He's changed in the past year

This was Spud's first sonogram, taken last September (at 8 weeks). His lumpy, potato-ish morphology in this image led his Dad to begin referring to him pre-natally as Spud. It was either that, or ya know, Lumpy.

Festival in the Park

This morning we took Spud downtown to Freedom Park to check out the annual Festival in the Park. The last time we were there was on Spud's original "due date", April 17th (He showed up a week later, on the 24th). We were out for a vigorous walkabout in an attempt to get things moving and get the baby launched.

We took a picture of Claire that day, with a locomotive for scale.



We took another picture today. Turns out she had one of THESE in her belly.



The Festival is a stroller-friendly walk around the lake, with a multitude of booths hawking arts, crafts, and bad/expensive food.



The food is the usual fair fare. Fried, mostly. It leaves you feeling sullied and unusual.



Claire got us a nice fried and sugar-encrusted funnel cake. Yum. But I had at least 2 heart attacks later in the day.





Mmmmm. Funnel cake!

As we walked around and perused the crafts, we made a few gratuitous breast-feeding jokes.



Spud thought they were hilarious.

Not Quite Mobility

This video suggests that he won't be staying put for very much longer. Time to get one of those baby leashes.

Ready for Halloween

He's 5 months old! Seems like...longer? Anyway, he had another trip to the pediatrician, and another round of vaccinations. This was a repeat of the PC and Hib shots that he got at three months that made him a little sick, so we are keeping a close eye on him. He seems a little fussy tonight, but he's allowed, considering that he's such a little guy and people keep sticking him with needles. He might have a little fever too.

The stats!
weight: 17 lbs (50-75%)
Length: 27 inches (75-90%)

He's big, but not quite as big as this 19-pound behemoth newborn baby in Indonesia:

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93042?fp=1

Our colleague Anne gave Spud a hand-me-down Halloween costume. So we're all set for his first child-oriented holiday. Unless he outgrows it in the next month. Now, we'll need a Calvin to go with this Hobbes...





Complete with a tail! Sophie was very curious about this new striped feline creature.

The ExerSaucer

Matt and Elizabeth gave us the "ExerSaucer", a wonderful multicolored plastic contraption that allows Spud to: 1) practice standing up (note foot action in photo #1), 2) rotate around from station to station and visit all of the toys, and 3) drool on them.

Notable Quasi Progress and Pseudo Developments

Last night Spud slept from 8 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., so that fairly qualifies as "Sleeping Through the Night". Cha-ching! That's the longest he's ever been in the crib in one stretch! He's starting to get more comfortable just hanging out in the crib before a nap too. Sometimes he just lays there for a few minutes and plays with his feet until he falls asleep. And sometimes he rolls onto his stomach and cries himself to sleep. And sometimes he just lies there and screams.

He's also showing signs of developing crawling skills. When he's on his stomach, he tries to scoot with his feet a bit, like a penguin scooting along on the smooth Antarctic ice.


The hand skills are not well-developed yet. Sometimes he manages to get his hands under him, but other times he seems to be trying to crawl on his face, perhaps using his mouth to chew himself into motion, like some of your lower invertebrates. I guess one must try everything in order to see what works and what doesn't.



He has started taking a stronger interest in the cats, especially the one that is most interested in human contact (Baxter). So far, we have managed to dissuade and prevent Spud from yanking on Baxter's fur too hard and from putting a big wad of cat fur in his mouth. Baxter is a very patient cat and he enjoys contact and rough-housing, so he should be a good baby-training cat. One of my students was visiting the house a couple of years ago with his toddler, who decided to LAY DOWN ON TOP OF BAXTER to our great dismay. But Baxter just shook it off, and more importantly did not sink all four sets of claws in the kid. Like Sophie would have.







He's also using his Bumbo seat (thanks Grandma and Grandpa Chadwick!) to develop his sitting skills. He sits like a pro in that contraption. But left without lateral support, gravity still gets the best of him. (The play mat is from Richard and Lynn, and the toys are from Matt and Elizabeth. Thank you!)

Groovin' Baby Tunes

Spud started the day with a giant poop, then he peed on the wall and himself (not Daddy! Celebrate the small things) when his diaper was being changed, then, when Daddy was reaching over to clean the wall, he sneezed right in Daddy's face.

So, we took a bath, and came downstairs with a fresh diaper and a fresh dinosaur onesie.

I cruised Youtube for some videos that might be entertaining to his tiny, rudimentary pseudo-brain (and let's face it, this was before Daddy had coffee, so we both had the same brain). I found some cool videos for kids by They Might Be Giants.



I played it full screen, and he loved it! Bright colors and fun music! 'We want cake! Where's our cake?' He made so many happy, excited, 'he he' noises that we had to watch the next one.



That one seems to be encouraging him to be some sort of unemployed slacker. It's the same message that the book Frederick conveys. His grandma gave him that book because she wants him to grow up to be a hippie (Thanks Grandma! Just kidding!).



Wow! He really liked that one. Lots of happy chirpy noises that might be proto-singing, almost. Kind of. By the way, they buried the lead on that one. Electric car? It's a car the DRIVES UNDERWATER. No wonder Japan is kicking Detroit's ass.

OK, one more. He just threw up all over the dinosaur onesie. Time for onsesie #3.



So there you go. You'll never get that 10 minutes back. But don't you feel strangely cheerful?

Timber!

We are working on our sitting skills. It's not there yet. He's very tall and has limited motor control and has a big baby head, so he's top-heavy. We'll get there. But for now, the score is: Gravity: 1, Baby: 0

The Movies

One of the things that new parents must forfeit is going to the movies together. We tried to go to Star Trek with Spud last month to see if he'd sleep through it. I was prepared to bolt with him at the first sign of trouble. The carbuncular slack-jawed morons at the theater forgot to start the movie on time, and only got it rolling after 20 minutes and a few complaints from Claire and I and others. It was immediately clear that the movie would be much too loud and scary for the baby, so I ended up wandering the mall while Claire watched the movie. I took one for the team; Claire is a much bigger Trekkie than me. The good news was, even though I didn't get to see the movie, we got two free passes since they started it so late.

So last night, we planned to see a movie (District 9) in series. First Claire would go to the 7:05 showing and I'd stroll the baby around the mall, get a Starbucks, stretch my legs, and show Spud the shiny, colorful, world of the mall and people-watch it's scary-sad denizens. Then, I'd go watch the 9:45 show and Claire would take Spud home. Then, we'd get together and discuss the movie, and it would be just like we'd seen it together! Sort of. Anyway, that was the plan for the free tickets. Then we heard from a colleague that District 9, though a good movie, is very violent. This turned Claire off a bit, so I ended up going by myself to the 9:45 show.

District 9 is a good movie. The giant alien mothership arrives and hovers over Johannesburg South Africa (instead of, say, Los Angeles or New York). The aliens are not invaders, they are hungry and sick and get "rescued" and placed in a slum by a Blackwater-like corporate-government entity. The movie has great themes that focus on xenophobia and poverty and racism (the location in South Africa is no coincidence) and the terrible things that the powerful do to the weak. It's anti-Independence Day: WE are the snarling monsters that take away the dignity of the imprisoned aliens and randomly kill them.



The main character is a human, but he's flawed and selfish. He redeems himself somewhat in the end, but he's not really the hero of the movie. The aliens aren't cute (a cross between a cricket and a squid, kinda), but you ultimately realize that the "good guys" are an alien father and his little son. These are the two characters with the most, well, humanity. I was particularly concerned about the welfare of the little alien son, and I was most touched by their relationship, probably more so than I would have been a year ago.



The only question is: will they qualify for Obama's health care?

Workin' the Cuteness

My parents and the Leggett's sent some pictures from last weekend. I think this one (taken by Dee) is probably the cutest one of him yet taken, scoring a whopping 9.95 on the Cuteness Factor scale. He's clearly workin' it.



(Dee: Of course you can put pictures of him on greeting cards, but keep in mind that that white stuff on his shoulder is PUKE! The card could read: "May the Joy and Happiness of this Holiday Season not Lead you to Eat so Much That you Barf all Over Yourself, Like I Did--Happy Holidays!")

Speaking of cuteness, he's been sitting in my lap as I've been writing this, holding the bottle (one-handed!) and feeding himself and watching the computer screen. He has slowly closed his eyes and fallen asleep, but he's still holding the bottle. Now it's slipping out of his hands...slipping...and...there it goes.

David 8.0

When Spud's Virginia grandparents were here last weekend, we took a picture of 3 generations of David Chadwicks. Spud is at least the 8th David in a row! As far back as we can trace that particular branch of the family tree.

Here's David Benjamin (8), David John (7), and David James (6):



And here are some more Davids. This was taken circa 1970-ish at Spud's great-great grandparent's house in Sumner, Iowa. That's David James and David John again, along with David Earl (5) and another David Earl (4).



I'm just getting warmed up! More paleo-Davids (thanks Grandpa David #6 for the pictures)!

(3) Jason David Chadwick, born in 1856 in Cold Spring, WI (Spud's great-great-great Grandpa); stone mason, quarryman. And the black sheep of the chain o' Davids, because he went with a non-David first name. As you can see from his wife's (what was her name?) wedding-day expression, nothing is more joyous than marrying a David Chadwick!



(2) David Chadwick born 1814 or 1815 in Owatonna, MN (Spud's great-great-great-great Grandpa); Farmer, postmaster. Just David.



(1) David Michael Chadwick, born between 1780 and 1785 (Spud's great-great-great-great-great Grandpa). I don't suppose there's a picture of this one...

I thought long and hard about giving Spud his David as a first name, as opposed to a middle name like Jason David. It's actually kind of a pain in the backside. I had to correct all of my teachers every year on the first day of school.

Teacher (calling roll): "David Chadwick"?

John: "Here. Um, it's John."

Teacher (blinks, stares at roll): "It says David."

John: "That's my first name."

Teacher: "So that IS your name."

John: "What."

Teacher: "David."

John: "Yes. But I go by John. My middle name."

Teacher: "What?"

John: "What? John."

Teacher (has now identified first problem student of the year): "I see."

The other kids could just say "Here" and be done with it, slipping back safely into anonymity. Me, I had to have a complex discussion with the teacher. The teacher would then search for a pen to make the change to the roll, giving my classmates enough time to stare derisively at the annoying talky kid that doesn't go by his first name.

I'm hoping to someday peer further back down the road to discover Spud's even more ancient ancestors, including those on the Jordan and Macdonald and Grimm branches as well. Hey grandparents! Send pictures! Spud will hear the story of his family history from us. He will probably be sooo bored by it when I discuss it with him when he's about 9 years old, and he'll totally ignore it when he's 15. But it will get in, and when he's 28, maybe he'll really like knowing where his roots are.

Big Boy Food

When Spud is hungry he lets you know about it. There's no subtlety, he simply shrieks until he gets fed. Lately, the shrieks have sounded a lot like a tiny shrill bichon frise puppy that's tied up in the backyard during a thunderstorm. I have no idea where he picked up this annoying habit.



Following the last post, we decided to supplement his bottles with a little rice cereal in an effort to get him to stay full for more than and hour or two, and perhaps, to get him to sleep longer at night. Honestly, this kid is a little chubby pink velociraptor.



If you believe the picture on the front of the box, if he eats this he'll be out in the fields, shirtless, harvesting his own crops in no time. We'll see.

He's really good at holding the bottle himself now. I can just hand it to him in the bouncy chair. As long as the initial docking procedure is executed well and he doesn't miss and poke himself in the eye, he can drain the whole bottle without help.



Occasionally he gets a little bit lazy though. If we stay in North Carolina, I imagine someday in 35 years or so that he'll be doing this with a bottle of Miller Lite. Sittin' in a Lazy Boy, with a beer resting on his chest. Watchin' that there NASCAR.



He's also really good at putting his feet in his mouth. When was the last time you tried this? Go ahead and try it!



The odds of him ever getting that ivy-league scholarship decrease dramatically every time he tries to put both the foot and the bottle in at the same time though.

It's Good to be the King

Baby in a king-size bed.



He may need to upgrade to a bigger bed soon. He's growing so fast, he's starting to fill his cradle.



Here he is on May 1 when he was a week old. Look how much more room he had then! Granted, there's more crap in the cradle with him now. But still, look how huge he is! We're going to need a bigger house.