At Botanic Gardens

Yesterday Luke and I went for a walk with Carla Colley. We went by the Capitol and Bartholdi Park and the outdoor garden at the National Botanic Garden. Today Carla came over to lend us her VCR. See, I had accidentally recorded an episode of "Heroes" over part of a video that I checked out from the library. So I had Rich request a copy of the same video from another library, and then I used Carla's VCR to re-record the whole thing.

Latest Activity: Sucking on his toes and going "pffbbbbbb" with his lips, flinging slobber everywhere. I haven't gotten a pic of the toe-sucking yet, although it's really cute, but here's a video of the "pfffbbb." He just did it a couple of times before he got camera-shy.

My Favorite Baby DVD

This isn't one of those entries where the parent writes in the voice of Luke to try to be all cute. So let's get that straight right from the get go. I'm here to talk about my favorite baby DVD: "Classical Baby: The Music Show".

I've watched some other baby DVDs since Luke's been born, but none have captivated me like this animal orchestra set to the music of some of the great classical composers. If you've had a hard day at work, there's nothing like coming home to your baby son sitting on his little foamy throne. So cute. But throw in some cow-playing cellists playing "Appalachian Spring" on top of that and you've got a wind-down you could only dream of!

Twenty-six minutes later, the DVD ends with all the animals in the audience sleeping and snoring, and the baby director says, "Time for night night." I'll leave you with that.

Visit from Lippmans

This weekend, Rich's longtime friend, wedding groomsman and fantasy football rival, Adam, and his wife Stephanie popped in for a visit. They live in Tampa and came to the area to visit us, Stephanie's cousin Frank, and Tori Amos.

And, they brought him a present. A convenient present, as it turns out, since we started feeding him cereal. I was only five years old and not a fan then, so I don't take offense. Plus we have two recent Series titles under our belt. And I will stop there. But here's the present:

For those of you who are totally confused, google the phrase "game six" (in quotes) and that should clear things up.

Update on Sleeping: He's been doing better now that I've given up putting him to bed early. We just let him take an evening nap and then go to bed around 9:30pm. Then he only wakes up once--around 3am. Then he wakes up again at 7:30am, and I make him stay awake until his morning nap. Then he has regular naps (about every two hours) throughout the day.

First Cereal

Yea! Luke had his first spoon-fed meal. It was just a bit of rice cereal. He seemed to like it, but maybe he was just excited about trying to grab the spoon. Anyway, it was a success.

Also, last night he went to bed at 9:30pm, woke up at 11:30pm and we put him right back to sleep. Then he slept till 5am! I'm pleased with that progress. Can't say whether it was because he went to be later or what. Maybe we'll try closer to a 9pm bedtime instead of 8pm.

And here are some pictures of him the other day when we went outside to plant some plants.

I went to the trouble of carrying his walker downstairs. A friend is going to lend me one of these

but I haven't gotten it from her yet. Then I can bring this downstairs and he can just sit in it. The walker is kind of cumbersome.

Luke says Good Morning

Latest Activity: Practicing standing on the couch

He can stand for at least a minute on his own. He just needs to focus on not putting his feet close together or on top of one another.

I have a hard time getting him to smile, laugh or 'talk' like he usually does for the camera. He just gets too interested in what I'm doing and what the camera is. But here's a video anyway:

Another thing we've been working on is his sleep schedule. I wish that I had read more books about parenting and baby schedules before I had Luke. I have disliked almost every book about babies and sleeping that I've read so far. Attachment Parenting and Babywise are both written with such a condescending tone, each critiquing the other's philosophy and implying that their method is the only right way.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child is better in that regard, but it's horribly written. It's really dense and almost cryptic in its explanation of how one should structure baby's sleeping. You have to read the book for nuggets of wisdom. One sentence will jump out at you every few pages, and you'll think, "Ah! Yes! This is my child! So that's what I've been doing wrong..." I really like the way Dr. Sears writes and the way his books are ordered, but I feel like he doesn't go far enough in explaining the importance of training your child to sleep.

I might believe that it doesn't matter what you do with your baby; we all learn to sleep eventually. Yet, #1, even if that is the case, I would rather my child learn sooner, rather than later, because the lack of extended sleeping periods is wreaking havoc with my ability to think, and #2, my aunt just told me in August about how her daughter didn't learn to fall asleep by herself at a normal time until the age of 5. It took my aunt developing a very intense and deliberate training scheme that lasted for weeks to get her to go to sleep on her own.

So all this to say that my friends babies are all sleeping through the night (with an occasional and unexpected single wake-up every once in a while), and Luke is not. One night he may sleep 6 hours, but the next night, he may wake up every 2 hours. It's just not predictable. I'm working hard to establish a daytime sleeping/eating routine. According to Babywise, which thousands of parents swear by, this will get baby to sleep through the night within a few weeks. I'll let you know how it goes.

Not an Ad Baby

Have you ever noticed how babies that appear in advertising often have this gender-neutral face? Is it a boy or girl? Who knows?! I guess the point is to make the parent feel like "Ah, that could be my child!" whether their child is a boy or girl. I never feel that way, though. I'm usually just trying to figure out the gender.

Anyway, only once in Luke's life has someone called him 'she' by mistake. He goes without clothes pretty frequently, because he gets hot. But even without the tell-tale blue onesie, people know he's a boy. They say, "Oh, he's so big!" or "What a cute little guy!" before they catch themselves and remember to ask politely whether he's a boy or girl. And how could you blame them? Check out these muscular legs. You can actually see the muscle! OK, so he has some rolls, too. But you must admit that's a bulging thigh muscle on the side...

Also, here's his "cool dude" face after eating:

Fantasy Addict and Luke turns Four Months

On Sunday, Luke was officially four months old. No celebrations yet, and actually, it looks like we will all be in Las Vegas on his one-year birthday. (Rich bought tickets to the U.S. Olympic wrestling team trials.) So today, we had his fourth-month check-up with Dr. Reddy. She's our pediatrician, and we really like her. She's Indian in ethnicity, but she seems to be a native American. *chuckle to self* She speaks quietly and doesn't come across as arrogant or busy like most doctors I've encountered. She also loves Luke. Which we love.

So here are Luke's "new specs," as his dad says:
Temperature: 97.6 F
Height: 26.5" (93%)
Weight: 15 lbs, 11.2 oz (66%)
Head circumference: 16.5" (50%)

So he's a long and skinny baby. This is primarily how I shop for him. I assess whether outfits are long and thin. Sometimes they make them for more squarish babies, I guess. And he's a rectangle. (Although, you know, a square is technically also a rectangle.)

I'm also dealing with this:




A husband obsessed with Fantasy Football. Notice the bags under his eyes in the second pic. Okay, he's probably not more obsessed than many, many other men across America right now. He's playing in two leagues, and each Sunday and Monday, he's constantly checking the TV and computer. And during the week, he's talking about his teams and explaining his thoughts about which players to drop and which to pick up. And that reminds me about Bill Hybels and produce, but I'll tell that story another time.

I'll close with a video of Luke and his plastic chains.

He's Rooting For the Sox

Rich still doesn't like to think or talk about it, but the Mets' season has ended. Now we're all rooting for the Red Sox to win the World Series. Lukie donned his Sox outfit (given to him by the Berberians) last night. You might be thinking, "But hey! The Sox lost!" Yes, but they were winning until he went to bed. Then they sort of lost momentum.

He's Learning Early

So Em and I were watching a little bit of the LSU-Kentucky game when Luke woke up from his nap. We brought him out and I put him on my lap to watch the game with me. Of course, I had the remote and I had put it on the arm of the couch. After watching the game for about 5 minutes, next thing I know I see a "4-" on the screen and I quickly realized that Luke had picked up the remote and pressed a button. Luckily, Em was sitting right next to me with the camera as she was downloading some pics onto the computer. This pic was not staged!

I'm laughing now as I look at the pic again, because I realize that Luke first blocked my left hand by grabbing it and sucking on a finger, leaving me helpless to defend his attack. I wonder if he's left handed? If he's not, it's even more impressive.

In conclusion, I'm one proud Dad. Today Luke has joined the proud male tradition of remote control holding. One day he will learn how to read, but I like to see his priorities are in the right place.

Luke's vocabulary

Yesterday I took this video of Luke to show what his "tummy time" looks like, and so you could hear his "talking." He won't talk if you put the camera in his face, because he's too intrigued by it. So I had to film him from behind. Also, toward the end, you can hear him say his favorite word: "hunga."

Luke bites Rich's toe

Latest activity: Chomping

So recently, Lukie has been biting down hard with his gums, rather than simply sucking on our fingers. So last night, when he spotted Rich's toes and leaned toward them, we knew what he had on his mind.

Lukie at Four Months

This is Lukie today. I can't get over how fast he's growing. You know, those first few weeks seemed to just eek by. Now the time is flying. I can't believe he'll be four months on Sunday. There are so many changes happening on a weekly basis. He's quite adept at rolling over now. If you lay him on his back, it's virtually guaranteed that when you look at him 30 seconds later, he will be on his stomach. He rolls onto his stomach to sleep now. If he can't get there due to the tightness of his swaddle, he'll settle for lying on his side. It's really cute.

Some not-so-cute things he's doing: waking up every two hours. Last night he went to bed at 8:20pm. Then he woke up at 12:30am, 2:30am, 4:30am, 6:20am, and 9am. We can't seem to figure out how to get him to sleep soundly at night. He will go 6 hours without eating for the first stretch. Of course, the earlier we put him down, the more time that he is sleeping while we're awake. And then he wakes up only a couple of hours after we go to sleep.

And he talks so much now. He's always jabbering away. And lately he's been doing this kind of gagging cough. I've been wondering what it is. It may be talking, but I also suspect that his fluffy "sheet" on his play yard is getting fuzz in his mouth, since he wakes up with fuzz stuck to his face from slobbering.