Idiomatic Expression

Date: 11/10/08
Weight: 16 lbs 4 ozs — 77th Percentile
Length: 26.25 inches — 90th Percentile
Head Circumference: 17 inches — 76th Percentile

Monday was time for a health and wellness check as well as another round of immunizations. We now have empirical evidence to support our observation that Aidan has been growing like a weed over the last two months. Although we are happy to see him get taller and look more like a toddler, we are also ready for him to level off for a bit. If he grows another 2.75 inches we will have to switch from the infant car seat, which means no carrying him inside asleep from the car, nothing for him to sit in at restaurants, and us struggling to shoe horn him into the convertible car seat while in the car.

He can hold on to and reach for toys and has favorites that he reaches for first. He manages to pass toys from one hand to the other, but it is closer to ripping the toy out of one hand with the other than the orderly picture that pass conjures for most of us. Aidan loves to talk and will happily have a conversation with whoever will talk to him.

His leg and neck strength continue to increase, and Katherine and I are both waiting for the day that we can hold him with one hand and not worry about him flopping over and bashing his head on the ground. He is also getting very good at balancing himself while standing on his feet, but has not grasped the concept that he can hold on to stuff and stand up by himself.

Getting an evening nap in for him between us coming home later and later with work and trying to get dinner on the table has been a struggle, and something we will have to figure out to keep him happy.

Just in time for election day… Halloween pictures!

Aidan was a pea pod, and Murray was bumble bee. Katherine carved the pumpkin and a couple of neighbors commented on how cool much they liked it. We got around 50 kids, but still way too much candy left.

Pictures are finally up from the last month and a half.

• Month 3
• Month 4
• Aidan’s Room

I will try to keep photos coming in the coming weeks and months.

I am on the tail end of two and a half weeks off of work to watch Aidan, and help ease Katherine back into a nine - five schedule at her job. My employer is progressive enough to extend primary caretaker leave to (up to four weeks) to new mothers, new fathers, and parents adopting children. I had grand plans for these two and a half week, including some major updates to my website, fixing the moon and star lights in Aidan’s room, insulating the hot water pipes in the basement, coordinating quotes for new front and back doors etc. However, watching an infant is a full time job. I am lucky if I get the time to eat lunch, wash his dirty bottles, and run to the post office or grocery market in a given day. It is a good thing that he is a generally happy baby as long as he is fed, changed, and forced to sleep on a regular basis.

Aidan, is changing every day now. He can reach for items of interest to him, and spends 30-45 minutes at a time playing on his play mat at least once a day. He has also learned to suck his fingers / hands, and is rolling back and forth, but not quite making it from his back to his stomach. His baby hair started to fall out, but he is still left with a pretty good crop of hair. He prefers being outdoors to indoors and if he is cranky taking him outside usually quiets him immediately (as long as he isn’t hungry or wet).

As challenging as it has been over the last two weeks I am glad I took the time to stay home for him. To a certain extent I feel like starting Monday we will only be a part-time family with a family friend taking care of him during the day he will only see his mother and father at those hours of the night where he is the least happy and we have barely an opportunity to get to know him before it is bedtime. So, to take full advantage of our last four weekdays together… time to take Aidan for a walk.

I do hope to get photos up soon, but that is not going to happen today or tomorrow so I did the easy thing and uploaded a new video.

Aidan is starting to find his voice, and yesterday he found himself in the mirror for the first time. Once he identified the other baby in the mirror he was very friendly and sociable. Now we need to find another baby of about the same age to see if he will talk to him/her as well.

Its not a baby, it is an eighteen year experiment without a hypothesis.

And here is a view through the mirror.

If you noticed that his onesie is unbuttoned in the second video it is because he has mostly outgrown his 0-3 onesies, when they are buttoned they hold his diaper against his skin and he gets really annoyed with the smallest amount of pee in the diaper. We have plenty of bigger clothes, but the 0-3 month stuff is some of the cutest.

Since Aidan was born Katherine and I have found ourselves watching a lot of sports. First the Olympics, then the US Open, and now Football season. I have been a football fan forever, and some of my earliest memories are playing with the Redskins’ bobble head that was lost in one of my countless moves. Tennis, and the Olympics are a new phenomenon and I would suggest all parents of newborns or infants keep the channel tuned to sports for a couple of reasons.

• Easy to follow the action while the TV is on mute. As good as closed caption is on some shows, the majority are very poor. My biggest annoyance is that a two word comment by one character will stay on the screen for 20 seconds followed by a one second flash of a paragraph response from a different character. On the positive side of the balance sheet for CC are the often amusing typos and homonyms arrangements that go across the screen. Here is a typical example that someone else noted for General Hospital One of the characters said to another, “You look worse than I feel.” Closed captioning read, “You’re the horse and I failed.”
• When you are distracted from a sporting event for twenty minutes to change a diaper or make a bottle, you can quickly catch up by looking at the score. Sure you might have missed the most exciting twenty minutes of the game, but you can continue to enjoy the rest of the game. Unlike missing twenty minutes of a drama, say Lost, and being lost for an entire season. As a bonus if you missed something important from a Football broadcast on NBC, John Madden will repeat the details every two minutes for the rest of the game.
• Rooting for your team is almost like real interaction with your baby. Yelling at your team for mistakes is probably a bad idea though.

Given all that, Aidan and I were excited for the start of the Redskin’s season last Thursday.

And this Video captures how we were both feeling at the end of the game.

Date 9/05/08
Weight 13 lbs 7 ozs — 91st Percentile
Length: 23.5 inches — 78th Percentile
Head Circumference: 16 inches — 71st Percentile

Aidan had his two month doctors appointment, which brought his first round of immunizations. There is not much worse in life than knowingly inflicting pain on your child (especially when one of the parents has to hold the child down.) This appointment had three shots and an oral vaccine. The oral vaccine went down just fine, but the shots were obviously quite painful to him, and he cried out after each one (including tears). By the time we put him into the car he was mostly recovered from the trauma, however Katherine and I were off kilter for the rest of the day. On the positive side his immune system is building an increased resistance to the following diseases.

• Diptheria
• Tetanus
• Pertussis
• Polio
• Hepatitis B
• Haemophilus Influenzae Type b
• Streptococcus pneumoniae
• Rotavirus

I also located my lost Samsung NV7 so I can start posting some poor quality video of Aidan. More picture will probably have to wait until we get our new computer (hopefully soon after September 9th).

We probably should have considered the homonym ramifications of Aidan prior to settling on that name.

Main Entry: a
Pronunciation: \ə, (ˈ)ā, Canada ˈa\
Function: indefinite article
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English ān one — more at one
Date: before 12th century

1—used as a function word before singular nouns when the referent is unspecified < a man overboard> and before number collectives and some numbers < a dozen>
2: the same
3 a—used as a function word before a singular noun followed by a restrictive modifier
4—used as a function word with nouns to form adverbial phrases of quantity, amount, or degree

And…

Main Entry: din
Pronunciation: \’din\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English dyne; akin to Old Norse dynr din, Sanskrit dhvanati it roars
Date: before 12th century

1: a loud continued noise; especially : a welter of discordant sounds
2: a situation or condition resembling a din

Of course, a loud continued noise is a good description of the situation here sometimes, so perhaps we were on to something when we choose his name.

Definitions provided by Merriam Webster

Well he was 4 weeks old about 6 days ago, however life continues to conspire against us, and after four and a half years of faithful service our home laptop seems to be limping towards death.

Aidan continues to change every day and is a bit more alert and interactive. He has started to smile (on purpose) and is attempting to make non-crying noises in response to Katherine and I. So far he whatever he is doing he does with gusto. His cries are LOUD, he roots around violently when he is hungry and when he finally sleeps it is lights out (unless of course you need to try to put him into his pack-n-play or bassinet which triggers the big cries again). His is getting pretty good at holding his head stable, but still looses hi balance and head butts whatever is in front of him (which hurts if he aims for your face).

Just yesterday Katherine saw his first tear when food did not arrive quite quickly enough.

Murray continues to notice the lack of attention, but is mostly settling into a routine. Unfortunately that routine consists of indicating that he wants to go outside about the time the baby starts feeding.

Katherine and I are surviving pretty well, but not terribly enthusiastic about a laptop upgrade on top of the planned water heater upgrade. The baby room is 95% painted I just need to touch up some mistakes this weekend and I can get started on assembling baby furniture. Then it is back to wallpaper removal.

Pictures from the last week are here.

Aidan had his two week checkup today. He is healthy and growing quickly. His jaundice is completely gone and no other health problems. He has figured out how to use his legs, and is really good at kicking off his blankets twenty seconds after we put them over him. He is also much noisier than I expected a newborn to be and not a minute goes by without a grunt of some sort coming out of him. The super strength continues and he can manage to scoot himself around with his legs when he is on his stomach. He isn’t moving towards any goal, but he can move a bit. He can also support his head while upright (when not drunk with milk) and support his head while on his stomach for 15-20 seconds at a time. However his head still weighs more than the rest of him combined, if someone isn’t holding his feet when he tries to lift his head he rotates onto his face and panics a bit.

Date 7/23/08
Weight 8 lbs 12 oz — 50%
Length: 20.75 inches — 79%
Head Circumference: 14.5 inches — 44%

Katherine and I are hanging in there, he is a bit more active at night now that he has more energy, but we are still managing to get a reasonable amount of sleep. Hopefully that will continue for Katherine next week when I head back to work and will not be around to take the early morning shift and give her three or so hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I repaired the dryer just in time for the water heater to malfunction, however I called in the professionals, and a small adjustment to the exhaust pipe and the basement is no longer flooded with combustion fumes.