Loud & Strong

Whaddya lookin' at?

So it's been awhile since I got something up here - we've been busy! Our boy continues to change at an astonishing pace and for the past few weeks we've found him so amusing that it's been hard to find time to write. Well, we've also been a little slowed down by the headache-inducing construction noise from the kitchen, and the fact that Fall has clearly arrived, so I feel compelled to get out of the house & enjoy the beautiful days while we can - we've been taking a lot of walks. The good news is that this means there are lots of pictures and videos to post!

First, since we've used the stroller a little more of late, here are some pictures of Thomas enjoying his stroller.

Hi Daddy!

Hi Grandpa Yves! Grandpa Yves visited on Sunday the 21st. He was amazed by Thomas's talking and his intense desire to stand (holding our fingers).


As you can see, the stroller often puts Thomas to sleep.
But don't worry, he's not just squandering his days away by sleeping - oh no, Thomas is practicing talking. Just listen:

He also loves to stand (as long as he's holding our fingers).











And he's even trying to sit - well, I'm not sure "he" is trying...

Though, to be fair to Thomas's parents, just tonight he's been "sitting" on his own for up to 10 seconds - well, if you count having your hands flat on the floor on either side of your legs as sitting! Still, it's pretty impressive since he's not even 4 months old - oh, and he's desperately trying to move across the floor on his tummy - I'll keep you up to date on that!

I'm still trying to get a video of him rolling over & I swear I will get him laughing some day soon. He loves to laugh - and in the last 10 days or so he's begun to love to be tossed (gently) in the air or "flown" - he laughs and laughs whenever we do that - or when we sing "Barbara Ann" by The Beach Boys - or when we say "Fee Fi Fo Fum!" Pretty much everything makes him laugh - and then I laugh - and then he laughs...

(And now I need to get to bed. I've had quite a fight to get some of the pictures and videos to format properly but somewhere along the way I accidentally published this, so I felt obligated to at least try to get things done right - but I've tried plenty & bed sounds great right now - so Good Night!)

American Abroad

Thomas may not have his American citizenship yet (the paperwork is a little complicated), but that didn't stop him from attending his first political rally today! Wearing a blue sweater, a blue & white checked hat, his cool dude sunglasses with the ubiquitous green pacifier and a small American flag draped over the sling, he came with me to a Barack Obama "Yes We Span" event (corny, I know). Ostensibly we were all standing on the pedestrian bridge over the canal in an attempt to get Americans abroad to register to vote, but I didn't hear anyone chanting McCain's name. On the other hand, we did sing a great new song (to the tune of Frère Jaques):

Barack Obama,
Barack Obama
Yes we can
Yes we can
Change we can believe in
Change we can believe in
Obama
Obama

A few people took T-man's picture (he was cute), but I was not that clever so no picture in this post... sorry!

Talking Back

Although Mandy assures me that this is normal at this stage of development, I must admit to being thrilled to pieces: Thomas is repeating vowels sounds.

It started yesterday morning before work when he very distinctly looked at me and made the noise "bay". What made that exciting was that I had just said "baby" (as in, "Baby Thomas"). I then proceeded to say "baby" again about five hundred times, but to no avail: his beautiful syllable was not repeated. As I walked to work I was left to wonder whether this was just a beautiful coincidence or whether he had actually repeated something that I said.

This morning I received a sign that it might be the latter when, after saying "yogurt" as I gave him a taste of some of the same (not much, don't worry), he repeated back "oh-er". Once again my many repetitions of the word failed to elicit any response that even a proud dad could interpret as genuine repetition.

This evening, however, I received the confirmation that I was so desperately looking for when I tried the "baby" trick again. This time after a brief pause he repeated back "aa-phhh". I tried saying "baby" a few more times and almost every time he would repeat vowel sounds back that roughly resembled the original word. Following is a sample of our "conversation":

Me: "baby"
Thomas: "eh-eee"
Me: "baby"
Thomas: "uh-phee"
Me: "baby"
Thomas: "buh-eee"
Me: "baby"
Thomas: "ph-vee"

You get the picture.

P.S. Work on the kitchen has been stalled because the next stage (putting up drywall) requires four people and the contractor will only be able to pull a team together this Thursday. In addition, the windows that we're having installed won't arrive until the beginning of October. Needless to say we're both going a bit mad since there's only so much that you can do with a microwave. That being said, what they've done so far looks amazing and the end result will be a dramatic improvement over the original.

This week's news

I can roll!

In the news at our house: still no usable kitchen, but the contractors have stopped tearing things down and have even started to put things up (like lights and insulation). This is good and allows us to deceive ourselves into believing that the kitchen might be usable by the end of the week. I swear I'll take pictures if we ever get that far.

We've realized that Thomas, who has no long-term memory and whose short-term memory is entirely recognition (meaning that he can recognize what he's seen before but not call to mind something that is not in front of him), has no idea that our house even has a kitchen. He thinks that the only way to cook is in a microwave - actually, he hasn't been near the microwave, so he probably just thinks our food appears from thin air. He doesn't even know that our house has a backdoor or water on the first floor. On the other hand, he probably figures the contractors are just really noisy members of the family and there's no way he remembers the bats (especially since he was the only one to sleep through both incidents.)


The biggest news of the week is that Thomas can read - no, no, I'm just kidding. The news is that rolling over has led to much better sleep for everyone. It took a couple of days, but Thomas discovered that if he could roll on his playmat, then he could roll in his bassinet and sleep on his tummy. This is bad news for the SIDS alarmists of the world (though everyone agrees that there's nothing you can do once your kid can roll over) - but it's great news for us because now Thomas can get his fingers in his mouth, wedge them a little bit and (and this is key) keep them there. I can't tell you how wonderful this is - oh wait, yes I can: it's 7+ hours wonderful. 7 hours of beautiful sleep three nights in a row. (Then a quick feed and 2-4 MORE hours of sleep.) The first night this happened, André woke up as Thomas was nursing, looked at the clock and groggily said, "One more hour, kid, and we'll talk about a sibling." So just wait for the post that says Thomas slept 8 hours in a row...

One more bit of news: our friends Kim & Jud had their twins this week - Welcome Henry & Elliott! The boys are doing well & to their (exhausted) parents, I say, "There is light at the end of the tunnel: we're just 15 weeks into this new world and we are starting to get some sleep!"

No videos right now (I'm still trying to get one of his rolls on camera - sorry, Becca), but you'll note that two of the accompanying pictures are on his tummy. Some babies hate tummy time, but our boy loves it... and here's one of Thomas playing in his new (well, used but new-to-us) Bumbo seat which is made of some foam-type material & keeps him propped up as though he's sitting. (I've decided that there is no reason to ever buy any baby item new - the used baby goods market is hopping in Ottawa!)

Filling in the account of Thomas (a.k.a., Godot)

As Mandy mentioned before, one of the reasons that we've created this blog is to have a written record of Thomas' early life for his later enjoyment (and who are we kidding, ours too).

In that spirit I've added three posts for each of his early ultrasounds, back when we were using the working title Godot, as in "waiting for" (not subtle, I know).

First ultrasound
Second ultrasound
Third ultrasound

I've also added a post back at the beginning of March which has a poem written by (at that time) grandma-to-be Leslie, which we wanted to share with you.

A Wish for Andre and Amanda's Baby

He sings, he dances, he rolls, he reads!

Was it really just 10 days ago that we wondered if Thomas could actually roll over? Um, he can. He's been rolling like mad for the past few days - mostly from his back to his tummy, but he can go from his tummy to his back, too. Here are some of his practice rolls from Saturday. He doesn't get quite all the way over, but you get the idea.

At first he would roll over and land flat on his face, nose smashed into the ground. (Now that would have been great on film!) He always seemed pretty shocked to find himself eyeball-to-fiber with the carpet, but it didn't bother him too much since he'd do it again a minute later. Now though, with several days practice under his belt, he can roll over & get his hands under himself so he can push up and look around. It's pretty impressive.

He's figured out the Jolly Jumper and the Exersaucer in the past few days, too. He's managed to get his feet on the floor in the Jolly Jumper and he could put them on the floor in the Exersaucer, but instead he prefers picking them up and pulling himself around by grabbing on the various toys. He's very intent on particular toys and will expend a tremendous amount of energy to get to the ones he likes.

Here he is "dancing" in his Jolly Jumper.



Ok, so the dancing video isn't really that great, but humor me - it's really hard to get him on film. (Boy do I have a LOT of respect for directors of movies like Kindergarten Cop; I can almost hear the frustration: "No, no don't look at the camera! Do what you were doing just a second ago!" Of course, advanced as he is (no doubt), Thomas cannot yet understand me, so you'll have to be patient - or you can just skip the next (adorable) video of him "singing" (or you can pool your money and buy us a Digital Video Recorder - a perk which the kitchen renovations have eaten for the foreseeable future!) because he does, in fact, check out the camera.

And, as I finish up this entry (which I should really go back and re-title "Isn't our son advanced & adorable?", but I'm trying to disguise my naked pride), here's a picture of Thomas and André reading (notice he's wearing his first pair of overalls! I swear I didn't have a baby just so I could dress him up.)

Now where did I leave that thing?

A few days ago the contractors who are re-doing the kitchen/stable ceiling (which is going well, but slowly) informed Mandy that they had found a hat in the hayloft as they were taking it apart. The hayloft, we believe, had been inaccessible for probably 25 or more years. It wasn't just any hat, mind you, it was a genuine Stetson. Not one of their cowboy hats, which would have been too perfect, but a nice, classy affair nevertheless (no longer wearable, unfortunately). We looked inside the hatband and learned that it had been manufactured in Brockville at the J. B. Stetson Company factory, which existed there from 1935 to 1970 (before then it was the Union Hat Works, which opened in 1904).

In other news, Thomas continues to grow beautifully. We were at a check-up today and learned that he weighs 13 pounds and one half an ounce and is 61.5 cm in length, which puts him at the 50th percentile for both height and weight. He's also chatting up a storm and the number of distinct noises (and the way he combines them) is growing at a breathtaking rate.