I hab a code

. . . by bery first code! There is do air com-bing in through my nose but lots of stuff com-bing out of it! I hab to sleep now so I'll let Bobby tell you about it . . .

Mommy here: we feel fortunate to have made it almost to 5 months and almost to November before Otis Chester got sick. Yesterday I noticed that his eyes were red-rimmed and he was sleeping more than usual but the real cold symptoms came on all at once around bedtime.

He is in good spirits, still wanting to play and laugh, but he really has trouble breathing (babies can't breathe through their mouths well yet and can't clear their own noses either -- major evolutionary oversight!) and therefore has trouble sleeping. Meanwhile, since he keeps rubbing his face with his hands and putting everything he can grab into his mouth, I'm starting to envision our house as a scene from Ghostbusters post-sliming.

A BIG week

Lots of milestones this week! First off, here is the most recent picture of me, taken by Grandma and Grandpa Mago yesterday (October 21, 2006) - 9 days shy of 5 months old.

As you can see, I haven't lost any weight! Look at those cheeks! On the other hand, I don't think I've gained much either - not more than a pound at most, so that puts me between 20 and 21 pounds. Mommy's trying to hold me back so I will be able to fit into my Christmas suit that Grandma bought me. But really I think I'm slowing down on my own; I was just getting ready for the cold weather.

Now for my milestones: I've always gotten my fist or various fingers in my mouth from time to time. But this week, I started reliably getting a thumb in my mouth, when I'm trying to fall asleep or after I eat. So if I end up sucking my thumb, we'll be able to say it started the beginning of this week.

Tuesday (10/17) Mommy sat up my Thomas the Tank Engine train set that her friend Carol and Carol's son Shane gave us. I liked to watch her run the train around and around the track (but I got impatient when she went too fast and it derailed). Mommy sat me up in the floor and I stayed there! Grandma and Grandpa Mago have been helping me sit up in the couch at their house for ages, but this was the first time I sat up unassisted! It doesn't last long; I have a tendency to hurl myself backward when I get excited or exasperated. But I've been practicing all this week. Here's a picture of me sitting up on Grandma's couch yesterday; I'm sure you'll be seeing more sitting pics soon!

Also this week, I started scooting! Only thing is, I go backwards, not forwards. This is really frustrating, because I'm trying to get to the toys in front of me, and instead I get further away! Mommy and Daddy think it's just great, though.

My two most recent milestones happened just today (Sunday Oct. 22). First, I've been watching Mommy run that train around the track all week long. So this afternoon, she balanced the train on the top of the bridge and I pushed it down so it zoomed partway around the track. We did it over and over. It didn't make me smile; although I was pleased, I was more intent than anything. I really studied the train after I pushed it down. (I also learned to grab the weight at the bottom of the wind chimes and swing the clapper to make them ring this week - that dexterity thing is NOT overrated!)

Finally, this evening, Mommy stood me up and put my hands on the seat of the armchair in the living room - - and I stayed there! I stood up supporting myself on the chair several times (getting "caught" when I lost my balance and starting over) - the longest standing streak was about 1/2 a minute (ok, 25 seconds; Mommy timed it).

Wow, what a week! I've got to go to bed and get some rest; who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Happy Birthday Grandma S. and Grandpa G.

Oct. 17 is the birthday both of my mommy's mommy and of my daddy's daddy. One year ago today, Mommy called her mommy and woke her up to tell her that she was going to have a baby. And now here I am, four 1/2 months old!

Happy Birthday Grandma Salyers and Grandpa Groves!

A few of my favorite things

I want to use a few posts to talk about some of my favorite toys. Let's start with the all-time three best toys up to 3 1/2 months. But very first, we have to talk about the coolest accessory - my toy bar. Mommy and Auntie Allyn made my first one with foam from the Scrap Exchange and yarn from around the house when I was about 2 months old. It wasn't fancy, but it worked pretty well; after we threw it in the car for a visit to Grandma and Grandpa Salyers', though, it ended up a little bent and wobbly.

A week or two later, Grandpa Mago made me a swanky new toy bar that I still use every day. It's bright yellow, lightweight, and sturdy. I loved it so much that he made another one to use when I come to his and Grandma Mago's house.
Hanging from my fabulous toy bar on your right is the first of the three best toys for the first three months - Mommy and Tommy Dolphin. Mommy (mine, not Tommy's) was surfing the Web looking for the second best toy and came across this one. It had such good reviews posted from customers that she ordered it and boy, was I glad! It has one big dolphin (Mommy), whose belly is black-and-white striped, good to stare at when you're a little baby, as are her big eyes. She has a squeaker, too and her fins make crinkly noises. Off to her side is her son, Tommy Dolphin, who carries a ring that's good to move and teethe on when you get older. Very sadly, Mommy and Tommy have disappeared - we haven't been able to find them for several weeks. Even though I have a LOT of other toys, now, I still miss them.

The second "best of" toy is Sassy's Fascination Station. I got acquainted with it also at about 8 weeks when Mommy took me to see Miss Laurel, the colored light lady (Mommy calls her a craniosacral therapist). I was having trouble with arching and torticollis (but she also helped me poop with green light!) While she was working on me she often had Mommy hold a toy up for me to look at to distract me. Most of them didn't work because, let's face it, some little squeaky toy is not going to keep me from noticing that this strange lady is holding me down and twisting my

body all around. But this one . . . it did the trick (here's another view). And like Mommy and Tommy, it grows with me; it was fun when all I could do was look at it and it's now fun to move. Miss Laurel said her clients always asked her where she found it (and believe me, we looked at local stores!) but she'd had it for a few years. So Mommy went to Sassy's Web site and found it (and as I mentioned, also found Mommy and Tommy while surfing).

The third featured toy in this post I got when I was about 11 weeks old, the week I first started holding things. Mommy took me to visit Grandma and Grandpa Salyers in Ohio; Grandma's friend Nancy brought some toys over for me, which was so nice of her! Immediately, this one became my favorite. We named her Laurel the Cyber-Piggy (Laurel because of the garland around her neck). If you look at her logically, she's kind of creepy - long eyelashes and the inexplicable laurel surrounded by the tubes coming out and re-entering her on the other side. Fortunately, I don't have logic yet--all I saw were bright colors and something the perfect size for me to be able to grab onto. Oh, and she rattles, too.

Well, there you have it; my top three toys from my first three-plus months. I'd recommend them to anyone (although I don't know where Laurel Piggy came from). Next week, I'll tell you about some of my favorite toys of more recent days.

What I won't miss about the first three months

Colic; it's a bummer.
Fortunately, I'm almost done with it, I think!

Who do I look like?

When I was born, everybody said I looked like my daddy. Mommy said she put an awful lot of work into getting me here for us not to look like we were related! Finally she decided at least my eyelashes were from her (my great-grandma Ruth would have said, "Those eyelashes are wasted on a boy!") Anyway, so you can see for yourself, here's a picture of my daddy 4 hours old and me a few minutes old:

We both were born with dark hair that looked kind of reddish in photos, exact same hands (passed down from my daddy's daddy, and his daddy), same nose, even same worried expression!

Well, now I'm four months old, and as you have no doubt noticed from other posts, I've, er, plumped up a bit. OK, OK, at my 4-month checkup I weighed 20 pounds, which is -- literally -- off the scale. Not even on the growth chart. Yep. Well now is apparently when my mom's side of the family makes a genetic appearance. As my aunt Cindy says, I come by it honestly. Here's what I mean:

Cousin Sam - 5 months Aunt Cindy - 11 or 12 months Me and Grandma - 3 months & change

(2 by-the-ways: First, my shirt in the above photo says "Will work for ice cream" (thank you Ben, Kendra, and Marley!) and second, I am much fatter now than in this picture (those shorts don't fit anymore, for one thing).

Mommy is never satisfied - first she was disappointed that I didn't look like her. Now she's mad 'cause since I've gotten hugely fat, everyone's started telling her I do look like her! (They don't mean you look fat, Mommy, just that . . . yeah, well, hmmm, actually, I'm not going to touch that one.)

My adventures with EMS

I learned a new word today -- "p - a - r - a - m - e - d - i - c - s." That's what Mommy called them, but they called themselves "EMS."

They come after the fire department, who are the "first responders."

They all will come to your house -- all half-dozen of them -- if you launch yourself off your Mommy and Daddy's bed while Mommy is bending over to pick up your socks.

We were going to go for a walk in my stroller to see if I would fall asleep and because it was so nice and cool outside. But because it was cool I needed socks. Well, Mommy took her hand off me to get my socks and I don't know what I was thinking but I guess I got excited. Next thing I know I'm on the floor. (By the way, if you've never seen my Mommy and Daddy's bed, it's a really tall four-poster.)

It was all a little confused after that. I cried so hard when Mommy was on the phone that she couldn't hear what the dispatcher was telling her. She just got me to stop crying when the strange people got here. They leaned over me and held my head so I couldn't move it, and boy, did that make me mad. I started crying again and wasn't about to stop for anything, so I couldn't hear everything, but a few things came through:
* Is crying like that normal for him?
* Does he ever use a pacifier?
* How old is he? Four months?! Whoa, he's a BIG boy!
* Well, his spine's definitely ok judging from how he's kicking around.

Then the paramedics, I mean EMS, got there. One guy kind of took charge. He said,
* How old is he? Wow, he's a BIG boy!
* Does he have a pacifier that he uses? (Mommy explained again that giving me a pacifier would just make me madder.)

Pretty quickly he determined that I was probably ok. Babies fall all the time, he said, and our bones are still soft so we're very resilient. Especially if we fall on carpet. (One of the other EMTs said her kids fell all the time when they were babies!) Before they left he asked to see where I fell from. "D*&n! That's a high bed!" he said and then we were back to deciding if I should go to the hospital.

Mommy is still worried, but eventually they just told Mommy to keep an eye on me and that I'd probably be fine. I hope so!

Piggies

There's piggies down there!! When Mommy sat me up and I leaned way over, all the sudden they were down there wiggling around!

Mommy says she's been trying to show them to me for a while now but I'm telling you, they just came out of nowhere. I hope I get to see them again soon!

Piggies!!

Raspberries!

Grandma and Grandpa Mago have been helping me with my raspberry goal for awhile now, and we're really making progress. On Sunday I held an all-day raspberry clinic, first with Mommy and Daddy at home and then with the grands and great-grands when they took me visiting. Just the noise of the lips vibrating is good, but ideally, you have to juggle a combination of that noise using intensity of breath, plus squealing vocalization, plus spit bubble volume (and ideally, incidental spit distance). I've nailed all the elements at different times; now I'm trying to keep it all in the air at once.

Hanging out with Grandpa

Grandpa Groves babysat for me this weekend so Mommy and Daddy could go out for a little bit. I almost got them with my worried look right at them as they were walking out the door, but they didn't stop. Not that I mind hanging out with Grandpa. I'm still not sure about that furry stuff on his face, but other than that I think he's pretty cool.

Let me tell you what's cool about grandparents. Where Mommy and Daddy pretty much lay me down to sleep these days (unless I manage a total nap strike for a few days and they get worried about my sleep and let me lie on them ), grandparents will let you sleep on top of them for your whole nap! Ah, takes me back to the good ol' days when that was the only way I ever had to sleep. Now I even have my own bed-blech!