Welcome Home, Eamon Wolfe

So, uh, we moved and stuff. And now every night is taken up with one of us taking care of Eamon and one of us continuing to move stuff out of our old house. That's when we're not both working late, or attending class, or going to district meetings.

So, yeah, things are busy. Posts might be pictures for awhile.

But the baby, he's still happy. And still very cute. So pictures posts, not the worst thing in the world.

And we will post pictures of the house, too. You know, someday. When we have some spare time. I'm thinking maybe this summer?

Eamon vs Sleep, Redux

Eamon has slept remarkably well throughout his life. Rarely does he awaken during the night and when he does, putting his pacifier in his mouth gets him back to sleep. Since he figured out how to do that on his own about 2 weeks ago, I barely hear a peep from him once he's in bed.

I do not mention this, dear reader, to make you angry at the remarkable luck with which we have been bestowed, but rather to illustrate why last weekend was so crazy.

On the weekends, Kate and I like to spend as much time as possible with Eamon, which usually means that the person getting up with him would also nap with him. He is such a cuddler that the practice was pleasant for all involved (even Kate, who isn't much of a cuddler). However, it seems this practice was getting Eamon in the habit of sleeping with someone all the time. Once he figured out how to sit up (see previous post), he was reluctant to soothe himself back to sleep. Apparently, learning that one can sit up does not necessarily mean that one also learns to lie down.

All of these things came to a head last Sunday, when Eamon took FOREVER to fall asleep, then was awake an hour later, screaming his head off. This was unfortunate for me, since the Cowboys were playing their first game in their new stadium. Being a good father, I then decided to allow my son to watch his first Cowboys night game. Ok, so he played on the floor while I watched, but he did look up at the TV every once and a while. At the end of the 1st quarter, I took him in to sleep with Kate. Side note: DVR is the best invention ever.

This episode repeated itself Monday night, with Eamon strenously objecting to going to sleep alone (and by "strenuously object" I mean "screamed his lungs out for 90 minutes"). Kate and I decided to just let him scream it out, and it worked. While he did have to get rocked to sleep after his marathon (for him) session, Tuesday was a breeze. Problem solved. For now.

In other news, we bought a house today and Eamon goes for his 9 month check up Wednesday. Updates on the transition will follow.

Do the Locomotion

It finally happened: this morning, I went in to Eamon's room to find him sitting up by himself. He was playing with his Baby Elmo (who sleeps with him in the crib) and looking altogether more like a kid than an infant (it doesn't help that he's the size of many of the little guys toddling around out there).

Moreover, Eamon finally got tired of dragging himself around in an army crawl. While he could move, and pretty quickly, he always sort of looked like he was rock climbing. No more. Yesterday, he finally figured out the complicated process of getting his butt in the air, pushing up with his arms, and moving his arms and legs in a motion that allowed him to move forward. From this position, he has also figured out that he can easily get himself back to a sit.

He has also been attempting to pull himself to a stand, though he isn't quite as ready for this. His balance is still really off, and he wobbles and teeters precipitously until he finally falls on his bottom. Nevertheless, it seems that once Eamon gets it in his head to do something, he keeps at it until he finally figures it out. So we'll see. I think the walking is still a long way's off given his pretty terrible balance so far, which is kind of good since we're right in the middle of packing and getting ready to move, and the last thing we need is a baby literally running around.

I bet you can guess what he's crawling towards before you even watch the video.

The Original King of Comedy...and Drama

Eamon has needs (formula, sleep, shelter, etc.) and he used to use his "voice" to express those needs. But now Eamon Wolfe also has wants (well, he thinks they are needs), and those wants include the TV remote, our cell phones, the camera, and anything else technological that he can destroy with his nefarious baby spit. And no longer does he just lunge for things he wants...if he can't have them, he can burst into tears in a matter of seconds. It's quite the act. And it is an act, since when we start laughing at him (as we always do), he usually stops crying and laughs along (his desperate want momentarily forgotten).

See how quickly he goes from happy to upset and back? I was trying to get a video of him doing a raspberry, but it was a moot point since all he wanted was the camera.

When he isn't fake crying because we are being mean and evil parents who don't think an 8 month old needs his own cell phone, Eamon loves to entertain. Despite his occasional fake crying, he's actually quite a happy little guy most of the time. Much of his day is spent in pursuit of finding funny things or making others laugh. There are some things that he finds absolutely hysterical: the popping noise that Aaron can make with his mouth, when Mommy fake sneezes, or when you "pretend" to throw the dog toy but don't actually throw it (Nesta does not find this nearly as funny).

But Eamon has learned that he can make others laugh, too. He's almost somewhat of a clown sometimes, and I pity his future teachers. The child has a vast repertoire of funny noises and sound effects: grunting, shrieking, fake coughing, fake sneezing, fake gagging, and recently, blowing raspberries. He loves to blow raspberries now. He blows them all the time (even while you are feeding him, which I hear gets very interesting--sorry, Mom).

So anyway, if you come to visit our little man, be prepared for both laughter and tears--and watch your cell phone.

Addendum: Another First

To Meredith: Eamon and Lucas must have both learned to read our blogs, since I just posted yesterday that Eamon still wasn't crawling.

He's now gotten so full of himself that he's trying to climb up the stairs as I write this. Luckily, he's not strong enough to even get himself on the first step yet.

Nevertheless, the days of setting him on the floor and turning away are over.

A Bunch of Firsts

Part I: Getting Sick

It was a miracle in Baby World when we went 7 ½ months without Eamon getting sick. Unfortunately, that had to come crashing to an end eventually, and unlike most babies, Eamon picked a pretty good time to indoctrinate us into the world of sick infants. I was done with summer school, but hadn’t gone back to my regular job or started classes at William and Mary yet. Aaron had just finished the summer Teacher Institute, so he was working relatively normal hours again.

Besides his sense of timing, another lovely thing about Eamon has been his ability to sleep through the night since he was about 3 months old. He was even sleeping 12 hours some nights, and since he’s been able to put his own pacifier back in his mouth, wasn’t even waking up for a “paci-check.” About a two weeks ago, though, he woke up crying. A few times. He had been drooly and chewing on things, so we assumed that he was teething. We put his pacifier back in his mouth and told him to go back to sleep. He tried, but by 5:00 he couldn’t take it anymore so I got up with him and fed him. I assumed that he was just hungry, and maybe going through a growth-spurt.

The next night, though, he was up again. This time, he would not go back to sleep. He was burning up, but the entire house was warm, and his room was especially toasty from having the door closed. Aaron gave him Tylenol (once again assuming it was his teeth), but after Eamon was up from 2:00-3:30, Aaron woke me up and said it was my turn. I blearily got up and rocked Eamon, singing softly to him, until he sort of nestled in, but even then he couldn’t really sleep. I finally gave him 3 ounces of formula, cranked up the A/C, took him into the guest room (which was a lot cooler), and slept there with him until morning. Even with me there, he slept fitfully, waking every hour or so and whimpering until I soothed him back to sleep.

In the morning, he was still burning up, even though the house was a lot cooler. I decided to take his temperature. Eamon’s temp usually runs low, like mine, somewhere in the 97s. Imagine my shock when the thermometer therefore started at 99 and climbed to 101.6! We took him to my mother (who used to work in pediatrics), but she couldn’t find any symptoms other than the fever, so she said we needed to go to the doctor.

What followed was probably the longest 3 hours possible. Dr. Thomas also couldn’t find anything wrong with him, other than this really high fever, and he looked so lifeless and miserable. Ears and throat looked fine, so she decided to run some blood and urine tests just to be sure. Eamon was a trooper, and though he cried while they were inserting the catheter and sticking him with needles, he calmed down pretty quickly afterwards, which was both a testament to his disposition and his illness.

Eamon at the doctor's office

And the tests showed…nothing. Dr. Thomas was a bit torn. It was probably just a virus, but he looked so puny that she prescribed an antibiotic just to be sure. We took Eamon home and gave him the Augmentin…which he then proceeded to projectile vomit everywhere.

Anyway, after a couple of days, Eamon began to rapidly improve. The medicine was still upsetting his stomach, so I called the doctor’s office and they recommended stopping the antibiotic. If he got sick, start it up again, and if not, then it was definitely viral. He stayed healthy, and has therefore weathered his first virus.


Part 2: Mobility? Sort of?

Eamon has grown increasingly interested in crawling. Unfortunately, he’s still not very good at it. He can get his little butt up into the air, and can even get up on his hands…and then…lunges and flops. He still isn’t able to get to a sit by himself, either (though apparently he did it once for his Oma over the weekend…and then not again since), and I hear that they really have to be able to sit up before they can crawl.

Even more interesting to Eamon, however, is the ability to stand. He has already started pulling up on things, and can even get himself to his knees, though he’s unsure of where to go from there. He likes to play standing more than sitting, and his legs are really strong. Actually, all of Eamon is very strong…just not very coordinated. I’m afraid he might have gotten my coordination, for which I am very sorry.

Nevertheless, he can scoot on his little bottom enough to get things that are far away, and rolls over very proficiently. He can even do 360 degree circle while on his belly.

Eamon is still much more mobile in the water than on land.

Okay, I just really like pictures of Eamon in the pool...even when they only tangently fit in with the entry itself.

Part 3: The New House

I am secretly sort of glad that Eamon has yet to master mobility. Aaron and I recently made the decision to join the world of Homeowners, thanks to wonderful parents and Uncle Obama’s $8,000 tax credit). We’re very excited to be moving into a house of our own (I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about that in the future), but right now the house we’re in is a mess of boxes everywhere as we get ready for our Sept. 21 closing date. Therefore, it’s kind of nice not to have to try to babyproof the house we’re leaving for just three weeks before we have to turn around and babyproof another house.


Part 4: Hey Baby, What’s Your Sign?

As soon as Aaron and I realized that his friends Shawn and Liz had taught their (then) baby Mason to sign, we knew that we would be teaching our babies to sign—and this was long before we even realized we would be having babies together. So a couple of months ago, I purchased a Baby Signs Favorites DVD. Eamon was only about 5 months old, but he was entranced by it. The sock puppets, the signing teddy bear, the cartoon kids, and the real kids, too…he loved it all.

I therefore decided to go out and buy the entire Baby Signs DVD set. For a couple of months now, I’ve been making Eamon watch it with me. Each DVD is about 20-30 minutes long, and he’ll usually sit through an entire one (he will NOT sit still that long for anything else on TV). I’ve really been pushing the Mealtimes signs, and we’ve been trying to use the signs whenever we feed him, too. I knew that we wouldn’t see any results for awhile, since the information booklet said that most kids don’t start using signs until they’re 8-12 months old.

Well, Eamon must have heard me telling someone that, because he turned 8 months old yesterday. Two days ago, he started clenching and unclenching his hand—the sign for milk (well, formula in our case). His Oma (Aaron’s mother) was the first to see him do it, and assumed he was just saying “hi,” which has made me aware of the fact that I need to let people know about the signs.

Nevertheless, we weren’t sure that he knew what he was doing. The other night, he woke up hungry again (he went on a hunger strike after the medicine, and it’s taken awhile to get him back to eating normally), and was making the sign in the middle of the night, too.

Then today, while we were running errands, Eamon started making the “milk” sign at me. I still wasn’t sure he knew was he was doing, so I made it back and asked, “You want milk?” He immediately started crying when no milk was produced. He kept making the sign until we got to my mother’s house and she brought him out a bottle. He drank the entire thing and then promptly fell asleep.

Family Time

I've always loved writing (a fact which Aaron exploited mercilessly when he started this blog, knowing full well that I would do most of the writing and he would have to do very little), so it's not often that I simply post a bunch of pictures. That being said, this past Saturday and Sunday we went to visit Aaron's family up in the Maryland/Delaware area, and took a ton of pictures. Therefore, I'll use most of the time I would normally spend writing uploading pictures.

Eamon and Daddy at swim lessons Saturday morning.

Eamon loves the water.

He's learned that he can kick his feet and make himself move (even though he still hasn't mastered mobility on land in the slightest).

He's comfortable in just about any position, and thinks it's all great fun.

But then again, maybe he just loves spending time with his super-fun Daddy.

Of course, his Aunt Meredith (Aaron's sister) is pretty cool, too.

She's even brave enough to hold two babies at a time! (on the left is her her son, Lucas, aged 10 1/2 months--exactly 3 months older than Eamon).

Eamon LOVES his cousin Lucas as well.

In fact, he kept kissing and kissing Lucas (which can be kind of sloppy, since Eamon learned to kiss from Nesta, our dog).

Even when poor Lucas really didn't want to be kissed (sorry, Lucas!)

He also got to spend some time with his cousin, Ellie (aged 3). He didn't kiss her as much, since she spent most of the time running around and playing.

We tried to take some nice pictures of the boys on Sunday, but it turns out it's really hard to get two infants to look at you and smile at the same time. This was the best one I got.

For the grand finale, we took a picture of Eamon with his Opa, Oma, and cousin Ellie and Lucas just before we had to get back on the road.

And when we got home, Eamon was an only child once more, with only his bowls and spoons to play with...

...how long until Thanksgiving?