Monkey on My Back

There are many ways to move a baby around that do not involve wheels.

Michelle picked up a sling online (on Etsy, I think) that she enjoyed "wearing" Jonah. It was a bit too floral for my tastes, so I never wore Jonah in it.

We also have a Baby Bjorn, which I love. It accommodated Jonah when he was tiny (facing toward us) and can still carry him today facing out. I like kissing his little head when he is in it.

For actual hiking, though, we thought we wanted to find something a little more designed to go the distance, so Michelle solicited some feedback on Facebook, and we did some checking around. We headed to REI to try some packs out. It didn't take long to select a Kelty Kids FC 3.0. Jonah didn't want to get out after we tried him in it. In fact, he started crying when we took it off Michelle's back when she first tried it on!

We didn't wait long to try it, either. The day after we got it, we headed out to Lapham Peak in the Kettle Moraine State Forest to try it out. I wore the pack with Jonah first, and we started the hike with a quick trip up the observation tower. I think Michelle was glad she didn't have the pack on for the hike up all those stairs. Unfortunately, we didn't think to get a picture of the tower itself.

The view from the top was great! A full 360 degree view of the surrounding area. You can see Holy Hill, but surprisingly none of the buildings in downtown Milwaukee. We need to get back there when the leaves change color in the next few weeks.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that is Holy Hill waaaaaay off in the distance...

After the tower, we started hiking the well maintained trails. For the most part, the trails were flat or had moderate inclines, but there were a few good hills. Jonah particularly liked when we would jog or chase each other with him along for the ride. Here are some shots from the hike.

The long and winding road...

This section of the trail was aptly named and was lots of fun with Jonah to go down and up the hills.

Another aptly named section of the trail. We might need to go back in the winter for some cross country skiing.

Scaling "The Wall"

We took a break partway through the hike to give Jonah a little snack and to switch so Michelle could carry him for a bit. We had a little fun playing by a little pond before taking off again.

When traveling on Mommy's back, Jonah had more fun playing with Mommy's hair than anything else associated with the hike. I even tried to let her put her hair up under my cap, but he still found hair to pull.

Daddy doesn't give me toys to play with when he hikes with me. Thanks, Mommy!

All good things must come to an end, though. As we were finishing our hike and getting ready to head home, it started to rain. Jonah's new ride is a big hit, though, with both the pack horse carrying it and the little monkey who rides in it!

You can see more pictures from our hike on our Phanfare album.

Making Great Discoveries

I'm going to break the chronology of our posts (we'll get caught up sometime soon, I hope!!!) to share this video of Jonah discovering a puddle in front of a neighbor's house earlier this week.  Every single day he amazes us with how much he is learning and observing about his world. It is so much fun to see him discover and experience new things as simple as splashing in a puddle.

And since we're behind on posting videos, here are some of his other discoveries and enjoyments of the past month or so.

The sheer curtains in the living room:

Mommy's canning supplies:

Crinkling newspaper (some days he is insistent that he have a section of the newspaper at breakfast, just like Mommy or Daddy):

And finally, he has discovered a small "bump" in the sidewalk up the street that he will walk to and then proceed to go up and down and up and down over again.  Capturing this on video has proven to be a bit difficult, but here you can get the idea. Sometimes he does it while pushing one of his toys, sometimes while just walking normally.

I wonder what he will discover today???

Family Ties - Labor Day Weekend

As Michelle has already written, we went to Cape Cod to visit the Sweetser side of the family over Labor Day weekend. Jonah got to see some familiar faces, like:

Uncle Russ

Auntie Shannon

Great Grandma Souza - "Oh, Great Gram, you are toooo much!"

Grammy Sweets

Grandpa Sweetser

First cousins, once removed Cory and Robyn Schnaible (and the rest of the Schnaible clan, including meeting Becky!)

We also had a great time visiting with the Toolas family, but we didn't get many pictures that night of Jonah with any one, particularly because he was feeling a bit under the weather. All pictures from our weekend are posted in our Phanfare web album.

Jonah also got to meet some family members he hadn't met previously. 

Great Aunt Marge (and her husband Alan)

Great Uncle Jim (and Sandy, Joey, and Kelly)

Unfortunately, we weren't as good about getting pictures with everyone, so we didn't get pictures with Great Uncle Mike, or Great Aunt Maryrose and Great Uncle Speedy, or cousins (once removed) Sarah and Amanda.

It was a great weekend filled with seeing family! More pics are available in our Phanfare web album.

The Baby on the Bike Goes Wah, Wah, Wah!

Daddy and a sleeping Jonah a few miles into our ride.

We started the morning of our final day on Cape Cod with a bike ride with Grammy Sweetser. We
rented bikes from Barb's Bike Shop in Dennis and hopped on at the Cape Cod Rail Trail trailhead right next to it.  Ben and I were definitely excited to get out and do something more active, especially as Jonah has done fairly well with bike rides in the past. This was his first time riding in a seat behind Ben, rather than in a trailer behind the bike. And as usual, he expressed his distaste for the bike helmet (they do seem impossible to get situated properly and require frequent readjustment).


The ride started out really well - Jonah enjoyed himself a bit before falling asleep.  The day was beautiful for a ride and there were lots of people out on the trail.  We stopped briefly in Nickerson State Park to use the facilities and continued heading east, motivated in part by the mileage indicators every tenth of a mile (how awesome would that be for speed work for running?!).  We turned around just shy of the 12.5 mile mark, as the trail joined the main roadway and we didn't feel like trying to caravan as a group on a busy street.  The day was beautiful, and all seemed to be going great.

Get me out of here!

Unfortunately, the return trip was not nearly as peaceful.  Jonah decided he had had it with the bike ride and cried nonstop for at least 5 miles of the return trip.  We stopped at one point to try to console him, but ultimately had no option but to put him back in the seat and continue on back to our car.  Eventually, he wore himself out and fell asleep as we approached our destination.  In hindsight, we think he was hungry and that exacerbated his frustration: he inhaled his food in the parking lot when we got back.  This serves as a good reminder that we should always plan to have at least a small snack with us!

Hopefully our next bike ride will be much happier.  I doubt we'll attempt 25 miles in the near future, though.

Martha's Vineyard

Jonah and Daddy on the boat at the start of the trip.

On the second day of our vacation, we took the high speed boat from Hyannis to Martha's Vineyard with Grandpa Sweetser, Linda, Uncle Russ, and Aunt Shannon.  It was a beautiful day for a trip, marking Jonah's first time on a boat, and the first time that most of us had been to the Vineyard.

After arriving and taking some time to develop our plans for the day - and grabbing some refreshment in the form of coffee and doughnuts - we headed out to check out Oak Bluffs.  We began by walking around Ocean Park, which is surrounded by homes in the Queen Anne and Gothic Revival style.  There were also great views of the water on our walk, including the one below.

View of the beach at Ocean Park.

After finishing our navigation around Ocean Park, we stopped back at the Flying Horses Carousel so that Jonah could get a ride on the oldest operating platform carousel in the United States. He'd been on a carousel once before, at the zoo here in Milwaukee, and he hadn't been a huge fan of it. As Ben had accompanied him on his previous ride, we decided I would take him on this ride. He definitely was uncertain about the ride and from the first moment I put him on the horse's back, he was wriggling to get off. When the movement and motion started, it helped somewhat, in part because he enjoys music and "danced" in rhythm to the music a bit.

Sign outside the carousel building.

Jonah and Mommy riding the carousel.

After leaving the carousel, we headed toward the gingerbread cottages that surround the Methodist Tabernacle. These were really charming little homes and I should learn more about what led to their construction there. I can't quite imagine residing in them, though, with all of the tourists taking photos all of the time.  That didn't stop me from taking a few photos myself!  These are a couple of my favorites:

Front porches of several cottages, featuring patriotic decorations.

"The Greenup." Love the decorative railing above. So many details in these houses!

Windmill in a garden next to one of the cottages.

Shortly after this, we took the bus to Edgartown, where we grabbed lunch. Most of our activities for the day were pretty grown-up-focused, but Jonah handled the stroller and bus rides pretty well.  Of course it also helped to have reading material for him: he has entered a phase of being extremely interested in books and we read the same board books over and over at least five or six times a day sometimes.

Jonah "reads" his book.

We walked out to the Edgartown Lighthouse, where we shot a family photo or two.

The Sweetser Family.  Too bad Linda and Aunt Shannon aren't included!

Edgartown Lighthouse.

We headed back and got on the bus, planning to get off at an alpaca farm, but changed plans and got off in Vineyard Haven instead. We got some yummy ice cream at Mad Martha's and browsed in  a couple of shops.  The Black Dog ship was in the harbor, featuring a flag with the eponymous dog.

The Black Dog ship was in the harbor.

With bellies filled, we boarded the bus back to Oak Bluffs and returned to Ocean Park to kill time until the ferry. There were some kite flying festivities going on by this point and Jonah enjoyed watching people go by.

A woman entertained those gathered in Ocean Park.

Three generations of Sweetsers watch the kites.

After a busy day, we boarded the boat back to Hyannis just in time for Jonah to crash and take a nap, which meant that Mommy and Daddy snuck one in too!  What a great day!  Loads more photos are on the Phanfare site.

Sign o' the (bath) times

We've tried to use sign language with Jonah in the hopes that he will be able to communicate with us more easily before he can talk. We use the signs for eat, drink, more, milk/nurse, and sleep among some others. The first one he picked up and started to do though, was bath.

Jonah loves his bath time! It was one of the first words that he seemed to recognize, and he would always perk up when he heard it. On the night I captured this (about a month ago - yes, I'm a bit behind in posting), we were outside talking with the neighbors when it seemed to be time to go in, so I asked if he was ready for bath. As soon as he heard it, he started doing the sign for it. When we got back inside, I was hoping he would do it again so I could capture it. I think he got tired of me asking at the end and just decided to walk out of the room.



He also does the signs for outside (kind of), eat (though he puts his hand to his nose instead of his mouth), and more (but we never really know what he wants more of, because sometimes we try to give him more and he refuses...).

Beach Baby

We took a trip to Cape Cod over Labor Day weekend and had a wonderful time catching up with family members.  The trip started out with a visit to the beach, Jonah's first time there. Fortunately we were on the Cape the weekend after Irene had gone through, so a trip to the beach was possible (there did seem to be more debris than usual on the beach, probably as a result of the hurricane).

We thought Jonah would really enjoy the water as he has always loved baths and has generally seemed to enjoy his wading pool experiences.  The beach experience was a mixed success: Jonah wasn't too sure about the water (maybe it was too cold, the waves too strong, the noise too loud, or some combination thereof), but he did seem to enjoy playing in the sand.

This video shows his initial reaction to the waves:



At times, he would warm up to the water when we did more playful things with him, like Ben did here, dipping Jonah in and out of the water:



Two other videos of Jonah in the water are available on YouTube: here and here.

We didn't take our camera along, so the only pictures we have to document are those we took with our phones (and I was playing with Hipstamatic, so some of them really aren't that great). Grandpa Sweetser got a few with his camera before it died, but he still needs to share them with us. Here are some of our favorites:

Maybe I can smile about this.

 

That water is COLD on my foot!

Hey - where did my legs go?

What IS this stuff??

Having a good time showing Mama the sand.

 

Grandpa, don't you go stealing my seashell!

Jonah definitely enjoyed playing in the sand and tried eating it at one point.  Imagine his shock upon tasting sand.  Not pretty!  He liked the seashells he found scattered throughout, and also liked putting shoes into the stroller and attempting to push it around:





All in all, we had a nice time and look forward to many more trips to the beach!