Davis can add

Davis can now add. Well, he can at least put two and two together. Today he put together a bunch of the tummy-time movements he has been doing in isolation (getting his butt off the ground, pushing with his legs, etc) to figure out lunging. He surprised both of us by lunging and grabbing the power cord for the baby monitor while we were playing with him. Time to get our act in gear and baby proof (at least get the cords out of his reach).

New Photos

I took a few pictures of Davis this weekend while he was playing in his room. Here are some selections:

A mixed bag of a weekend

Saturday John, Davis and I went with our friends Jarasa, Dave and Siri to the Middlesex Fells for a hike in the woods. The weather couldn't have been better, it was beautiful and you could feel the start of autumn coming on. We've found it's much easier to dress Davis for going out in the sun now that the weather is cooler..we can use pants and long sleeves without him getting too hot (and of course, his 'Indiana Jones' hat). Davis had a fantastic time on Dad's back in the hiking pack. He occassionally reached out for trees if John got too close. We had a great time getting to know Jarasa, Dave and their daughter Siri. Siri and Davis had synchronized naps about halfway through the hike and slept for the remainder of it. Saturday night, Dave and Megan came over for dinner, we realized Megan hadn't seen Davis since the end of July! He impressed them with his sweet potato eating ability. We had to refill the bowl three times!!

Today felt like a growth-spurt for Davis. He napped most of the day (unprecedented amounts really) and when he was awake, he was eating. He had pumpkin today for the first time and loved it! For John and I it was mostly a chore day. Looking back, I did a crazy amount of cooking: French toast with goat cheese and orange fig spread and a broccoli roasted red pepper fritatta for breakfast. Then I made oat scones and roasted a sugar pumpkin for Davis (which I pureed and froze). I followed that up with quinoa muffins and red beans and rice. John made a mole enchilada casserole and I made a gargantuan fruit salad. We took a bunch of the food to our friends' place for dinner (they have a 2.5week old). When we got back I then assembled a strata for breakfast. I think I feel like I've caught up on my desire to cook. John removed the air conditioners from the windows and put up the wall decorations in Davis' room we ordered last week (pictures coming, I forgot to take some before Davis went to bed).

Breaking News: Davis sleeps through the night!!

Last night was the second night that Davis has slept through the night (in a row). I didn't want to jinx it, I still don't, but two nights ago Davis slept from 8pm to 4am and last night he slept from 8pm to 3:30am! This is biiig news for us. Even though he hasn't been eating at night recently, he's still needed comforting 2-3 times a night from John. We have no idea what's different, other than that he's just growing up and able to soothe himself. We've been trying to get him attached to a sleep lovey, so he can take it to daycare. However, this has had mixed results since when he does wake up at 4am he starts talking to his duckie and won't go back to sleep. He's also doing better sleeping at daycare. He had a 2-hour nap yesterday!

I'm just counting the hours until I can pick him up from daycare. I've decided to start taking Wednesday afternoons off to spend with him. If it doesn't rain, we'll be heading to a consignment store to shop for Halloween costumes, then we'll hit the Arlington Boys and Girls club to see about signing up for swim lessons, then Isis for teething toys (invariably, we have yet again lost some toys, which I'm sure will show up just after I buy new ones), then to the farmer's market!

Teeth: The better to eat apples with

We've had a busy, but the good kind of busy, weekend here at the Naegle household (of course, one of many Naegle households). Saturday we got to see our friends Vasu and Rachana for brunch (we made pancakes they made idli. We subsequently bought idli dough at our local Indian shop and they now know how to make pancakes)! Then last night, our friends AJ and Susan came over for dinner (and of course they brought their killer chocolate pudding and a fantastic Belgian beer). That visit was bittersweet as Susan is moving to San Francisco in early October, followed by AJ in December/January (although, the idea is we slowly move all our friends to the west coast and then we follow...Megan might be looking at postdocs in Seattle ;)

Today, we went for our fifth year in a row (we think we've gone every year), to the Brookdale fruit farm in Hollis, NH to pick apples. Unfortunately, it was very early season, so several of our favorite varieties weren't quite ripe (so we'll have to go again!). This was a fantastic opportunity to get together with some yoga mom friends I had made on maternity leave. It's a really fantastic group of women and of all the groups I had participated in over maternity leave, this one I really feel connected to and want to keep in touch with. Also, for the first time, John got to meet them and we got to meet their spouses! Below are the 'girls', left-most is Siri and her Dad Dave (mom not pictured is Jarasa), then Scott and Charlotte are center (mom Tara) and on the right is Jane, the oldest of the group (mom Edua and Dad John). Davis is quite a bit younger, Siri and Charlotte are two weeks apart and are about 7.5-8months and Jane is 9months. I think the thing I realized today that was so refreshing is that for the first time I have met non-scientists/engineers in the last five years (ok, a couple are scientists/engineers, but one is an architect, one an architecture photographer, a clinical psychologist and a business analyst)!

We tried Davis out in the backpack we had bought when I was about 36-weeks pregnant. He loved it! It was great that he could pick trees while Dad picked apples.













It went so well today, that we hope to hike next weekend (more like a walk in the woods..but it's a start).

The biggest news of the weekend (aside from me actually trying on a pair of pre-pregnancy pants and then subsequently wearing them, oh and that the University of Washington BEAT 3rd ranked USC) is that Davis has a first tooth! His lower right front tooth has broken the surface! He's also eating like a champ now. Tonight he scarfed down an entire serving of carrots in just a couple of minutes. We followed this up with some bubbles, which he LOVED and Lilly HATED. We also got to talk to Grammie on Skype. So you can see it was a big weekend for all of us, and the picture below pretty much sums up how we feel now.

New Pictures / Davis' Room

Davis' room is starting to take shape. Today we received the mats we ordered and I was super excited to put them down so he can start playing in there so I re-arranged the room (again) and moved a lot of the junk we had in there out. After Dinner, Kristen and Davis had some good playtime on the new mats. We're going to order some more mats and have a lot more work to do, but his room is starting to take shape. It is a little hard to see in the pictures below, but Davis can really sit for quite a while without any assistance if he is in the right mood.

Feeling scholarly

I had some surprising news this week, I've been named a Siebel Scholar. The scholarship is for a graduate student's last year of study and it focuses on students in Computer Science, Business, and now Bioengineering. My department was applying for the first time to the foundation, since they have only this year added Bioengineering to the foundation list. I had no idea what was going on, I was only asked for a resume a while ago (which I had made for another fellowship application...I'll tell that story later).

The most fantastic news of all is that my advisor, the department head, is responsible for choosing me as one of the five submissions for our department's scholars. In doing so, he had to make sure the candidates would be finished within 12months. That's right..my advisor just guaranteed I'll be done in a year! (Which was the plan..it's just a really really solid plan now).

"Solid" Food

We've been introducing "solid" food to Davis for some time now. So far he has sampled peas, sweet potatoes, bananas, carrots apple sauce, rice cereal and combinations of those. Results have been varied. How much he eats really seem mood dependent, but he does seem to like freshly made foods over the packaged foods you get from the store.

Here are a couple of pictures of one of our recent adventures at dinner.

Often Davis gets more interested in the spoon or our hands, or the cats than eating:

The results of carrots. We think some actually went down, but we aren't sure:

Baby proofing

Kristen and I are slowing working our way through baby proofing our apartment. Tonight I installed the first baby gate and this weekend we moved our second bed out of Davis' room and into our office. This gives Davis a lot more safe space and lets us still have guests. Kristen ordered some nice mats for the floor and we are trying to figure out how to make the radiator safe and keep the room warm. We still have a long way to go, but with the progress Davis is showing in crawling and standing, we need to get started.

Davis is a lot more mobile. He isn't yet crawling, but he is turning and scooting (forwards and backwards) and can move around and get to things he wants to play with. Its been really fun to watch his progress and I think we are both looking forward to and dreading when he starts crawling. It is both exciting and sad to see him grow up.

Having our bed in the office has actually turned out to be rather nice. This weekend, I went to a few garage sales with the goal of picking up a new stroller and looking for fall/winter clothes. I met both those goals and also picked up a new monitor stand, an Onkyo TX-8511 stereo receiver. Previously I had been using two reams of paper, but when the printer ran out of paper, my monitor stand was compromised and this seemed like a good alternative. Besides being the right height for a monitor stand, the receiver also allows us to watch movies in our office while relaxing on the bed with a nice fall breeze through the windows (our office has full windows on three sides). The cats seem to enjoy the bed also, it is just the right height for them to relax on and watch the birds in the trees, next door house and power lines.

Davis almost sleeps through the night

Recently, Davis has almost slept through the night. Earlier this week, he only woke up once during the night and Tuesday, while he woke up a couple of times, he went the whole night without eating. Sleep has definitely been getting easier, tonight I put him down on his back (crying) and he put himself to sleep. I don't think we've done anything, I think this is mostly Davis growing up and getting used to our bedtime routine which we've been pretty consistent about for the last month and a half.

I'm sorry for the lack of posts lately, we've been adjusting to taking daycare and have both been swamped with work recently. Hopefully we're both out from under the heaviest work loads for a while and will be able to post a little more often. This blog is very important to both of us.

Quick Davis Fix

Sorry for the relative digital silence..John and I have been adjusting to the new chaos that is our lives post Grandmas. I'm hard at work, but I needed a quick Davis fix, so I figure you must too.

A jumbled list of updates

What an adventure the last few days have been. Sunday, we flew home from Seattle. This time the flight connected in Chicago and so we had to worry about take-off and landing two times! Miraculously, John got Davis to use the binkie for take-off on the second leg and so we only had to give him milk/water on the other three take offs and landings. Also, Davis slept the entire way from Chicago to Boston, at baggage claim, and in the car until we were a quarter-mile from home. John and I were getting really hopeful we could just transfer him inside and he would never need to wake up until his night feeding. No such luck, awake and VERY interested to relearn his house and cats. We were up until 2am, I think, trying to get him back down..eventually it happened. I have to say that the trip on the airplane definitely tested our parenting preparedness. I'll have you know that even though his clothing became less coordinated as the trip wore on, we still had one extra outfit at the end of it! Not bad for rookies. An additional adventure we took on was to transport frozen breastmilk on the airplane. Since I had been sick, we went through our entire stock (almost) of milk and I was really nervous going into daycare that he wouldn't have enough and as Grammie found out the night we went away for our anniversary, Davis says "Just say NO to formula"...Not a situation I wanted to leave him in on his first day of daycare.

John and I were really glad to have a day at home to unpack and organize everything for daycare. We managed to break my breastpump and then fix it (phew), unpack, take a walk, cuddle for hours with Lilly and play for hours with Domino and introduce homemade applesauce to Davis. We made applesauce last fall from organic Northeast handpicked apples and Davis was wild about it, in fact I had to refill the bowl. Unfortunately, this is the very last bottle of it and so John and I are in a hurry to make more for this year.

Finally, we get to today, a BIG day in all of our lives. John and I dropped Davis off at daycare this morning for the first time. Even with all our advanced preparation, I still felt disorganzied and hurried. Davis was very unhappy to be transferred from Mommy's arms to Sarah's arms and it was all I could do not to snatch him back, but you'll be glad to know I didn't AND I didn't cry until we left the daycare. Sarah has written an email to let me know that he his happily playing with his new friends (which, we expected to happen). Luckily, I'm madly busy with work and have less time to dwell on it than I would naturally take.

Davis: Food and rolling

Davis has been so interested in cups that at his four month checkup we got the all-clear from the pediatrician to start solid food. His fascination with cups has persisted, and he gets his sippy cup after he's tried a bit of food. Other than peas, the food thing isn't going very well. He's gotten very good at pushing all the food in his mouth, out of his mouth. At least he likes peas! Here's what we've tried so far (in the order we've tried them):
Rice cereal, peas, sweet potatoes, oatmeal cereal (since he didn't like rice), applesauce, bananas.

This morning, John let me sleep in and when he came to wake me up he greeted me with an update on Davis. Davis can now string together multiple rolls to make it from one side of the room to the other. We knew it would happen eventually, but now when we return to Boston, our first order of business will be baby proofing!

Enjoying our visit

We are having a great time in Washington. We've spent our time relaxing with family and friends and visiting some of our favorite places in Seattle. Kristen's Aunt came out and visited us Saturday and Sunday and we enjoyed some long visits while Davis provided the entertainment. On Monday, we went to lunch at Big Time Brewery in the University District then headed to Pike Place Market downtown to pick up food and flowers for our anniversary.

Monday night, we left Davis over night while we went for a very relaxing night at the Salish Lodge. Davis, Mom, Dad and Grammie all did great but Davis was quite hungry and ate through an entire day's worth of milk and had to have a few ounces of formula (which he did not like) before we got home. Tuesday night, James, Stephanie and Melanie returned to my Mom's after spending time at Stephanie's parents and we enjoyed relaxing and catching up.

Wednesday we met Kristen's Aunt for breakfast in Seattle, then headed to the Woodland Park Zoo. Davis has really been enjoying sitting up in his stroller and looking around and we thought it would be a great opportunity for him to see a lot of different sites and enjoy a walk in the great weather. We had a great time and Davis enjoyed looking at everything including flowers, the carousel, a monkey, other children and his toes.

Today we had a relaxing day. After a late breakfast we wrangled both babies and went to the Issaquah Zoo for another day of walking around and enjoying the outdoors. Davis really enjoyed the parrots and the lemurs until they startled him with with some screaming. Afterwards we went to the Issaquah Brewhouse for lunch then wrapped the day up with dutch oven chicken.

Its been a very relaxing trip so far and it has been great to spend so much time with family.

I've uploaded a number of pictures to Picasa.

Chapter 2: Courtship Part I

We left off in the last post that John and I met playing soccer. I suppose our first dates were goalie practices followed by lunch at the student union Subway. After a couple of those, John asked me to go bowling with a regular group of friends that went to Renton on Friday nights for 25 cent bowling. Given that I typically top out at a score of 65, 80 if it's a fantastic night, everyone was pretty surprised that I beat John 136-135 in our first game. I think we are still unsure if this bowling adventure counts as a date. Finally, we get to dinner and a movie! After enjoying a calzone at a local pizza dive, John and I went to see Mission Impossible 2 which had just opened. MI2 was so bad we decided we had to go out the next night as well to make up for it. John walked me back to my place where we stayed up until 4 in the morning talking. As he was about to leave I very awkwardly kissed him on the cheek, just as someone walked in the door, so I don't know if John even noticed it!

We saw a lot of each other in the last two weeks of that school year (John's senior year and my junior year), just before I moved to Portland, Oregon for the summer to intern at Intel. A little while after our second first date, I took John cupcakes in lab, where he was working most nights until 4 or 5 am finishing a senior design course (in fact, when I made plans to meet him for lunch, he would say 'just as long as it's after 11am, before 11am I'm a pumpkin', how can you not fall in love with that?!). We went for a walk around the big fountain on campus, the fountain is surrounded by a few benches, and it looks down towards Mt. Raineer and is the center of the engineering campus. We sat on a bench (this will become important later), where John asked me if I 'wanted to be more than just friends?' So I kissed him again and then said "Wait, does that mean we're dating??" So there you have it, soccer, a few dates, a first kiss, and we were more than friends.

Unfortunately, this all happened just before I left for Oregon. John graduated and stayed on at the University to do research for his undergraduate adviser. It turns out that it was exactly 190 miles from his door to my door and we made the trip every weekend that summer, alternating between Portland and Seattle. Luckily, we both had little red sports cars to keep us company those weekends, shown below, my MX6 is in the foreground and John's Mustang is in the background (and occasionally John would take the train). In some ways the move was hard for a burgeoning romance, but in other ways it was remarkably convenient. John and I spent time together every weekend from Friday night to Sunday afternoon, and it was a quick way to get to know each other. In the beginning John and I would say 'I like you!' It wasn't too long into the summer that I ventured to tell John "I more than like you" and he quickly responded "I love you!"


We had a fantastic time that summer exploring the Oregon coast and getting to know each other. I don't have digital photographic evidence, but a trip along the coast one weekend provided the first opportunity for John to work on his 'pose'. This is his classic picture pose and I'm providing an example below of what I mean (which is from about a year later when we were on a hike). We have pictures like this from literally all over the world, Washington, Massachusetts, Oregon, France, Canada, and Utah. Someday, perhaps I can build a montage.