Evan and Lynn

This week, our full time nanny, Lynn started.  She is great!  As my mom pointed out, she has more years of experience as a nanny than I do being a human.  She is a real blessing to have with our boys.  Davis is still going to daycare at Ms. Laura's two days a week which is good for everybody.  Today, Lynn reported that Evan flipped over from his front to has back and almost flipped back over.  He is a strong little 3 month old.

95 Blocks

Davis was out of daycare sick today so we split the day with the little guy.  I went into work early and Kristen went in to do some lab work tonight.  During the day, Kristen and Davis went to the zoo, and while I wasn't looking, she snuck in his first haircut to trim down the toddler mullet that had been forming.  Hopefully, she will be able to write a separate post about that experience.  

While Kristen was at work, Davis and I had a fantastic evening.   We took a little cat nap in the rocking chair, then with a re-charged little one we had dinner and played hard for a couple of hours.

We:

• Had french toast for dinner.
• Went for a walk around the neighborhood.
• Ran the Scooba.  Davis sat in my lap for 20 minutes while we watched it work.  I love robots. :)
• Built a structure using all 95 of the mega blocks.  Davis put 85 of them together and I added 10 or so for stability.  He was just amazing with the blocks.  It seemed like he made a huge leap forward in his building abilities.  When all 95 blocks where used, he said "more".  I agree, we need more blocks mom.
• Played chase and hide and seek.
• Had a miniature tickle fest.
• Rolled and threw tennis balls to each other.

Here are a few pictures from the evening.  I had to use the little camera which doesn't take as good of pictures with the harsh direct flash (sorry):

Building in progress.  Davis has identified a structural weakness that Dad will address.

Work in progress

Adding the last block

Final product, from the top

Guilty of something.  He just came out from under the table

Daycare closed

Daycare is closed this week, and I'm off from work and taking care of Davis.  Yesterday we went to the park, the Y, the pet store, the grocery store, farm stand, a different park and for a walk to Arlington Center. Today, we'll head to the Y then downtown to the Aquarium before coming home for a nap.  For the rest of the week, I'm planning on going to the Y each day and I'd like to get to the Boston's children's museum and a beach.  Friday is his 15 month appointment and Saturday we are thinking about going camping.  Should be a fun and busy week!

A rough week

Its been a tough week for our little guy.

• Last Monday, he went back to daycare after two weeks off
• Thursday he had a high fever and would not eat after daycare (we did get to goto the zoo because of this)
• Friday and Saturday he broke out with a rash all over his body
• Saturday he finished a 10 day course of antibiotics for strep
• Saturday he got taken to the YMCA daycare while we worked out
• Sunday he went to the doctor for the rash (nothing to worry about)
• Today he went to the park at 7:15 am with mom and dad, only to have dad leave for his doctor's appointment after 15 minutes (Davis stood at the fence saying "Da-Da?")
• He has multiple teeth coming in at once

Drop off at daycare has been especially tough for the last week.  He really does not like to see mom or dad go and lets us know about it.  Tonight was a really rough night for all of us - teething seems to have him in a lot of discomfort and he spent most of the night screaming and throwing himself around.  A popsicle at dinner did help, as did Tylenol, but it was tough to see him so uncomfortable.

The Home Stretch

As of today, Kristen has exactly 5 weeks to finish and turn in her thesis.  It promises to be a busy 5 weeks.  A few of the big things on our plates for the next 2 months:

• Davis' first birthday
• Prepare poster / presentation for conference in Lisbon (Kristen)
• Plan and take a 1 week trip to Portugal and somewhere else in Europe (Both)
• Come up with a thesis title.  Current working draft is: "Biological systems and stuff" (Kristen)
• Write thesis (Kristen)
• Prepare resume (Kristen)
• Job Search (Kristen)
• Prepare thesis defense presentation (Kristen)

Most of these are typical things that happen at the end of a PHd.  We've certainly seen a number of our friends go through crunch time in the last part of their degrees, but it was kind of shock when we realized there were only 5 weeks left until her thesis was due. 

Kristen has been working very hard for a long time and it is hard to imagine where we'll find the extra time.   We're planning on taking Davis to daycare for an extra 3 hours a week which will help a lot, but it means trading off Davis time for work time for a little while.  

Our typical day goes like this:

• 5:30 - Wake up, hopefully sleeping through the night
• 6:00 - Parent #1 showers and gets ready for work
• 6:00 - Parent #2 takes care of Davis (fed, changed, playing - yay!)
• 6:30 - Parent #2 prepares breakfast for Parent #1, #2 and Davis
• 7:00 - Breakfast
• 7:15 to 7:30 - Parent #1 leaves for work
• 7:30 to 9:00 - Parent #2 and Davis time (yay!)
• 9:30 to 10:00 - Parent #2 arrives at work
• 5:15 - Parent #1 picks up Davis
• 5:30 - Parent #2 arrives home, starts dinner
• 6:15 to 6:45 - Dinner
• 6:45 to 7:15 - Playtime (yay!)
• 7:30 - Davis goes to bed
• 7:30 to 9:00 - John cleans, does laundry, chores, etc, Kristen works
• 9:00 to 10:00 - John on the computer, blogging / doing finances, etc, Kristen works
• 10:00 or 11:00 - Bedtime

Its going to be a busy and exciting time.

That is some good walking

It seems I am forever composing blog posts in my head, but rarely do they make it into writing.  I hope to do a better job of that in the future, but below are some disconnected thoughts and updates regarding the last couple of weeks.

Davis is a walker!  A couple of weeks ago, he took his first steps, and he has been exponentially improving on those first steps.  For the first week or so, we could get him to walk if we sufficiently motivated and distracted him.  However, he mostly felt the need for the safety of an object to hold onto, despite whether or not it actually provided him any support.  This last Friday, for the first time, while we were playing in his room, he stood up and walked to me!  John and I are amazed at his ability to learn things so quickly, from a few steps to crossing a room in the matter of a couple of weeks.  John has just posted a video. 

One of Davis' favorite things continues to be books.  However, we do a lot less reading of the books these days.  Mostly Davis enjoys pulling the books out of the book box and handing them to us.  Then we open the book and Davis turns the pages until it's time to move onto pulling the next book in the box.  During one of these sessions, Davis saw me put something in his laundry basket.  He then took everything out of the book box and put it in the laundry basket.  This makes us realize that we need to be VERY careful about what we do and say in his presence, it doesn't take much for him to pick up on things.

Kellie, one of the daycare providers, told me a story this last week when I picked Davis up.  Apparently, he likes to pull every single car out of the box of cars they have at the daycare.  He methodically pulls one out at a time and places it on the ground.  When he finally gets to the last one, whatever one that is, he runs off to play with it.  Davis and his partner in crime, Roxie, can take apart the daycare in a matter of minutes.  In exasperation, Kellie told John yesterday that they will be working on the skill of putting things away soon.  John suggested they pull out a laundry hamper.

A couple of weeks ago marked an increase in fussiness for Davis.  We believe it's a combination of him being sick at the time as well as his increasing frustration at not being able to communicate.  Who knows what it really is, but we have noticed that Davis is getting very good at communicating to us what he wants recently.  We have attempted using a few signs with Davis in the hope of giving him some tools before he's verbal to aid in his communication.  His sign for 'more' looks like clapping and tells us that he's ready for more food at the table.  However, when combined with his refusal of one type of food and his insistence for 'more' we've been able to figure out he may not want cereal, but he definitely wants the pancake sitting in front of Mom.  He is also able to clearly tell us when he wants to be picked up and when he wants to be put down, when he wants a book read to him, and when he wants you to play peak-a-boo.  It's such a joy to see him turning into a person with real preferences.  Current preferences include blueberries and tofu.  We've watched him eat a half pint of blueberries in one sitting and pick around everything on his tray to eat every morsel of tofu, and ask for more. 

Domino is not nearly as enthused as we are at Davis' newest form of mobility.  Davis continues to treat Domino like his stuffed animals, which entails throwing his arms around him and tackling him.  Sometimes if he can't get close enough for a tackle, Davis settles for a head butt.  Domino continues to be amazingly calm around Davis and I've only once had to deter Domino from nibbling Davis after a particularly rough tackle.  We continue to monitor their interactions closely and lock Domino out of Davis' room at night since we know Domino lacks the better judgment to not go in there.  Despite all of his overly-enthusiastic attention, Domino continues to lavish attention on Davis.  The moment his door opens in the morning Domino races into the room.   One morning when Davis woke up late, Domino paced outside his room for about an hour.  Our night time ritual includes chasing Domino out from under the crib.  Someday they will be the best of friends.  Lilly continues to claim safe harbor, far away from the reaches of Davis.  The only exceptions to this rule is if she is forced to choose between a room with a baby and a room with a vaccuum or when there is a particular bit of enticing food on the highchair tray.  Davis is more than happy to share food with Lilly.

I am extremely busy and quite overwhelmed at work.  I have had some great results recently, and although I know I will wrap this work up, the idea of wrapping it up in time for my final committee meeting (now less than two weeks away) is a bit of a shock.  This is in addition to submitting an abstract for one conference and preparing a poster for another.  I think underlying all of this stress is the idea that in less than two weeks I will be away from John and Davis for a full five days!  This conference marks the end of breasfeeding for us.  I think it's a natural ending for it anyway, but it's still an ending to what has been a large part of my relationship with Davis.  A couple of weeks ago I discontinued pumping at work and we began introducing formula to Davis.  Today, we cut out one feeding, leaving just one last feeding.  This one will be the hardest to break since it's the most emotionally-tied one for Davis.  After a long and exciting day at daycare, Davis nurses as a way to reconnect and to calm down.  Some nights this ends in a quick catnap before dinner.  We'll be dropping this feeding when I leave and I'm not sure John is very excited about the potential reprocussions.  Our hope is that out-of-sight, out-of-mind will apply in this case and it will be the easiest way to wean.  If we are wrong, well, let's just say I'm glad I won't be around to find that out.

John had his six-month post-radiation checkup yesterday where he had a chest x-ray and some bloodwork done.  We will find the results out later this week.  His cancer and treatment have been on my mind a lot lately.  Someone we know is battling breast cancer and seeing her go through surgery and treatment has brought all the history of John's own fight to the forefront again.  It's a strange feeling that I can't explain or shake, but seeing someone else battle something more aggressive makes me feel like we got off almost too easily this time around.  Comparing aggressiveness of John's cancer with someone else's makes about as much sense as what we heard multiple times during his diagnosis and treatment, which was "Testicular cancer is extremely treatable, if you were going to pick a cancer to get, this is the one to pick".  Clearly, this isn't how it works, but yet people feel compelled to tell us that, much like I feel compelled to worry more now than I did since seeing someone else go through something harder to treat.  I am consistenly thinking of her and hoping for the best, but like John, I know only time will tell.

A day off

Today, Kristen and I both took the day off from work. With our daycare closed, at least one of us had to take the day off so we decided to make it a three day weekend. Unfortunately, it didn't feel like much of a vacation day. We spent most of the day cleaning the kitchen trying to eradicate the Indian Meal moths that have been pestering us for a long time. To give you an idea of how much we cleaned just the kitchen: I pulled the stove out of the cabinets and cleaned under it. If it doesn't solve the problem, at least we have a fantastically clean kitchen.

We did have some fun. This morning, we took brunch to our friends Josh and Courtney who have an 18 month old and a 1 month old. After cleaning we went for a short walk in Menotomy Rocks Park in Arlington. We also made pumpkin-pie ice cream, which I can report is awesome.

Here are a few pictures from the day:

Hiking at Menotomy Rocks Park:

It is definitely fall:

By the pond:

Kristen gave Davis a measuring cup to play with. He had a blast:

Davis is a mover, but not a napper

Tomorrow marks the end of Davis' fourth week in daycare. It's had it's ups and downs, for Davis and us. We are definitely quite happy with the daycare, they do a good job of communicating with us about his day and I like the environment and the toddlers all seem really happy and well adjusted (they've all been there since they were infants). Unfortunately, Davis has gone from napping well, then poorly, then great, and now not at all. Ten minutes, that's how long he napped for today. It's making for a pretty cranky baby at daycare and at home too. My hope is that this cycle of napping corresponds with a new tooth getting cut (since he napped well, then not well, then his tooth came in and he napped great!) Now he's showing signs again of teething, yanking on his sippy cup while he bites down, drooling (more than usual!) and general fussiness. I hope that's what it is, we're running out of ideas for how to get him to sleep better at daycare. On the other hand (and knocking on wood as I type one handed), he's sleeping very well at night these days. Many nights he's sleeping from 8pm to 4am. Occasionally, he'll wake up one other time, but this is a vast improvement compared to waking up 4 or 5 times a night.

Davis is really making strides in his moving ability..he has his parents in a big hurry to baby proof now. We'll set him down in one place and then turn our back to get a diaper and he's half-way across the room! It's not crawling so much, but it's a cross between a commando style arm pull and a butt hike with a lunge. In any event, we aren't prepared for it. The other thing Davis is excelling at is eating. Tonight he ate an entire jar of carrots followed by a big bowl of applesauce. It seems we keep refilling bowls now because we underestimate the amount of food he wants. Last night it was 3/4 of a banana instead of 1/2!

A few days ago, I went for a haircut in Arlington and swung by the consignment store. I found this costume there and couldn't wait to for Halloween to try it on him. He, of course, wanted to eat it.

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.

Random Thoughts

I didn't think any of these were worthy of a full blog post, so here are a bunch of small snippets of thoughts from my week with Davis. I will probably also post some pictures soon.

You don't miss it until it is gone

Ever since Davis was born, we've been using white noise at night and often during naps as a sleep aide for Davis. We have a docking station for our iPod that we move between rooms, or position near the crib or swing at night. Last night, the docking station started making a strange crackling noise (very un-whitenoise like) and we decided to turn it off for the night and see what we could do about it in the morning. Kristen and I are both a little tired of the constant drone of the white noise, but last night was a lot rougher without the white noise. Kristen and I woke up more often to Davis' normal sleep noises and Davis didn't sleep as well either. Fortunately, the dock seems to be working bett

Week Summary

I've really enjoyed taking care of Davis this week. Kristen's mom arrives Sunday and she will be taking care of Davis for the next 5 weeks. It will be tough to go back to work next week and be without the little guy all day. We didn't get out of the house as much as I expected this week; it took me a couple of days to get comfortable, but we did go for a couple of walks. Tuesday, we went to the Arlington Farmer's market. Davis spent almost an hour in the carrier and we picked up some delicious farm fresh vegatables and eggs.

Yesterday we went to a sing-along at the Fox Library in Arlington. I learned / remembered a few songs and Davis was facinated by all the other kids and the trombone. Yesterday when Kristen took Davis to lunch and her Great Beginnings class at Isis, I went for a bike ride (homemade ice cream is an excellent recovery food) and did some shopping for dinner.

I've also made a lot of progress on my to-do list, including: paying medical bills, arraging to have the car worked on (mirror and brakes), recoving deleted files from old drives, and calling about some broken bicycle equipment. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to move by August 26th doctor's appointment -- the next available appointment was in Janurary so that has complicated my other todo list item: looking at flights to go to Seattle in August.

Today and the Weekend

Today, Davis and I are going to go meet Kristen at MIT for a picnic lunch and might spend some time in Davis square as well. We're aiming for a late lunch so Kristen and go to the gym at noon so we'll probably head out sometime after today's Tour de France stage ends. I would have liked to see the tall ships which are in Boston through Monday, but they are only open from 5pm to 10pm. Tonight we will do some grilling and might enjoy spending time together with Davis.

This weekend, we will probably got out to breakfast Saturday and then we are planning on going over to our friends Josh and Courtney's for a BBQ. They recently moved from Davis Square to Newton and it is going to be much harder to drop by and see them. The weather looks great and hopefully we'll enjoy some nice sunshine with Davis. Since Kristen is going to be working as a cycling instructor again, she has to go into school for a fire drill Sunday morning (more Daddy and Davis time!) and Kristen's mom arrives late Sunday.

I was seriously considering doing a bike race this weekend, but I don't think my fitness is quite good enough yet for it to be fun. A couple of more weeks of commuting with some hard efforts should get me there. There are a number of criteriums in the late summer and hopefully one of them is close enough for me.

Sleep

We've been working on transitioning Davis from sleeping in bed with us, to sleeping in his crib. We've had some success, but getting him down in the crib is a challenge. We're usually most successful when either Kristen nurses him or I rock him to sleep, then move him to the crib. Unfortunately, this only gets him to sleep for a couple of hours in a row instead of the 4-5 we can expect in the swing. We were using the pack-and-play as a bed-side bassinet, but we probably won't be using that any more as 1) it has a weight limit of 15 pounds and 2) Domino has discovered it is a great place to nap.

One thing I've found interesting is how consistent Davis' sleep patterns are, at least in the morning. We use a website, http://trixietracker.com, to keep track of sleep and bottles. They have a nice feature that shows sleep across different days. You can see that he wakes up at 6:00 am every day and has an 8:00 am nap:

Daddy-Davis time

I'm off of work this week taking care of Davis full time. Davis will be starting daycare on September 8th, so we are patching together care for him until then. My mom (Grammie) came for three weeks which ended last Friday, I have this week, then Kristen's mom comes for 5 weeks (her dad is also coming for part of that). That gets us to August 15th, so we'll probably plan to take some vacation time and hopefully travel back to Seattle for at least a week.

Today was my first day since Davis was born where I had full responsibility for him for the whole day. I really enjoyed the day. This morning, I made Kristen breakfast, then Kristen was off to work and Davis was off for a nap. I took care of some long lingering errands (a theme for the week) and watched the Tour de France on Versus.

Davis woke up smiling after 90 minutes and we some good playtime for about an hour before it was time for his first bottle of the day. After his bottle, he slept in my arms while we watched the exciting finish of stage 3. Kristen accused me of lining up my time off with the Tour, but if that was the case, I would have planned to take the 3rd week of the Tour off, not the first.

Davis woke up from his power nap and we had almost 2 and a half hours of play time before his next bottle. It then took him a while to fall asleep and I had to resort to taking him on a walk to Arlington Center. Fortunately, the raining weather of the last three weeks seems to be abating and we had a wonderful walk in the sun to Jam N' Java for an ice coffee before walking back along Spy Pond and past the Capital Theater. It was a 55 minute walk and a 53 minute nap.

After we got home, I transferred Davis to the crib from his car seat (a daring maneuver) and he is still sleeping after 40 minutes. If you've been following this blog, or talking to us, you'll know that sleeping in the crib has been a real trial for us and Davis, so this gives me hope that we are making progress.

Kristen should be home soon. I have a dinner of sweet-potato quesadillas planned, then I get to go out to Red Bones for a beer with a friend and former co-worker.

Tomorrow, Kristen and Mommy and Me Yoga in the afternoon and I'm going to try to take a bike ride up to the Lexington Farmer's market to pick up a chicken for beer-can chicken while she has Davis for Yoga and lunch. Thursday is a sing-along at the Arlington Library and hopefully we'll find some more fun activities and enjoy more of this sunshine that has eluded us for so long.

Daycare Decided

Today, we settled on a daycare. We choose a home daycare about 4 blocks from our house. We visited late last week during daycare hours and really liked the people and what we saw in the kids interactions. This weekend and today, I followed up with references and really liked what we heard. The parents were all very happy and enthusiastic with the daycare. One of the questions I asked each parent was: "What values do you think your child has learned from the daycare?". All three parents I talked to said things like: Sharing, Playing nice with others and taking turns. Also, every parent used the words loving to describe the daycare and were all very happy with the whole team of providers.

Kristen is going to call or email them tomorrow to confirm our spot for the fall. Hopefully everything goes well and there is indeed a spot for us. Tomorrow is Kristen's first day at home by herself. I've tried to make tomorrow as easy as possible for her - I'll make her a nice breakfast in the crock pot and there are leftovers for lunch, so at least meals are taken care of.

Daycare tour

Kristen and I took our first daycare tour this last week. It was both exciting and depressing at the same time. A few months ago, our plan was to use the daycare next to my work, but we decided we would be a lot better off close to home where either Kristen or I can drop off or pick up. We found Another Place to Grow in Arlington Center. Its a short walk and on my way to/from work, so it would work out really well. The tour was exciting because it was obviously a fun and engaging place for children, but depressing in cost (more than our rent) and the fact that there was a 65 person waiting list for 7 infant slots. We're on the waiting list (free) but will have to look around for more options. We need a place starting around September 1st after maternity and grandma care runs out.

Daycare

Kristen and I have been looking into daycare options. For a long time we had thought that it made the most sense to use the Bright Horizons daycare just down the street from my office. In the last week or so, we've been considering that we would be a lot better of with a daycare close to home. This gives us a lot more flexibility for pick-up and drop-off options. For instance, I can drop him off in the morning and Kristen can pick him up in the evening if I have to work late or go grocery shopping after work.

There are a few good daycares within walking distance of our place. that we'll be visiting shortly. One of the places has a 4 day a week option that is $200 less a month than the 5-day option. This has made us start thinking about each doing a 9/9 work week and each having 1 day at home every two weeks. We're both excited about this, so we'll have to see if we can work this out with our employers.