Emmett makes it to first base

This is what we found Emmett doing this morning at around 7 o'clock.

Keeping on keeping on

Things have been pretty crazy at Andrea's work so Emmett and I have been spending a lot of quality time together. The good news is that the result of all of the craziness is that Belinda will be teaching the other first grade class starting after winter break. The bad news is that Belinda will be teaching the other first grade class starting after winter break since having her as Andrea's co-teacher has been unbelievably helpful as Andrea could leave the class with Andrea in full confidence to feed Emmett a few times a day---not to mention that Belinda has covered countless recess duties and dismissals over the past few months. I only kid that this is bad news as Belinda's promotion is nothing but good news, but the change in situation really makes one realize how good we have had it since school started.

I realize as I write this that I might not have mentioned how the feeding situation has worked out for us. Andrea is still nursing Emmett approximately 5 or 6 times a day (with 3 or so of those happening at work on weekdays). The goal, I believe, is for Emmett to have been nursed throughout the day through his first birthday and then switch to mornings and evenings after he turns one. It has been so good to be able to have the nursing continue while Andrea has been working as it gives them some bonding time, every study in the world indicates that nursing is super beneficial to the kid at least through a year, and it keeps Andrea from having to pump which apparently scores a solid zero on the fun scale. For me, it will be nice in some ways when the nursing is done as Emmett and I can venture further away from the nest without needing to return for feedings, but it will cut into the number of required visits which make both Emmett and Andrea very happy.

Yesterday I had an interview at a college in Marin County. I took the ferry from the Embarcadero to Larkspur and it was one of the neatest things I have done in a while. As everyone knows, I love public transit, and there was something very appealing about the prospect of traveling to and from work via boat (shown at left when docked in Larkspur). In the end, though, I decided that I would pass on the job as the commute would be somewhere around an hour-and-a-half each way and there would be quite a bit of work involved at the school. Now, however, I know that riding the ferry is loads of fun, so the whole fam can take the boat to the larkspur mall. That is something.

Emmett is so incredibly close to waving, and in fact, (depending on interpretation) one can say he is waving already. Every time he moves his arm in a wave-like motion when we are trying to get him to wave, I am reminded of that poem "Not waving but drowning" by Stevie Smith and wonder if Emmett is trying to communicate something important and we are missing the point completely. Anyway, the wave is approaching.

Emmett has gotten to the point that he can pull himself up to a standing postion on almost anything now. Even better is the fact that he has figured out how to lower himself back to a sitting postion (this is important as a child that can stand and can't sit will pull herself up to standing during naptime or bedtime, get "stuck", and scream nonstop until a parental problem solver can get the baby out of the standing jam). It is funny to watch him move from standing to sitting, though, as it is one of these times where you feel that you can really see the cranks turning in his head as he contemplates how he is going to complete the maneuver.

It definitely feels as though Emmett is starting to do things for a reaction, too---both things for a bad reaction and a good reaction. Maybe I am toddler-pomorphizing (there should be a word for assigning intent to behavior in an infant that would be expected from a toddler and older---the equivalent of anthropomorphizing with animals), but it really seems as though Emmett gets into things to test whether I will try to stop him from doing what he is doing. He also does things like cough or slap his hand on the table and then look at us for reaction (or so it seems). It would be nice to know what is going on in this kid's head.

It still remains the case that no matter how bad a mood Emmett is in, a walk in the Ergo will cheer him up. I walk with him quite a bit during the day, and I think that I have only heard him complain once while in the carrier. It is so good to have such an easy solution to an upset baby (it worked wonders when the tears would come from the diaper rash). Oh, the other thing is that he loves to be carried on my shoulders now. This has been something i have started in the last week or so, but he goes crazy for it---although I am convinced he is going to pull all of my hair out as my hair is his harness. I am tempted to patent a device that would be a head harness for carrying infants which would be especially useful for those with short or nonexistant hair...or those who don't like pain. A quick search to google patents makes it seem like I might be the first.

Working my way back in

I have been meaning to sit back down and write an update on what is going on with Emmett, but I have just been enjoying being done with teaching. That all ended over a week ago and since then I have been just hanging out with the family. It has been so nice to go to bed at a decent hour and not feel all of the time like I have things hanging over my head.

Things with the fam have been pretty great. Emmett is moving around more and more. His fifth and sixth teeth have worked their way through the gum (and not the result of his banging his mouth on a table this time). He was a little lopsided before as after the two front teeth on the bottom came in he got one of the front teeth and then its neighbor. Wait, I will steal a chart from the internet:
Now, referring to the chart above, the order of Emmett's teeth has been lower central incisor 1&2, upper central incisor (left), upper lateral incisor (left), and the right central and lateral incisors are now making their way through the surface. He has started grinding his teeth together as he figures them out and it really makes my skin crawl. Almost as bad is that he continually bites the metal spoon---I have very serious issues with bitten metal utensils, but I try to let it slide with him since he isn't old enough to understand punishment.

We just finished surviving our first bout with diaper rash. Every once in a while Emmett would get a little red which we assumed was diaper rash, treated with a little cream or some diaper-free time, and all was well. This past week we learned that diaper rash is a whole different monster. Emmett had a case of the runs and I think that we were slow to change him as he needed to be changed so frequently (we meaning me since I was home with him during the day when it occurred), and suddenly this red, red, red region showed up all around his butt crack (I probably don't need a diagram for this one). When I cleaned him up after a movement he started this laugh whine thing. Now, Emmett often likes to have his bottom wiped with the cold, wet cloths we use (must come from his mom's side of the family) so, unfortunately, I thought that this laugh/whine thing was laughter but quickly learned that it was real pain as he started to really cry and cry. Emmett doesn't cry very often at all, so I felt really horrible about this, and every change for the rest of the day followed the same routine (except I was much more careful and the tears less frequent). Though the real damage only lasted about 24 hours, it felt like forever and I really want to do all I can to make sure that he never gets diaper rash again. No fun.

Emmett is pulling himself up like crazy. It was something of a shock the first time that we walked into his room at the end of one of his naps and he was standing up in his crib waiting for us. That has only happened a couple of times, but he has also had a couple of times where we have put him down for a nap only to have him stand up behind the bars of the crib and whine that he doesn't want to take a nap. Luckily that doesn't happen too often.

I think that this will be my get-over-the-hump post and I will get back into the swing of things. We only have a few days left here before we head up to Portland to see family. We are flying up and it will be interesting to see how E deals with flying, sleeping in an unfamiliar locale, etc. Fun times ahead.

First Blood

Emmett has had one of his top front teeth ready to pop out for some time. This morning A, E, and I were hanging out in the front room and he was standing up using the coffee table to keep him upright. Both Andrea and I had a feeling that we were making a mistake by letting him do this, but we didn't act on that feeling fast enough and Emmett fell to the ground, catching his mouth on the table on the way down. We lifted him up to find a bit of blood coming out of the side of his mouth and he was definitely not happy. After he settled for a bit in him mom's arms, we had a look at the damage and the tooth had completely broken through the surface by a well-placed table impact [note: after posting this Andrea read it and has corrected me (I believe the word she used was liar). She argues that his front top tooth was already poking through and the one second from the front was the one that broke through. A few minutes ago she held him upside-down (the only way we can see in his mouth these days) and proved that, indeed, it was the second from the back that we broke through---although I still don't believe that the front was all the way through. Also note that I am updating this on the laptop and Andrea doesn't know what I am working on, and she just said that I also lied by saying that she shared the blame in it and that it was only her kindness that kept her from blaming me right then. Also, in light of these two "lies" as she terms them, she has decided that she is going to start a rival blog with the sole purpose of there being the possibility of a true record of Emmett's upbringing). We are going to have to see, now, if this speeds the teething process and he doesn't get all upset about the fact a tooth is coming in since we rushed it in already. We will also have to see if the trauma we underwent in seeing him clock himself and seeing blood trickle out his mouth was worth the possibility of speeding the teething process. Definitely no fun to see that happen.

Tonight Andrea was feeding Emmett and started to sing a song from her youth and there was a part where she would say "pick 'em, pick 'em" and Emmett would start busting up laughing. It is so funny how you try and try to get him to laugh and suddenly the dumbest thing will get him going. He was really laughing hard so I took a little video (of course he wasn't laughing as hard when I took it, but you get the idea). Also this gives an idea of what feedings are like these days. Emmett is eating some combination that Andrea makes of plain yogurt, tahini, brewer's yeast, avocado, broccoli, carrot, and butternut squash all blended to a silky smoothness. I can't believe he eats that stuff. The good part, as is apparent by the list I just gave, is that he is mostly off of bananas as a necessary supplement to every meal.



I threw up one other video to show how Emmett is moving about these days. He is amazingly efficient at getting about the house this way...hopefully he figures out how to actually crawl sometime soon, too. It is funny how suddenly the house is filled with all of these objects that we never knew he had interest in and now all he wants to do is grab them and bite them or break them.



That is it. Tomorrow is Emmett's first Thanksgiving, so we will see how he battles his hit of turkey tryptophan (OK, maybe he won't have turkey---why would you if you can have one of Andrea's wonderful concoctions)?

More days out than in

We didn't celebrate it, but last Wednesday marked the day that Emmett had been outside of Andrea longer than he was inside of Andrea (Emmett's big day was March 5th, ours June 20th). I never mentioned this as I didn't start this blog until after Emmett was born, but it is plain wacky how they count weeks when a woman is pregnant. Human gestation is about 260 days, which works out to just less than 9 months, but they use this 280 days or forty weeks calendar thing now that is measured from the first day of the mother's last period to birth. I know that there are all kinds of debates about when life begins, but I am quite confident that all are in agreement that life does not begin 20 days before the swimmers start their way upstream. It is crazy as it results in all kinds of misconceptions now like that pregnancy is 10 months. Weird.

Anyway, Emmett has been out longer than in now and things have been changing pretty rapidly since I last posted (the reason for the hiatus is this teaching thing which will be the death of me...luckily there are only 3 more days of lectures left). Emmett is now worming around and easily makes forward progress---it definitely wouldn't be termed crawling, but when the worm is used in combination with the belly-rotate, he can get pretty much anywhere he wants in a room. If he employs tears as well he can get to pretty much any room he wants. (I have a video of him doing the worm, but he is really whiny and he isn't making much progress...I will try to take a better one tomorrow).

Emmett really seemed to be all about standing for a while, but I think that the new-found independence that he has with his mobility abilities has made him so he doesn't need to stand as much (not that he doesn't still like a good stand every once in a while). I had a new invention, though, for a device that makes it so I don't have to hold him upright all of the time---I call it the stand-trainer allowing a parent to free their hands to fold laundry, turn the page of the newspaper, etc. The best part of the device is that when it is done being used for this purpose it can be converted into a laundry container or trash receptacle simply by removing the child.

Emmett is fascinated by Malcolm these days and Malcolm has reached new levels of annoying by climbing on everything resulting in broken vases, candle holders and pigs (Belinda gave Andrea a cast pig which was knocked off by a painting that fell off of the wall---we have no evidence that it was a chain reaction initiated by malcolm, but all signs point to the hairless one). I fear that Andrea is about to give Malcolm away---at least he has been good around Emmett and has tolerated Emmett grabbing handfuls of what fur Malcolm hasn't already licked off (perhaps Malcolm sees it as less work he will have to do later?). When we are playing in Emmett's room, Malcolm likes to jump into the crib or onto the changing table to watch Emmett play. This makes Emmett laugh. It also makes Andrea mad. Malcolm gets mixed signals around here.

Sleep has been really good for us of late. Emmett is down by 7-7:15 and has been sleeping straight to 6 or 6:30 the past couple of weeks. There were a couple of strange nights in a row last week where he would wake up screaming, but that seems to have passed. Oh, and I don't think I mentioned it before, but Emmett got his first fever about two weeks ago. That was no fun at all, even though it wasn't that bad in the fever world. He only got up to about 102 (which is about 98.75 for an adult), and we got lots of practice taking temperatures in the other end.

The other thing has been food. He is eating more and more things and is getting the hang of chewing even though he still has only 2 teeth. (Oh, we pulled up his upper lip one day to see if there were any other teeth on the way, and we were both pretty grossed out with what we saw. I guess I had never put it together before, but teeth come into your mouth by passing in front of the bones of your mouth---which means that it looks like there is a thin layer of skin over fully formed teeth (which there is). For some reason, I always pictured that teeth came through nice little holes in bone and slid into place. I was very wrong, and what I saw I found to be very troubling and I wish that I never would have looked.)

the many faces of emmett

We just got back from a family trip around town on the bus which ended with lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant. Emmett was really good (we had brought him food, too), and at the end of the meal A & I were still eating when Emmett started to have a bowel movement. These days there is no questioning the fact that he is having a bowel movement as his face turns bright red and he makes the stereotypical expression that you see in comedy movies when a character is supposed to be having a bowel movement. At this point Andrea and I were just staring at him laughing at the fact that he doesn't realize that doing this at the table is a bit of a faux pas when the server comes up and comments "he makes so many different expressions" --- immediately making it clear that she doesn't have a child.

vids and pics

It definitely feels like it is getting hard to come close to keeping up with this here blog. The whole teaching thing feels like it is taking all of my free time, but luckily I am done in just a few more weeks. I am yearning for Thanksgiving.

Things have been going well with Emmett. I think we are nearing the point where he needs to be switching from 3 naps to two. He took a very long first nap today and I just put him down for his second. He has been a little cranky of late, which is making me wonder if another tooth isn't on its way. Yesterday was the first time in a very long time that he started to cry and I couldn't figure out what he wanted.

Three nights ago Andrea and I were doing some chores around the house and we had Emmett in one of those plastic playthings playing away when we heard him laughing up a storm. We peeked in on him and he was watching Malcolm play with a tag, where Malcolm was throwing the tag up in the air with his paws and then pouncing on it. This was only the second time we had heard him laugh when someone wasn't trying to make him laugh (the first being watching skateboarders wreck a few weeks back). Anyway, I hurried off to get the camera, but Malcolm lost interest in the tag so we decided to reenact the situation. The following video is Andrea entertaining Malcolm with a string which in turn entertains Emmett. The video gets pretty dull after about 30 seconds or so, but I (again) didn't edit it down. I will try to do this with later videos.

Just after the above video, Andrea and I decided we would see how Emmett's reaction time with the scarf/string thing compared to Malcolm's, so we made the following video. It is pretty short because about 7 seconds in you can see the lightning-quick black paw of Malcolm enter from the left and swipe the string away right in front of Emmett's face. Very fortunate that Emmett didn't take a claw to a cheek as they are big targets.


Emmett is getting closer to crawling with him spending some time getting up to his hands and knees. Today when I took him to Andrea's school she put him on the floor into his version of "downward facing dog" which he held for quite a while, as seen in the picture at left (note that though his butt and thighs run against the right-hand-side of the photo, there was no support for him in this pose). He was getting up to his hands and knees quite a bit while he and I were in the backyard just before his nap. We definitely need to start taking care of the childproofing.

Halloween also happened since I last posted. I worked a long day and didn't see him dressed up, but Andrea put him in a hand-me-down monkey outfit from her sister which Tyler wore last year. Read what you will from the expression on his face in the picture at left. It was no fun missing out on halloween, and hopefully this isn't an example of what the rest of his life is going to be like with me never showing up for golf tournaments, ballet recitals, and benchpress competitions.

Other than that, just keeping on keeping on. I have a lot of cleaning to do while he finishes his nap.