Blogging…

It’s amazing what you can get done when you want to avoid grading. Jes and her mother are out Christmas shopping and I am a whirlwind of laundry, dishes, vacuuming, furniture rearranging, etc. I even took the dry cleaning in. I am trying to do all the cleaning that creates noise while they are away today. But enough about me, you want a baby update.

He’s sometimes sleeping through the night. We get these four and a half to five hour stretches some nights, but not all nights. He has his fussy days where we call him little baby fuss-fuss. He’s turning into a chubby little guy with Michelin-Man rolls of skin at all his joints. We are still just breast feeding, so he’s getting a high fat/nutrient rich diet. We had a screaming day the day after Jes had some spicy Indian food and are thus leaning how Jes’ diet affects him. The biggest secret to good breast milk production that we have learned is having Jes eat lots of oatmeal; it helped the milk come in and when she doesn’t eat it she makes less milk.

I just rearranged the living room to make space for a Christmas tree. I’m not sure when we are going to do that, maybe next weekend. I am very much looking forward to the time off. We’ve debated trips to Wisconsin, Florida, Arkansas, and Kirksville, but I’m of a mind to just stay put for the two weeks that I have off and recover from our hectic semester. Over Thanksgiving break I did a lot of cleaning, unpacking, and rearranging. It really felt great to knock out several projects that have been nagging at me.

More about the baby: we have a book that explains what he should be doing developmentally each week; he is several weeks ahead of what he’s supposed to be able to do. He’s starting to have play behavior. The other night he was grasping a ribbon on a toy mirror in his crib and pulling the mirror onto himself and then knocking it off again. He had an accidental speech event, where instead of his usual cooing and gurgling he made the distinct vowel sound “O”. I thought that was pretty cool.

Jes took him to knit-night on Thursday and I met some friends out for Vanessa’s Drinking Liberally club. She is hosting the local chapter of a national organization committed to left-of-center political discussion and awareness. I got to see Melissa and I discovered that one of the regulars used to bartend at the same bar that Beth, Erica, and I worked at. He was there in 2003. I haven’t met friends out at a bar in months, and it was fun to stick a toe in the water that was once much more a part of my life. It was less fun to pay bar prices. We are making a renewed commitment to getting out of debt and that means cutting back on what little eating/going out that we do.

Ah well, I actually have to get up on the roof and repair a rattling vent before I lose the light. The girls will be home soon, and I’d rather have all the big jobs out of the way. On an interesting football note, the last time that Mizzou played Oklahoma, when they lost to them, was the day that we went into the hospital for Elliot’s birth. We watched the game while Jes was in labor. If we win tonight I’ll have to pick him up some Mizzou gear.