Adventures in Parenting

Simon is four months old today--look how much he's grown!
(12 days on the left, 4 months on the right)

Over the past four months, the everyday adventures in parenting (coping with screaming baby, finding a place to change a diaper without offending too many people, breastfeeding in public, etc.) have become pretty routine for us. It now takes more unusual circumstances for us to consider something to have been an adventure. Lucky me though, I recently had two such adventures...

1. Tornado Drill: Simon's first tornado drill while I was on campus getting some work done at the coffee shop (see Jess abandoning her own bag, coffee, etc. to wheel sleeping baby in stroller into huge crowd of students in the lower level, because she doesn't have enough hands to grab everything and the people doing the herding of students are being rather adamant that I leave, right now!...of course, I cheated and took the elevator while no one was looking because, really, do you want me to make the baby scream by taking him out of the stroller to carry down the stairs, when we all know this is just a drill?)
   
   
2. Traffic Jam: The interstate was closed right about at our exit, due to an accident. I, driving home from the Cities with Simon, did not know this, of course. So there's about a 6-mile gap between our exit and the one before, and not knowing to exit at the one before, instead Simon and I took about an hour and a half to travel those 6 miles to get to our exit. Generally Simon sleeps in the car, which is great...but he only sleeps if the car is moving, so about 3 or 4 minutes into the stopped traffic, he woke up, screaming (of course). About 10 minutes later it was clear to me that the traffic was not going to clear up anytime soon, so we pulled off onto the shoulder while I fed him in the backseat, then strapped him back in and rejoined the traffic. To give you an idea of the frustratingly slow pace of vehicles: in the entire time it took me to pull off, feed Simon, strap him back into his seat and pull back into the lane (probably 15-20 minutes), the school bus I had been right in front of had moved a total of about 5 truck-lengths ahead. (Strapping Simon back in to the carseat led to more screaming, of course, but at least now it was not the intense "I'm hungry!" scream, just an intermittent "I don't like my carseat when no one is entertaining me and I'm bored back here!" scream, which is somewhat easier to tolerate.) I was just glad we didn't run out of gas!

So these past four months and related parenting adventures have earned me a new holiday: Mother's Day! Officially its still over a week away, but we celebrated early because Andy has some work stuff he has to do on actual Mother's Day. Here we are at the waffle bar, the new mom on her first mother's day, and baby, who helped us celebrate by sleeping and otherwise being generally well-behaved while Mom and Dad went out for waffles!

first Mother's Day

High-Density Adorableness

Thanks for the title, Anne :).






Froggie Munching (30 seconds):

The days pass by...

...sometimes with screaming, sometimes with cooing, sometimes with giggling, our days just keep on passing by with our littlest Gubbins. Here are a few photos from the past week, to show what we've been up to:

Oh boy! New playspace, new toys, how exciting!

Simon took his first spin in the exersaucer the other day--his little feet just reach the bottom, and his head has only recently gotten stable enough to put him in. (I actually have very mixed feelings about exersaucers, because I think many caregivers misuse them. Like many other baby products I used to think were excessive or unnecessary or ridiculous, it took seeing our very fussy baby go from near-scream to amazed contentment to understand why parents love, and often over-use, these things!)

First trip to the playground!

We had one lovely day this week amidst a bunch of chilly, windy ones. Simon and I walked to the park, and here we are in the only shady spot to be found--under the slide, where Simon got to dig his little toes in the gravel a bit, and feel the wind on his face!

TOYS!!!

Well, Mom and Dad may have gotten a little excited about Simon's toys, here. Since he's grabbing onto things, we figured it was time to get more toys out than the few rattles we've had lying around. This led to a fabulous time with Mom and Dad playing with Simon's toys...while he looked at us like we were crazy.

Professor Gubbins will see you now :)

Weekend with Liz

Its a bit past the weekend now, but due to serious sleep deprivation, Mom hasn't really been keeping up with the photos and blogging this week. (Did I say Simon had settled into waking twice a night? Ha! We wish! Try four times a night for four of the past five nights...)

So, a few updates on Simon and life here at the Gubbins' residence are in order. Simon is more alert than ever and wants to play, play, play! He will hold onto toys if you place them in his hand, and more than likely bring them up to his mouth, where he is surprised to find that the object entering his mouth is not his own hand. He's not quite reaching for things yet, though in his bouncy chair or rocker his hands will often 'catch' the toys and he'll end up grabbing them--it doesn't seem to be very intentional reaching, as far as I can tell.

Simon's first taste of fish...of the plush rattle variety

He is also much better at sucking his thumbs--he'll suck either one now, and is more adept at getting the thumb into his mouth on the first or second try. He still loves to suck and lick and generally explore his whole hand much of the time, but if he's getting sleepy he'll often find his thumb.

cozy on Dad's lap for storytime

Simon is also very good at bringing his hands together in front of him--an important step to being able to really explore toys, pass them from one hand to another, and so on. Right now he just explores his other hand, of course, unless someone else puts a toy there.

look everybody, my right hand found my left hand!

Liz was a great help over the weekend, keeping Mom sane. I was already amazed by single parents, but now actually having a little one, I am further impressed with their ability to get anything done at all, and to keep a sense of humor and not go crazy! We were very glad to have Aunt Liz here so Jess didn't have to single parent all weekend--just Thursday was enough for us, thank you very much :).

"I like you and all Liz, but the lights are still more fascinating sometimes..."

playtime with Liz--and more fish, yum yum!

When Dad came home after four days away, he was amazed by how much Simon had grown and changed. I think sometimes it takes a brief separation to realize some of the less obvious changes that have happened. Simon is doing very well holding his head up, for instance, and seems to have improved a lot in just a few days in that regard. And, his little legs just love to push out against things, which means recently, with his improved posture/back and neck strength, he loves to "stand" with Mom or Dad's help. I'm hoping this love of being stretched out doesn't mean he'll skip crawling altogether and be an early walker--I wouldn't mind a few months of slower-paced crawling before he gets his running legs!

showing off his new tricks for Dad--standing and holding his head upright!

Joke's on us

Well, unfortunately the awesome night of sleep was, indeed, our little one's first April Fools joke. "Ha ha!" I can just hear him thinking, "I can sleep through the night, but I won't, because I just love seeing Mommy's sleepy face in the wee hours of the morning!"

He has recovered from our travels, at least, so he's back to a pretty standard up-twice-per-night schedule, which we feel we really shouldn't complain about too much. He is only three months old, after all.

In other news, Andy is in Nashville for a conference this weekend. Simon and I are awaiting Aunt Liz's arrival any hour now, to keep us company (and help with baby!) while Andy is gone. Have a good weekend everyone!

3 months old!

Hey everybody, I'm already three months old! That's right, while you weren't looking, I went and grew up into a fully interactive infant--no more lay around, do nothing but sleep all day, newborn behavior for me! Oh no, I'm a big baby now, and I want to play!

Just look how big I am!

This past weekend, we went to Red Wing to see our friends and spend some time with Grandma & Grandpa. Here are a few photos from our weekend fun.

Simon's first trip to Grandpa & Grandma's farm, outside Red Wing


Playing with Grandma and Uncle Pete


Bubbles!


Re-introductions--Simon, this is Elsie!


This time, they actually paid attention to each other! (Well, when you held them within a foot of each other's faces, at least...)


We all took a lovely walk at a park in Red Wing

And, a few photos of everyday life with a three-month-old:

Simon always gets a story before bed. Now that he'll sometimes actually look at the pictures in the book, we're trying to read to him more at other times, too. As you can see, at this particular moment he is more interested in his hands :).


Tummy time: still not Simon's favorite, but he's doing better--look how high that head is!


We're trying to get Simon outside as much as we can, on the nicer days--we figure the fresh air is good for him (he does seem to sleep better those nights when he's been out and about!), and the exercise is certainly good for us.

And, as either a 3-month gift to us, or an April Fools Day joke (depending on whether the trend continues or he reverts back to his old ways), Simon slept until 5:00 am last night! Wooohooo! 8:30 pm to 5:00 am (and then back to sleep after eating, until 8:00 am)...aaaah, to possibly get full nights of sleep again...do we dare hope for a repeat tonight?