he's happy and he knows it

last night for Stanley's bedtime song, scott chose "If you're happy and you know it", and of course we started with clap your hands. We never got past that verse, though, because every time we did the two claps, stan laughed and laughed. We ended up singing it for 10 or 15 minutes, and he just laid there laughing and laughing and waving his arms and kicking his feet. I think we have a hit!

Good Night

Stanley is asleep, having had a very rough day. He seemed to be in a dreamlike, annoyed state for the whole day. But he went down without complaint a couple hours ago. I hope he stays asleep, now that we're going to bed.

The Perfect Storm

The alternate title was "Worst Night...Ever" and you would have to say that with the Comic-book Guy voice. We drove last night to Boise, and Stanley slept the entire trip. It was a nice thing, because we talked and enjoyed each others' company (and the scenery! Don't forget the scenery!). But this set up a night to forget, since he was now quite awake and we were dead tired. He also had a stuffy nose, was in unfamiliar surroundings, and we didn't really have anywhere to put him except in his carseat. So, he woke up literally fifteen times during the seven or so hours that we were trying to sleep. I gave up at seven-forty-five and brought him downstairs. He's very tired, and Julie just fed him, and so maybe he'll sleep now.

At last, a friend my own size

Stanley, this is Snowman. Snowman, this is Stanley

Stan is one cute baby!

Stan was interested in this crawling, purring tiger

here, boy!

We all had a good time at Don and Jan's on sunday when we went to Jeffrey's unofficial homecoming. In these pictures, Stan is playing with my cousin Michael. 

HI, i'm having such a great time! ||  

I'm in love

I just love Stanley. I love to hold him, I love to take him places and go on walks with him, I love to play with him, I love to bathe him and dress him, I love to talk to him and sing to him, I love that he remembers me and that he likes to play with me. I love that he gets excited when Scott gets home from work, and how they play together in the evening. I love to bring him onto bed with me in the morning after scott goes to work. I love his smile and his hair and the line between his hand and his arm, and his mid-arm crease. I love his eyes and his eyelashes. I love his lamby laugh and his belly laugh. I love the way he talks to himself and to us. I love that he's learning to eat foods, and that he can do things like sitting up and rolling over. I love the way he turns on the charm when he wants me to pick him up or play with him. stan is a good baby and I'm so glad he's ours.

four things

I say four things to stan while I feed him:
1. good boy!
2. yummy yummy!
3. the name of the food (also with an exclamation point)
4. Yay!

I usually say these things in pairs, such as "banannas! Yay!" "good boy! carrots!" " Good boy! Yay!" "peas! yummy yummy!"

The only other thing I say is " are you all finished? Let's wash you up."

This is Stanley's first interaction with snow. He touched it, then looked at me with a grimace--the same grimace he has whenever anything goes in his mouth for the first time that's edible. He did eat just a little of it. Yes, I know that snow is not clean, necessarily, but he'll be eating lots of it through his youth.

Scott and Stanley, both relatively slackjawed, in the waiting room of the NICU at LDS Hospital. We were there to see Coralee and Matthew.

"But I don't want to go into the circus, Uncle Don!"

Gnawing an apple to death (when you have only gums, you gnaw things to death.)

Sometimes it takes so long to gnaw the apple, that it ferments and leaves the boy feeling funny.

After his apple binge, he usually naps.

Eating squash, by comparison, turns Stanley into a ruthless Soviet dictator. This is him telling Julie "We will crush you." I have information that leads me to believe his threats are empty, and that the Stanley regime is actually in shambles and that it will eventually implode. 

Stanley and Mom enjoy a beach experience.

This picture is included mainly because the shadow makes my bicep look extremely good. Perhaps too good? | 

Stanley and Grandpa present themselves for inspection

Stanley enjoys his chair

He likes his apples and rice cereal mix.

Julie and Stanley in San Diego at a beautiful gardens we went to, in front of a weird plant.

More gardens (with the beautiful Julie)

Stan enjoying San Diego. Or his blanket, we're not positive which.

San Diego can only be so interesting.

Scott and Stanley on the beach. Scott's about to give Stanley his first swimming lesson: don't swim if you're only six months old. That's the lesson.

No idea who those people are on the right, but if this is to scale, Stanley's drool is about the size of the lady's foot. That's a lot of drool.

It was warmer than Julie's jacket would indicate, and the sun was quite a treat. Stan seemed to enjoy himself quite a bit.  

something to be thankful for

Stan went to bed at around 10:00 last night, so when scott and I went to bed at 12:30 i thought i had about another hour until the first feeding. well, after i woke up and fed him and went back to bed and as i was getting in bed I looked at the clock, i saw that it was ..... six thirty! So i got all cozy and went back to sleep. i woke up the second time all on my own ahd the room was warm and bright. I started listening, and in after a while i heard stan playing in his crib. what time was it? nine fifteen. It was the best night we ever had.

Yell Tide Glee

It would seem to the untrained I (pause for laughter), that Stanley is learning how to yell to people across the room. To do so, he locks in his gaze on someone at least four feet away, and then he holds his arms wide open, like the guy from Creed. He then takes his arms and sort of waves them inward, and a little "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHH!" comes out of his mouth. It's sort of as if he's using his arms as a bellows for his lungs. He also leans forward at that moment, perhaps to get his diaphram involved. I'm learning a lot by watching him do this.

The counterpoint to my assertions about his yelling is that he may simply be learning how to yell, and not really aiming it at anyone specifically. That's possible, I admit. And that's okay, because he's learning to yell--something we will undoubtedly tell him not to do by the time he can understand what we're saying.

"Stanley, it's not time to use our yelling voice."

OR

"Stanley, there are times to use your arms as a bellows, and there are times to just let your lungs to all their own work."

We'll see which is more effective, when that time comes.

Bath Story

Stan with Dad on the way to the bath

Bath o' Rama begins.

Even a noble soul must take a bath now and then.

This isn't so bad.

Wait a second...

Bath o' Rama reaches the Drying Stage.

Stan resumes pre-bath activity.

"I will now sit and place a variety of toys in my mouth. You may observe, if you wish." 

The Sleeping Sitter

I think the experiment with Stanley is a success. We have given ourselves permission to ignore a greater amount of him crying, which in turn allows us to sleep better. Stanley stops crying before that threshold is reached, and falls back asleep. Thus, we are sleeping more! It's exciting because we are sleeping more!

Stanley is really sitting now. Today I set him on the carpet and had him sit for a while. He fell to the side and bonked his head on the little mirror he was enjoying. He seemed pretty upset about that.

So I built a "safe place" by positioning four pillows around him, so no matter in which direction he fell, he would fall onto something soft. He only fell once after that, and actually cried while sitting up because he was tired of it.

So we're happy about his progress, though we have it from reliable sources that Robyn is already reading at a fourth-grade level! Dang it!

look at me! 

stan has sitting skills! 

stan in his favorite chair 

not much to report

well, I can't really say how things went last night with our plan to let stan cry himself back to sleep because I slept through the whole thing. I was just so tired from him getting up every 45 minutes for 3 nights in a row, and I think my subconcious knew that I didn't need to listen for him, so i didnt' even wake up between 1:30 and 5:45. I don't know how long he cried, or how hard. But I do know that i had my first four hour and fifteen minute stretch of sleep since stan stopped wanting to sleep without me two weeks ago. Once a night, i can do. Twice a night is even ok, but it really was getting rediculous and worse by the day, er, night. Hopefully it was a success and he will experience a long and happy future of sound, uninterrupted sleep... and so will I.

All You Care To Fuss Buffet

Stanley is going to be angry with us in a few hours. We have decided that he needs to sleep through the night better than he does, and that we've been too quick to get him when he starts fussing. We hit a crossroads of sorts this morning, when Stanley started fussing just a half hour after Julie had fed him. After we picked him up, he just sort of snacked for a minute and then cooed and played. He has us under his thumb.

So here's our plan: we're going to let him fuss for a half hour or so, then pick him up if he's still crying. We hope that we will be able to restore him to his former self, which used to sleep from eleven-thirty until six-thirty. Those were the days! We'll see how it goes. Stanley Banley is a wily one, and he may win this battle of wills (or lungs, depending on the side you're on).

the fairest one

Stan's new favorite activity is to hold a mirror above his face and smile into it. It's really cute. I'll try to get a picture of it and post it.

I don't need Stan to pull my hair out...

I'll pull it out myself! He has been crying and crying for like three days. It all started tuesday when we were on the Tuesday-Thursday Walk With Friend and Baby. We were an hour away from home, and he started crying. He cried and cried, and the only thing that would make him stop was me carrying him, so i carried him for an hour, passing him from arm to arm and steering the stroller with the other hand. From time to time i tried to set him down in the stroller to rest my arm, and the instant i set him down he started crying every time. And he hasn't stopped since then. Not only that, but last night and the night before he's woken up at least four or five times. Alan and Shannon came over tonight and thought it was teething so they recommended tylenol. Hopefully that will help.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Stanley has chosen to not acknowledge the Daylight Savings change, and just fall asleep at 8:30 as if it were 9:30. There is great benefit in this. Julie fed him after he fell asleep and I was able to write. Now we are sitting in the long room, and he is long since gone to sleep. We might have a normal existence after 8:30, which is much, much better than the 11:30 bedtime we were routinely getting from him. I'm glad, Julie is glad, and Stanley doesn't know the difference!

Super Trooper

Stan said his first word tonight! We spent all this time wondering whether he would say Ma-ma or Da-da first, but it turns out that the first word was ABBA. I never knew my cleaning music would have such an impact...and i don't even know if I've listened to it more than once since he was born! He has been practicing the b sound for two or three days, and tonight during dinner he had a great time saying it back and forth with me. When I leave him to entertain himself, he lays there and says "buh....buh....aaaa-buh...bbbbbbwaaaa....buh." It's pretty cute. I'm looking foreward to him being in the stage where he'll babble and string consonant sounds together.

The other thing he did today for the first time was shake a rattle. Usually he just licks it for a minute then drops it, but today he was shaking it around. In the morning he waved it around going as far in each direction as his short arms would permit, and by evening he was shaking it more like a normal person shakes a rattle. To me this is big news because it means he's going to start playing with his toys instead of just tasting them and dropping them. Hopefully this means I'll be able to let him entertain himself for longer periods of time.

Today at naptime (2:00) I nursed him and put him in the crib, but as soon as he touched the matress his eyes opened. I put a blanket over him anyway and walked out, and just stayed in the next room to listen. He played with his crib toy for probably ten minutes, then he got a little fussy and started whimpering, but after a few minutes of that he just fell asleep. I love it when he falls asleep on his own!

scott and stan playing a fun game. 

the apple of my eye

stan's favorite baby food by far is applesauce. It's either because apple is extra tasty, or because it doesn't hurt as much as other foods when he grabs some off the spoon and grinds it into his eye with his fist. or maybe it's both.

splish splash I was takin' a bath

Today Stan discovered how to slap his hands down on the bath water and make a splash. He wasnt' doing it for fun, though. When I turned him toward me i saw that he was splashing in a concentrated effort to grab the water and get it into his mouth. So maybe it was really nothing new.

Stan's earliest night yet!