Happy Halloween!

Breakfast: before and after

I am not joking when I say he eats at least twice as much for breakfast as I do.





And even after all that, he wasn't completely satisfied:



After I took him out of the high chair, he made himself a ham sandwich.

The only thing he doesn't immediately put in his mouth...

... is the finger food we've been giving him. Occasionally a grain of puffed rice will make its way inside, seemingly by random happenstance. At least 90 percent of it ends up on the floor. Still, he seems to be mastering the all-important pincer movement, which he practices by yanking my septum.

Conrad voted.

He went to the polls with Bonnie for Carrboro early voting. I respect his privacy and didn't ask who he voted for, but I suspect, like most Americans, he chose the candidate he feels is best able to keep our country safe from asparagus.

Not all members of the household...

... are thrilled by Conrad's new mobility.

"Look at that handsome baby in the dishwasher!"

"I love him."

The only thing he loves more than pulling hair...

... is chewing on hair. Jean is more often the victim of that. Some mornings she leaves for work looking like a spaniel has retrieved her.

But he also likes giving big, sloppy, open-mouthed kisses:

Sleeping Late

One of Dave's posts reminded me that I wanted to relate a little story of last Saturday morning. Usually Conrad sleeps until about 6 or a little before. He'll stir and make some little noise and by about 6:30, it has increased in volume enough to roust us out of bed.

Last Saturday, however, I awoke with a start at 6:30 to hear absolutely no noise. My mama sense was on high alert and I rushed into the boy's room, only to find him sleeping soundly. I put my hand on his back to make sure he was still breathing and returned to bed.

In some just world, I would have drifted off until the normal morning routine began. But no, in this new 'something must surely be wrong' state of mind, I was compelled to return to his room every ten minutes until he awoke. At 7:15. Which is a lovely time for a baby to wake up on a Saturday morning. I wish I could have enjoyed it.

Life lessons

If there's one thing a child can learn from the book "Sheep in a Jeep," it's that sheep cannot be relied upon in a crisis.

You can guess the outcome of this one.

I have a coworker with a new baby. She's still at home on maternity leave. She sent pictures yesterday and a brief state-of-the-baby address where she said he was sleeping well and only woke up once a night. I recommended the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" and credited it with helping us get Conrad on a regular sleep schedule. Do I even need to mention at this point that he woke up an hour early this morning?

Visit from Opa

My Dad came over last weekend and Conrad was really glad to see him, in the way that I've only seen him respond to us, Bonnie and his other grandparents. It's really nice to see, not only because my Dad appreciates it, but because it's another sign that he's becoming more aware and more sociable. Not that I think we have a lot to worry about in those areas.

Goofball

A few days ago I came home from work and glanced up at the back door, expecting to see Hastings waiting for me. Instead I saw that Conrad had usurped his spot. Now that he can get around and pull himself up, he was able to come to the door to greet me. It was one of the great moments so far in fatherhood.

Of course when we recreated the moment for the camera, the boy hammed it up.



Several more fun photos from this series on the Flickr page.

New teeth!

Not that you can see them in this photo, but we just discovered that his two top front teeth are coming in. Bonnie noticed them when he was hanging upside down playing his new favorite game, "I bet I can make you drop me."

He's had patches of grumpiness over the last two weeks that the teething might account for, but some of it coincided with his first cold, which he got, predictably, after day three of baby school (which is what we're calling day care, a term borrowed from a colleague of Jean's).

As you can see from that last gem of a paragraph that's also a sentence, one of my strategies for posting more often is to eschew editing.

Two weeks is a long time in the life of a baby

I know, it's unforgivable that I've gone so long without posting. So much has happened. He's crawling like a champ, pulling up and starting to cruise. I think. That's one of those baby terms of which I only have a vague grasp. He's pulling up, standing with only one hand to steady himself, and looking really hard like he wants to try to walk to other objects. If that's cruising, that's what he's doing.

(Note also our new easy-to-clean carpet squares to replace the bad, bad, white shag rug that Conrad enjoyed harvesting and spitting up upon.)

Big week for utensils

In addition to giving him his own spoon, we've started him on a sippy cup, which you would think would be a piece of cake after weeks of practicing with a regular, open, big-person cup. It nonetheless held a few challenges, such as determining which end the water came out of. I think we'll hold off on the fork for a while.

Spoons are for smearing

We bought him his own spoon a month or two back. Just in the last couple of weeks he's been really interested in holding it while we feed him, and even more recently, he seems to want to get in on the act. He's tried scooping out of the bowl with his spoon, with predictably limited degrees of success. This weekend I started handing him the spoon with a little bit of food on it. This explains why he has dried mango crusted in his nostrils and eyelashes.

Ibiza Chillout Baby Mix 2008

If there was a CD with that title, wouldn't this be the perfect cover for it?

Mr. Versatility

He can play the leading man:



... or the goofy sidekick:

Where'd that lady go?

It's always good to hang out with experienced parents and realize how little it actually takes to amuse a seven-month old. Here's Memsy playing a game that, trust me, never got old for Conrad.