We had a picnick tonight. Here is Stan enjoying two fistfuls of bread.

Scott and Stan

Julie and Stan. 

Stan loves feeding himself



whenever Stan comes across something soft, like a pillow or a couch cushion, he squeals and rubs his face on it. Sometimes throwing a pillow onto the floor by him is enough to keep him from pulling the books off the shelf. 

stats

we took stan to the doctor yesterday, and here's how big (read "small") he is:

weight: 18 pounds, 7 ounces (the good news about this for me and scott is that our home scale is about a pound high)

height: 27 7/8 inches

this puts his weight in the 5% and his height in the 10%. his head circumference, though, is in the 70%.

spring is in the air.

Up until recently, stan has been afraid of the grass. it's easy for me to take him outside on a warm day like yesterday or today and put him on a blanket with a few toys while I pull some weeds. He won't crawl off the blanket. Yesterday I was weeding and I looked over toward stan and found that he had crawled across maybe 5 feet of lawn to the railroad ties that frame the garden in the back. Good job, stan! I went back to what I was doing and soon I heard stan shrieking in delight over and over again. What could he be up to? I looked up again and saw that he was back on the blanket, laying on his face, wiggling his arms and legs and rubbing his face on the blanket, just screaming and laughing like it was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Stan's favorite food is beans. These are some we pulled out of our minestrone, but he loves all kinds, especially refried beans mixed with baby rice...yum! 

a little mischief 

putting stan's pajamas on is not as easy as it used to be...

he starts out in his daytime clothes

once his diaper is off he escapes

I put the pajamas over his head

now for the leg snaps

so far so good

just...a...few...more...to...go...

aaah. mission accomplished.

gettin' the hang of it

Stan is doing much much better at all of his skills (except his bow staff skills...). When he crawls, he uses both knees instead of using one and dragging the other leg behind. And when he stands and inches around on the furnature, he always holds on with one hand, and when he falls, he at least tries to fall on his knees or his nice soft diaper. He's doing better at sleeping, too. Last night we put him to bed at 8 after feeding him bananas, cheerios (actually, toasted oats), and about 3 oz. of a bottle. He slept until 7:30. It was great. He's also getting better at being handsome and loveable!

Stan(d)

Last thursday morning I went into Stan's room saw him completing a pull-up into standing position. The rest of that morning he was crawling from place to place pulling himself up on everything. The funny thing, though, is that as soon as he was standing, he'd let go with both hands and try to balance. I told this to Dawn and she said he'd stop after he fell a few times, so I bottled up all of my motherly instincts and let him fall down a few times.
A week and about 80 falls later (only a slight exaggeration) he's still doing it. Only now he's not just trying to balance. He'll crawl to the thing he wants to stand on, slowly pull himself up, let go with one hand and get his balance (he often waves with the hand which is not holding on, which is totally cute), then he'll turn and step out with one foot and let go with the other hand all at once. He thinks he can walk, but he cant. He tries all day, and all day long I stay within 6 inches of him so that I can catch him. Even so he falls all the time because he's always twisting around when he lets go. He has bruises all over his head. He's not even good at walking when we're holding his hands up or anything, so I don't know why he thinks he can just walk out into the middle of a room by himself. And I'm sure that if we were going to learn by falling, he'd have learned by now.

Showing Off For The Boy

Stanley has mastered the courtesy laugh already; children are obviously more savvy than they were before. Sometimes we play "jump out from behind a corner and say 'boo!' or some other word or loud noise," and he laughs and laughs. Then, in a brief moment, he gets tired of it. Instead of looking away and playing with something, though, he continues to watch, and when I jump out and make a fool of myself for the last time, he sort of smiles and exhales a little. It's the equivalent of a comedian nodding her head at a joke told by someone else, instead of laughing--as if to say, "I appreciate your effort. Your effort is valuable to me."

I guess that is all I'm asking for anyway--to know that Stanley enjoys our time together. He did seem to enjoy last night's dinner, when I got him to laugh numerous times saying (in a somewhat-impolitely loud voice), "Leek tart!" and "I love dill!"

Don't tell me stuff like that isn't funny.

Nursing Rules

When Julie is nursing, Stanley will occasionally test the waters with a bite. Julie has decided to try and institute the rule that if he bites while nursing, she says, "No, no, we don't bite," and then doesn't nurse him for five minutes.

What usually ensues is a good deal of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of tooth. He'll learn, though, or wean trying.

living hand to mouth

If you put stan on the floor with a bunch of his toys, he doesn't last long, but if you put him on the floor with, say, a piece of grass or a tiny rock or a piece of fluff from a quilting project, he will stay happy for a long time. He's like a little vacuum cleaner, moving from tiny thing to tiny thing. He zeroes in, scoots over to it, picks it up with his thumb and finger, and puts it in his mouth. Unless I take it away first, that is. I went to Scott's elders quorum basketball game on Saturday and sat up on the stage with stan. He had a great time and I came home with a pocket full of tiny things.

a message from stan

niiiiimn v tf jn78 h 5gru 7hnnrt 7 ibf vbghyn nm

Cheerio!

Cheerios Infestation 2005 

things that sometimes make stan stop crying

1. taking him to look in the mirror at himself, especially the medicine cabinet mirrors because I can angle the mirrors to make a whole bunch of him.
2. sitting him on the piano bench and letting him play for a while. He's working on refining a few of his more modern compositions.
3. me playing something for him on the piano
4. turning on some music, especially ragtime, and dancing with him
5. stoping what i'm doing and playing with him :)
6. playing pat-a-cake (i lay him on his back and do it with his feet)
7. playing peek-a-boo. this is best when i'm behind something with more than one side to come out from behind, so that i can surprise him sometimes.
8. stepping outside onto the porch, or walking around the back yard or driveway, or going for a walk in the stroller
9. giving him some cheerios, or a cold carrot stick to chew on (until he gets another tooth and can bite a piece off to choke on)
10. go into a different room, if weve been in the same one for a while
11. put him on my hip and walk back and forth through the house

the new arrival

Stanley cried and cried all morning yesterday. In the afternoon, i put my finger in his mouth for him to chew on, thinking that might help, and lo and belold, i felt a tinly sharp tooth peeking through. It's still pretty small, and it's hard to get a look at, but it's really there! My baby has a tooth! i sat there imagining all these terrible things...I imagined him being 8 years old and playing in the yard by himself, I imagined him being 12 and growing out of his clothes, and passing the sacrament with white socks between his black pants and black shoes... It all became too much when i imagined him as a 17 year old, taller than me, walking in and out of the house like he owned the place...how can this happen? How will he ever grow up? and what if i dont' even notice while he's doing it, and then one day he's moving out? how is it possible that he wont' always be tiny and fat and cuddly and toothless? how could there be a time when he won't just ride around on my hip all day? I wish I had a Tivo for Stan...

bath day

the diaper was such that i used two wipes before i had even taken it off....

dad and boy 

nope, not bothered by it. nope, not at all. 

you may think it's funny, but it's snot. (Stan after a sneeze. gross!)