Wii and natural infant hygiene

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!

Adam, Becca and Silas

Silas sleeping with Grandma Weaver

Molly, Wii and the sleeping Silas

Silas with the only gift his parents got him

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Week 20- First Noel

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.

Center of attention

2012 Olympic mascot

Chomp. Favorite new toy.

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Week 19 – Tall drink of water

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.

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Week 18 and the Big Snow of Ought-Nine

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.

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Silas Week 17

We limped into the week after driving 20 some hours on Friday and Saturday, returning from Texas Thanksgiving. Our friend Katie Graber stayed with us for a few days, as she defended her dissertation at the UW. Bravo Katie- Chapeau- and so forth. We all went to bed too late each night, except for Silas, who knows better. Katie taught us the “Where’s my baby… There’s my baby!!!” game, which Silas loves. I will not try to describe it. He continues his happy ways, even though  his airways are really not clear, if you get my drift. We took a trip to the zoo today with Chris and Kalea. It was maybe 20 degrees with a stiff wind. The Bison, odd Sheep, Seals, and Camel (?) were the only animals outside. We planned to stay indoors (reptiles, tropical birds, monkeys etc.) But despite the signs saying they opened at 10, nothing was open at 10. So we went and had coffee instead, briefly hitting the monkey house on the way back. The kids did not seem impressed. Here are this morning’s photos.

Molly and Katie, late in the evening

I've got it under control

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