June 2007

06/29/07

It's hot...

Very hot...

06/28/07

Teething continues.  Tommy's first tooth appeared at 4 months, 10 days.  That will be July 2nd for Charlie.  We'll see if his first tooth appears around then too.

Tommy's decided that Charlie's best nickname is Charlie-Warlie.

If he's positioned correctly, Charlie can flip himself onto his back after we try to put him on his tummy.  He dislikes being on his tummy enough to want to do this.  His neck strength is improving though, so he's starting to see some benefit in being on his stomach with his head up.  If Tommy's doing something really interesting he might stay that way for a few minutes, watching everything right-side-up for a change.

Tommy spelled a new word for me the other day.  He said, "Guess what this spells Mommy.  T-O-M-M-Y-H.  It spells Tommy-huh."   Of course, Tommy with an h-sound is exactly what it spells.  I really need to get some materials to work on teaching him his letters.  He knows quite a few, but it's rather haphazard.  He knows the letters in his name, M for Mommy, D for Daddy, A-B-C because they're at the start of the alphabet,  X and Z at the end, S for Spiderman and all the letters that spell Shrek.  He still doesn't really know how many letters are in L-M-N-O-P, so he gets lost when pointing at letters while singing the alphabet.  He also recognizes most of the numbers from 1-9.  Yesterday he told me a truck next to us was named four-ex-four.

06/25/07 - later

At his well-baby check up this morning, Charlie weighed 15 pounds, 6 ounces and was 26 inches tall.  That's about 50th percentile for weight and 75th percentile for height.  (Tommy was 17 lbs 3 oz and 26.75 inches at four months.)

06/25/07

At one point this weekend, Charlie was patting his hair.  All of a sudden, he grabbed a handful of his longer hair and started pulling.  Then he started screaming and crying.  He wanted whoever was pulling his hair to stop!  It hurt!  I had to pry his fingers loose.  They really do have cottage cheese for brains at this age.

We played around with the new camera again this Sunday night.  Here are the best of the bunch.  We actually have over 200 pictures saved in the June 2007 folder so far.  I usually have 50-100 per month, so we're definitely taking more pictures.

06/22/07

Today is Charlie's 4-month birthday.  I'll let you know his current weight and height on Monday, after his well-baby checkup.  I'm guessing he's about the same size Tommy was at this age, but we'll see.  I started putting him in 3-6 month clothes around Memorial Day and I'm going to have to pull the 6-9 month clothes out this weekend.  He's grown a LOT this month.

He's a much easier sleeper than Tommy was, but he's still only 4 months old.  He often sleeps from 8 pm to 5:30 am.  Those nights are great.  He's more likely to be ready to sleep for the night at 6:30 or 7:00 though, and on those nights he wakes up to be fed about 8-9 hours later around 3 am.  Eight to nine hours is a long time for a little guy to sleep at one go, so I'm not complaining.  It's just not very convenient to have his 8-9 hour stretch so early.  If he wakes up in the night, he won't fall asleep again for 60-90 minutes.  I'm really careful to keep the room dark and quiet during that middle of the night, but it always takes him that long to cycle back to sleepiness.

He's much more alert and interactive now than he was one month ago.  At three months he spent most of the day sleeping.  Now, he usually takes two or three naps a day in his crib, usually for less than 40 minutes each.  When he's awake he is often happy to lie on the floor with a few toys.  He likes his play mat now and rolls onto his side and scoots around to reach things.  He's not rolling completely over on his own yet, but I suspect it's more because of a lack of motivation than ability.  He doesn't really like being on his tummy and is content to watch the world around him instead of desperately reaching for a toy.  He's happiest when Tommy and I are playing on the floor near him so he can watch us. 

His favorite toys are very different from the things Tommy liked at this age.  We have tons of baby toys and 85% of them are unappealing to Charlie.  When we go out he always has his very small Pooh Bear that Grandma Sylvia bought him with him in his car seat.  He clutches it and rubs it on his face and sucks on its ears.  Tommy hated soft toys.  Charlie's favorite toy to chew on is a soft ring made of cloth that fits easily in his hand.  It has cloth knobs on it that he can chew on, which are filled with crinkly sounding stuff.

Charlie is very vocal now and people who telephone us often comment on the squeals and coos that are audible in the background.   He's also very ticklish and loves to giggle.  Tommy and I spend a lot of time every day trying to get him to laugh.  Just this afternoon, Tommy discovered a sound that made Charlie laugh and he did it over and over again until Charlie got bored and stopped laughing.  It's fun to watch the two of them entertain one another.  As a matter of fact, Tommy is a very engaged and careful big brother.  He still always wants to know where Charlie is and worries about him when he cries.  Every once in a while Tommy will ask me to "put the baby in his bouncy seat" so that I'll pay attention to him instead.  That doesn't happen very often though, and I'm pretty impressed with how understanding Tommy is about waiting for me to take care of Charlie AGAIN.  He's gotten very self-sufficient and it's not uncommon for me to emerge from Charlie's room to find Tommy's gotten himself a snack or some water and found a computer game to play.

I'm pretty sure Charlie is working on his first tooth, but we haven't seen it so far.  He has random fussy days which take us by surprise since he's usually so good natured.  He has tons of drool these days and almost always has one or more fingers in his mouth.  It's interesting to me that at this age Tommy was chewing on anything he could get his hands on, but Charlie seems bothered by most things that reach his mouth and would rather chew/suck on his own fingers.

As you've seen in pictures, Charlie likes books as much as Tommy did at this age.  He'd rather be read to while sitting in his bouncy seat than sit in our laps or lie down though.  His favorite book is Who Said Moo? by Harriet Ziefert and Sims Taback (another Grandma Sylvia present). He particularly likes the last page, which is all animal sounds, especially when Tommy and I read it to him together.  As for TV and movies, Charlie is exposed to a lot more than Tommy was since Tommy often has something playing in the background.  Charlie ignores most of it, but he does seem a bit mesmerized by the Backyardigans.  It's probably all the singing.  He likes singing.

06/20/07

Tommy Tidbits... 

• Tommy's favorite game right now is still Max & Ruby.  He started this while Grandma Sylvia and Grandpa Mel were here.  He likes to act out the stories from the books and TV show.  I'm almost always Ruby and Grandma, and he gets to be Max.  His favorite story is Bunny Money (need to buy that book), which is even rather educational since he has to count out play-money to buy things.  It's interesting to me that he's so into acting out stories.  He'd much prefer acting out stories and even hearing me tell him stories (about him, naturally) than play with his toys.  Maybe he's going to want to be an actor when he grows up. 
• I took him to a magic show at the library last Friday.  (Charlie stayed home with David.)  He really enjoyed it.  We got extremely overheated though.  They just added a shade pavilion over an outside area, so all the summer reading performances are going to be outside this year.  I can understand how it gives them more space, but it was miserably hot at 3 pm out there, even in the shade.  Tommy and I are wimps with similar coloring and constitutions though, so maybe everyone else was comfortable.  Poor Tommy was begging for water by the time the performance was over.  When we discovered that all the water fountains were having water pressure problems, we went over to the gas station for some Gatorade.  I think getting Gatorade almost matched seeing a real bunny pulled out of a box for Tommy.  I don't think I'll try taking both Tommy and Charlie to the show this Friday.  I'll wait and just take Tommy alone to the programs that fall on David's Fridays off, and I'll be sure to bring water next time.
• Tommy says, "Charlie is chewing on his fist because it's his favorite chew toy.  Oh.  Wait.  YOU are his favorite chew toy, Mommy.  His fist is his next favorite."
• Tommy had his first less-than-stellar day at pre-school yesterday.  There was a hat throwing incident and he refused to let them wipe his nose after he cried.  He told me he cried three times, "one time when I didn't want to wear my hat, one time when my orange juice was all gone and the teacher wouldn't give me more, and one time when my nose was drippy.  Three times.  One and one and one is three."  At least he can add!  I'm not sure what the problem was.  We'll see what happens next week.   

06/18/07

I hope you all had a nice Father's Day.  We had a Father's Day weekend instead of just a day over here.  We ate all of David's favorite foods all weekend long.  By Sunday, we were all feeling a bit sick from too many chips and cokes and cupcakes and green chile, so we had a pretty low key day.  It's finally turned the corner from mild, low-80's summer weather to super hot, so we spent a lot of time in Tommy's kiddie pool.  I tried putting Charlie's feet in the pool, but he didn't like it.  It's actually been a pretty tiring week with the heat and Charlie's teething fussiness.  Last night Tommy had me up from 1:30 to 2:40 (lonely, he said) and then Charlie had me up from 3:00 to 4:30.  I didn't actually get any sleep between the two, so I'm pretty tired today.  Hey, that's a good excuse to write less and just post more pictures!  (I'm going to run out of server space soon if I continue at this rate.)  Let the laziness continue...

I don't know why I can't manage to get any pictures of them together in actual day-time clothes.  Oh, maybe it's because I let Tommy run around in his pajamas until noon most days, and I can't be bothered to try putting shirts over Charlie's head.  

06/16/07

Can't. Stop. Taking. Pictures.

Tummy time

Reading books before bed (at the wondrous hour of 6:30 pm)

Smile for the camera, baby.

Show us cute, Tommy the model!

Now do surprised!

Can we see happy!

What about sad?

  Mad? Or is it fierce?

Oh.  Yeah.  It's supposed to be bedtime, not picture time.

06/13/07

Pictures, pictures, pictures...

06/11/07

My new camera arrived today!  Yippie Skippie!  It's about time because I'm tired of ending up with pictures like this...

(taken with old camera)

Now I'm going to take great pictures like this...

  My new camera rocks!

06/08/07

"Today is silly clothes day!"

"Let me hold Charlie a little bit.  He's so snuggly and huggy."

"Charlie likes to watch TV with me."

06/07/07

It's the seventh?  It's Thursday?  Already!?  Oops.  I guess I haven't posted anything since Monday.  Sorry about that.  I didn't fall off a cliff or get stuck in any existential muck or anything.  Tommy had preschool on Tuesday and a big play-date with Claudia and Duncan yesterday, so I guess we've just been busy having fun.  Let's catch up, shall we?

Charlie has discovered his hair.  I love this milestone.  It was one of my favorites when Tommy was wee too.  Now that he knows that some interesting, soft, fuzzy stuff is within his reach, Charlie likes to stretch his fist up over his head and stroke his own hair.  He doesn't seem to be as obsessed with it as Tommy was.  He's more interested in gnawing on his fist until his fingers bruise.  (Hurry up and pop through teeth!)  But every once in a while he'll forget to chew on his fist and go searching for his hair.  Cute.

Charlie's also getting really good at rolling onto his side with his knees pulled up.  He's figured out that this is the best position for passing gas and fist chewing, two of his favorite activities.  When he's on his side like that, both activities are greatly facilitated.  Plus, he can watch his whirlwind big brother run around the room more easily from that position.

Tommy is still enjoying school.  I need to have a talk with his teachers about his name, though.  I think they've been calling him Thomas or Tom.  He told me "I don't get to be Tommy at preschool."  We'll fix that. I'm sure it's a misunderstanding.  Other than that, things seem to be going really well.

In other news, David bought me a spiffy new digital camera (a Nikon D40 SLR!) as a no-occasion present.  It arrives Monday.  I'm super-excited to start taking better pictures.  We know I'll use it since I've taken pictures at least twice a week for the past 3+ years.  This website is a good incentive to take pictures.  That's all I can think of for now.  I've been trying to write this for six hours now, so I guess maybe the reason I haven't written this week is that having Charlie is finally starting to cut into my free time.  Ah well.

06/04/07

Tommy's first swimming lesson was yesterday.  He absolutely loved it and was fearless.  I'm glad now that we waited until this summer to start lessons.  I think he would have been more hesitant last year.

Here he is with his class, listening to his teacher (more or less).

This is Tommy sign language for "Ding!  I have an idea!"

Hmm, maybe I'll wander off on my own over and over and over again!

I do it so often that I'll get a time-out and have to sit on the edge for a while.  I don't really realize that this is a bad thing.  It's all fun to me!

I love swimming!  I dunk my head underwater and put my face in the water without fear and never, ever want to get out of the pool.  More swimming next week!

06/03/07

This is what I come home to when I go out to breakfast by myself once a week.  Sweet, don't you think? 

06/01/07

I think he's outgrown his baby tub.

See the archives for earlier entries.