Professor X turned 2 today.

Sunday we had two birthday parties in the morning for his peers and the evening for our friends. A few folks came from his daycare (which is impressive because he goes to an Eastside daycare and we live in West Seattle!?!?!). The split let us fit everyone in our house, make sure the baby got a nap, and gave us a chance to make some dinner for the evening party. The theme was a "Chasy Choo-choo Warty" as he put it. Ideas flew in our funnels. Then there was trouble. Luckily, no one was hurt.

Things have been so busy that I don't really get to blog much about the little things. By the time I actually sit down to the computer, I'm too wiped to write. Still, here are a few little things that come to mind that I would have written about had I about had the gumption at the time...

• We are increasingly sure he's a lefty. My dad is a lefty, so hopefully he can help us with the little details like teaching him to hold a pencil correctly.


• Sweet potatoes are baby food so no longer his favorite--he's big so he's left behind baby things... except when it suits him. His favorite food these days seems to be miso soup with lots of tofu squares, a side of rice, and some edamame.


• He still goes to sleep watching Mr. Colbert many nights. "Steven! Steven! Steven!"


• The boy can use Windows 8 like a rockstar. Based on teh Internets, I think he's the only one who acutally uses the [Windows] key on a keyboard.


• Lately he's taken to crossing his arms while he eats. Alas, the image is a bit like Schrodinger's Cat... every time we try to take a picture of it he reaches out for the camera.


• He's not much of a stuffy fan. He wrestles with the life-sized stuffed Emperor penguin. He things his stuffed cat should live under the furniture where an actual cat would stay. He does however have much love for his little R2D2.


• When driving about, he is thrilled to point out every bus ("BooBah!") and plane ("Plane!") he sees. One day DrB got him to point and say "House!"... which he then tried to do for every single house in our neighborhood on the way home.


• For most of his two years, I've been the one to get him when he's crying in the middle of the night--DrB has a really hard time going back to sleep if she gets up in the middle of the night, so I usually go get him, maybe change him, and then bring him back to bed and I have no particular problem going to back to sleep most of the time. Anyhow, for most of that time it's been a baby's cry on the monitor. These days, I'm hearing the plaintive cry of "Dah-Dee!". It's both sweet and heartbreaking to hear. Thankfully he's mostly sleeping through the night these days.


• The boy is a huge ham like his brother. They both followed the photographer's instructions very well. See Exhibit A below.

• And Exhibit B

I've been meaning to write something about the experience of being a parent, but it's been a little hard to find the time. Not necessarily because the baby has been keeping me too busy to write, but that between the holidays, work, company, and general family life I've spent most of my 'spare' time playing Skyrim or LOTRO.

Chase is five and a half months now, which means he is starting to hit a lot of big milestones. For most of the past few months his needs have been very simple: change his diaper, keep him clean and warm, let Dr. B feed him, and let him spend a lot of time sleeping on the blobs*. He has generally been a great baby who sleeps through the night, and his entertainment needs had mostly been satisfied with sucking on parent's knuckles, his own fingers, or a stuffed pony. He's had a few rough nights, but mostly it as due to being a little sickly or his early teething pains.

Things are starting to get more "interesting" (in the Chinese sense I suppose). He's much more interested in spending time sitting up on the floor--he's actually doing really well, but he does have a tendency to topple when he launches himself headfirst at an object of interest just a little ways away. He's started to become keenly interested in any object we have in our hands, particularly cups, food, and the remote. He's a bit too interested in seeing whatever is on the TV, so we've had to limit our own TV viewing.

Speaking of food, Chase has just started on the wild and wooly road of eating foods. The recommendation was to wait until he showed any interested in eating solid food, and about a week before the Winter Break he started being interested. He demonstrated this 'interest' by using his rather strong grip to yank several food items hard to his mouth including some honeydew melon and a cup of water on a flight, and then getting really pissed if we didn't let him have them. They call them "solids" but really they are "mushies". His first love is sweet potatoes. He scarfs them down. He's not sure what to think of most anything else--he seems to wonder why we are giving him anything but sweet potatoes--but so far he's tried carrots, guacamole, and a little bit of chicken. We got a nice high-chair set up for him, and he's able to sit up pretty well in it.

Alas, this also means the diapering is going to be a little less pleasant. The cotton diapers have been working really well, and the addition of some liners is hopefully going to keep it working for a while longer.

His play is getting a little more sophisticated. For Christmas he got a collection of toys, and he's doing pretty well with them considering his limited mobility. He's not quite crawling, but he has 'rolling' down and it will no doubt be far too soon that he'll be mobile. When that happens, keeping an eye on his will require 100% attention instead of say 50%.

After some trouble with him taking a bottle for a month or so, I've been able to keep him on my own enough for Dr. B to do head out for a few hours on her own. I've been working from home a day or so a week to watch him while she's at class as well. It's been fun, although he's been having a slightly harder time settling down for the night at a 'reasonable' time. We have to get a little more consistent about his 'bedtime' if we want to be able to get him down easier, but it was hard to do with all the traveling.

At least we are still managing to get a good 8+ hours sleep...

* = Back when Chase was a newborn, Rhys kept saying how he could only see the rest of us as 'blobs'. The name has stuck.

This week Rhys was at the Seattle Aquarium for camp, which is a bit more of a pain to get to since it's on the waterfront, there's tons of construction and congestion on all routes from West Seattle, and parking is crap. He enjoys it, but it doesn't run him around physically enough to keep him calm and centered in the evenings. Professor X has been doing pretty well, and a lot of our effort is being spent trying to find ways to keep the Rhyser sufficiently entertained.

We did a few errands this week, and I had some work fires to deal with remotely. We had our second doctor's appointment for Professor X, and he is back over his birth-weight and eating well. No worries there. I finally got up the gumpshun to work on some yard projects this week, mostly getting a start on mulching which needs to be done before it really gets to our 'hot' time--this summer has been rather overcast and cold for us unlike the rest of the country, but our wussy plants can't take the heat in any case.

Saturday we went to the Washington Renaissance Faire which the little one mostly slept through. We spent several hours there with a friend, and then headed home.

Sunday we went to a BBQ at a friend's place, which was a low-key social affair. There were some other kids around Rhys' age there, so he got some of his required little-people time in.

Chase was pretty good for us overnight at Swedish. We had to feed him every 2-3 hours and changed him a couple times, but he would fall right back asleep and we managed to get some decent rest. I was still groggy most of the morning, but overall a pretty easy night with a newborn. Frankly I think some of it was just not sleeping that well in a strange bed (it was a fold-out cot which was better than a chair, but still not quite our own bed).

• He was checked out by a pediatrician, and was judged in good health. First office appointment is Monday
  
• Hearing test with a pass
  
• Blood sugar levels all look good (no lingering problems from the gestational diabetes)
  
• Blood draws for various standard genetic screening tests
  
• Filled out official birth certificate paperwork
  
• Newborn photo-shoot

We had to stay until 24 hours after the birth, but we were pretty much ready to go by around 2pm. DrB got some prescriptions and we headed home. Chase was really upset at the car seat until we realized it was probably just a bit too tight for him. We loosened it a bit and he was fine after that. He didn’t even get upset when we kept fussing around with the car-seat and base until we realized we had the wrong second base. Got home around 5pm and Rhys got here shortly after with Denise and dinner.

It's good to be home.

DrB is doing pretty well, and should recover reasonably quickly. The perineal tear is no fun, but the pain is under control and compared to a C-section it's not really that much to heal. Chase is getting a bit more alert--newborns tend to be pretty drowsy--but still seems to be a mellow baby.

When cuddlyeconomist woke up this morning and she went to the restroom, her water broke... At her last appointment on Monday she was already starting to dialate, and earlier this week her mucus plug started coming out.

After a few moments of panic, we got everything under control again and started getting ready to leave the house. We called the doctor, the doula, our friend who is going to take care of Rhys for us, and the parents. We got the last things packed, and got Rhys ready for his "Frog-marching" camp. Once DrB talked to the doula and she was sure it was in fact the water breaking (rather that some completely unexpected dire medical emergency), she calmed down quite a bit.

Rhys, however, remained fairly freaked out. He was pacing like an expectant father, going in and out of the house, giving his stuffies rousing speeches of fortitude in the face of battle. He should be a lot less freaked after a day of frog-marching with other kids...

I had enough time this morning to get the house in shape for when we get back with der Xerxes, and Rhys will be staying the night here with our friend in any case. The car is packed, and the doula took DrB for a walk leaving me the time to take a shower.

They are back and I think we are on our way to Swedish.

We are coming down to the final stretch starting the 37th week. Since we first started the IVF process last fall, each thing has been day-by-day, week-by-week. In some sense actually having the baby seems like it will be less difficult than the path so far...

Honestly though, the whole experience so far hasn't been extremely difficult physically or medically. DrB having to cope with all those shots that first few months was a challenge, but she responded well and compared to many the IVF process went very smoothly for us. She was diagnosed with gestational diabetes a few months back and she was really frustrated by it, but it's responded well to diet and for the most part they are probably good diet changes to make and to keep for both of us.

The biggest problems have been in trying to help her manage her anxiety. She had some pretty traumatic experiences in the past, but so far it's gone reasonably smoothly. We've been pretty focused on getting past each little milestone, and at this point we've gotten past all the various planned events as well as a number of birth- and baby-related classes. The house is 99% ready--we have one more thing coming in the mail this week, and we should be in pretty good shape. We have DrB's birthday party next Saturday and tickets for Harry Potter 7.2 next Sunday, and hopefully we won't need to cancel either event to head to the hospital instead.

Tomorrow we'll be at 24 weeks. Things are going pretty well, and we've been mostly spending our past few weekends alternating between relaxing (cuddlyeconomist had her spring break between quarters recently), and working on various projects for the house. Between the wedding, Rhys coming for the summer, and Project Xerxes we'll be running out of weekends damn soon.

We finally bought some patio furniture which should make our lovely park-like yard more enjoyable with someplace to sit and relax. Of course, in true Seattle fashion we immediately had to cover them to keep them from getting wet in yet another cold day of rain. I'm really looking forward to the weather turning consistently nicer for a while. Thankfully we got a bit of a respite on our Texas trip back to Houston a little while back.

We've assembled a crib, and set up a glider/swivel chair & ottoman set. Actually the number of ottomans in our living is getting a little out of hand. I have the one that goes with my red chair (which I've had for some time), we have a storage ottoman for blankets and some extra sitting, a "Rock Band" ottoman for all the Xbox 360 stuff and instruments, and then this fourth glider ottoman. Long live the Ottoman Empire! Actually 4 is too many, so I moved one off to another room for the time being.

Next weekend we'll need to do the "seasonal composting" of the yard, and we've picked out a nice outdoor garden shed which will need to get assembled sometime in May. That should help us rearrange a few things out of the garage and then a few extra pieces of furniture will go in their place.

Phew.

Work is a bit unsettled, but that seems to be the norm at the House that BillG built. I'm keeping busy and have no shortage of work to do, which is all I can really ask for I suppose.