Water Baby

Since summer began, your Mom has been taking you to swim classes. Now, let's get one thing straight: you love the water, and you love the pool! You love splishing and splashing and bouncing. But, at first, you really really really hated being submerged. The swim school you attend, Emler, has a method of teaching babies how to hold their breath by literally tossing them into the deep end.

Okay, well, not literally. But they create a sensation of falling, which forces humans to automatically hold their breath. You are a human, so this applies to you too. You're doing a wonderful job at holding your breath under water, but the first couple times, when you surfaced, you were PISSED at your Mommy and the world for putting you through that.

But, slowly but surely, you've gotten used to it and are getting better and better at "swimming."

Luckily, last Friday I was able to go to Emler with you and Mommy and we practiced submersion a bunch. Throw in the Waterproof camera to that equation, and you've got pretty solid evidence of your submersion lessons. Granted, you still don't seem to love (or even like) being dunked, you seem okay with it now, which is good: water safety is very important, and learning things like holding your breath are key.



As fun as that seemed, your true love of water stems from bath time. You love splishing and all that other stuff in the tub too. But now you've figured out how to play with some of the cooler tubby toys in the bath. You also still really like to play with the one toy that is attached to you. Probably, as your Mommy puts it, because it's really the only time during the day that you have access to it.

But, I digress, bath time is, indeed, so much fun. And it's really cool to watch you discover actions and consequences in the tub (aka, figure out how your toys work).

Month 4 week! Daddy and Aidan's day of fun!

Through some clever finagling, I managed to swap my telecommuting day from Thursday to Friday, since today (Friday) was a half-work day (due to Independence Day weekend), I could work from home til noon, and be free to be with you 100% just in time for your Mommy to go to work!

And the day started off with a bang. I was upstairs working when I hear your Mom whisper-yell (a skill all parents need to learn s they can yell at their spouse and get their attention without waking the baby)...she told me to peak into the nursery...and this is what I saw:

Your Mom saw it too...that shouldn't be visible above the crib rail, should it?

No way!
You're on your tummy!

This was my first morning to see the evidence of you doing what you've secretly been doing all week in bed! You were sleeping on your tummy (and blending in quite well to the crib sheets too...we've got to stop dressing you in baby camouflage)!

Video of the son rise.

I was amazed with you, but then again I'm pretty amazed that I was amazed, because we've been super amazed with how grown up you're becoming all week!

Last night as I was reading you your bedtime stories, you reached out and were grabbing the book! Holding on to it...

The other day we were bathing you and you grabbed on to the bath toy and just held on to it!
Even you look amazed at that!


And Daddy and Aidan day proved to be no less amazing! Today as we were playing tummy time the second I put you down on your back, you rolled immediately over to your tummy and stayed there for a long time, just looking around, scooting in a circle and watching your dogs play (or laughed at them for looking so forlorn).


Becoming a dad makes people overly sentimental...and we can't help it. This morning, I just lay down next to you on your multi-colored play mat and was talking to you, playing with you and having a really good staring contest with you. You smiled and laughed and looked confused and farted. You went through just about all your awesome faces. And then iTunes played a mean trick on me (about as mean as playing a "cotton: the fabric of our lives" commercial in front of a menopausal woman.) ITunes played the song that Ben Folds wrote for his son, which goes like this:



And while the song was playing you just stared at me...looked deep into my eyes. And I sang to you. And by the time I was singing the second round of "Everybody knows, it hurts to grow up. And everybody does. So weird to be back here. And let me tell you what, the years go on and we're still fighting it..." ...and then the part where he says "you'll try and try, and then one day you'll fly away from here." I started seeing you growing up before my eyes...growing a head of hair, falling asleep at a carnival and me fireman carrying you home, you leaving for college (Go TUFTS (if we can afford it), and I started tearing up. Twice in one week this happened to me. Stupid Toy Story 3 made me do the same thing when Andy was leaving for college, and now here I was welling up. But, college is not for 17 years and 6 months, so let's make the most of every minute we have together.

So, it turns out your old man is kind of a softy. Don't tell anyone. Okay, fine, tell whoever you want! I ain't ashamed!

I dried my single tear, you farted again and drooled all over the place and we decided to go downstairs so I could feed you. You got pissed at me and screamed at the top of your lungs. Thank to an insider tip, I figured out that you were telling me you needed to be burped, so we walked around and I patted and rubbed your back for about 20 minutes until--- burp! -- a teeny tiny burp. Was that it? Perhaps! So I took you downstairs, and you downed your entire bottle in one go! Amazing!

While you sat in your new green chair (thanks Uncle Taff and Aunt April!), you were playing with "Green Man" (also known as the notorious Crinkle Frog!), and you were holding on to him by his handle. Yes, actually holding on tight! I picked you up and you picked Green Man up! You held on to him for a good long time.

Then you napped like a pro...from 2:30 til 5:00!

During dinner, you were having a conversation with your Mommy and me...we would ask you questions and you'd reply (of course it was all gobbles and garbles and jibber jabber baby flabber fun stuff). Your Mom said, "I have a feeling you're gonna be a talker, just like your Daddy!"

To which I replied, "That Aidan...he always has to have the last word!"

And then your Mom added, " Like you." Totally disproving her point, since she, in fact, had the last word.

I even tried my hand at bathing you for the first time tonight, in honor of Daddy/Aidan day, even though your Mom was here. Normally I'm towel boy/dinner man, so while your Mom bathes you, I fiddle around with dinner and then when it's time to get out of the tub, I swoop in and catch you with the towel. But tonight, we switched it up. Your Mom and I cooked dinner together, ate (at which we had the aforementioned conversation), and then I got to bathe you! I did a pretty good job, I must say. You were shining like new.

And I was beaming. We put you in pajamas, read you a story, then picked you up to put you in bed and, while your Mom was holding you, the lullaby was interrupted.

You had to amaze us once more before bedtime: you threw up all over your Mommy's arm and your shoulder. I was on clean up duty, and your Mom asked me to check the floor, and I didn't see anything there.

The lullabies continued...and I looked down and noticed two new white spots on Preston's back, where he didn't have any white spots before. Good aim son! Now that's amazing!

To finish off this amazing day, your Mom and I sang you "The Rainbow Connection," and then a riveting Beatles medley consisting of "Golden Slumbers," what we could remember of "Carry that Weight" and "The End."

...and in the end
the love you take
is equal to the love
you make.

Wise words. Today I felt the love; and even though I feel the love every day since day one when I first saw you and you held my hand, this was extra special because it was Daddy and Aidan's day all by ourselves (unless you count the dogs...which, apparently, you did...because you puked right on one of them).

And thus wraps up the week marking your 4th month on the planet! Happy monthi-versary week, Aidan!

I can't believe how much you've grown in just one month.

Here you are at 3 months:

And here you are at 4 months old (on the dot!)

Let's see that again. 3 months: 4 months!
I know as the weeks go on, you will only get more amazing! I love you, son.

Sleeping, Love Train and Down The Drain

Sleeping is one of the general areas of life that isn't going so well right now.

It seems you have - over the past couple of days - developed a 100% aversion to sleeping in your bassinet, the cradle or even your Little Lamb Swing for more than 10 minutes. This means, in short, that you must be held to sleep. This means, in shorter, that the adults in the house- and even the dogs, for some reason- are all sleep deprived.

Now, it's not that you have any difficulty sleeping when you're on somebody. In fact, this type of sleep seems to make everyone in the whole house very happy, because everyone can catch some shut eye. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. In fact, this sleep parade actually takes on some pretty dern' cute forms sometimes.

This one is called "The Love Train":

And a close up of the "Love Train" reveals the "Baby Butt Pillow" formation:

But nighttime, in-the-crib sleeping is still lacking. So, your Mom put out an SOS APB ASAP yesterday to all the Moms she knows and got some helpful advice that seemed to work marginally better for last night's sleep. Each night is a bit better than the one before it, and we're open to trying new tricks. So, we haven't given up all hope of sleeping going down the drain.

Speaking of down the drain (nice segue, right?), an oft-mentioned trick to get baby to sleep is to give him a soothing bath before bedtime. Up until your one-month-iversary, we couldn't give you a soothing bath...only a complicated sponge bath thing, because your umbilical cord stump hadn't fallen off yet.

But, when the cord went out the window (figuratively), we decided we could finally give you a big boy bath. And despite an auspicious start and some early crying...

...the warm water, and your Mom's bathing techniques slowly made you a little less wary...

And finally comfortable!

So by the time we were ready to dry you off, you were fully in happy land!

Well, maybe that's not the exact face of "happy land," but it's definitely "not crying land," so I'll take it!

Oh, and this whole soothing bath thing totally did NOT help you sleep any better on Sunday night. But, at least you're clean now, from head to toe!

We'll try the soothing bath in conjunction with our new night time tricks soon and see if we can't get you sleeping a bit more comfortably, so that not everyone's sleep will be slowly spinning down the drain!