Three little words

We're already back into the routine here: Zachary is up by 6 am, we occasionally snuggle for a bit, and then he's ready to come downstairs for breakfast. Owen joins us as well so mommy can get a little sleep. Very occasionally, we all go back to sleep for a bit - alas, not this morning. But there was an exciting moment when we got downstairs -- we read one of Zachary's favorite books, and when we were done, he looked up at me with his first three word sentence: "read book again". Truly the son of a librarian -- go Zachary!

Owen continues to smile and coo and interact with us more and more. Baffy time continues to be super cute - he's initially angry when we put him in the water, but as soon as he's modestly covered by a washcloth, he's very happy and kicky. Like his brother, he does really prefer to be up -- and not just on your shoulder, but with some kind of altitude sensitivity that requires you to be standing as well. And the car continues to be a, well, rough ride.

Sunday was Meh's birthday! She and I had a very nice date night (sadly, she had to do the organizing by herself since I was in Japan beforehand) at a new-ish restaurant with Mr. Owen accompanying us in his car seat. He slept through the appetizers, but decided he wanted to have some dinner as well and ended up needing some "up" time during dessert. But it was still a wonderful evening with the best wife and mommy on her birthday - happy birthday, Meh!

The sincerest form of flattery?

I flew back home yesterday from my brief trip to Japan (though I'm not sure if "brief" is quite how Meh would describe it!). The conference itself went great, and the rest of the trip was an interesting adventure of long flights with drunk and/or rude seatmates, yummy sushi, entertaining Japanese sweets (Men's Pocky or lamb caramels, anyone?), and of course many meetings. While in Tokyo, I did get to speak with the family several times via our favorite chat software. Zachary several times eagerly said "deh-ee!" before running back to play with his toys.

While I was gone, Zachary apparently picked up a new, um, word. After hearing Owen cry several times (usually related to car rides, which he seems to hate nearly as much as his brother once did), Zachary has started saying "Nahhhhhhhh...". It's generally preceded by a cough (since Owen often sputters a bit before the crying starts), and it might almost be cute if he didn't also do it while Owen is crying. But I've thankfully been seeing mostly the opposite from Owen since I got back -- he seemed genuinely happy to see me, and we even got to see some of his excellent giggles!

Evensongs

Just to follow up on our last post (I realized that, though it was almost exclusively about Zachary, the pictures were exclusively of Owen - go figure), here's Zachary in action with the seatbelt for Owen's downstairs seat.

Last night mommy's choir had a fabulous concert featuring something like 30 separate songs. They were wonderful, and I was equally impressed that so much of it was strictly memorized - there's a skill you never have to exercise with orchestral music! Zachary had a babysitter, but Owen and I ventured out to his first concert. The performance venue even had a "baby/loud child" room. Alas, the baby room's PA system speaker was broken, so we could barely hear when we started off in there. Thankfully, Owen conked out almost literally as the concert started, so we snuck back into the main hall and enjoyed the entire first half, including some excellent mommy solos. He got a snack at intermission and then was a little more fussy/squirmy for the second half, requiring us to hang out in the hall and kitchen pass-through area. But we could still hear okay, and overall I'll call it a successful first concert for tiny man!

Tuesday I'm off to Japan for the rest of the week, my first long trip away since our family became four. It will be difficult to be away for so long, though I'm certain much more challenging for Meh to be taking care of the two boys by herself. I wish we could all go together, though I'm not quite sure how Zachary would respond to a 10.5 hour flight! Thankfully several friends have offered to come over and help out, so at least there will be a second grownup to even the odds a bit from time to time.

Click It

One of Zachary's favorite pastimes lately is to look at his baby brother and call out "Oh-wee!" He's particularly interested in peeking up at him if he happens to be in the pack and play, is getting a diaper change, or is being worn by mommy or daddy. He even alternates talking about Owen and the coveted Elmo as the two boys face each other in their little seat-belted chairs at breakfast time.

On that topic, Zachary has recently discovered the joy of seat belts. He long loved snapping things together: legos, trains, his juice bottle's flip top, and plastic containers. A few days ago, when I put him in his "high cha!" for breakfast, he started playing with the safety harness, and was particularly pleased when I helped show him how to attach the buckle. Ever since, any time Meh or I approach something that buckles, it's most certainly been clicked into the connected position by the little man: Owen's car seat, Owen's baby papasan, the ergo baby carrier, shopping cart belts, and so on. He hasn't shown a desire to detach them yet (though the end of meal time often involves one or more rounds of daddy unbuckling Zachary just so he can rebuckle himself).

This morning, Zachary was saying 'juh juh', and I couldn't figure out what it was until I saw that Elmo was being bounced up and down (yes, still by his giant plastic eyes) in rhythm with the words -- "Jump!". His make believe continues to develop, with a "ha" (hello) as he picks up his toy phone before bringing it to us to chat with whoever is on the other line (oddly, still mostly telemarketers). He also has a new more consistent word -- a short but very endearing "no!" has generally replaced "all done" when the context is more about whether he wants something or disagrees with one of our suggestions.

I don't want to hex it, but tonight marks the fourth night in a row of zero crying when we put Zachary to bed. He still occasionally gets up and wanders around his darkened room for a minute or so, but I'm definitely hoping that this indicates the return of the 'happy to be getting into bed' little man who used to look forward to snuggling into bed with his blankie at the end of the day.

Starts with C

I still haven't quite figured out what the overall theme or goal was (other than apparently some kind of charity fundraiser?), but Meh and Owen went to Cupcake Camp on Saturday with friends S (of J & S) and J (of the entirely different couple S & J). They had a lovely time even though it was a bit of a madhouse, with originally instructions to "take as many as you like" eventually backing off to "please limit yourselves to 6 or 7" when people started abusing the system and snatching cupcakes by the box. For shame! But there was a wide variety, a few competitions for taste, Seattle-theme, and even "youth" entries, all of the major stores were represented, and over the past few days I've thankfully gotten to sample quite a few of the ones Meh brought home. Yum!

In other news, on Sunday morning, Zachary was snuggling on the couch with mommy and Owen (this often involves him deciding that the best place on the couch to be is between her and the closest armrest; so he squirms into place and she and Owen have to scoot over), his blankie, and Elmo. He smiled, looked at me, and said (I kid you not) "Cozy!" No repeats since then, but hooray for Zachary discovering one of his parents' favorite words!

Mild Manners

Another milestone for Zachary: when I gave him his milk this morning for breakfast, he signed an unprompted "thank you" before accepting it, and another one when I poured his Cheerios. Meh reported he's been doing this more and more often for her as well. Interestingly, the phrase itself remains out of his vocabulary; it's the one thing he continues to sign without attempting to pronounce.

Owen is one month old today - happy first month, tiny man! This morning was his checkup; Zachary and I stayed home while mommy and he visited the doctor. He was mildly sad about a shot, but did great otherwise. And all of the stats look good too:

Weight: 11 lbs 5.5 oz (90th percentile)
Length: 23 1/2 inches (90-97th percentile)
Head circumference: 38 1/2 cm (50-75th percentile)

We also learned a random bit of trivia - it's apparently very common for babies to break their collarbones during birth, and while they hadn't detected it in his initial doctor visit, Owen apparently now has the tell-tale little clavicle bump. The pediatrician said it clearly isn't bothering him and there's nothing to worry about -- she even said that by the time he's one year old, the break wouldn't be detectable even on an x-ray. Those resilient kids!

It's just gas

Owen continues to develop a pretty variable series of expressions, including big smiles, serious frowns and, um, I don't even know what to think of the picture to the left, other than "No how you doin'?" But he's got a great series of actual smiles, frequently culminating with a big, wide open grin. He of course also looks cute while he's asleep - often developing little smiles in the middle of dreams that I'm guessing are still pretty topic-limited. Even when he does cry, it's generally more of a tiny goat-like "nyeah!".

Today also marked the arrival in the mail of those wonderful professional photos we had taken of him when he was two days old. It's amazing how much he's changed in just a month! You can check out the full collection, in both black-and-white and color no less, here. We're so delighted with how they turned out, hooray for Keri's great eye. I'm still a huge fan of the ones she took with him wrapped in a cozy yarny fabric; it reminds me of a formal judge's wig, and I keep thinking of him banging down a tiny gavel and saying "guilty!" when I look at it. That, or that perhaps this image could be the backing of some future Owen-based paper currency?

Feed your imagination

Make believe hasn't really been Zachary's cup of tea; when we give him his cellphone toy and pretend there's someone on the other end of the line, he generally smiles at us, puts the phone to his ear, and then gives it back when it's silent. Similarly, Meh's attempts to introduce dolls have generally failed, with the doll being often carelessly discarded nearly immediately. (Meh was particularly worried about Zachary's would-be response to Owen when, a few weeks before Owen arrived, an introduced cabbage patch kid went soaring across the room into the toy bin -- nice arc, Zachary!)

So it was great to see Zachary rediscover his Elmo doll two days ago, bring him to bed, talk frequently about "Elmo!" (yes, he says that correctly), and carry him around in place of a toy car for a bit. And it was particularly fabulous at breakfast yesterday, when Zachary started offering Elmo some Cheerios and juice with no prompting or encouragement from me! I caught a video of his repeat performance this morning:

We'll kind of ignore the fact that he sometimes holds Elmo by his giant eyeballs - ouch!