journal article, preparing for the defense, and doing some other misc stuff. He is, however, much less busy than before, and we are all quite happy about it.

guess who dressed Nate today

if everyone thought like a baby

Ages ago (maybe when I was in high school?) there was this cartoon in the paper that was captioned, "if everyone thought like a baby" and there was this street scene and everyone's standing around looking at parking meters and cars and thinking, "I should eat that." That's what Nate's like right now. If you hold him, he licks your arm. If he's sitting, he grabs whatever's in reach and sticks it in his mouth. If he's on his back, he eats his foot. He is quite the gourmet these days, sampling bits of this and that. I get the desire to experiment and try new things, and his feet are so cute and tasty, but I really don't understand why something like, say, a carpet covered in dog fur seems appetizing. As my mom says, "to each his own" (or, in the old Italian-American dialect, "seh-zeech-is-own.")

Still no sightings of that pesky tooth. We will need more Tylenol if it doesn't pop out soon.

spring peepers

Just a quick dental update. There is definitely a tooth there, but it's coming out slower than I think Nate would like. We're hoping to see something soon so he can get to work biting things. In the meantime, we are trying to enjoy the beautiful weather and are appreciative of Children's Tylenol.

tooth?

Nate is either getting his first tooth or turning into a banshee. Since banshees are female, I'm going to assume the tooth theory is good. He's exhibiting teething symptoms, like fussiness, grabbing his ears, and drooling, as you can see:





















Just kidding! That's a picture from our recent Adventures with the Sippy Cup. It seems Nate is not quite ready to make that leap yet. And despite what you may think from the attractive expression, we gave him water, not vodka. I swear.

But back to the alleged tooth. Nate's been really cranky all day today and isn't sleeping well at all. It actually started last night, but there was some debate about whether he woke himself up or if my coughing played a role. Either way, he (and therefore his parents) didn't sleep well last night, and he barely napped at all today. He woke up about a half hour after he went to bed tonight, screaming hysterically. How long does the teething discomfort go on? He's got a lot of teeth to go. Does he get this uncomfortable for all of them? If so, it's going to be a long few years. But, luckily, so far it's nothing a snuggle and some tylenol can't fix!

solid waste removal

I've never been much of a cleaner (not that I'm dirty, per se, I just hate cleaning) but I've never really had a hard time figuring out how to clean something. Other than my stove top, that is. Anyway, I now find myself baffled by how to clean Nate after he's done eating. For instance, I decided to start by wiping off his hands. So I clean the right, then the left. By this point, he's stuck the right one into the massive amount of pureed whatever on his face. So I move back and clean the right hand again. Then the left one smacks all the food smeared on the tray table. So I take the tray off and wipe his left hand. Now the right one's dirty again and he's also managed to transfer some of the food from his face onto his clothes via the right hand. By now, the washcloth is completely covered in baby food and is a better tool for smearing than removing. But I wipe his face, and the left hand dutifully goes into the goop on his bib. This kind of cycle continues until he's pseudo clean and has a healthy orange glow from sweat potato residue left on his head. Or some prune up his nose. I think you get the idea. And, to add insult to injury, he seems to think that being wiped off while being restrained in a high chair is the absolute worst thing in the world. He's certainly more worked up about it than he was when his head broke.

In related news, I'm also trying to figure out how to deal with the towering pile of wet, food-covered bibs and washcloths. And the growing pile of poopy clothes that is the result of the increase in solid food eating and, thus, massive diaper blowouts. Thank goodness we own a washing machine!

unfinished business

The best $20 I ever spent:














Yesterday I bit the bullet and convinced some scrawny neighborhood kid to mow the lawn. I figured with Thad's dissertation deadline rapidly approaching, we weren't going to reasonably have time to tackle the field. The kid asked for $7, which seemed totally insignificant considering the lawn was past his knees. And it was about 95 degrees (I'm not being sarcastic, for once!) How much would you have given him? I don't really know the going rate for lawn mowing these days, but I didn't have any smaller bills, and the kid acted like he'd hit the jackpot.

After having numerous people ask me about our bathroom, I realized that I should probably give a quick update. Who knew so many of you were actually interested in our remodling adventures? Anyway, it's almost done - we just have a few loose ends to tie up, but it's working and, IMO, looks about a gazillion times better than before. We banished the lovely mosaic over the toilet (I know Thad dearly misses that fabulous architectural gem!), put in a new ceiling, fixed up the walls, painted, put in a new vanity, sink, and faucet... here's a glamour shot for you:

a tip of the hat

Q: What do Oprah, Fidel Castro, Elton John, Gorbachev, and Thad all have in common?
A: They all own Frabels.

What, you may ask, is a Frabel? We just learned that it is a glass sculpture made by the studio founded by none other than Hans Godo Fräbel.















Thad won an award at his DC conference (I guess he was working after all). He was chosen for outstanding MS research for a young investigator and won a cash prize (to be used for research, not for dinner, unfortunately for me!) and and actual trophy award commemorative glass sculpture thingie. According to the literature in the box, it's a Frabel, made by the famous Frabel Studio And despite it's humble appearance is apparently quite pricey. So unlike the major award from the Christmas Story, I'll do my best to water plants with care when near the Frabel.

And my own personal lesson from the past few days is that I need to give immense kudos to all single parents (or parents with travelling spouses), because after only three days of just me and Nate I'm beat. Seriously, I have a newfound respect for anyone who's soley responsible for caring for a child. Maybe if Thad's really as brilliant as everyone else seems to believe, I'll buy you all Frabels when he's rich and famous.

on hurdles, laps, and ice cream

Last night Nate finally rolled over from his back to his front. He's been rolling up on his side (for what feels like ages but is more realistically a few months), but he couldn't seem to get over his arm. Technically, he still hasn't figured out how to get over his arm, as he rolled on top of it, but he was definitely face down on his belly. And not too happy about it, I might add! Recently he's been wiggling all over the place, and I think he'll be creeping and crawling pretty soon. Time to babyproof our immensely not babyproofed house!

Today and tomorrow are our annual neighborhood garage sales. Saranac is all worked up because she hates when people walk by our house, let alone linger in the neighbors' driveways. The nerve of them! So she keeps running frantic circles around the house, topped of with an occasional growl or bark. Her neurotic tendencies are rather annoying, but it won't bother me too much unless she wakes Nate from a nap. Hopefully she'll be nice and tired from a day of running laps!

The internet worlds are colliding as Thad jumps blog sites tonight over to cousin Liz's Asco Adventures. He's off in DC galavanting with my friends and his family and eating Ben and Jerry's. And perhaps he's speaking at a conference too. But I think he went mainly for the ice cream.