October, November, December - How Time Flies!

It's been so long since the last update.  Eamon has had  not one, but two birthday parties!  (The second was a re-enactment with grama and grandad, the Sithers, and Mike and Marliyn.)  The bonus of having two birthday parties, of course, is that you get to eat pumpkin whoopie pie not once, but twice...  Even without birthdays, though, it's always wonderful to have loved ones visit.

We spent Thanksgiving in Austin with the Rambergs.  Eamon did a great job on the plane.  He was excited to play with the drink tray, and to walk up and down the aisle (with a little help from mom and dad) and say hi to everyone.  (Only one mishap there, where he grabbed the water glass of a very nice man and spilled it over both of us.)  He made great friends on our way to Texas with a man named Dean, who had older kids at home and was very nice about playing back whenever Eamon grabbed at his arm.

Texas was a great time, full of food, fun and family.  Eamon and Max are almost exactly the same age, and it was fun to see them playing alongside each other.  Tina was excited to play with them too, and there was a lot of fun interaction between the three, including some shared bath time between Eamon and Tina.  (Eamon doesn't usually get to play in a full-sized bathtub, so that was a treat too.)  In one of my favorite moments, after Tina went running by the bedroom shouting, Eamon looked up, dropped what he was doing, and then blasted out of the bedroom after her also shouting at the top of his lungs.  So cute!

Frances arranged for a family photo session, which resulted in some wonderful pictures.

In addition to the pool (sorry, no pictures), the park right next to Gramberg's was a big hit with everyone.  Here's Max playing on the slide while Eamon checks out the ladder...

...and here's Eamon making himself very useful handing great-aunt Jane some gravel.

Eamon has been taking a few careful steps, although he mostly still holds on to things (like the vacuum ) to get around standing up.  

Check out the cute slippers from Gramberg!

Eamon continues to love his kitties, and seems to be trying out saying cat and/or kitty when he sees them doing something.  (He also continues to warn us with a very clear "Uh-oh" whenever the cats are someplace they're not supposed to be - or someplace Eamon thinks they're not supposed to be - as well as when anybody drops anything on the floor.)  Here's a video of him trying to entice Clint with Clint's very favorite toy.

Dogs are also a very big hit.  We all went climbing yesterday afternoon, and there was not one, but two dogs at the gym!  Eamon practically lost his mind over it, and we spent a good chunk of time out in the lobby following the dogs around and encouraging Eamon not to stick his fingers up the dogs nostrils (as he likes to do when pointing to noses these days).

Of course, life is not always peaches and cream.  Our beloved Johnnie's has closed!  How do people buy  food when there isn't a grocery store around the corner?  We are slowly figuring things out, but miss our little shop very much.  It was sad to see it go, but we did get to say goodbye to a lot of our favorite employees on the last day, and it was nice to hear that almost everyone got offered a job at Whole Foods, which took over Johnnie's leases and thus bears most of the blame for this disastrous closure (but usefully continues to sell us Hemp milk and the very best apples).

We'll be heading to Madison soon for a week and are all excited to see the Foster family, especially cousins Audrey and Drew.  Here's hoping the snow will stay put and Eamon can try out sledding!

All our love to everyone, an early Merry Christmas, a late Happy Channukah, and so on and so forth.

Big hug!!!!

Travels and Fun!

Lots of traveling since the last post.  We flew out to Wisconsin to see family.  It was a quick trip, but we got to see the Drucks and the Vanderkolks, plus the Fosters.  Eamon did some thinking with his Aunt Sue . . .

. . . played with Baube . . .

. . . hung out with dad's Grandma and Grandpa and some cousins . . .

. . . and had some quality time with Grama and Grandad.

We've also had some visitors here.  Our cousin Zach came up from DC and  Allie,  from North Carolina.  

And Gramberg was here too!  Eamon really likes his books and has started to be pretty selective about which one he wants to look at.

Life is good.  Work has been busy for both of us, but also interesting and engaging (at least more often than not).  My ankle is finally getting close to healed, which means I can get out and run again.  So nice.  Erica has been looking at schools and getting excited about her prospects while moonlighting as a goal-scoring machine for her soccer team.  

Plus, Eamon is a delight, although he is becoming quite opinionated and determined about what he wants to hold/see/eat/do, which can be challenging.  He's still loves music and has started to clap along to songs in addition to bobbing his head and body and waving his arms like a conductor.  He's been increasingly interested in standing up to check things out, especially magnets on the fridge, kitchen drawers, and his toy box.  

Of course, balls are still a thrill!

And bath-time has started to be a lot of fun.  Who doesn't love splashing?

Sad to see summer fading away, but I'm also kind of excited for the fall.  Hope everyone is well.

Piano Playing

Did you know Eamon plays the piano!?  Amazing.  Take a look.

He also has started to dance when we put on music.  He stops what he's doing, cocks his head, and then starts bouncing and bobbing away.  Again, amazing.  No video yet, though.  You'll just have to believe.

The Ocean

We've tried to get Eamon interested in water in various ways.  This has included sitting near the water in Rockport, sitting with his feet in a puddle at sprinkler parks, playing with glasses filled with water on our porch, and a too-cold and too-noisy pool in the Poconos.  Some of those attempts have gone better than others.  We're looking to try out a public pool one of these days with the hopes of warm water and more full submersion.  While the Atlantic Ocean is understandably too cold to really enjoy, that didn't stop us from dipping our toes on a hot day....

Clearly he's a bit happier on the sand!

June and Then Some

I bet you're wondering how busy a 7/8 month old can really keep us.  Me too.

June was quite a busy month for us; we got to see all of our immediate family and one had to leave home once!  That's right we saw alllllll the Fosters and alllll the Rambergs.  Even have a few photos to prove it.

We had a blast during Grama, Aunt Dani and cousins Audrey and Drew's, visit at the beginning of the month.  We struck out around town and just hung around the neighborhood.  Eamon loved getting to play and watch his older cousins, while his cousins enjoyed feeding him and having him in their laps.  It made for a full apartment, but everyone had a good time.

About a week after they left we hit the road to Philadelphia to see my brother ordained a rabbi and celebrate this achievement and Aunt Ali's completion of her PhD.  We were so proud and so excited to be there to take part in such amazing accomplishments.  Babies abounded (Ali's sister and brother both had babies weeks from Eamon) and so did the chaos of traveling with a wee one.  During the following week in the Poconos let's just say our nights were punctuated with more frequent crying and nursing and our days consisted of numerous cat naps of sheer exhaustion.  We did, however, LOVE meeting our nephew, Max, and getting to see our niece Tina "hold hand" with Eamon and love him up generally.  It was a pleasure to get the family time in since we've missed the last two Thanksgivings when we usually are all together.

And then, at the end of the month, we had the pleasure of hosting Grandad for a weekend.  

We adventured out to a couple of parks with sprinklers, but Eamon didn't really want to get close to any of it.  Instead he preferred splashing around on our porch with glasses of water and "playing" with the elephant watering can (which, as you can see became putting his mouth all over the spout and drinking from it). 

We're feeling pretty luck that we got to see everyone!

The biggest news outside of all the visiting is Eamon's teeth!  The count is up to 8.  So many adorable toothy grins these days.  He's also making lots more sounds, eating tons of different foods (excepting dairy and wheat.  sigh.  A trip to the allergist revealed he's allergic to wheat.  Bye-bye carbs for momma), and sitting and playing quite contentedly in one place.  Yes, that's right, our baby seems to have no interest in moving around and that is just fine by us.

Our Perfect Little Storm

What can I say?  I'm finally, 6 months in, starting to accept that my new constant is change.  Eamon was going a long just fine and dandy, loving his sweet potatoes, when a week and half ago he got his first virus.  Many pathetic hours of cuddling ensued.  Then he started teething again.  (Number 2 is now visible!)  And I'll be darned if he isn't in the middle of a growth spurt and nursing all the time.  He's also decided that 6 am is a perfectly decent time to wake up for the day.  Which means his first nap is at about 8 am.  (What??  Who naps at 8 am?)  Eamon does  - and most days so do I.  Then I had some chocolate Tofutti ice cream and it became very clear that Eamon's skin gets real irritated when I eat soy, so we're dealing with his skin discomfort again and my renewed effort to deprive myself of every enjoyable food.  But wait, there's more: he's dealing with some intense separation anxiety.  And he seems to have lost some interest in eating solid foods....


Don't even get me started on my theories of how this is effecting his sleep.  And my sleep.  Sigh.


Of course this was all timed perfectly with Gramberg's visit.  It took until the last day of her visit, her 4th here, for Eamon to let her hold him for an extended amount of time without whining helplessly and making desperate eye contact with me or Rory.

The hardest part for me throughout all of these milestones is feeling out of sync with Eamon.   I look forward to getting back into a rhythm with him.  Or at least being a little more confident of how to respond to his needs and wants.  


Anyway, it's a good thing swinging makes everything better.

Trips to Dad's work are great too!

Wearing spiffy caps and sucking on apples can cheer anyone up.

In other news we're (or maybe just me) trying to come up with a good nickname for our dear baby.  I shower this kid with many terms of endearment, but none that are viable, life-long nicknames.  There's no rush, I know.   I come from a nicknameless family so I'm concerned about my skills in identifying and cultivating a nickname.  Thus we're recruiting some help.  A couple friends have made some suggestions we're considering....  Smalls (as in Biggie Smalls because Eamon's big), Cheeks (because Eamon's cheeks are SO awesome to pinch, even when their a little red and speckled due to allergies), Amy (because that's how Eamon's cousin Tina says his name at 22 months), and Dizzy (because many of the sounds he's been making recently sound like a trumpet).  I'm not sold on any of them so the search continues....  This could be your chance to (sort of) name my firstborn child!

And Now the Numbers

Eamon weighed in at 17 lbs 5 oz and measured 27.75 inches.  His head was 43 cm around.  The weight and head are at the 50th% mark and length is 75th%.  We're thankful for his medium-sized head as I had an enormous head as a child, so much so that my parents decided to take me to the doctor to get it checked out.  Anyway, here's Eamon looking so smart playing at the doctor's office!  (Don't those things look like some old fashioned intelligence test?  Clearly he's acing it.)

If you look closely you can see the redness on his arms... and legs, cheeks, ankles, belly....  When Dr. Callahan walked in the room the first thing she said was, "He's a poster child for eczema!"  We're so proud.  Sigh.  His irritated skin is why I'm eating dairy free (a true testament to my love if you know how much I adore ice cream) and that has helped lots, but not all the way.  Rather than go gluten and soy free and starve to death, this visit our doctor gave us some prescription strength hydrocortisone cream.  She also recommended a mixture of shea butter and eucerin as his twice daily lotion.  We had a funny/awkward moment when she asked if we knew where to get shea butter.  I paused because I wasn't sure if she meant, "Do you know that this is something from Africa and that black people use it as moisturizer so you should look in the 'specialty' section where products for black people are usually relegated?"  Or if she simply was asking if we knew where to find it....  Anyway, the mixture of lotions and creams is doing the trick and for what seems like the first time in months Eamon's looking clear-skinned and scratching himself less!  Yippee!  Like most semi-hippy moms I've got some reservations about smearing my baby with steroids, but its effective, my baby's more comfortable, and our doctor was all about stopping using the cream as soon as his skin cleared.  

In the last weeks we've discovered some new activities that Eamon likes.

1) swinging

2)  putting everything in his mouth/dancing.  Can you guess our current favorite?

3) eating sweet potatoes.  Grilled sweet potatoes, no less.  We're trying to develop a sophisticated palate early on....  And for this one I've got another poem for you:

sampling solids

smacking on sweet potatoes

mom's tasting freedom