Chugging along

Hello all. Since our last post we crossed the 6 month barrier (on April 13). I can't think of any major developments to report, just steady progress. The most notable things I can think of are 1) he has really improved on his sitting up skills and 2) he is getting more and more adept with his hands. He can now sit, if you set him up, more or less indefinitely. For example, he was up for a good 15 minutes today when we were playing outside. As for the hands, he rotates objects around to look at them from all angles and passes them back and forth between his hands. He's getting strong enough that he bears watching most of the time, lest he pick up a plate from the table or pull a beer-I mean soda-bottle out of your hands.

He's gotten a little more "dramatic," for lack of a better word, as well. More laughter when he is happy and bigger fits when he's not. I think he's just got bigger thoughts and feelings in that little brain of his and he's got to express them bigger. I also wonder if he isn't starting to get more aware of who people are and who he doesn't know. Don't get me wrong, he's still a charming little extrovert, but he seems to lose it a bit more easily when mom and dad get out of sight.

The photos show him getting ready to get shipped to Timbuktu, hanging with Grandpop Trainer, and sitting in the yard today in a Zags hat, looking an awful lot like his Grandma Trainer (in my opinion anyway). Those Grady genes are strong. There's also a video of him goofing around in his jumper toy.

Rosetta stone

No pictures to update right now (Chris should be adding a more dense post soon).

I'm just really excited about this new blog I found:

Secrets of Baby Behavior
(http://www.secretsofbabybehavior.com/)

Perhaps it will prove useful in the months to come.

Also, happy due date Devin!

Swing Coach

I hope he was laughing with me and not at me.

Bubbling Over

Since last time, J has added a few more culinary delights to his repertoire, including green beans and bananas. We've got some carrots in the hole, ready to go. Zucchini, too, if Melissa can figure out how to cook it...

Aunt Danielle and Uncle Adam (Gianola) came out for a visit last weekend, and among other things we got to go down to DC for the Cherry Blossom Festival. A nice time was had by all. We had really nice weather and got some nice outdoor pictures. The one on the left was a big hit with the grandmas, so I thought I'd post it here. When we were indoors, Julian put on a nice little dance for them in his bouncy jumpy thingy (first video).

Early this week Julian discovered he could "blow bubbles" with his lips and tongue. He got excited when we reacted and started doing it back to him, and we managed to get a video of it. Pretty darned cute!


I also have that same video on YouTube if you want a larger view.

Appeased by peas

Julian continues to increase his culinary repertoire. He has now expanded from rice cereal to sweet potatoes, apples, and sweat peas. So far, he has happily eaten whatever we have given him. Some of it even ends up in his belly.








He's also become quite the ham for the camera. As you can see, when Melissa attempted to video him playing with his otter, he was as interested in the camera as he was the toy. He still doesn't like playing on his belly. He insists on rolling onto his back even though he has a perfectly good tummy to play on.


The second video shows off his sitting up skills. In case you're wondering, the off-camera sound you hear is the lightsaber app on my iPhone. He seemed to enjoy it almost as much as I do. The force is strong with this one.

Rice Rice Baby

Yesterday Julian got his first taste of big boy food. If you can call rice cereal food. It looked like gruel to me. I shot a couple of videos for posterity. The first shows the first few bites. The second shows a few minutes later after he's starting to get the hang of it. It seemed to me like he did pretty well for a rookie. No gagging or anything. I think a good proportion of it even ended up in his stomach (eventually).





In other news, he turned 5 months old yesterday. I can't believe it's already been that long. I suppose we'll be saying that a lot over the years. "I can't believe he's already 5 years," etc. Even crazier, his new cousin Devin will be a month old tomorrow. (Yes, my brother Jeff and his wife Cindy had their baby boy last month. I gave them a month-long grace period to get the word out before I stole their thunder on our blog. I figure the cat is probably out of the bag by now, and only 3 people read this blog anyway. Congrats to them!). You know time is flying when you are marveling at how fast it's gone by with your kid brother's kids. I can't wait to get them together.

Branching out

Hola amigos. I'm just doing a quick follow up to Melissa's post from Sunday. As she mentioned, it's finally warming up here. It turns out that J loves the outdoors. He's been getting to go out in the yard at daycare and apparently loves it, and he got to go out for a "hike" with Mom and Dad last Sunday. After living in the new house for almost 4 months, we finally found our way to the trail by the stream that forms the northern boundary of our neighborhood. It turns out that we live right along the fall line, and the Northwest Branch has some pretty good rapids as it drops through the area down to the coastal plain. There's a ribbon of woodland and a trail along its course through the area. There's even a sign describing how Theodore and Mrs. Roosevelt liked to hang out there back when they lived in DC in some big white house. I cannot emphasize enough how pathetic it is that we are only now discovering this. We live a lot closer to this park than we ever lived to Boulder Creek. We are sorry excuses for Boulder expats.


Anyway, Julian had a blast. He's gotten a lot more interested in his surroundings lately, and I think he enjoys the sights and sounds of the outdoors and the feel of the breeze on his skin. He started giggling when we got out of the car and loaded him in the Baby Bjorn. He even napped when he got tired. I feel like this is all stuff Mel said last week. At any rate, we plan to get him out more and more now that the sun is out and he's big enough to enjoy it.

Swedish babies must smile all the time...

Greetings! We're still here, and trying to keep y'all posted as often as we can. Julian (and work) has been keeping us pretty busy, but we sure don't want to lose you, our faithful audience, and so we shall keep at this blog thing.

We've made it through two whole weeks of daycare with only minor traumas. And those traumas have been largely mine. Other than some napping difficulties Julian seems pretty happy with the babysitter. Bottles and feeding have become a new temporary obsession of mine, since it seems hard to truly feel like I'm keeping up with the little guy when I have to pump at work. Next weekend we'll be starting him on some food - most likely rice cereal - so that may help a bit. Also we hope to get some good photos out of that milestone.

Jules has been starting to really enjoy riding around in the Baby Bjorn. This weekend he has spent some time checking out the world from Dad's chest-height and is pretty tickled by it. Here is a video of him busting out some giggles while helping to set the table:



Another big first - Julian had his first "play date" this past Saturday. Friends of ours from our Bradley childbirth class (see earlier posts for Chris' commentary on Bradley class) came over and brought their baby boy Noah, who is only 3 days older than JD (but about 3 lbs bigger!). They seemed to have a great time just interacting with each other. Noah tried to show Julian that it's pretty cool to hang out on your tummy, and Jules tried to show Noah how to suck your thumb. A good time was had by all. It was also a nice play date for his Mom and Dad, who very much enjoyed the company of other adults/new parents. We even talked about subjects other than our babies!



The weather here is finally perking up and we can see the spring light at the end of the long winter tunnel. We took Julian out for his first hike today to celebrate the sun being out and the temperature peaking around 60 degrees. Turns out there's a pretty sweet trail right by our house which follows the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River. There are waterfalls and everything! Again, he was in his Baby Bjorn and loved it! He giggled as we walked along the trail, presumably enjoying the new experience of sun and breeze on his baby skin. Then, once he got tired of it he fell asleep. Anyway, stay tuned for pictures of that adventure - as soon as we download those.

No more Mr. Nice Mr. Mom

Hard to believe, but my Mr. Mom time with JD is coming to an end. He seems to have survived okay. He got a practice run at daycare on Friday, spending 3 hours away from Mom or Dad, and was smiling when I picked him up, so it seems he wasn't too phased by it. He's continuing to develop those hands. As you can see in the first video, he now will see something and grab at it on purpose. You can kind of see the gears turning in his little brain as you see the delay between his eyes and hands.



He hasn't rolled all the way over again since the last blog post. I guess twice was enough for him and he's decided to retire. He likes to go half way, though, and can do so starting on his tummy or his back. We tried to get a video of him rolling over today, but he "crapped" out about half way through. Actually, the clip is a pretty good sampling of life in our house right now.

Warning: This clip is rated PG for crude humor, mild profanity, and graphic feline nudity.

Rock 'n Roll

Day three of my "snow leave" this week. The entire city of Washington, D.C. has appeared to shut down as we get our second major blizzard in five days. The accumulations aren't quite as high as the weekend's storm, but this time the winds are pretty brutal - snow appears to be blowing sideways.

But don't worry - we are finding new ways to keep ourselves entertained. The big news around here is that Julian rolled from his tummy to his back yesterday! His indignation during tummy time is finally being channeled towards more productive pursuits of getting himself off of his tummy. He even repeated it again last night, so we know it wasn't a fluke. No video of this yet, but we'll try to get him doing it as he becomes more reliable.

Note the new addition to the blog - a link to our Picasa album and the newest pictures of our bouncing baby boy.

Snowmageddon!

(This is Mel blogging under Chris' login. Not sure why it worked out this way, but I wanted to be upfront in the spirit of full disclosure.)

The east coast - particularly our region of it - was hit with a major snowstorm this past weekend. We think we got something like 2-1/2 feet here in the Maryland 'burbs. It started Friday afternoon and stopped just in time for a pretty sunset Saturday afternoon. Here is Chris shoveling Saturday afternoon - about another 6 inches fell after he measured it at the two foot mark. Julian and I stayed inside and ate bon bons while Chris worked. Typical.

I got to leave work early on Friday and am still off work today (Monday). So, in the spirit of being snowed in I thought it was about time I jumped on the blog. As many of you have pointed out as of late, we have been big slackers. We are trying to do better. Maybe that will motivate Julian's Aunt Cindy to blog more too (oh, snap!).










Sunday was sunny and so we got to go outside. We let Julian channel his Colorado roots by going for a romp in snowshoes. Well, Dad wore the snowshoes but JD got to go along for the ride. We didn't make it too far - just stomped around our unplowed street. It was pretty fun, but the J-Dog lost a mitten (sorry, grandma!). Here are some pics from our Sunday fun, which was facilitated by the 3-ish hours that Chris spent shoveling:

In other news, we got to watch the Super Bowl with some friends who live close enough to walk over (Avi, Amber, and Hannah). Julian got into the spirit of things. His Dad is so proud.

He's also doing much better at his tummy time. He actually looks up and gets on his elbows for a few minutes before crying his eyes out. Then after tummy time he gets to hang out with his Dad, who we also like to call Dr. Beardface. He looks a lot like that actor...what's his name? Orson Wells. (j/k honey!)











Lastly, Julian has developed two new obsessions - sucking his fingers and squealing loudly. Here's a video that shows both of those new tricks.

Baby J Returns

Hi all! I bet you thought we'd given up on this whole blog thing. Think of it more like a hiatus. I don't really have a good explanation other than the baby takes up a lot of our free time, and I have devoted a lot of my baby documenting energy to taking pictures of him rather than in writing about him. I don't know what Melissa's excuse is. We plan to pick this back up again more frequently for the benefit of distant relatives who need their baby J fix.

We've been bumping along pretty well. The above ground floors of our house are more or less moved into. The basement remains a work in progress. Melissa returned to her space cowboy job with the new year and I have been home with Jules ever since. He and I have managed to keep our sanity thus far, other than I have grown a Mr. Mom beard (no pictures of that yet since I seem to be the head cameraman). Honestly, I cannot believe how extraordinarily lucky we have been, for which we are truly grateful. JD is not only an extremely handsome kid, he is also a happy baby who often sleeps through the night, laughs at his dad's jokes, and is generally pretty agreeable as long as we keep the milk flowing and occasionally make him take a nap.

As far as developmental milestones go, the pictures in the link above will probably show you better than I can describe for you. He can sit up on his own if you help him keep his balance, has pretty much full control of his head and neck, laughs out loud (or as I like to say he LOLs out loud), and sucks his thumb. He can look up to maybe a 45 degree angle and get his arms under himself when he's on his belly, but can't really roll over or anything yet (at least not intentionally). His hands are starting to come online. He slaps and grabs at things, and anything he happens to hook goes straight into his mouth. He hasn't quite mastered his hands to the point of just picking things right up out of your hand, but if you put an object where he can see and reach it it will eventually find its way mouthward. I embedded a YouTube video where you can see what I mean.





I will try to do this a little more often while I am still off work and post some more videos. Until we meet again...

Busy Busy Busy

Julian is asleep in the swing and I thought I should take the free quiet moment to post to the blog. Sorry it has been so long! We have just been so busy lately (infant, house, holidays...). I hope we haven't lost all of our readers due to our slacking.
JD has started smiling, which is super cute. I caught him one day on my iPhone camera (sorry for the low res) when he was being super cute.


Chris has taken a cute video of Julian in the bath on YouTube:

Here are some notes on the video from Chris: when he was having a bath I took some some pictures and saw that he was totally fascinated by the camera, so I clicked on the video to try to capture a smile for the distant relatives. It took a little coaxing, but I got him to do it. ..Two things will be obvious to you. 1) Julian is pretty much the cutest baby of all time. 2) Having a baby makes you talk like a complete idiot, as you will hear if you listen to the audio of the coaxing.

We're moving this week to the new house, the movers will be toiling Thursday and Friday. The apartment is a super mess - you would never guess we were about to move. I think I am in complete denial of the fact that they will be completely packing up my house while I have to deal with an infant. Keep your fingers crossed that the stress doesn't set off a complete nervous breakdown!

Otherwise I have been busy getting the new house ready - there are tons of projects. We had the handyman over today doing a few odds and ends including installing a cat door for our fat cat. A literal quote from the box: "Generously sized for today's larger cats". Are America's cats all obese now too?

An Ode to Grandmas

Julian and I have been on our own during the daytime for an entire week, which has inspired me to write this post praising the invaluable help provided by the Grandmothers. After being on our own for 5 full days while Chris is back at work, I can say that things are much easier when you have a second set of hands around. Particularly when that set of hands belongs to a patient adoring grandmother who is more than happy to cuddle and soothe her newborn grandson.



For the first three weeks the little guy was around, I was able to get rest and not worry about a thing besides feeding the little guy. Grandmas Trainer and Downey helped out with cooking, cleaning, and shopping (the shopping was huge considering I wasn't allowed to drive!). Now I'm lucky if I can eat lunch, since the little guy is going through a bit of a "don't put me down or I will wake up and fuss" phase. I'm getting a lot better at doing things one-handed, but I will say my back sure does hurt! Especially since Jules is growing at ever-increasing speeds. We go to the doctor tomorrow for an official weigh-in, but I suspect he'll be pretty close to 10 lbs. (if not over).

Fussiness aside, life with J-Dog is pretty good. Thursday we close on our house, which means that I can throw moving and redecorating onto my list of things to find time to do (right under showering and writing thank-you notes). Good thing one of the grandmas is coming back to help...



PS Grandfathers are also helpful at entertaining the little guy, and especially good at teaching them how to be left-handed pitchers.

Great Pumpkin

As you can see, Julian had his first Halloween Saturday. He was pretty scary. He had a big day that day. In addition to his first holiday, he got to go see his new house, go out to Great Falls with Grandma and Grandpa Downey, and he had his first real bath (i.e. in a tub instead of just as sponge) at home. He remains photogenic. It's hard to believe it's already been three weeks. This parenthood thing is so easy the time just flies by. Okay, maybe not ;-)

I think instead of as a pumpkin we should've had JD dress up as Billy Ray Cyrus, since he was born with a killer mullet.

It occurs to me that there is more cuteness than I can reasonably post in a blog, so I've been putting lots more pictures on a web album. Just go to this link and you can see pictures as we post them.