Just kidding, I’m not a fan of the half-birthday concept. Silas now has two recognizable bottom teeth and he doesn’t seem bothered anymore. He was never too bothered really. There are a few more baby teeth coming though, I hear. A few days ago Molly and I spontaneously dug out the food mill and a baked sweet potato, and made a real nice puree for Silas. He downed it pretty efficiently, of course it was only a Tablespoon or so. He ate sweet potato again the day after, but then we didn’t make it the last few days. Rice cereal is next on the menu. If we can find a good avocado then we’ll try that. Maybe we’ll go to the Vietnamese grocery today, which carried Avocado for some reason.
Silas is squirming even more excitedly than last week. He’s trying to get out of his blue play chair as I write. The blue chair is much tougher to escape than our white chair, which he dumped himself out of last week.
Yesterday we attended another Stay-at-Home Dads play group. Silas sat up pretty strongly (until something off to the side caught his attention and he’d tip himself over trying to look back over his shoulder. He sort of played with a few other infants, passing toys back and forth, and chewing on them. I see how kids at day-care pick up so many bugs.
Ella the dog had her dentist appointment a few days back, and needed a tooth pulled. Apparently it’s common for old dogs, and I can’t tell any difference from how she throws down her dog food.
Here are the weekly portraits, including maybe a new feature, the “Toy of the week.” Whichever toy gets the most attention gets its picture taken. I’ll try to post fast, as the boy’s fuse is burning… The video at the end is just him cracking up the other night. I was acting bizarre behind the camera.
Cold as a coal miner’s lunchbucket out there. Not much outdoor activity going on this week. Inside though, whole lot of squirming going on. Silas started wriggling in earnest recently, and scooted himself right out the bottom of his chair while I was looking in the fridge.
Dad...come on...
The bigger news this week occurred in Silas’ mouth. He popped one tooth last Sunday, which I realized when he chomped my finger during church. The second tooth popped a day or two later. He was mighty irritated for 2-3 days, though not really too difficult. Little Baby Tylenol and some homeopathic goop and he was manageable. Those teeth are bottom middle. Makes us feel we ought to start solid food pretty soon. I mean, he has teeth.
Tooth 1 of 2
We’re pleased that Silas resumed some “Goya” recitations this week. Never fails to crack us up. In other household news we took Ella to the vet last week for a few shots, and were told her teeth are horrible and she needs a cleaning. She had blood work done to make sure she’s fit for anesthesia, and she’s just fine. So we need to schedule that….can’t wait. We didn’t tell Ella yet.
Here are this week’s portraits. Happy kid, as usual.
Not much action this week, that I remember anyway. I only heard Silas say “Goya” on one occasion, which threatens his endorsement contract if they find out. He’s an influencer, that kid.
Goya is good for you
We’ve also noticed Silas’ hair growing continuously lighter. Here are close-ups from Months 3 and 5. We’re not sure exactly what color this is going to settle.
Month Three roundabouts
Today- Month Five and a half
Silas and I attended our first “Stay at home Dads” play group this week down at the Happy Bambino. Half a dozen fellows and their kids meet every Tuesday to play with toys and shoot the Shinola. Silas managed to sit upright for at least a minute by himself, which is a new record. He impressed me, and didn’t start hollering and squeeling until nearly the end of the session. A few of the guys are from our neighborhood. We’ll go back again for sure.
We lament the infrequent visits of our verbal friend “Goya” while celebrating the frequent absence of “Scream.” Silas has taken instead to great big sloppy motorboat noises. They’re pretty entertaining, though we now diligently dress him up in a bib every morning.
We skated on the ice-covered pond at Olbrich Garden a few days ago, towing Silas behind us in a storage bin full of blankets and a memory pillow. The 20-odd degrees made his cheeks rosey, but he seemed neither pleased nor bothered. We enjoyed the skate anyway. The thermometer is rising this week so we’ll have to take a break from skating. Bummer. I suppose we can take Silas out in the stroller though, at least.
Silas was born August 7, so today is another… anniversary?… his .42 birthday?
It’s hard to reflect on the last week when the dominant memory still rings in our ears. He’s taken to screaming. Not the upset screaming- more testing the voice screaming. Dang. We arrived back in Madison on Saturday from our big east coast swing, and are finally getting back in the groove. Silas’ sleep schedule was pretty disturbed. Actually he didn’t have much of a sleep schedule before, but he’s getting more sleep this week with only his Pop here to entertain him. 6 inches of snow came down yesterday and shoveling it off before night fell was a big challenge. While Silas slept I ran out and chucked snow for a few minutes, then ran back inside to check Silas, and repeated several times. Another inch or two fell last night, so I guess there’s something waiting for me outside.
We shot this week’s photos this morning super early again, and that’s like shooting a celebrity, in that you’ve got 4 minutes to get it done before they get impatient. That’s what I’ve heard anyway.
We hit the road again this week, visiting the Lapp Hochstetler folks in Philly, then cruising down to Harrisonburg to visit Grandpa Cleo and the Illinois Weaver clan who drove in for a few days. Mom and Pop Weaver came down and we had a pretty good family reunion. Last night we drove from Harrisonburg to Columbus for New Years with Jon, Katie, Nina and Ivan. We canned it around 11, but the neighbors shot off rockets in the backyard at the hour, so I guess we didn’t miss it. The drive over was a pain, with drizzle and fog going over the hills of West Virginia and western Maryland. Somehow we just weren’t feeling it and a 7 hour drive turned into 8. But I’ll stop complaining. We did stop at a convenience store slash BBQ joint on the side of the road. Pork BBQ smoked on hickory. The guy’s store smokes stuff and sells hamburger buns and nightcrawlers more or less. He wants to sell eggs and milk. I asked where he buys the dairy, and he buys it all down at Walmart and marks it up a bit. He also sells pork shoulders, which he trades for with the Mennonites “up north.” Manitoba maybe?
Happy New Year to everyone. Don’t screw it up.
Center of Attention: Maggie, Dave, Silas, Ollie, and Edwin
Everyone in the McGlone/Weaver household has been enjoying our time in PA with the Weaver clan. We went on a lovely family walk around a nearby lake and shared several family meals with yummy food (including lots of cookies and chocolate). Jeremy and Ayanna were gracious enough to bring their Wii over for all of us to play. My personal favorite is the WiiFit, which has several yoga poses and other games like a tightrope walk. However, Adam and I spent by far the most time on Guitar Hero which allows you to play along with songs on a “Gibson” WiiGuitar. There are only 5 buttons for your left hand to push and one button for your right. The musical notation is spatial and in real-time- the notes you are supposed to play come across the screen a few seconds before you are supposed to press them. It is an interesting concept and fun to play but the jury is still out about whether it would be a good pedagogical tool to get people into playing music or if it simplifies the music too much. On the one hand, it updates music notation- with computer screens why do we need to have shapes and flags to show us the rhythm? On the other hand, you can’t represent complex rhythmic values very easily and you only have five notes (or how ever many you can see across a TV screen) to work with. The second obsession I have had over the past few days is reading Diaper Free and getting Silas to try natural infant hygiene. There are websites devoted to this practice and it seems like a logical way to approach toilet training by getting the kid to start early while shifting the focus to positively eliminate waste instead of holding it in. I have successfully gotten Silas to pee in the potty a few times already and he had one whole poop make it into the toilet. We are starting out slow and I don’t have any expectations that this will turn into using no diapers but I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it takes!
Merry Christmas everyone. We’re here in Chalftont, PA with the Weaver folk this week. We slipped in a day after the blizzard and had an easy time. We’ve been eating plenty of good food so far this week, and probably keeping Silas good and over-stimulated. Possibly over-loved and over-cuddled (Molly isn’t sure that is possible!). He melts down about 7 pm every evening, and we think he’s on a growth spurt, or at least he’s eating like he’s growing real fast.
We opened our Christmas gifts last night and Silas received the the lion’s share of the presents. He has a Bumbo throne now thanks to Jeremy and Ayanna, some sweet sippy cups, assorted beautiful wooden toys, Lego set, and a pile of tissue paper. The tissue paper is from his parents, as we mostly forgot to buy him anything.
We’ve got the extended family rolling in soon, so I’ll drop in our weekly pictures quick.
Did I use that line before? Silas had his four month checkup this week, and measured in the 99th percentile for body length. 85th percentile for weight. He received a few more vaccinations but didn’t seem too bothered after an hour or two. He’s dialed back on his squeeling recently, and showing off a sound more resembling getting punched in the gut. He’s playing more independently now- sitting for maybe 15 minutes at a time in his little dangling-toy-chair and his rotating-toy-seat thing. We’re thankful for those few minutes- when our time is again our own- and we can fold diapers or wash dishes until he starts his hollering again .
He sleeps less during the day too. It’s harder to find 15 minutes to get this post together. We notice too that Silas has found his thumb, although he’s not full-on sucking it yet. Bye bye binky (maybe.)
This morning we shot some pictures at 5:45 (so Molly could get to work on-time) The part-naked photo is one of those. Then we figured we’d shoot the Santa Suit Chair photos while we were at it. But he was well tired and irritated by then, as you see in the photos.
News to none is the snow dump we received on Wednesday- 14 inches of super heavy stuff. The University and State Gov’t closed for the whole day, which hasn’t happened in 25 years. Molly stayed home and we spent most of the day shoveling. We also took a trip to the grocery store, in between our shoveling session. The store is about 6 blocks away. The weather was alright Wednesday. Thursday the temperatures dropped through the floor and now we’re near negative.
Silas responded to the snow storm by squeeling about a third of each day. It’s getting ridiculous. I have a video of that, but no patience to screw around with iMovie right now. Silas has also started to start to try to crawl this week. He makes flailing crawling motions while he’s on tummy time. He moves a millimeter now and then. We went eShopping last week for a booster chair, anticipating feeding him solid food in a month or two. It’s pretty sweet and Silas sits in it playing happily with his toys. It frees us up to eat meals more comfortably while he slides rattles across his tray.
I switched up the chair position and lighting this week. Looks nicer I think.
