This was a big month for our little guy.

The weather finally warmed up so the Bird got to spend more time outside. We went on a boat cruise on the Potomac River. He went to several playgrounds and took a turn in the baby swings. Our whole family (including Casey) participated in a charity 5K for the Animal Welfare League of Arlington. Back at home there were some significant milestones as well. The Bird tried rice cereal several times and wasn’t too impressed. He also rolled over twice. In fairness, his play mat was half on and half off the carpet so Don thinks the Bird had an unfair advantage.

Here’s the larger version of the Bird’s five-month photo if you want to see it.

One day I’ll have to write a post with some of the outtakes from these photo shoots. There are some good ones.

You can view the full size photo here.

This month we decided to list some of the places Harris has visited in his short life.

• We went to Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf when we were in California during our ICPC stay. Suzanne and Trish were with us and Tori was working over at Alcatraz. We could, of course, see Alcatraz from Pier 39 so we we waved and took pictures.
• Way back in January we had a warm spell. Dean and I took Hayden and Harris to the zoo. I actually went ahead and became a member of Friends of the National Zoo that day so I expect we’ll be back a few more times before next January.
• The Bird has been to Baltimore a lot, unfortunately. He normally has to come with me when I go for my eye check ups at Hopkins. Poor kid. He’s been there so much he might end up with a Maryland accent.
• We went to visit Grammy and Granddaddy in Ocean City for my mom’s birthday in March. The Bird even went to Assateague  Island for the first time, but it was too cold so he slept in the car with Grammy while Casey ran off some puppy energy on the beach.
• When Grandma and Abuelo visited in earl April we went to Washington Nationals game (we won!) and took in the cherry blossoms at the National Arboretum. The Arboretum was packed, but we got some nice pictures.

The Bird rarely spits up. In his four and a half months, he’s spit up only around 10 times. Maybe 15. At least half of these occurrences have taken place minutes after someone asked us, “Does he spit up much?” and we have answered, “Hardly ever.”

I’m fairly confident he doesn’t speak
English yet … but these events make me wonder. They also concern me. If this is the Bird expressing his independence to prove us wrong, we’re in trouble later.

“Does he make good grades?” a coworker might ask one of us.

“Straight As,” we’ll answer just before he comes home with a failing report card.

“Is he well behaved?” someone will ask.

“He’s a very good boy,” we’ll reply even as he’s being given a suspension notice at that very instant.

“Is he good with the dog,” an animal-loving friend will inquire.

“Oh yes,” we’ll say as Casey comes into the room with a large chunk of missing fur.

Or maybe he just had to spit up.

Like all parents, Don and I bought, downloaded and borrowed a myriad of parenting books. You’ll note that I did not say we read these books, only that we obtained them.

This is because:

1. We have an infant. There is no time for reading about him. We are too tired to read and would rather gaze upon him than read anyway. And also,

2. They are sort-of pointless.

When my friend and new mom Karen shared the Portalandia clip above with me, I laughed for five minutes.

“Ryan, did you actually read the book?”

“Of course I read the book!”

No one reads the books.

Actually, we did read a little bit of all the books.  About three pages or so. I’m pretty sure that makes me an expert at parenting techniques so I thought I would share my wisdom with you and save you the trouble of acquiring these books yourself. Unless you want them to fool people into thinking you are well read on the subject of your baby’s development and want to place them in strategic locations around the house. In that case, by all means purchase a few. Don’t forget to leave one open on the coffee table for unexpected visitors.

Let’s start with the book above, Your Baby’s First Year Week by Week. In this book we learn that every week your baby will do things things radically different than the week before. For example, in week one your baby will focus on objects 8 – 12 inches away and in week two your baby will stare at objects 8 – 12 inches away. Wow. It’s crazy, right? I didn’t make that up; it’s in the book.

In Baby 411 we learn that all parents have questions. In fact, all parents have the same questions. For example: “My baby usually poops with every feeding. Now he hasn’t gone in 24 hours. Is he constipated?” The answer, I am both happy and sad to tell you, is no. Turns out constipation in infants is determined by the consistency of the output, not the frequency. That’s why as a new parent you will spend far too much time thinking about poop. People who don’t have children think that they will never be that parent. But you will. It’s inevitable. And really, you won’t even care.

I read my three pages of What to Expect the First Year on the plane ride to California to collect the Bird. I read those three pages for six hours because it was hard to concentrate for some reason. Therefore I am an extreme expert on pages 49  and 54-55. In the edition of the book we have those are the pages on infant reflexes (bottom line: he has them) and bottle feeding. I got to skip over pages 50 – 53 since those were the pages on breast feeding. Skipping pages was exciting to me. I felt like I had been promoted a grade in school. I stopped reading when I realized a HUGE portion of the bottle feeding section was about sterilizing the bottles and I had no idea how we might accomplish that in a hotel room. I mean, I’ve seen the “Dateline” specials. Nothing about hotel rooms is sterile.

For reasons we didn’t fully understand, we knew we would be swaddling the Bird from birth until he started Kindergarten. We knew it was valuable, we just didn’t know why. That’s why I checked out a copy of Happiest Baby on the Block at the library. A note about checking out library books as the parent of a newborn: Don’t do it. In my sleep deprived state, the book languished on a side table in the living room for weeks after I learned all I needed from it and I never made it back to the library to return it. The overdue fee would have paid for a new copy on Amazon, I think. Plus, you don’t even need this book because I am going  to tell everything you need to know. If your baby is fussy, turn him on his side and make a loud SHHHH sound. It sounds horribly cruel – like a really mean librarian. But honest to Pampers it works. We were already swaddling so we didn’t learn anything new about that, but the shushing was helpful when the Bird turned 6 weeks old and went crazy. I even downloaded a shushing app for my phone because I was getting dry mouth.

We put copies of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Childcare on our Kindles. Every time I have turned on my Kindle since December 13 I have fallen asleep so I can’t tell you much about this one. Nonetheless, I still feel I can offer two pieces of expert advice on this book having tried to read it a dozen times. 1. It’s an excellent sleep aid and 2.  Your parents read an earlier edition of this book and look how you turned out. Interpret that in any way you like.

Finally, I was excited to learn that Cindy Crawford wrote the forward for Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Did you know she was a correspondent for “Good Morning, America”? I didn’t either until I read this book. See how much I learned? Actually, along with Happiest Baby on the Block, this book has been helpful even though I read so little of it. We started putting the Bird to bed earlier and even though it hasn’t stopped him from waking up twice a night to eat, we get a little more rest because of it. We had been putting him to bed between 9 and 10 p.m. when he fell asleep and he would wake up at 1 a.m. for a bottle. Now we put him into his crib at 8 p.m. and he coos to himself for 10 – 20 minutes before drifting off. He sometimes still wakes us up at 1 a.m., but we have an extra two hours of down time.

I think those are all the books I “read” to gain my expert parent status. Do you have a parenting book you would like me to review? I won’t actually read it, but I will be happy to read ABOUT it on Amazon and then tell you everything you need to know.

In fact, it has probably gotten worse. Almost as soon as the Bird was born, I confess that I was singing Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe to him. Only my version went like this:

Hey, I just met you
And this is crazy
But I’m your mama
And you’re my baby

Terrible, right?

The last two weeks the song that has been giving me an ear worm is actually a song about teenage vampires in love, but I’m sure it’s secretly about adoption. It’s “A Thousand Years” performed by Christina Perri for the Twilight saga.

I have died everyday, waiting for you
Darling, don’t be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more

And all along I believed, I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me, I have loved you for a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more

Christina Perri- A Thousand Years (Official Music Video) from W3ndy on Vimeo.

What do you think? It’s totally about adoption, right?

The Bird’s nursery has one of those odor trapper diaper pails that does an okay job of keeping the room from smelling like a public toilet … but it’s never as fresh as I want. It always smells vaguely of baby pee (better than the alternative, I suppose). I bought one of those plug-in liquid air fresheners, but the scent (while pleasant enough) was just too strong.

Then I saw this great idea on Pinterest. While I was thinking about a container, I noticed that Don was sprinkling coffee grounds in the diaper pail in the The Bird’s room. Coffee grounds are a natural odor neutralizer. Great idea, Don.

You Will Need:

• Coffee grounds, dried well (as not to promote mold)
• Small tin container
• Small piece of breathable fabric like tullle
• Scrapbook paper
• Glue or double sides tape

You can see the larger version of this image here.

Little man is closing in on 14 lbs which means he’s nearly doubled his post-birth weight (he was 7 lbs, 7 oz at birth, but 7 lbs even when we took him home).  He giggles and chats a lot, but he still loves to sleep.

Today is the last day of my maternity leave, and Don starts his paternity leave tomorrow. Good luck, Daddy!

One year ago, Casey came home to live with us. Here is the story of his adoption.

On St. Patrick’s Day in 2012, Don and I were headed over to visit with our friends and their brand new baby. Things were not running on schedule (as is so often the case with tiny newborns) and they sent us a text asking for an additional 30 minutes. However, we had already left the house because we needed to stop by Target on the way. I had been stalking dogs through Petfinder for a long time, so we decided to pop over to PetSmart to see if any of the dogs on our short list were at the adoption event.

We were a bit early and none of the adult dogs had arrived yet. The puppies were there, though, being carried by volunteers or hanging out in the puppy play pen. One little terrier caught my eye immediately.

Getting a puppy was not in our plans. Don tried his best to point out other dogs to me once they arrived, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about the little guy. Don was pretty crazy about him, too.

We spoke to the volunteer who was fostering him. She told us he was nearly fully house trained already and a really awesome dog. I let him lick my arm and buried my face in his fur so we could test my allergies, then we left and headed to our friends’ house.

Several hours later I had a only a small reaction so it seemed like we might have found our dog.

Casey.

The next day we drove about 15 miles to a different PetSmart. Casey was scheduled to be there. We didn’t see him right away and panicked. Had he been adopted? We waited for his foster mom. Had coffee. Paced nervously. Finally, they arrived. We aced our interview and then Casey was ours. He weighed 8 lbs and was full of love.  Don held him all the way home.

Our family had grown to three. Little did we know that by the end of the year we would be four.

Homemade Air Freshener 

I saw this great idea on Pinterest. While I was thinking about a container, I noticed that Don was sprinkling coffee grounds in the diaper pail in the The Bird’s room. Coffee grounds are a natural odor neutralizer. Great idea, Don.

You Will Need:

• Coffee grounds, dried well (as not to promote mold)
• Small tin container
• Small piece of breathable fabric like tullle
• Scrapbook paper
• Glue or double sides tape

You can see a larger version of the photo here.

I am still on maternity leave for another 5 weeks (almost). We have settled into our little routine. On Mondays we go to the Under One story hour at the library. On Tuesdays we have Mom and Baby Yoga. Sometime we rush from yoga to a new mom’s group at the hospital in the next town. Every other Wednesday we go to a new mom’s group at the hospital right down the street. On Thursdays and Fridays we try to have lunch with friends.

Don gets home from work around 7 p.m. – just as the Bird is finishing up his cranky hour (of course). We have family time for a bit, and then the Bird goes to bed between 8 and 8:30. He sleeps for a long time during his first night shift. Once as long as 9 1/2 hours (!), but usually between 6 and 7 hours. His second sleep lasts about 4 hours.

We just love him to bits.