Chapter 1: How we met (and the times we didn't)

Many of you have heard of the way we met in college, it's one of my favorite stories to tell. I'll start with how we actually met, which is also the short version. I was good friends (and lab partners) with John's brother James. James, Stephanie (James' girlfriend at the time, and his wife now) and some other good friends in Electrical Engineering played together on an intramural soccer team. Goalies are always hard to come by and so James volunteered his brother, a lowly Computer Engineer, as a goalie. John joined our team and the rest is pretty much history! Our getting to know each other better was facilitated by the fact that I was playing goalie for a women's team, only it had been about eight years since I had played goalie and so I asked John for some 'coaching'.

It turns out there were a couple of situations in the three years prior to that when John and I had almost met. My freshman year I took programming and was struggling with a homework assignment. My friend Dave, who lived on my floor in the dorm, took me to his cousin Keva, who lived the floor below us to get help. Keva was a sophomore and in computer science/computer engineering. I spent about 20minutes with Dave and Keva getting programming help and found out four years later that was John's room too!

Later in college, not long before John and I actually met, there was an evening where I was extremely bored. It seemed all my friends had plans for the evening. I tried to get James to go to dinner. James, Jeff, and I were lab partners for a pretty intensive lab class that had us working most evenings/nights. So the three of us would get dinner and one of us would pay one night and we would rotate. I think I had paid the last time and so I tried really hard to get James or Jeff to go to dinner since *they owed me*. Alas, Jeff had plans with his girlfriend Allison and James had plans with Stephanie. I was so desparate that night to do something I think I ended up at a basketball game with my friend Stew. Much later I found out that just before leaving on their date, John had also whined to James about how bored he was and James said "Well, you could go out with my lonely lab partner!" John said "No Thanks, I'm sure I'll find something to do".

Seven years ago today, I married my best friend

Today, John and I celebrate our seven year anniversary. The time has really flown by, but every minute of it has been fun. To commemorate our seven years, I plan to write seven blog installments about 'the story of us'.

Tonight is our first night away from Davis. Grammie is going to babysit Davis while John and I spend the night at the Salish Lodge, the same hotel/resort we went to the night we were married. I believe people are taking bets on whether we'll stay away the whole night.

Davis is a definite sitter

For awhile now, we have been watching Davis develop the muscles to work towards sitting. It's gone from tiny tummy crunches, to pulling his legs up into the air (followed by toes to nose), to now sitting! In just the last week he has gone from a wobbly sitter that we would surround by our legs and arms to prevent him from falling, to a definite sitter. We still sit near him when he sits or support him, but he's very close to not needing it. Now if you put him in his high chair/stroller and recline the seat, he continues to sit forward. What a big boy he is becoming!

New Pictures

Lots of pictures from the day. I couldn't bring myself to cut it down to under 10, so here are 17 pictures in all of Davis' glory. These pictures are also on Picasa.

Davis in Mommy's arms

Davis and Grammie:

Playtime in the living room:

Playtime:

Little hands, part one:

More playtime:

Playtime turned to rolling:

Looking back at mommy:

Davis' favorite toy on the new exersaucer:

Trying to eat the toy:

Peas for dinner:

Yum yum:

The peas were only slightly interrupted by playtime:

A little concerned about the spoon:

Sometimes the peas were a little surprising:

Open wide sweet baby:

Little hands, part two:

A whirlwind adventure

John, Davis and I are having a blast in Seattle and catching up with some friends we haven't seen in a long time. Thursday and Friday we spent getting to know Melanie and Friday night John and I went to our friend Bryan's wedding reception (Bryan was a groomsman in our wedding, he's in the picture below, center). It was great to see him so happy, actually great to see him! We haven't seen Bryan since we moved to Boston, or I haven't, I think John might have on a solo trip out here a couple of years ago. We were also able to catch up with some other old friends (including Casey, on the left in the picture).
We spent today hanging out around the house where Davis ate (and I think even enjoyed) peas! I think he's definitely getting the hang of this solid food thing. My aunt Mary Jo came over for dinner where we had a relaxing visit. Tomorrow will be chock-full of visits with an unanticipated visit with a very good friend from college (Melany, the same one who introduced me to triathlons) who is driving with her two kids from Ellensburg to Seattle to visit her family, they'll be stopping here on the way in the morning. Last time I saw her daughter, she was Davis' age and now she's 3 and a half! She's also my birthday buddy. In the afternoon we're going to see our friends the Dorwins (whose kids we've never even met yet) and then we'll have dinner with Mary Jo again! We have lots more adventures on tap for the remaining part of the week as well. In this busy mix, I'm also managing to steal some time for work here and there (as well as time to dismantle and reassemble a working stroller that I was convinced was not working, guess John shouldn't leave me alone for long).

In Seattle

The remainder of our trip to Seattle went surprisingly well. Davis did great on the landing and after a slow meander through the airport we picked up our bags, got the rental car and headed to my mom's in Issaquah where we will spend the next 10 days. My brother James, his wife Stephanie and their 11 week old Melanie arrived later that night and we had a nice reunion and family dinner.

One of our biggest concerns about this trip has been how we would handle the 3 hour time transition. Since Davis usually wakes up between 5 and 6 in the morning, we would have real sleep issues if he stayed on East Coast time. In the end, he has handled it better than Kristen or I. We put him down for a nap at his usual East Coast bedtime, but woke him up after about an hour and a half. We were later put him down at 8:00 Pacific, and while it was a struggle to get him down, he slept great last night.

We've already enjoyed our time in Seattle. We really have missed the beautiful green mountains and the peacefulness of my Mom's and it has been great to sit, relax and enjoy ourselves. Seeing James, Melanie and Stephanie has been great - it has been far too long since we last saw them. This morning we went into Seattle and Davis met his great aunt for the first time over breakfast at one of our favorite breakfast places.

Here are some photos from our trip so far:

Morning play time:

Practicing sitting up with Grammie:

Playing in the new exersaucer:

James and Melanie:

Grammie and Melanie:

Grammie and Melanie:

Steph and Davis:

Cousins:

Cousins part deux:

Melanie and John:

More on picasa online

Seattle here we come

Today marks the start of our 10 day summer vacation to Seattle to visit friends and family. This is our first significant trip with Davis and so far things are going smoothly. Yesterday, I was able to stop work at about noon and help with packing before my 3 month check up. It took us a while to pack, clean, prepare instructions for the cat sitter, water plants, clean out the fridge, etc but by about 7:00 we were all packed and ready to go. We ended up with 3 checked bags, one carry-on, the diaper bag, stroller and car seat. This seems like a lot, but for us, it is actually traveling pretty light. I think Davis picked up on our stress of getting ready to go as it was a little more difficult than usual to get him to bed. Megan and Dave picked up Thai food and we shared a nice dinner before settling down for the night. Given how much more difficult it was to get Davis down, I expected a tough night, but he slept well and we were up at 5:00 to make final preparations.

After packing the last of the baby gear, fixing the cat bistro, doing laundry and putting away dishes, We left the house at about 6:30 and headed to Megan and Dave's so Dave could take us to the airport. Having Dave drive our car home and pick us up when we return really simplified the day and avoided a lot of stress from taking a taxi or livery. Davis took a short cat nap* on the way to the airport, but not enough to provide any real rest.

The airport went much better than I expected. We were easily through security with one of the nicest TSA agents on the planet and grabbed a quick breakfast. We walked Davis around the terminal where he enjoyed watching all the people and activity. Taking advantage of Jet Blue's pre-boarding, we got settled in early with a tired and hungry baby.

Our flight wasn't scheduled to depart until 8:45 and we were a few minutes pushing back from the gate. By the time we took off, Davis had been up for about 4 hours and was very hungry. The advice we got, which seemed to work, was to give him a bottle to suck on during take-off and landing to help with the cabin pressure changes. While this worked well, the timing made it very tough to withhold the bottle and sleep until take off. However, the screams we endured on the tarmac were worth it – Davis didn't have any issues with ears popping on take off and went to sleep shortly after we passed 10,000 feet.

The flight so far has been a mixture of entertaining Davis and working. Kristen has been working hard on a paper and I've been listening to podcasts and these blog posts. Davis has actually been very easy to entertain – we can just walk around the cabin and he is fascinated by all the faces and people. He has been very popular with the flight attendants and other parents. We've also spent time playing with toys, bouncing on dad, reading books and sitting in the car seat backwards self entertaining.

Right now, we have an hour until landing and Davis is napping in his car seat. Soon we'll wake him up, put our stuff away and prepare a bottle for the descent. After landing, we pick up the rental car and head to my mom's for the next 10 days. We're really looking forward to some relaxing time with Grammie, seeing Kristen's Aunt, seeing friends and being back in the great pacific northwest

Here are some pictures from the flight:





* A cat nap means a short nap, but if you've ever seen our cats, you would think otherwise.

3 Month Checkup

Wednesday I went to MGH for my three month checkup since finishing radiation treatment in May. This is the first of many followups over the next three to ten years and I hope the rest go as easily as this one. I met with Dr. Shipley for a quick exam and check up, then had simple blood work and a chest x-ray. I should get the results of the blood work and chest x-ray back by the end of the week, but until then there isn't much to report, though my odds of finding nothing are quite good. I scheduled my next two appointments, one with Dr. Richard Lee in February, the hematology oncologist I saw previously and another with Dr. Shipley in August. I share Dr. Shipley's optimism that the tests will be negative, but waiting is always hard.

Davis moves into his own room!

Much like other big parenting decisions, John and I spontaneously decided tonight would be the night that we move Davis into his own room. He's been in a crib in our room while our second bedroom has been used by Grandparents. We've been debating a while about whether we move him now, move him when we return from Seattle, or wait a while until he's used to daycare (which, happens after we come back from Seattle). I was chatting with friends today and one of them pointed out it will only get harder as he gets older, and so, voila, Davis is in his own bedroom. I'm impressed that John managed to move all the furniture, dismantle and reassemble the crib, and clean all between 5:00 when he got home and 7:30 when Davis went to bed!

Putting him to bed was just a little bit rougher than a good night, but no worse than a bad night so far. Keep your fingers crossed! We have the bed still set up in that room just in case one of us needs to sleep in there for transition...

Updates

It's been a big week on the Naegle household. This morning Davis tried real food for the first time! He seemed a bit confused, but kept opening his mouth for more, although I'm not sure how much actually made it to his tummy, but it was a lot of fun to watch! Grandma Mendenhall left today and we're all quite sad. It was hard dropping her off at the airport after six weeks of living under one roof again (this is the first time since my sophmore year of college that I've really lived with my parents again). Grandma almost didn't make it out of Boston becuase of the hurricane, but she managed to get on a flight and was hoping to be off the east coast before there was any more problems. She has a long day ahead of her with connections in New York and Denver.

Davis had his four month checkup yesterday. The vaccinations hit him pretty hard last night, but he's doing much better today. I didn't time it, but I think he giggled for a full five minutes earlier after he woke up from his first nap. He weighs 18lbs and 13oz and is 26" long! He's moved from 50th percentile to 99th! (At least in weight, he's now in the 88th percentile for length...so he's a bit wider than long).

Right now, I'm working (blogging for a break from work :) while John and Davis take a nap. We're all feeling pretty exhausted after a rough night and emotional morning.

Sippy cup galore

Davis is really interested in cups. In fact, I think it's safe to use the term obsessed. He lunges for glasses if they are anywhere in the vicinity and will stop everything he is doing to stare at them. He's getting pretty good at his two-handled sippy cup, but unfortunately, we don't have enough breastmilk to really let him explore with it too much (especially after this last illness). We're hoping at his four month checkup on Friday that we can get the go-ahead for giving him water and juice in a sippy cup. Tonight, he was so interested in cups that Grandma brought him his own plastic cup to play with. He had a great time, especially playing the game of dropping it. He thought it was really funny if it dropped, and even funnier if Daddy could catch it. I couldn't pick between the two videos below, so here they both are!

New Pictures

On Friday, Davis would only sleep on his people, so Grandma and I each took a turn with the little guy sleeping on our chest.

If you look very very closely, you might see some hair.

Our little guy has gotten very adept at grabbing his toes.

Davis showing off his toes for mom

Play time in the living room

More play time

Self portraits while doing chores. Davis enjoyed watching me do dishes.

That's not what I had planned for the week...

So, Monday morning as I got ready for work, I thought "Hm, run today or yoga? Think I'll do yoga today, run tomorrow (with Davis), swim Wednesday, run Thursday (with Davis), teach spin class Friday. Right and meet with UROP (undergraduate research assistant) today and start working on a results write up, figure out that wierd bug, Dr's appointment for my foot today, make PT appointment (hm, maybe for next week), finish getting Matlab fixed...so on and so forth". I didn't plan on getting violently ill within a couple hours of starting work...and staying that way.

Talk about an unexpected turn of events. I thought I had simply gotten motion sickness on the way in, but then it kept getting worse. Finally, when I found myself curled up on the bench in the bathroom stall for an hour (thank goodness we have a bathroom stall with a bench), I realized it was something more. John luckily came to work to pick me up (just in time for the stomach pyrotechnics to really start). I didn't know it was a virus/food poisoning until John found out from a friend that she, her husband and her son were all sick with the stomach flu. We had just been at their place on Saturday to celebrate our friend's Ph.D. defense (yay!) Unfortunately, a lot of people who had been at the party came down with something sometime between 4 hours and 48 hours later. It's quite perplexing since there doesn't seem to be any linking event. Some people ate the dip and did get sick, others didn't. Some the ice cream, etc. etc. Some people had kids, others didn't. It's the strangest thing that something that spread so virulently at the party stopped completely with the people who got sick. Luckily, John, Davis, Grandma and Grandpa are all fine. I suppose that means it was food born in some manner and isn't easily passed by contact.

Anyway, I kept getting hopeful as hour after hour passed that various people reported feeling better. Some within the same night, others by the next day, everyone definitely by the morning of the third day. So morning of the third day (after a night of still losing everything I put into my stomach) I woke up so hopeful. I was sad to see freezer bag after freezer bag of milk defrosted to feed Davis since I couldn't (although, also not really with it to worry too much about restocking the freezer yet), but I thought for sure I was through it. Nope. Finally, my mom convinced me to call urgent care at MIT medical and they said they could definitely help, so John packed me up and off we went. We spent a few hours there as they pumped me full of 3-1 litre bags of IV solution and some anti-nausea medication until finally they let me loose with a prescription for more anti-nausea drugs and a care sheet on how to take care of a stomach bug (in short..don't eat). Today was the first day I've been able to function on any kind of normal level, and the first day I've had solid food (but trust me, I haven't ventured past simple flour based carbohydrates and clear liquids). I still seem to need the anti-nausea meds, but it's good to be keeping food down for the first time since Monday! John and I joked that if you've ever wanted to lose weight by removing an irresistable junk food from your diet is to eat it when you have the stomach flu. (That and pregnancy, the difference is you get to choose what you develop an aversion to with the flu).

I seem to be improving, although I'm still absolutely exhausted and wondering how in the world I'll be able to rebuild a stockpile of milk to give the daycare when we get back from Seattle. (And yes, I know formula won't kill him...) I'm hoping as I can start to eat more calories than I'm making in milk, I'll start to feel better and function better, but this is still a far cry from where I was yesterday! The most amazing discovery during this was that no matter how depleted my body is, it will make milk. I'm assuming that's part of the reason this flu hit me so much harder than it seemed to hit anybody else was I had to make myself better in addition to feeding a whole nother person!

Thank goodness we had both Grandma and Grandpa here when this happened. I was essentially like a negative parent, I couldn't do anything for Davis and I needed help myself!

New Pictures

After long days for both of us, Kristen and I enjoyed some good time with Davis tonight. I grabbed the camera and got some pictures of Kristen and Davis playing on the mat then rocking in the chair.

Davis was rolling around on the mat playing with his winkle and Kristen was working on getting him to reach and roll to it.

Kristen got her hair cut yesterday:

Looking for mom:

Got the winkle, looking at dad.

Reaching for a block

Hamming it up for the camera:

Mom and Davis

A few more pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/john.naegle/200908Davis

Goodbye pregnancy hormones, the angry me is back

I have always had a bit of a volatile temper, specifically when it comes to what I think is incompetent behavior or behavior that doesn't seem to follow any kind of logic. I rarely have this reaction to loved ones or friends, it's mostly reserved for strangers and/or people I know only a little. However, I really mellowed out during pregnancy and was very hard to anger (maybe it would have been a good time for me to start bike commuting again...this is a really good example of my angry streak, I quit riding my bike to work the day I almost got off my bike in order to smash it against a car..a car that had just hit me while they were parking..) Anyway, I can't remember any instances of being so worked up while pregnant, or since, until today.

On Monday the license for a program I use on a daily basis expired. I managed to get rolling on my laptop at home on Monday and Tuesday and continued working with this program (which is what I'm almost exclusively using right now for my work). However, when I came in on Wednesday I needed to get my desktop going too. Only, my desktop is on a different kind of license and so I had to e-mail to see if I could get the info for this license. I got back a really cryptic email (wait, I should really list the sequence of events).

1. I email Andy (IT guy #1) to find out about the license
2. He responds and cc's Bob (IT guy #2) who is charge of the license
3. Andy forwards me a cryptic email from Bob
   
4. I waste my coworker's time trying to figure out what is up with email and then I email Andy and say I don't get it.
5. Coworker and I have figured out what we're supposed to do, but it doesn't work.
6. Day #2, Andy comes to help and sees we are doing it right..he's stumped, we try some stuff. He emails Bob.
   
7. Bob emails Chris (support staff).
   
8. They email Dave (support staff).
   
9. Dave says Bob is in charge
10. Bob is stumped and tells me to do something I'm ALREADY doing
11. I tell him what I need and he tells me you shouldn't need that
12. He tells me I should uninstall and reinstall program (illogical and incompetent all in one)
    
13. I lose my temper and tell him that can't possibly be the solution and I'll just get license type that I know works .....
    

At this point I have to interrupt the post and condense what happens (I wrote the first half this morning and since then a lot has happened including multiple passive aggressive fights with Bob, a call to the company (that proves I have been right all along), two visits from Bob, 5 emails and in all I can summarize that I am in Catch-22 hell. I have passed from angry to amused, because you can't be angry when a situation becomes as ludicrous as this one has. Although I am sad that for all the time I have wasted on it this week that I have very little to show for my week, which is much more of a problem now that I have a munchkin to go home to. In fact I only saw Davis for an hour last night before his bedtime and I was hoping to leave work early today, but since this guy kept coming to my office to argue about how to fix the problem, I met with my undergraduate research assistant late, and so here I am again not going home when I wanted to. And this comes to the very essence of the point of this post. Now, not only am I struggling with my very own nature (the ability to anger easily when faced with bad logic and incompetence, with which I have been blessed in spades today) but on top of wasting time, it now means less time with my son. And so anger and sadness has rendered me even more volatile it seems when you combine those things. I know I have been worse today than I would have been pre-Davis since I actively showed my aggravation to Bob, normally I would simply have complained to my poor office mates, but today I made it very clear to this person that I was angry about the time he was forcing me to waste.

*Sigh* If you have made it this far, thanks for letting me vent. I will be working on how to separate wasted time at work from my time at home with Davis, but in all my life I have yet to find a way from getting angry when faced with a person's bad logic that directly affects me. I did try hypnobirthing techniques today and it helped a little. What helped most was a really good workout. Unfortunately, I have found that the people who attend my indoor cycling class rarely have a good time when I've had a bad week..everyone gets to have a hard workout then :)

Note: Names have been changed

Davis at 4 months

Davis was 16 weeks old this last Saturday and this coming Tuesday he'll be four months old (according to the calendar). He sure has changed a lot, in fact it seems that every day I come home he's doing something new. Here it is in bullet points:

• He's really interested in big person food, specifically in glasses. He likes to put a hand on our glasses and cups and whenever he sees you drink from one he sticks his chin out and purses his lips. We tried giving him his own sippy cup of milk at the dinner table last night. He managed pretty well, although about half of it ended up on his onesie.
  
• He has started jumping. We're debating about whether this was caused by introducing him to the exersaucer. All I know is we have to take turns holding him during his jumping phases in the day. An 18 lb jumper on your legs and belly isn't too much fun.
  
• If you didn't catch that, our little 16 week old isn't so little. 18 lbs as of yesterday.
• He's rolling! He has now successfully rolled front to back and back to front. He hasn't put the two together yet, but I'm sure he will soon and then watch out!..update, I started this post earlier in the day and when I got home I was told he rolled twice in the crib!
  
• He likes to 'talk'. He is definitely becoming a conversationalist, in fact Grandpa watched him trying to talk to our cat Domino the other day. Too bad Domino ignored him. Talking typically involves making ever crescendo'ing vowel sounds until the person/cat he's trying to talk to pays attention.
  
• He has definitely got object permanence down. He remembers when I'm home working and this morning I plopped him in his exersaucer (he was starting to jump) and he played until I went into the bedroom, then he just watched the bedroom door until I came out again.
  
• He's getting really strong abs and we can tell he really wants to sit up on his own. He's getting pretty close!
  
• He has transitioned from 'needing' to 'wanting'. He seems to have figured out how to get himself into mom's arms by acting hungry, but then he just plays when I offer him food.
  
• He's doing really well in the carrier now. In fact, now that he has so much trunk/neck/head control, he doesn't mind facing in since he can now look around.
• He likes being in the stroller like a big boy now! The car seat is now mostly reserved for the car only.
• He likes to feel the texture of various objects, he likes to pet the cats (there's some grabbing involved too) and touch the soft cover on the boppy nursing pillow.
  
• He's been discovering his feet. If I had posted this earlier today I would have said he's almost got them to his mouth, but now I can say he has! As we were getting ready for his bath tonight there was definitely toes in the mouth. Let's just say diapering with a leg stretched up to the head is an interesting experience.
• He has gone from sleeping in a combination of our bed, the crib and the swing to all in his own crib (part of that was parent training as well).
  
• He really enjoys sucking his upper lip in and letting it go with a *smack* sound.
• It's hard to quantify how much better his fine motor skills are, but in the last month he's gone from smacking at his toys to grabbing them and bringing them to his mouth.
  

All these exciting developments along with the giggles and smiles makes me love being a parent.

A new bedtime routine

For a while now, we have had a pretty consistent bedtime routine with Davis. Typically, it goes something like this:

• 5:00 pm - Nap
  
• 6:00 pm - Our dinner with Davis in the highchair / laps
  
• 7:00 pm - Massage or Bath
• 7:30 pm - Nurse to sleep in the chair
• 7:45 pm - Put in crib asleep
• 10:30 pm - Wake up, bounced or rocked back to sleep
• 12:30 am - Wake up, bounced or rocked back to sleep
• 2:30 am - Wake up, eat, put back to sleep
• 3:30 am - Wake up, bounced or rocked back to sleep
• 4:30 am - Wake up, whatever works to get him back to sleep (except nursing)
• 5:30 am - Crap shoot, maybe up, maybe asleep
  

This has been working okay, but not great. It has been okay in that it is consistent and it gets him to sleep by 7:45 or 8:00, but not so good in that he hasn't been sleeping well and has a very strong association with Mom and eating. Whenever Kristen has got up at night to re-assure him and put him back to sleep, he seems to get very upset that he is not being fed. Some of this is probably left over from nursing him in bed at night multiple times.

If you are familiar with EASY principals (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You-Time) from the Baby Whisperer, you see that we are actually on the AESY schedule (Activity, Eat, Sleep, You-Time).

We aren't really teaching him how to fall asleep on his own so we are trying a new bedtime routine. Our goals for this change to a) get him to sleep better at night (as you can see above, he wakes up every couple of hours) and b) teach him to go to sleep by himself. We are still working out the details, but we will be a) moving up his bed time, b) nursing him before his massage / bath and c) Dad will read Davis 2 books in the bedroom d) Dad will be putting him to bed (hopefully while sleepy, but not asleep) e) we will let him cry for 5 minutes before going in an re-assuring him for 5 minutes f) we will repeat e up to 5 times.

Tonight was our first try with this routine and to both our surprises it actually worked. Kristen nursed the little guy then I gave him a massage in the living room. After that, I took him into the bedroom where we read Daddy Kisses and Goodnight Moon before turning of the lights and rocking in the chair for a little bit. I put him down in the crib on his stomach a little fussy, then returned after 5 minutes (we have a timer) to reassure him by talking to him and patting him on the back for 5 minutes. He was able to fall asleep by himself and I haven't had go back in for the last 55 minutes.

We're still figuring out this routine and what we want our style to be. I'm sure there will be some changes, but the overwhelming thing we've learned from reading is to be consistent. Whether you use the Ferber Method, the No Cry Sleep Solution, attachment parenting, some other method, or a combination or many different approaches having a plan and sticking to it allows you to say "I love it when a plan comes together" and get some sleep yourself.

Lions and tigers and butterflies, oh my

Sunday, we took Davis to the zoo for the first time. He has gotten to the point where he is interested in what is going on around him and tracks people and animals really well. Originally, we had planned on going to The Butterfly Place in Westford, but it collapsed on June 29th. We decided to stick with the original theme and see butterflies at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. After a hearty breakfast at our favorite neighborhood breakfast place, we headed out with some of the best weather we've had in long time.

We spent about three hours walking around the Zoo. We saw a lion, tigers, zebras, ostriches, giraffes (include a 2-week old baby), lots of butterflies and birds and many other animals. We went to the Butterfly exhibit right away while Davis was awake. He enjoyed the butterflies, but they moved just a little bit too fast for him to track.

We also took him on his first carousel ride. According to observers, he grew more and more concerned with each rotation, but didn't fuss and finished with a smile for mom.

After the zoo, we topped the day off with a trip to Costco and Babies R' Us for a thoroughly long and exhausting day.

Pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/john.naegle/20090802FranklinParkZoo.

The lion would wake up about every 30 minutes and roar to let everybody know to stay off his turf, then fall back to sleep. I tried to get a recording to train Domino:

In the butterfly garden:

Not too many of the butterflies would get close enough or stay still long enough to get a good picture (forgetting the telephoto also didn't help). This guy was the exception.


At the giraffe exhibit. The baby in the back ground is about 2 weeks old and two hundred pounds. The one in the foreground is 16 weeks old and about 17 pounds:


First carousel ride. This must have been one of the first times around as Davis has not yet started using his look of concern:

Everybody on the carousel:

Grandma singing Davis a song about a kookaburra (which we were watching):

A tired little guy: