Recent Pictures

Davis during some playtime in the living room:

Playtime:

Happy baby:

Domino discovered the pack-and-play:

Today in the crib:

Davis and Domino:

Davis and Domino posing in the pack and play:

Davis has really discovered his hand and has enough control to put them in his mouth whenever he wants:

Napping in the crib:

A rare moment when the hand isn't either flailing or in his mouth:

Sleepy baby:

More sleepy baby:

Getting a bottle:

Braintree Train

This week I have very consistently been catching the 7:34 bus from Arlington to Davis Square, where I hop on the subway to get to Kendall/MIT. Yesterday and today I had the same train conductor, and I know this because this man has a special talent. First, I must tell you that the red line train has two ultimate destinations, a train can either be heading to Braintree station or to Ashmont Station. It's typically written on the train and the conductor will also usually announce it. I've noticed conductors at rush hour usually don't bother announcing much about the destinations and that's reserved for off-rush hour traffic that is more likely to contain tourists. However, this conductor, I want to call him something, so let's call him George, he announces destinations in a big way. In fact at each stop he announced that the destination of this train is Braintree on average 30 times at EACH stop. So as we pull into the station it sounds something like this:

"The destination of this train is Braintree Station, this is a Braintree Train-braintree train-braintree-braintree-braintree-braintree-braintree-braintree-Brain tree train-braintree-braintree-braintree-braintree-Braintree trainbraintree-braintree-(BIG BREATH IN) braintree Trainbraintree-braintree-braintree-braintree-braintree-braintree-braintree-Braintree train"

Yesterday, when I heard it at the first stop I thought it was kind of amusing. Then by the fourth stop, my stop, I was a little aggravated. When it happened today, I decided to count the number of times I heard braintree:
Porter: 24
Harvard: 29
Central: 39
MIT: 28

Counting helped keep me from losing my mind. Monday, I plan on taking a stopwatch to see if I can correlate the number of times with the amount of time the door is open. There's a few possibilities that I and my officemates can come up with:
1) George has a bit of an obsessive-compulsive disorder
2) George got chastised for not announcing the destination of the train at some point in time
3) That train is missing the sign that announces the destination
4) George is bored with his job and has to entertain himself somehow

I figure I can support hypothesis #1 if I can find a pattern and correlation with the stop or day of the week. Let's just hope that my own OCD behavior will not have me riding on this train between Braintree and Alewife all day with George in order to get a whole lot of information.

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:

Things I never thought I would say or do...

Motherhood has definitely changed me and I was trying to think of all the things I say and do now that I never thought I would. Here are some examples, I never thought I would...

• Be so excited about poop. "Yay! This one isn't green!" (We've been struggling with what might be a foremilk/hindmilk issue, milk separates and if they eat too much foremilk and not enough of the fatty hindmilk their poop will be green and they'll have increased gas and need to eat more often).
  
• Say "Ow! Don't hug me so hard, you're hurting my boobs!" (One of my friends is stronger than she knows).
  
• Say "My pubic bone hurts." This seems to disturb people, but really, it's just like saying my knee hurts isn't it? This is the only thing standing between me and a good, long, run. Oh, and about 42 weeks of lost fitness.
  
• Refer to myself in third person as 'mommy'. Not just to Davis mind you, but in general. Hopefully, I mostly curb this behavior at work.
  
• Yell "Domino, I swear, if you wake that baby up you're going to the sausuage factory!"
• Say "John, you pointed him down right?" Turns out with little boys you have aim them correctly so as to prevent diaper leaks.
• Open a diaper to double check that I pointed him down.
  
• Go to work with spit up on my shirt becuase "eh, it's not that much really".
• Tell Davis "Niiice one" when he passes wind. Hey, trust me, it's much better out than in.
• Tell another baby "Niice one" when they pass wind. I can be excited for everyone right?
• Tell anyone who will listen what very small thing Davis did that I think is the most amazing thing in the world. I always told myself I wouldn't be one of those people who can't talk about anything but their kids. I can talk about other things, I just generally prefer not to.
• Plead with God every night at bedtime. "Please God, just five hours of sleep in a row, that's all I ask for. Well, that's a lot huh? Ok, four hours, please just four hours of consecutive sleep? No, no, you're right, it could be a lot worse than three hours in a row. Please God, just three hours of sleep in a row."
  

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.

Happy Fourth of July

Kristen, Davis and I had a very relaxing, but busy Fourth of July this year. After fueling up on a blueberry pancake breakfast, Kristen when for a two and a half hour ride with Sonya while I watched Davis. We read some books, had some cuddles, watched some of the Tour de France, watched the mobile and had a short nap. After Kristen got home and recovered from her ride, we headed out to Wilson Farms in Lexington to pick up something to grill and ingredients for strawberry ice cream.

After we returned home, Kristen and Davis took a nap while I worked in the yard and prepared the marinade for dinner and sliced the strawberries for ice cream. We spent the early evening in the yard playing with Davis, grilling and eating outside and enjoying the first sunshine in Boston in a very long time. Davis went down for an early bedtime (hopefully) and Kristen and I have spent the evening relaxing around the house, hoping that the fireworks don't disturb Davis or the cats too much.

It was a great Fourth of July. I only wish we were closer to family to share sunny days in the backyard.

Here are some pictures from the backyard:

Davis and Mom playing Airplane

Airplane baby!

Enjoying time together:

Wheeeeee!

Enjoying the sunny day in the backyard.

Davis has gained a lot of control over his hands. He really enjoys grabbing his duck and chewing on it:

Davis getting kissed by Dad:

Daddy and Davis:

A (dead) bee I found in the yard:

New pictures of a growing boy

Today is the big 12-week birthday for Davis! Supposedly a lot happens at three months as they move out of the 'fourth trimester'. We've certainly noticed a lot happen in his physical and mental development in the past couple of weeks. He is very good at grabbing things now (in addition to toys he's great at grabbing mommy's hair and daddy's cheeks). He can almost roll over! He just hasn't managed to move the arm that ends up underneath him so he gets stopped by that. He's also getting stronger by the day and he can push himself pretty far up on his arms now. The picture below is him this week at our new Mommy and Me class (it's called Next Step). We're adjusting to the fervor of the new instructor and getting to know a new group of moms and babies (several of which already knew each other from the last class). We're still enjoying or Tuesday and Thursday afternoons together, although I'm finding it awkward to be a flexible working mom. We have a couple of friends like us and it's very easy going, but the moms who have to work full time we don't see anymore and the moms who don't work are hard to get to know since they can all get together anytime during the week. John and I are hoping to go on a picnic tomorrow with a couple of families..although we haven't done much to plan it yet!
Our continuing struggle with Davis is around sleep. Last night he managed to go 7 hours without eating! Unfortunately, he wasn't sleeping that whole time. After we moved him from the bassinet to the swing though he managed a solid four hour block of sleep. We haven't had more than two hours in a stretch this whole week, until last night. It's making things pretty crazy at work and home for both of us to be so sleep deprived (and I'm very worried I'm going to stick my foot in my mouth at work because of it, there was a pretty close call on Thursday at our group meeting). John and I are currently struggling with the decision to buy a bigger blanket and start swaddling him..we're almost at the point they recommend to stop swaddling, but it's pretty clear to us when he's in a position (like the swing) that prevents him from waking himself up that he can sleep for longer blocks of time. The problem is that swaddling has made him so mad in the past that it seems to prevent him from going to sleep, so what would be different now? (Other than that I have gotten recommendations for a different kind of swaddler that allows them to move more inside it). However, one difference is that John is getting the binkie to work!! Yay! That is how he managed to keep him calm when he woke up without me having to feed him (and honestly, does a baby who has doubled his weight by 3months really need to eat every two hours at night?)

The biggest news of the week is that Grammie left us yesterday to go home. We are very sad to see her go, it was such a blessing to have her here to get to know Davis so well. Davis loved Grammie and they had some good times together..unfortunately, not too many adventures outside since it rained almost every day since she arrived. The good news is she gets to go on to Pasedena on Monday to see her new grandchild, Melanie! We are so excited for her and we wish we could go as well. John is taking this week off for a whole week of nothing but Daddy and Davis! However, I'm still going to steal him back on Tuesday for yoga and Thursday for our mommy-baby group. I'm very glad that John will get this bonding time and it works out perfectly for our trying some new sleep routines (i.e. let mommy sleep so she doesn't get too crazy when she's at work). That's the news for now and I'll finish this post with a couple more cute pictures of Davis.