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Splish Splash, I was Taking a Bath!

Jonah has always enjoyed his baths and doesn't seem to mind the water at all.  He even recognizes the pre-bath routine and gets excited when we put him on the floor in the bathroom in preparation for his bath.  At home, we have a Primo Eurobath which we've used for all of his baths since his initial sponge baths, with the exception of a few in a dishpan when we were in Ohio earlier this summer. 

We debated about what to do about his baths while we were in Ohio last week for Thanksgiving. He seems too big for a dishpan at this point, and we didn't really want to take along the bath (and use precious cargo space) for the three times he'd use it over the course of the week. In the end, we decided we would simply bathe him in the grown-up tub.  And what a good decision!  After helping him sit up for a bit, we let him lie on his back in the water (it didn't reach his ears) and he just LOVED it.  He might be a swimmer some day because he was splashing and moving himself all over the tub.  Here he is early on during that first experience:





Earlier tonight, we had a hard time deciding whether to lay Jonah on the bottom of the regular tub or put him in the Eurobath.  In the end, we settled on the Eurobath, but he was extremely restless in it and constantly lifted his butt off the bottom as if he was trying to tell us that he missed the other experience.  Which way will we bathe him on Thursday?  Time will tell, but I'm leaning toward ditching the Eurobath.

Visit from Grandma Sweetser

Grandma Sweetser recently visited us. She claims it was to attend a professional conference that happened to be held in Milwaukee this year, but we know the real reason was to visit with her grandson.



Time really flew by while she was in town. She arrived on a Tuesday night, but her conference didn't begin until Thursday, so she spent the day baby-sitting on Wednesday. I was teaching early morning classes online to colleagues in Europe and Africa, so I was able to spend the afternoon with Jonah and grandma.

Some little highlights from her visit:
Jonah rolled more in one sitting than he ever had previously.
We picked out a highchair for Jonah, and he got to try it out.



Red Robin opened in a much more convenient location, and we had a good dinner there with a HUGE piece of carrot cake at Mitchell's Fish Market to finish off the evening.
Jonah just got some good quality time with Grandma!

Monkeying around for Halloween

We weren't originally going to dress Jonah up for Halloween, but at the last minute (Ok, it was just over a week before Halloween, but that is last when it comes to Michelle and the way she plans :) we decided to get Jonah a costume. We struck out at Target, where they had more options for people to dress their dogs than their babies, so we did some hunting around online. We ended up finding a monkey costume we really liked, and based on the reviews, we thought it might be ok on our little guy, even though the smallest available size was 6-12 months.

Though the costume was big on Jonah, he looked extremely cute in it. He got to wear it twice on the Friday before Halloween: once for his daycare's parade of kids in their costumes and that night for the neighborhood trick or treat. Before you say anything, no, we didn't take him trick or treating. We put him in his costume to hand out some candy and say hi to a couple neighbors quickly before he needed to eat.

Here are a couple pictures of our little monkey.

Jonah getting dressed in his costume for the first time. He is so excited!

Jonah magically transformed into a little monkey!

Mommy and Daddy's little monkey.

Jonah in the super stroller just before heading out for the costume parade. He was plenty warm in this costume! 

Jonah slept for most of the costume parade, but here is a picture from before he took his little nap. 

Mommy prepares to take Jonah out to visit a couple neighbors.

The Saturday before Halloween, Michelle and I found a new resale shop for children's stuff called Tuesday's Child in Wauwatosa. They had a great little selection of costumes. Though we were too late for this year, we will certainly keep it in mind for next year!

4 months old!

Our little guy hit 4 months old last Thursday! Yes, I know it sounds cliché, but he is growing so quickly! He is now 13 lbs. 8.5 oz (more than double his birth weight and up from 10 lbs. 7 oz. at 2 months) and height is 23 3/4 inches (up from 22 inches at 2 months).

We are a bit behind in posting more pictures, even though we have gotten some because I want to do a little filtering and reorganizing in the online albums. Hopefully we will have some of the new ones up soon. In the meantime, here are some of his 4 month pictures with Tigger and a bonus one with some of his other friends from the 100 Acre Wood.

Jonah at 4 months with Tigger

Jonah at 4 months with Tigger

Jonah hanging out with his 100 Acre Wood crew

Vocal Minor(ity)

Jonah's been cooing and vocalizing for some time now.  On some days, he has a lot of say and "speaks" his mind, going on and on!  If only we knew what he was saying.  It'd probably save a lot of stress and tears (fortunately, there have been less of those on my end of late!).

Here's some video of him from Saturday, one of those days where he was particularly vocal.  I'd just changed him and we were getting ready for a visit to the farmer's market.




What a little sweetheart! I'm sure we'll be having real conversations before I can believe it.

Whack a toy

Jonah has been quite interested in his activity center since we first introduced him to it.  At first, it was more fun for me because it gave me something concrete for me to do with him and I could make up stories about the toys that came with it and he could touch, feel, and look at them and listen to the music and lights.  He'd definitely show interest in the toys and even nearly rolled over trying to get them at times, but he didn't really have the control of his hands and arms to interact a whole lot with them.

Well, that's changed a lot in the past couple of weeks.  Now it's all about reaching to move the toys around, grabbing them, etc.  He still gets enthralled by the lights on occasion, but he can consistently whack those toys like crazy.  It amazes us how intent he can be at times and how he sometimes seems to be whacking the toys without even looking at them (does he know he's hitting them?). Here's some footage of him from Saturday:




Similarly, he's become more engaged with the toys in his seat, which we don't always put in front of him.  One of these days, he'll figure out that he can pull the banana and make music happen.  Here he is in his chair last Sunday:



He's had so much fun with these, that we bought a bar to attach to his car seat.  While the toys on it seemed to scare him a bit at first - mainly because they're a bit noisier - he's loving them as well!

Thumbs up!

This is from October 7. I intended to make this post couple weeks ago when this happened, but I got a little behind.

Jonah loves to eat his hands. Apart from a one off time about a week after he was born when he found his thumb, he pretty much just liked to "eat" his entire hand. (Disclaimer: Michelle says she noticed him finding his thumb a couple other times before this, too. This was just my first time seeing him get his thumb and watching him soothe himself to sleep with it.).

Jonah and I were playing before we took him to daycare, and he was starting to get a little upset during tummy time. Normally he would have his hand in his mouth, but that still wouldn't calm him completely. For some reason on that morning he found just his thumb, and he was so soothed by it, he fell asleep. I had to capture some pictures and some video... :)




Update: in case you were wondering what he looked like when he found his thumb in early July...

He was so tiny then!

Urine for a little laugh

This morning, Jonah did something he hasn't done in quite a while: peed while I changed his diaper. He went from napping on me to hunger tantrum in about .04 seconds, so I brought him upstairs to change him before passing him off to Michelle to feed.

When I got his diaper off, it looked like some pesky poo escaped the back of his diaper and had gone up his back. While I was investigating, he peed a little. I noticed, but thought he was done, so I returned to cleaning him up.

He wasn't done.

Our little guy turned into a little geyser. I couldn't cover him with the dirty diaper, and for some reason I didn't think to grab the new diaper, so I tried stopping the gush with the diaper wipe. Let me tell you, diaper wipes are great to clean up a mess, but they are certainly NOT absorbent. Jonah didn't like being covered by the diaper wipe. He must have stopped peeing when he was covered up, and would start up again when I removed my makeshift diaper wipe peepee teepee. Pee -- ach! cover it up... wait... check... More pee! - cover, wait, check... Still going!

Michelle and I both started to crack up watching this whole little comedy unfold because there wasn't much we could do except wait out the little storm and contain it as best as possible. Jonah even stopped crying a bit while he was making his little mess to look at us like we were crazy. Fortunately, we were able to keep it contained to the changing pad, and all is good now.

Pumpkins!

With Grandma and Grandpa Gregg in town for a few days and some gorgeous fall weather, we decided to take Jonah to Barthel Fruit Farm in Mequon to pick some pumpkins from their patch.  Although it was somewhat late in the season, we still found some great pumpkins in the patch and came back with 14 for the reasonable price of $25.  Grandma Gregg bought some apples (we bought some last month), I nursed under a beautiful tree, and Grandma and Grandpa played with the orchard's two dogs.  Jonah probably didn't really know what was going on, but seemed to have a great time taking it all in.


In the afternoon, we all ventured to the West Allis Farmer's Market, where we found beautiful mums, a nice deal on mix-and-match squash, and tons of end-of-season produce.  I broke down and bought several heirloom apple varieties: Russett, Snow (Fameuse), and a Banana variety. Tried two of them today: yummy!  (Particularly the Russett.)  Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of Jonah riding in the Baby Bjorn and chilling with his Dad.

Here are some pictures from our lovely day:

Good times, bad times...

...we know we'll have our share (to paraphrase Led Zeppelin).

Today started pretty nicely. After breakfast, Michelle and I took turns playing with Jonah while the other one showered. Then we took advantage of the weather and went for a nice walk. Jonah looked all about, checking out the changing autumn leaves and the other sights.

Things went downhill, though, when we got home and it was time for him to eat. He erupted in tears, and was nearly inconsolable. We did eventually calm him, and he got some sleep. He was the same at his next feeding, though, and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. He was clean, well slept, and we were trying to feed him. No fever, so we figured he wasn't sick.

Our only thought: could he be teething already? He is exhibiting the usual symptoms. Thanks to the power of the internet and confirmation from some books, it seems it is possible. We tried chilling some of the teething items we have, and he seemed soothed by the chilled pacifier, but wouldn't keep the teething ring in his mouth. The pacifier also couldn't be in his mouth to eat, so I ran out to pick up some Teething Tablets and Baby Oragel. We tried the Oragel first, and it seemed to have done the trick so we again had a feeding baby.

We were hoping to get out later in the day to spend some time enjoying the unseasonably warm weather on a blanket in the back yard. With a happy baby, we opted to make that happen, though it was later than anticipated. I'm really glad we did, because Jonah seemed to have a really good time (and we definitely did!).

I will let you judge for yourself, though. I capture this little bit of the fun.



[or you can view it on YouTube]

Adjusting the car seat

Jonah is definitely getting bigger! This morning I had to adjust his car seat straps to account for the fact that he has gotten taller. We are looking forward to his 4-month check up in a couple weeks to find out exactly how much he has grown.

Bumbo time!

Jonah's definitely been showing some neck strength and stability and he seems to hold himself up pretty well on our laps, so we decided to try him in the Bumbo seat on Wednesday night.  He didn't stay in it too long and wasn't quite sure what to think:

Last night, he got some more time in it while we were eating dinner.  No worries: we watched him really closely and took him out when he started to slump to the side a bit.  He did really well and we think he enjoyed sitting up closer to us while we ate, but it also seemed like it required a lot of his concentration and he was happier and smiling when put back in his laid-back style seat.  He's getting strong enough, however, that he twists and contorts in that at times, as if looking to somehow get out of it.

First time parents

One thing we've noticed lately is that we seem to get quite a few comments from people who recognize that Jonah is our first child. Usually it is an older couple making the comment, and one of the first times we heard it was at a baseball game when the comment was preceded with the statement "That little guy is getting plenty of attention..."

My first thought is that if Jonah were not our first child, we would probably have our other kids with us in these situations. It also makes me wonder if some parents really pay that much less attention to subsequent children. If we have more kids, I hope we give them the same kind of attention we show Jonah. Yes, I know it will be different with our time divided between kids, but hopefully quality time with multiple kids isn't impossible.



This is just an unrelated picture of our happy boy. :)

More Tummy Time

In my excitement to play with my new video camera, I forgot about adequate lighting.  Our living room isn't the brightest room to begin with, but it didn't occur to me that we didn't have the lights surrounding the fireplace on tonight when I shot this video of Jonah doing tummy time.  And it's too precious NOT to keep and post and share.  The little guy is getting darn good about lifting his head!!!

Razzing, Playing with Spit, and the Like

In the past 10 days or so, Jonah has taken a definite interest in trying to razz.  It started the night that I recorded Ben playing with him in the first video I posted, and has steadily continued to now.  There are times when Jonah gets very serious looks on his face and you wonder what is wrong, and then he rolls his spit in the back of his mouth or manages to vibrate his lips for brief periods and you know that he was concentrating intently on how to actually perform those actions.  Sometimes he clearly surprises himself with his success; other times he clearly gets frustrated when he can't seem to make it happen.  Either way, it's darn cute!

Here's brief video taken in the car on the way to work yesterday morning.

Day of mini-disasters

Babies poop.

This isn't news to anyone. Especially parents. Poop is not always well timed, and no matter how good the diaper, it doesn't always stay contained.

This morning, just after I changed Jonah before heading to daycare, that familiar sound and vibration came from his backside. Knowing by now that these occurrences don't usually fly solo, we opted to wait to change him when we got to daycare.

Well, it turned out that wasn't going to happen. Apparently, this burst was a bit more than the diaper could handle. Outfit #1 for the day ruined. And yes, when we got to daycare, Jonah did need to be changed again...

Sometime during the day, Jonah exploded again and s(p)oiled outfit #2.

Mini-disaster number three today has nothing to do with diapers. I decided to trim Jonah's claw-like fingernails while Michelle was feeding him. The left hand went pretty smoothly, but when I got to his right hand, we had a little accident, and I pinched his little thumb with the clippers. His skin didn't break and you can't see the pinch, but he certainly let us know his dissatisfaction!

The most unfortunate part here is that Jonah associated the pinch with Mommy. It was much more difficult for her to soothe him (which is rare), and he wouldn't nurse. I felt absolutely miserable. All sorts of crazy thoughts running through my mind. "What if he won't nurse any more?" "What if mommy can never easily calm him down again?"

It took several times of attempting to soothe with renewed outbursts over the course of an hour or so, but eventually he started to eat again. Phew!

Have any of you reading this had similar experiences where your baby seemed to associate something like this?

3 months old!

As unbelievable as it sounds, our little Jonah is 3 months old today! He is getting big. Here is a progression of photos taken at his first, second, and third month birthdays (with Tigger as a constant):

Yes, it can be a little deceiving because these pictures start closer and the latest one is from a little further back. He had such a cute smile in it, though, that I couldn't resist. We will get more photos posted soon

Jonah is now in the middle of his second week of daycare. It is still very difficult to leave him there each day. It was particularly tough today because he looked at us with a sad expression when we passed him to his daycare provider. Does he know what is going on? No day has been easy, but that just made it a little tougher...

Having fun!

Jonah and his Daddy had some fun last night. Daddy made funny noises and kissed Jonah's hands while he was sitting in his seat.  Jonah's not quite sure what to think, but the general impression given seems to be that it's a good time.

Working on skills

It's hard to believe that Jonah is almost 3 months old!  Time sure does fly!

Jonah has been growing leaps and bounds in terms of his coordination and motor skills.  He's really, really enjoying his activity center and has been interacting with it more and more. He reaches for some of the toys, bats them around, and talks to them.  His favorites seem to be the monkey and toucan toys, although the others can captivate him as well.  Tonight, he made it onto his side to play with one of the toys and I got a bit of video of it:

He has also been getting much stronger during his tummy time and even gets up on his arms, lifts his trunk and looks around for brief periods of time.  I've begun helping him roll over so he gets used to the experience and I imagine it won't be too long before he's able to do so on his own.  He was trying really hard to get over on Friday night. This morning he did actually make it from his tummy to his back, but it was after I'd rolled him the opposite way and his one arm was still under him, so it probably doesn't truly count as a roll.  But he's definitely working on it and the boy can move - twice this week we found him rotated 180 degrees in his crib!  Here's some video of him lifting his head this morning:

It's so exciting to see Jonah learn to do these things!  We can't wait to see more!