The Elusive Thumb

Over the past couple of weeks Xander has discovered that his hand is right by his mouth. So very patiently he brings his hand over and tries to latch on. And he realizes that he can't latch. So he bops his hand around a little and gets drool all over his fist and sleeve. Then he'll flex his fingers and his thumb will pop out. He'll he'll pop it into his mouth and start sucking his thumb, but almost immediately he lets go. I guess it's not as satisfying as he had expected.

Go Browns!

Xander and I got to watch some football today. Touchdown Cleveland!!


Then we wrestled at halftime (just ignore the stain on the shirt).

Game Time

Xander does such a great job of sleeping at night that he has a very calm active awake period in the morning. Today Chris even made up a song about being morning people (Chris and Xander are, I am not). As the morning wears on and I emerge from my lethargy, there are a few games I play with Xander. None are terribly exciting unless you are a new mom and none last for more than a few minutes at time

1) Watch the Rattle - or giraffe blanket or butterfly depending on what is nearby. I just move it from left to right to see if he can follow it. Sometimes he is great at it, other times not so much. His head has a flat spot from always looking towards his left and his eyes also seem to go left easily, more trouble looking towards his right.

2) Repeat the Sound - Xander is cooing and ahhing and making other various vocal noises, so I just repeat them back to him. Nothing exciting there, I'm just waiting until he repeats them back to me.

3) Smile for Mommy - I stand or sit so he can see me and I smile at him. I laugh and stick out my tongue and maybe tickle him a little. And he smiles back. So I leave you with these morsels of adorableness.

dueling what?

So the other day my wife was pumping so that I can share in feeding our kid. The pump she has is a fancy electric one with a dualie setup, so she can pump both at the same time. So Xander is in his rain forest chair and Amanda is pumping and she says "Gee, I wonder which one's going to fill up first?"

So how do I respond to this? Do I complement her shoes? Do I tell her she looks beautiful? Do I tell her that her hair is nice today? Nope, none of the above.

I, being the considerate thoughtful husband, go to youtube and played this for her.

Proof!

Further proof that Chris is the father. LISTEN.


Last week Xander weighed in at 11 lbs 2 oz. It's no wonder he's already outgrowing his clothes and my arms get tired so easily. He's eating like a champ, though the past few days he's finally slowed down some. And the whole sleeping for five hours thing was not a fluke, he did it again last night. Ah, sweet dreams.

bald spot

Our poor little boy is losing his hair and will soon look like a cue ball.

Oh well!

Xander's first Halloween

Halloween was interesting. We got Xander dressed up in his pumpkin outfit for the 5th time in the past 2 weeks, (which makes sense because he's not going to be able to wear it after this ever again) invited Sergey and Ikkin over and passed out some candy. I thought it would be interesting to quiz the kids some simple questions before I gave them candy, what's the capital of the US, what's the capital of Ohio, what's 2*5, what's 10+10, simple stuff for elementary school kids.

Or so I thought. It was a good idea until I got one kid who didn't get her first question right, but her companion did, then her companion got a few more right (and more candy) and then I went back to the girl again and asked her something easy and she replied "I'm not that stupid, you know."

Whoa! Time to stop this little game that I think is cute. So that was a bad idea and I stopped. Let's just stick with questions about their costumes before I get an angry parent beating me up.

Also, am I a bad candy-giver if I only give 1 piece of candy per kid? Am I cheap and stingy or frugal? One kid walked back down the drive and said something to his mother and she said to him "well, it's better than nothing." It's not like we were giving out the teeny tiny tootsie rolls or the 5 packs of Necco wafers, we had the giant tootsie rolls and fun packs of m&m's.

Oh, and the best costumes where the Darth Vaders' (but no mask) and the tornado. Who knows where this kid got this idea, but he showed up dressed as a tornado. He had a cloth he wore over himself that had strips cut in it and cars and houses sewed to the strips. Very original. We gave him extra candy for a cool costume.