...more on Simon's tolerance

Yes, now about eight weeks into his little life, I think Simon is rather tolerant. Just last night he tolerated spending several hours with another baby (Sophie), her boisterous two-year-old brother (Toby), and several unfamiliar adults while Mom and Dad caught up with their parents (our friends Brian & Natalie), whom we hadn't seen since before either of our babies was born. Then he tolerated a party for Jess' grad program, complete with alcohol, lots of loud talking, lots of strangers, and being passed from person to person...not to mention the hour-long drives to and from the Cities! And, of course, most impressive, he tolerates his weird parents and the things they do with him (see video at end of post for further evidence of this)...of course our philosophy is, if you're going to have kids, you might as well be entertained by them!

Our happy little family (Simon thinking "oooh...kitchen light...")

Toby rockin' out

Simon (almost two months) and Sophie (almost three months)

...they were both rather tolerant of each others' wandering hands!

Simon Dances...er, "Dances" (22 seconds long):

Our baby is so tolerant...

I just realized we haven't posted any video in a long time--here are a couple from the past few weeks. The first shows just how tolerant Simon is, and that I think his favorite toy is quickly becoming Daddy! (We have an even better video demonstrating Simon's tolerance for the wacky things his parents do, but unfortunately its too dark to really see, so this one will have to do.)

Daddy Ride (39 seconds):




Yawn & Sneezes (31 seconds):

Yes, I do still knit...

Well, what do you know? It's a non-Simon-centered post! (Don't worry, he does appear in a photo, so you grandparents can just skip to the bottom of the post for your Simon-photo-fix!) I just thought I should update my knitting friends, since I hardly see them in person anymore, on what I've been up to.

The build-up to Christmas consisted of making a pinwheel sweater for my sister. It was mostly finished by Christmas, completely done by the time Simon was born. I knit it with KnitPick's Swish Superwash, which is really soft and I pretty much want to make everything with now that my life involves spit up and occasionally being peed upon, and hand washing anything is just laughable (not that I was really into handwashing things before...but then I would have at least considered it, for a hand-knit garment). Doesn't she look great in it?

Liz in her pinwheel sweater

I decided to add a couple toggles so it could either close or hang open in the front--the loopy edge (which I love, though it was rather tedious) worked well as ready-made button holes.

Here's how the whole thing looks spread out--its kind of a funky sweater...which is probably why I thought of my funky sister when I saw the pattern :)

Once I finished that, I had a much smaller sweater to make, for my friend Jen's baby who is due in March. This was blissfully quick after making a grown-up sweater (and even that one went pretty quick!). It's called "Baby Cable Cardigan" and I knit it in KnitPick's Shine Worsted, so its washable and all that jazz. When I picked out the yarn I didn't know that they knew they were having a girl, so I thought a bright blue/turquoise would be a nice spring-sweater color for either a boy or girl...and now, having seen just a smattering of the pink she received at a recent baby shower, I'm glad I didn't know it was a girl, so I wasn't even tempted to go down the its-a-girl-she-must-wear-pink road!

I finished this in a rush to finish in time for Jen's baby shower, so I forgot to take a picture of the sweater itself...but I did try it on Simon to check out the sizing--so here he is modeling what claims to be a 0-6 month sweater, filling it out at 6 weeks old!

Hello Aunt Jen!

We had a special visitor this past weekend, all the way from Cambodia: Aunt Jen!

They seem to have hit it off, don't you think?

hmmm...these clothes of Simon's looked quite familiar to Jen, whose kids have supplied Simon with a good three-quarters of his wardrobe!

In other news, this week was Jess's first week back "at work." For the next few months, that (thankfully) means only 10 hours a week, most of which will actually happen in the house, with only occasional drives up to the Cities for meetings. But, it was still a rough week. Carving out 10 hours that are baby-free is harder than it sounds! And, I'm just not terribly happy about having to do ANY work, even part-time from-home work. Andy and I are pragmatic though, and I do want to finish my PhD someday, so graduate school must continue (and, even more pragmatic, we really don't want to lose my awesome grad student health insurance that the whole family is on!).

Luckily, Simon has chosen this stressful week to start showing off a few smiles to cheer Mom up! They aren't quite reliable yet...but sometimes they seem to be in response to our smiling faces (and sometimes they're totally random). We've tried to capture these elusive smiles on camera without much success--but we got close a couple of times, like the bath photo in our last post. I'm sure we'll only be seeing more and more smiles (yay!) so we'll have some more photos of them in the weeks to come.

A slightly-blurry, dimly-lit, almost-caught-the-full-smile photo of Simon :)

Open Invitation

Simon would like to issue an open invitation:

In case you can't quite make out the letters: "Party in my Crib, 2 a.m." (and his face should give you some indication of what you're in for if you take him up on it!)

And, a few other recent photos of life with Simon...

Simon & Andy having a serious (telepathic) discussion

is that a smile? after a bath, even?!


"Okay Mom, its only cute when I give the big smile...you're just weird"


Hey, look what came upstairs with the clean laundry!

Baby Shower

Baby showers are decidedly more interesting when the baby is actually present, as we learned this past Saturday! Then everyone can focus on the adorable baby, rather than stare at a big belly, which is not only less cute, but also a somewhat less comfortable object of others' attention, particularly for the owner of the belly.

Thanks to a lovely meet-the-baby shower thrown by Paloma, Simon got a chance to meet Jess's grad school friends and some high school friends as well. Here we have photos of Simon with...

Andria

Ian

Jelena

Mia

Andrea

Paloma

Amanda

Anne

Ashley

Sara

Nikki

Thanks to everyone for coming, especially those who drove and flew in from out of town. We really enjoyed getting a chance to catch up with everyone and enjoy a lovely party at the same time :) .