home again

We are tired and happy here at the hoemke home. We just got back from our trip to Florida to baptize the boy. The service was perfect -- small and intimate. Tobo learned so much from his godbrothers. He was facinated to watch them playing on the floor, goofing around and generally being boys. It's like the little switch clicked in his brain saying "oh..I get it! I'm suppose to interact with my environment!" This has lead to a couple of major steps:

1. tobo now giggles. Daddy is very excited about this development.
2. tobo is now ticklish. See 1.
3. tobo now can be come bored. (This ceiling is boring. Where is the ceiling fan to watch?)
4. tobo likes to sit either on your lap or in front of your lap as you hold him and look around. He has great head control and very strong little legs.
5. tobo also likes to stand up (with a spotter) and look around. He's even taken a few steps.
6. tobo likes to lean forward when he's sitting in your lap (with a spotter) to "get a better look at something." You have to really watch him that he doesn't go over on his head. He hasn't really figured out that he can use his hands to investigate too.
7. tobo shows no interest in learning to roll over. He'd rather run.
8. tobo is a drooler. Oh my, can this boy drool. We call him mr. bubbly.
9. tobo hates to be put down. Especially on his back. This has made bed time exciting.
10. tobo's bed just moved to a stand alone bassinet at the foot of our bed. [insert sad mommy face]
11. All of this happened in the last week. *phew*

The decision about the bassinet has been in the works for a few weeks, in a fit of hyper exhaustion (super tired) I moved it today (and got a good vacuuming under everything, spiders were back!) and set him up on his own little island by the door. I'm truly sad about the move but this is one of those better for him decisions and he's ready. He's been sleeping on his own in swings for the last few weeks as we've been traveling about. He made something close to 12 hours the second night we were at the cottage because he was so exhausted. We need to figure out if we're going to let him cry it out or not. I was hoping to wait til 6 months just to give him a bit of maturity to handle being alone, but I think still having him in the room transitioning eventually to his own crib in his own room is the way to go.

He's officially 12 lbs 5 oz. His feet were dangling off the office scale today. We took him in because he seemed to be reacting to something I ate. Dr. told us (after running some tests on his stool) that it was probably nothing but he'd check on him at his 4 mth apt in a few weeks. I think we probably over reacted but we are tired.

We also came home to find that our dsl modem was limping along. Hope to be getting a new one in the mail on monday. I think we'll buy it out right because this one lasted 4 years, making it not worth the renting. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me, you know.

I've been looking at the jumper thing Paul has wanted to get Tobo since he was born. I'm seeing a lot of folks using them at 4 months on, so I'll probably see if we can pick one up when we're back from Mich. [ed: or tomorrow. Paul is now bouncing up and down of his own accord in anticipation]

Tobo was a great traveler which makes me thing that this age is the easiest to get them around (that and once they can read for pleasure). He pretty much went into the sling as soon as we boarded the airplane and slept until we exited the airplane for all 4 flights. We took him out and fed/played/changed him in between and came home with an ok baby. Ok, in that he does not sleep the first night, but takes 24 hours to get back into routine. What is our routine, darned if I know, but I'm sure we have one. We're still doing on demand nursing, which means I got better at public nursing through all those airports. We actually got the sling to work with that so now I feel a little more confident about getting out there and feeding him. I still find a quiet nook, mainly to keep mr curious on task.

Anywho, here we are home again. I'm reading harry potter 3 (poa) and watershipdown. What are you up to?