As Much Fun As... Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

New Blog

Mon, 8 Nov 2010 23:02:56 -0600

Something is confusing MobileMe about this blog so I’m moving the content over here for now.

Camping and More

Wed, 6 Oct 2010 22:57:41 -0500

We mentioned back in August that we were planning for a big multi-day camping trip. Now we’ve done it! We just got back from a trip up north that included a 3-day, 2-night actual camping trip in an actual tent with an actual campfire and camp stove and everything. And that was only one part of our big vacation adventure, although according to Grant, it was the best part (especially sleeping in the tent).

The plan all started this summer when I signed up for a trip to Boston for work. It was a 4-day conference and leaving Anita alone with both boys for that entire time wasn’t going to work, so I enlisted my parents, who live about an hour outside Boston. Grant would come up with me for the week of the conference, and stay with me at my parents’ house at night. While I was in Boston during the day, he could explore my family’s small farm (a couple of horses, a productive vegetable garden, and plenty of space to run around).

Meanwhile, Anita’s mom would come to Austin to help Anita with Seth. After the conference ended, Anita and Seth would come up to Boston as well, and then we’d embark on our big camping trip, then return to Austin together a week later.

The original plan was to spend almost the entire vacation camping, up at Acadia National Park in Maine; since Acadia is several hours from Boston, we’d want to stay a while to make it worth the drive. After our trial run at McKinney Falls, we decided to cut it shorter and stay closer. We ended up making a reservation for 2 nights at Recompense Shore Campground on Casco Bay outside Freeport.

The trip started off just as planned. Grant made everyone at our gate smile with his excitement to see all the airplanes as we waited to leave Austin that Friday -- I wish I had video, I’m not a good enough writer to do justice to his reaction, but let’s just say he was climbing parts of the airport not designed to be climbed in order to get a better view. We arrived in Boston and caught a bus to New Hampshire where my parents met us. Plane, bus, grandparents -- life was perfect for Grant!

The next day we visited my sister and practiced fishing with Grant’s new fishing rod in the lake near her house. We caught...a snail. Ah well, Grant enjoyed it anyway.

That evening I came down with an awful stomach bug, which ended up being some 24-hour flu thing that eventually hit Grant, my dad, and my sister, and possibly Seth (he caught something, but not quite the same thing the rest of us had...and it seemed like Grant had two bouts, so maybe there were two bugs going around). So I was pretty much out of commission Sunday.

Fortunately I did recover in time for work Monday morning, the first of many mornings (continuing to yesterday, pretty much) when I was up at 5am or thereabouts to catch all the necessary commuter connections. I had a productive week and from all reports Grant had a wonderful time with my family, flying toy airplanes and goodness knows what else.

Grant really impressed Mem with his musical talents. He likes to sing and dance, but often tries to hide it. At Mem & Papa’s, there’s a sunroom with a glass door where Grant can feel “private” but we can still observe, so we really got to see him in action.

On Wednesday, after work I went by the airport to pick up Anita and Seth. Thursday I had work again while Anita showed Seth around, but only a short day, and we prepared for our big camping trip all evening. I think I went a bit overboard on the food shopping.

On Friday we headed out to Freeport. We picked up lunch on the road and got to camp in time to be all set up well before dinner, which was to be grilled hamburgers, even allowing some time for exploration as high tide approached:

Then I realized I’d packed charcoal, but forgotten the lighter fluid. No problem, I thought, I’ll just borrow a dose from a neighboring campsite...but they all used wood for campfires. Eventually we ended up carting an entire wood fire over to our campsite and lighting the charcoal from the embers:

At dinner Grant was suspiciously not hungry and right around bedtime he went down with the same bug that had gotten me a few days earlier. Fortunately my parents had booked a hotel room for themselves (my mom not being a big camper) and with a little rearranging, we had a real bed and more importantly, real plumbing, for Grant for the night.

As was the case with me, by the next morning Grant was significantly perked up and by midday was pretty much himself. We rented a sea kayak and spent a happy hour or two exploring the near corners of the bay. The campground is a nice spot, bumped right up against a working farm on the inland side and the bay on the other, and the bay is quite scenic especially at high tides.

Anita, Mem, and Papa all ate lobster in South Freeport that night. Grant wasn’t interested in eating lobster, but he happily told us that these lobsters were good to eat. How did he know? Because they were red. That means they are cooked!

Grant and I went out to the docks to admire the amazing variety of boats, from fishing trawlers to pleasure yachts, sailboats and powerboats, boats that looked like they might sail around the world and boats that barely looked seaworthy.

That night was forecast to be very cool, and we belatedly realized that we’d forgotten to get a warm, yet baby-friendly blanket for Seth. Fortunately, famous outdoor outfitter L.L. Bean is headquartered only a few minutes away, and open 24 hours. We had a fun visit there and came away with, I think we all agreed, the cutest possible solution to the problem of keeping Seth warm:

Sunday morning turned out to be not as cool as predicted and instead just right: cool enough to make us feel like we’d really been camping outside but not so cool that we were actually uncomfortable. We fired up the camp stove and I made pancakes for everyone, including Mem and Papa before they headed home. Anita, Grant, Seth, and I took our time tearing down the tent, then stopped on the drive home at Cape Elizabeth to admire the lighthouses...and the waves; the surf at Casco Bay is very calm, but here the wind was strong, the tide was coming in, and the waves were crashing impressively on the rocks.

On Monday we went apple picking. Apple picking is very productive compared to berry picking, but in a way less fun -- 5 minutes of apple picking easily fills a big bucket, and then what? You only need so many apples! We made two pies, with plenty left over for snacking, from those 5 minutes worth of apples. We also got a pumpkin from one of many fields we saw that were just absolutely full of pumpkins:

Tuesday was another highlight: the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, formerly known as the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium. Or as Grant kept calling it, “the militarium.” We missed the show on “tonight’s sky” because we took a long lunch at St. Paul’s School where an acquaintance of mine works and agreed to show us around, but we caught a fun show on black holes. Fun for me anyway. Not sure exactly what Grant thought of that part; afterwards he mostly talked about the rockets and other exhibits in the museum part of the center. I tried to convince Grant to side with me on purchasing some sweet-looking science toys from the gift shop, but Anita shot us down. Too hard to pack, she said...picky picky. Here’s Seth enjoying the planetarium’s light-and-sound experiment:

As we mentioned earlier, Seth had some kind of bug the entire time we were travelling, and wow did we ever miss our cloth diapers. Disposables are handy for trips because you can buy more just about anywhere, and throw them out in many places, but they are simply no where near as good as cloth at containing a big mess. We spent a lot of time cleaning soiled shirts, pants, and PJs. Yuck.

The trip included other memorable moments such as this conversation:
Daddy: “Horses stand up to sleep. They don't have any beds.”
Grant: “That makes sense because you’re not supposed to stand up in bed.”

Grant also got a big laugh out of Daddy calling Seth “Buster”. Well, actually “Bustah” in a nod to the locals.

We encourage Grant to “listen to his body” for signs of hunger, time to go to the bathroom, etc. Sometimes that leads to humorous conversations like this one:
Grant: “How much longer until lunch?”
Mommy: “14 minutes.”
Grant: “That's too long to hold onto my body.”

The flight home Wednesday was mostly smooth; Seth even timed his diaper change to coincide with our long layover in Dallas -- very lucky for us! Grant was a bit more seasoned by this point and kept his excitement about airplanes to a much lower level, but I think it’s safe to say he’ll be eager for our next opportunity when it comes.

-Scot

Seth’s 11 Month Birthday

Sat, 2 Oct 2010 09:42:40 -0500

Uhhh...holy cow! Another month already?

I’d apologize for the lack of updates but many regular readers know the reason: we’ve been visiting you! We’ll be putting together a special-edition, reserve-yours-now-before-they-sell-out vacation blog update sometime in the next few days, but for now we just want to update you on the latest Seth developments:

• Is up to 6 teeth. In an interesting contrast to Grant at the same age, Seth’s top teeth are prominent while the bottom teeth barely show.
• Now uses “dada” to refer to Daddy! Very exciting moment for Mommy when she observed this -- unfortunately it was said as Daddy was leaving earshot so Daddy missed it.
• Sometimes moves between hand-holds without going down to a crawl, just by letting go of one hand-hold and leaning/falling to the next one. I recall this is the last stage before taking a proper step on his own, but he still hasn’t attempted an actual step yet.
• Settled right back into the day care routine after our vacation. Big sigh of relief there! He seems to really like his classmates and teachers.
• Uses the “more” hand signal regularly when he’s still hungry at mealtimes.
• Can climb up and down (steps, couches, etc.) safely, always ensuring that he keeps his feet under him. Fun to watch!
• Has expanded his diet to where we usually give him at least a bite or two of whatever we are having, as long as there are no obvious choking hazards (nuts, raisins, etc.) or honey (not recommended for kids his age). He still makes his preferences clear: Mommy’s milk #1, Cheerios #2, pretty much everything else merely tolerated. He takes a lot of milk in the morning and evening still, and is actually getting ahead of Anita’s supply. We’ll probably make it about another month, to the 1-year mark, but it will be close! We’ll be reducing his milk diet and increasing other foods as much as possible in the coming days and weeks.
• Loves to play with Grant’s toys, which annoys Grant greatly. Conversely, anything that Seth sets his eye on suddenly becomes deeply and personally important to Grant, regardless of whether Grant cared at all about it before.
• Loves to play on cushions and pillows, especially using them as an aid to climbing to where he shouldn’t be climbing.
• Loves nose rubs.
• Continues to earn a reputation as “Mr. Smiles”. He smiles easily and endearingly to one and all. Grant is the only person who can reliably make him laugh, though. Grant takes a lot of pride in his job as official baby-cheerer-upper.
• Cries on his way to sleep for a few minutes each night, and sometimes at naptimes. On rare occasions we are able to get him to fall asleep as we pat or rub or snuggle him, but mostly he seems calm and asleep while we do that, and then lifts his head up a few moments after we stop, cries briefly, and then conks out.
• Falls asleep very easily in the car. We sort of assume any car trip longer than 5 minutes will put him to sleep. Grant is very proactive about reporting Seth’s sleeping status to us from the back seat (since Seth faces backwards, we can’t easily tell).
• Drools like crazy. Teething, I guess.
• His favorite toy is anything with wheels.
• Definitely knows the meaning of “no” and uh-uh. He often obeys, at least briefly.
• Wrestles with Grant semi-willingly. Grant would wrestle with him constantly if Seth would tolerate it, but Seth usually giggles for a few seconds and then turns to complaining. We spend a lot of time reminding Grant that he needs to listen to Seth’s cries because he doesn’t have words yet. Everyone is eager for Seth to get some words! 
• Did great at his first haircut: 
• When Grant and Daddy left for the first vacation wave (more on that soon), Seth decided that while the cat was away the mouse should play. Here he is enjoying Grant’s bed.

- Scot & Anita

Seth's 10 Month Birthday

Thu, 2 Sep 2010 21:14:06 -0500

The past month has included changes for both Grant and Seth. Grant moved up to Ms. Valerie’s pre-K class and has been loving it. He made a Lego creation by following the box for the first time - a Duplo duck. He has also been busy coming up with lots of new stories for us.

These days Seth:

• Gained three teeth in three weeks and has more just below the surface! The top two came in first followed by one of the bottom teeth.
• Has started some basic babbling like ba-ba, da-da, ma-ma, mostly in direct imitation of Mommy and Daddy. He doesn’t often make these sounds on his own.
• Likes to cruise around furniture.
• Has been free-standing for a few seconds at a time for the past few days.
• Sometimes seems to get the “more” hand signal.
• Often goes feet first over edges.
• Had one day this month when he cried when mommy dropped him off at daycare, but Ms. Mary picked him up and it was okay.
• Sometimes eats an item or two from the family dinner.
• Is a surprisingly neat eater for his age.
• Is starting to play on his own more often.
• Is having fun with Ms. Ashley who joined Ms. Leticia when Ms. Kat left to teach high school!
• Really likes to flop onto the sofa cushions and other pillows that Grant puts on the floor.
• Loves nose rubs.
• Likes to clap his hands during patty cake. 
- Scot & Anita

Camping Test #1: McKinney Falls

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:36:11 -0500

We are planning a big family camping trip, like a real camping trip with multiple nights in a tent. In order to prepare for this and figure out if it’s really going to work, we’ve set up a couple of shorter trips as practice runs. Last weekend was our first whole-family camping test, at McKinney Falls State Park right here in Austin.

We kept it pretty simple and short. McKinney Falls is only 20 minutes away, within the city limits at the south end of town near the airport. Even in Texas in August, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees in the heat of the day, it’s a popular destination. We requested a campsite away from other campers, partly to avoid passers-by waking up Seth and partly to avoid Seth bothering the neighbors if he cried himself to sleep as he often does lately (more on that in the upcoming birthday blog entry). We ended up at the extreme far end of the campsites (#64 on the map) which meant we got quite a bit of “hiking” in just getting back to the main part of the park.

The park itself is small, with a few sites of interest that you can easily see in a short trip -- historic (ruined) buildings from when Thomas McKinney raised horses there in the 1800’s, a hike-n-bike trail along slow-moving Onion Creek, and two sets of waterfalls, maybe 10 feet high, with interesting patterns of erosion on the rocks that leave cliffs and slides for water play. When we were there, the water was low and the upper falls were very stagnant and uninviting, with very limited water flow. The lower falls were still quite scenic though, and several families with small children were playing in the basin. Grant charged right in, at first fully clothed but eventually stripped down to nothing. (We remembered later that his bathing suit was stuffed into the backpack he was carrying. Oops.) We did the Upper Falls on Saturday afternoon and the Lower Falls on Sunday morning. Seth and I walked over to the Horse Trainer’s Cabin (ruined) on Sunday morning while Anita and Grant attempted to sleep a bit more; Seth still gets up a little earlier than the rest of us.

There are opportunities to see wildlife -- we saw a decent-sized snake and a beautiful Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher -- but you had to be quick and looking the right way at the right time. Grant missed both of those sightings. He did really enjoy the large orbweaver (figure 10 in this TAMU doc) at our campsite:

As for the campsite, it had a flat sandy spot with plenty of room for a tent, a picnic table, potable water and a built-in grill so it wasn’t primitive camping, but even at that it was about as much as we could handle with Seth on the loose. One of our key lessons was that we need one of those child seats that hooks onto a table (and of course a table to hook it onto) so that we can keep Seth occupied while we do thinks like set up the tent (we got lucky on that one -- he fell asleep) and also to make it easier to feed him. At one point we moved his pack-n-play from the tent to an open spot in the campsite because the tent was a little stuffy:

The tent was a new acquisition, an REI Kingdom 4. It’s...awesome. It had tons of room for two adults and a 3-year-old to sleep even with a pack-n-play set up inside, and it’s really tall. And really it was about as airy as you could possibly hope; we had only ourselves to blame for the stuffiness inside, since we are the crazy people who decided to camp in Texas in August.

Anita made some cool Girl Scout fire-starters, which I’d never seen before. As good as lighter fluid or any other trick I know for starting charcoal, and way more kid-friendly. Unfortunately we should have started the coals about an hour earlier on Saturday, as we ended up having dessert -- S’mores, of course, and also baked stuffed apples, after sausage wraps and corn on the cob for dinner -- in the dark, but we learned our lesson and Anita started the breakfast grill up first thing the next morning while Seth and I were out for our walk. Breakfast tacos are always good, but dealing with the eggs was a pain and we might not repeat that choice.

-Scot

Seth’s 9 Month Birthday

Mon, 2 Aug 2010 21:16:09 -0500

July was a great month for seeing family. Mem couldn’t take the suspense of wondering how much Seth had grown anymore so she hopped on a plane to help Scot out while Anita went to a retreat with a friend for the weekend. Mem was able to join Granny, Grandpa, Scot, Grant, and Seth at St. Martins’ “family picnic” celebrating all the generations together at the church:

In non-baby-related news we also just have to share the tale of our Ananas melon plant. It’s like Jack’s beanstalk except instead of up, it’s grown out of the garden and taken over a good part of the side lawn. It had probably run 15 foot past one end of the garden and 8 or 9 past the other end. It was making mowing the lawn impossible so we relocated it, carefully wrapping it around multiple supports. There are at least half a dozen good sized melons on it and it’s not done yet:

Apparently this is the one thing we can sort of grow well. We flubbed our tomato plants and most of the other veggies we tried to grow this year.

These days Seth:
• has a few different crawls he uses to get around most of the time. His fastest method is a sort of breaststroke that sometimes leads to a face-first crash on the floor. He split his upper lip doing so a few days ago. He also uses a half-crab walk where he brings one foot way up under him like he’s trying to stand on it, which is pretty hard on his poor toes as they get dragged along the floor. He still uses his army crawl as well, plus the occasional standard hands-and-knees crawl.  
• enjoys being lifted up overhead, airplane-style...just like big brother:  
• pulls himself up to standing at any opportunity, and can easily transition from that back to his crawl if needed. Shortly after the picture below was taken, he pulled down the side table you see in the background, and it had to be moved to another room.  
• seems to respond to his name.
• looks a lot more like a little boy and less like a baby, especially in the face. He has a lot of hair, and long eyelashes like his brother, which make him look older, plus he’s on the tall-and-skinny side size-wise.  
• can signal various things with sounds and hand motions. He does the “milk” and “more” hand signs intermittently (and possibly unintentionally) at mealtimes, and well knows the power of the universal “pick me up!” sign (putting both arms up in the air when an adult smiles at him). And he loves to clap his hands.
• still has no teeth, but we see them under the gums. Any day now, we think.
• doesn’t eat paper as much as he used to. He puts lots of things in his mouth still, but is doing better about limiting his eating to actual food.  
• tries to climb out of his crib. He’s not very close to success yet, but he really wants to figure it out. He has figured out how to pull most of his weight off his feet by pushing his arms down while draped across the crib rail.
• has grown more tolerant of the car seat. He still sometimes fights the buckle at first, but it’s not the battle it was last month.
• on the other hand, he wiggles, rolls, flails, and otherwise moves to make diaper changes as challenging as possible. Often, two people are required. Fortunately Grant is pretty good as “designated distractor”.
• did a good job of making Granny happy on her birthday. 
• at his 9-month well check weighed 19 pounds, 3 ounces was 29” long and had a head circumference of 47 cm.
• eats well and is ready to establish regular three mealtimes according to his doctor. He feeds himself puffs or banana bits. He hasn’t quite figured out what to do with more solids things like cooked vegetable bits. They go into his mouth and get moved around, but not swallowed.
• Likes going swimming with the family
• Gives a very satisfying huge grin when we pick him up from daycare, and crawls to us as fast as he can.
• like last month, can do a wobbly walk if you hold his hands. He seems very interested in doing so and seizes any chance to practice. He’s improving all the time, but is starting to remind us of Grant, in that he cruises easily but doesn’t show that much interest in independent walking yet.
• loves to “wrestle” with Grant. Grant is pretty good about being gentle, but sometimes there’s a bumped noggin.
• is still seriously happy. 9-months is often when stranger anxiety starts, but he has shown no sign yet. Aunt Jessica enjoys the moment. 
• has a persistent cough and runny nose. Some combination of “daycare-itis” and allergies, maybe. The doctor said we could give a little Zyrtec, but we haven’t tried it yet.
• is behind the curve on babbling still, but does make occasional leaps in “vocabulary”. In the last few days it’s the wet, messy “raspberry” sound.
• seems to go for any toy that isn’t really a toy. A plastic cup, a magazine, a placemat, a napkin...these are his favorite things to bang, rattle, and crumple.
• most days gets 10-11 hours of sleep at night as he should, asleep around 8:30 and up around 6:30 or 7. He’s also starting to standardize on two naps, a short one mid-morning and a longer one in the early afternoon, sometimes with another very short one in the early evening.

-Scot & Anita

Selecting a 529 Plan for Seth

Sun, 4 Jul 2010 23:02:01 -0500

529 Tax-Advantaged Education Savings Plans are a topic I’ve posted about several times. My original post on June 1, 2007 describes what these plans are, how they work and how we selected Grant’s. On March 18, 2008 I revisited the topic, covering gift tax implications and looking at changes in the offerings even just since opening Grant’s account. On December 2, 2008, I discussed the low prices of Grant’s 529 plan which were tracking the trend in the overall stock market.

The specifics of this year's 529 evaluation process were a little different from Grant’s selection, but the principle was the same - identify plans with flexible plan terms, very low cost and reasonable past performance. I again enlisted my father to narrow the field while Scot & I were distracted by a certain little someone. The methodology and numbers are detailed in documents I'll send if you're interested, but here is the summary: our 2010 finalists are College Savings Iowa, Michigan Education Savings Plan, Utah Education Savings Plan and Nevada-Vanguard 529. These are the full plan names; although I just use the state name in the rest of the post, keep in mind that there can be more than one plan per state with very different terms. Other than Nevada, the others were finalists three years ago when we went through the exercise for Grant.

Nevada and Utah have both edged out Michigan in asset-based fees - Michigan is at the same 0.45% that it was when we selected it for Grant's plan; at that time it was the lowest cost non-resident plan available. When I originally selected a plan for Grant, Utah had an annual $25 non-resident fee that effectively wiped out their cost advantage for non-residents. Earlier this year the plan reduced fees, including waiving the $15 per year annual account fee for non-residents and reducing some asset-based fees. Utah's asset-based fee for one of the 100% equity portfolios is a very attractive 0.301% and 0.205% for another. Nevada also come in just below Michigan at 0.44%, but has a $3000 minimum initial investment.

A hypothetical $10,000 investment left to grow for 10 years in a 100% stock portfolio, assuming 5% growth would have the following total cost over those 10 years:
Iowa: $628
Michigan: $568
Nevada: $555
Utah: $402
This information is taken from the plan brochures.

For perspective, let's continue the scenario and instead of assuming 5% growth, assume the past 5-year average annual performance of each fund continues for the next ten years. If that were to happen, this would be the return for each fund (without compounding):
Iowa: $3100
Michigan: $3260
Nevada: $3550
Utah: $4020
The cost for the 100% equity option for these low-cost plans is roughly 1/10 to 1/5 of the return.

The Nevada plan has an interesting feature of allowing you to link a Upromise account to make contributions when making retail purchases.

One of the nice things about the Utah plan that was added this February is the option to select a custom mix of the various funds in the plan. So, for example, if you were looking to get broad US stock exposure with some bonds and international equities you could create a portfolio made up of the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, Institutional Total Bond Mkt Index Fund, and Developed Markets Index Fund. I like this kind of approach for long-term investments. As the beneficiary ages, you would want to be sure shift percentages and add other less risky options, and this could be done with more precision than the other options.

The Utah plan materials describe how to calculate the asset-based expense ratio for a custom portfolio. Depending on your asset selections, the fees for this can be higher or lower. It's just the weighted underlying fund ratios plus 0.22%. Since some of the funds are institutional funds and most are index funds, the expenses of most of the underlying funds are extremely low - as low as 0.025% for an S&P index or 0.06% for the Total Stock Market Index. Some international options are notably more expensive, but if used in moderation the cost structure would still be competitive. Utah also automatically rebalances the portfolio to the target percentages you set once per year. You can change your investment selections once annually (federal law limit on all 529 plans).

The Utah cost differential is enough to win me over for a new account. I'm going to use Utah for Seth's plan. I think for now I'll leave Grant's in Michigan, though. TIAA-CREF's original 3-year contract with Michigan can be renewed for up to two one-year terms by the state. The initial 3-year period ended March 31, 2010, and I'm guessing that come March of 2012 if not next March, there will be a definite expectation on the part of the state that fees will follow market trends and come down. Given the sizable assets under management in Michigan's plan I expect they'll get a great deal, and that it’s not worth moving our account yet. So for now, I think I'll keep Grant's with Michigan and see what happens when the business is re-bid. If the costs don’t come down, a rollover to another plan might be in order. Since I made sure to avoid plans with sneaky fees, I’m not worried about it being a problem to move on.

- Anita

Seth’s 8 Month Birthday

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 21:12:19 -0500

These days Seth:
• can climb stairs. He started a few days after his seven month birthday and sent us scrambling to find a gate solution for the wide and irregularly-shaped stairwell in the new house.
• moves about mostly by army crawl. Sometimes he crawls on hands and knees, and he also cruises along furniture, albeit not with great speed yet. He once made his way across the kitchen using a chair for support. 
• pulls himself up regularly.
• can sometimes work himself back down to the floor from standing next to furniture without dropping.
• is still working on learning the “more” hand sign.
• has no teeth, but is starting to act like he’s teething.
• stands in his crib.
• does NOT want to be put in his car seat. Once we start driving, he’s usually okay, though.
• often really wants to be held during dinner. He then grabs anything remotely reachable on the dining room table.
• eats, eats and eats. He’s probably taking in 34+ ounces of milk, cereal and two tubs of baby food most days. He also enjoys Puffs. Spinach is the only food we’ve given him that he didn’t immediately demand we shovel in as quickly as possible.
• will do a wobbly walk while holding hands for support.
• will try to climb up and over our shoulders to get interesting things, especially paper.
• has been spitting up more again.
• coughs a lot in the early morning, but not the rest of the day. 
• has no interest in lying on his back during a diaper change. He is quite the wiggle worm. Luckily, there is a towel bar just above the changing table. After getting him cleaned up, he’ll stand and hold onto it, being relatively still long enough to get a clean diaper on.
• grunts and growls. Responding in kind gets a big smile. He doesn’t regularly make the usual baby sounds like ah-goo, ba-ba, ab-ba or da-da, though.
• seems to enjoy being called “Smiles”, Daddy’s favorite nickname for him.
• loves watching his big brother. Grant can make him smile and giggle almost on cue.
• his favorite toy this month isn’t really clear. He likes a stuffed Tigger that he gets to have in the car.
• likes to eat paper like his big brother did at this age.
• is going to bed more regularly around 8 or 8:30 and waking at roughly 6:15 most days. We still see a lot more of the 5 o’clock hour than we would like, and he is definitely at the short end of the 10-12 hours per night that he’s expected to get.

-Scot & Anita

P.S. We updated the previous blog entry (Grant’s 3 1/2 year entry) with a couple more pictures today.

Grant’s 3-1/2 Year Birthday

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 13:42:02 -0500

Although we’ve turned over the monthly update to fast-growing Seth, Grant still has new tricks all the time and is well worthy of a half-birthday blog!

These days Grant:
• is back on an 8pm bedtime schedule. He usually stays up playing quietly or reading until 8:30 or 9.
• says the most amazing things:  He usually has at least one really funny or insightful thing to say at the dinner table. Yesterday, Anita had dropped some ingredients while cooking, and Grant helped pick the pieces off the floor. A while later she said something about having to “do it again”. Grant said, “Are you going to knock all the food down again?” Grandpa and Scot just laughed and Grant could not quite figure out why. [Update: we forgot a funny one, when he said, “I forgot dolphins didn’t have toes!” We have no idea what that was about.] In general his conversation strikes us as very much more grown-up than it did a few months ago.
• will talk, talk, talk non-stop to us and at school. But he gets very quiet around new people.
• in particular, loves telling us about words that rhyme. He thinks hard about it sometimes and comes up with many hilarious examples, and other times just stumbles onto them. “Walk and talk rhyme! Walk and talk!” Usually he quickly drives himself into a giggling fit by making up words. “Pillow and killow rhyme! Ahahahah! Killow isn’t a wooooord!”
• loves to play his first board game - “The Ladybug Game” which he recently received from Anita’s friend, Kelly.
• eats well, enjoying a variety of vegetables from our garden and CSA. But he has started to expect dessert every night which we think is a little excessive.
• loves to go to the pool, but doesn’t really want to learn how to swim. He would much rather just cling to an adult. He was a better swimmer after swim lessons last year (happy to jump “all the way in” over his head, happy to blow practice bubbles) than he is this year. The only evidence we have now of his graduation from “Starfish 1” is the certificate of completion. Hopefully by the end of the summer, living walking distance from the community pool, he will be swimming for real.
• helps out around the house. In addition to setting out silverware for meals which has been his “thing” for a while, he also enjoys vacuuming and mopping the floors. If we get either of them out while he is around, we had better offer him a shot at it or we’ll hear about it. He is surprisingly vehement in insisting we’re not allowed to go back over areas he’s done. As a result, we have been coaching him on technique, and he is getting surprisingly better. He also cleans up his own messes.
• is very reluctant to try new things, but often enjoys them once he tries them. It can be quite frustrating as a parent if you know he will enjoy something and have to really almost force him to try it. He eases into things very slowly and gradually, and then once he gets into it he often gets really into it and you can’t stop him. Argh!
• has several great friends whom he talks about regularly. Our neighbors Noah (slightly older) and Phineas (slightly younger), Zoey (his age), and classmates Gabriel and Samson are often featured in stories, and he loves to run to play with them. He also gets inspired by their more adventurous attitudes (for example -- Phineas is a good swimmer and will swim a fair distance, or down to the bottom, on his own), which is usually a good thing.
• loves Seth, and especially loves to make him laugh.
• thinks he wants to try his bike without training wheels. We let him try it once, but he really didn’t seem to have the necessary focus. Another boy his age in the neighborhood, Leo, is pretty good on a bike so we know it’s possible in theory, but we’re a little skeptical that Grant is ready.
• has switched from baths to showers. His own idea, but it’s working out really well. He helped pick out a duck pattern shower curtain which actually looks great in his bathroom, too.
• can pretty much take care of himself completely on the potty now.
• loves watering plants in the garden
• doesn’t take Puppy with him to bed most nights. He isn’t quite forgotten, but doesn’t get as much attention anymore.
• still dresses himself every morning (picks out his own clothes, too) and comes into our room to ask us to get breakfast. Usually we are up a bit before him because of Seth, but not downstairs yet; this is around 7am.
• if his fireman shirt is available in his shirt drawer, it will be worn. If he had a Thomas the Train shirt that might get top billing. After that come the alligator, Corvette, monkey and Boeing airplane shirts.
• has reached the lesser-known milestone of having worn out an article of clothing rather than outgrowing it - a sock has a hole!
• is still working on the differences between wants and needs
• has learned how to pass a toy through a roll of toilet paper to see if it’s too small for Seth. These toys have to go back in his closet when he’s done playing with them. We also have been working on teaching him which larger toys are dangerous for Seth due to small parts. He has been pretty good about putting these things away.
• weighs about 37 pounds.
• is getting better at brushing his teeth like a grown-up, spitting out the toothpaste, so that we can consider graduating from the toddler toothpaste. Not quite ready yet though.
• reads three stories before bed every night: one story from his Spark Bible, one story from a regular book (or sometimes a second Bible story, it’s up to him), and one baby story for Seth. Then we say our regular prayers and kiss goodnight.
• is very, very good about staying in his room at night, at least until he has slept for a while. Some other rules, he tends to test and break, but for some reason that one is ironclad in his mind. He will come right to the door, talk to us or sit and read a book there maybe, but he will not cross that threshold before about 2 am, and that is rare.
• gets “timeout” for misbehavior. He has to sit in a corner by himself, quiet and not playing, until we tell him he can come out. There is a little room for flexibility on this, for example if he is misusing a toy, the punishment is sometimes that we take the toy away (for toys where he has done this repeatedly, he will sometimes lock the toy away himself if he sees us catch him abusing it). Or if he makes a mess, sometimes the consequence is to have to clean up the mess. When he does get a timeout, he usually (but not 100%) will obey the timeout and sit in his corner, but he does sometimes get into a very impish mood where any kind of stern talk or punishment just makes him laugh and try to escape. If he’s in that mood and gets in trouble, punishment is hard on everyone because a parent has to pretty much physically hold him in timeout (which isn’t really a timeout, and is giving in to his demand for attention) and, once captured, his impish giggles turn into blood-curdling screams. Fortunately this is fairly rare, but it has happened a few times.
• loves to flip down the back cushions on the couch to make a boat. We are regularly invited aboard.
• often pretends to be a doggy or kitty cat. He has also recently started recreating a scene from one of his nature books - he likes to play shark with us as the dolphins.
• uses his “whiny voice” too much for our taste. We are trying hard to tell him that we only want to talk to him when he uses his normal voice.
• anything related to Thomas the Train makes a favorite toy for him right now.

-Scot & Anita

Seth’s 7 Month Birthday

Wed, 2 Jun 2010 21:31:57 -0500

These days Seth:
• can crawl very fast, and does so whenever he sees something he wants across the room (he’s best on hardwood, but he can go on any surface).
• is starting to pull up. We now keep his crib sides at maximum height.
• can stand holding on to something like a couch as long as he wants.
• can sit as long as he wants, and go from sitting to crawling.
• eats baby cereals: oatmeal, rice; pureéd veggies: carrots, sweet potatoes, peas; and pureéd fruit: bananas and apples. For the most part he eats very eagerly and, in the last few days, surprisingly neatly. He starts with half a “size 1” tub which is 4 oz., and gets the full 4 oz. after that.
• still goes 3-4 hours between feedings of 8 oz of milk or more (seemingly a lot more in the morning when he nurses). He tolerates cool milk now, though still prefers it warmed.
• loves to play with Grant. Grant makes him giggle more than other people.
• loves to smile. Everyone mentions this when they meet him.
• is starting to babble a bit more, and occasionally makes sounds like “dada” that might not be totally random.
• likes to go to the pool and watch from his stroller while Daddy and Grant play in the water nearby; will sit quietly like that for 30 mins or more.
• is establishing the bedtime routine we laid out last month: ideally, gets a dinner (of milk) around 7, maybe with some cereal or baby food, then a diaper change, then some rocking or other pre-bedtime calming, then a book (read by Grant and Mommy or Daddy). He then usually plays for a few minutes while Grant is getting into bed, and usually goes to sleep with little fuss after that.
• still loves his musical mobile at bedtime when he’s fussy.
• sleeps 8:30-6:30 roughly, somewhat more predictably than last month, and often stays in his crib fairly quietly until 7.
• has not established a firm nap schedule, but usually has one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

-Scot & Anita