Silas' Six Month Doctor's Visit

After four more shots, Silas is lobbying against returning for the nine-month appointment.

Current weight: 17lbs, 1 oz.
Current length: 28 inches.

There's a New Sheriff in Town

Today marks the first day that I (Matt) stayed home to care for Silas. Thanks to an extraordinarily generous parental leave policy, I will be spending the next 18 weeks -- now through the end of August -- at home each day to be with him, handling the naps, mealtimes, diapers, and strolls. You will all be relieved to hear that Taylor will maintain principal blog-authoring duties, but from time to time I will take advantage of the flexibility of my new day job by catching you up on Silas' activities.

After Day One, my conclusion is this: Babies. Are. Hard. It may take a few years to get the hang of this child-rearing thing.

As a lawyer at a big firm, I am accustomed to billing to clients in six-minute increments (tenths of an hour). For the next four months, I will have a single client who will not demand such detailed recordkeeping. But it's tough to break old habits, so here is a bill reflecting some of what Silas and I did today:

0.2 -- Negotiate terms of napping arrangement with client
0.2 -- Teleconference with T. Jones re response to crying
0.3 -- Review and analyze contents of excrement collection garment
0.4 -- Revise terms of napping arrangement with client
0.6 -- Confer with client re The Very Hungry Caterpillar
0.5 -- Review materials produced by T. Jones; distribute same to client
1.1 -- Revise terms of napping arrangement with client
0.3 -- Advise client re desirability of burping
0.2 -- Review and analyze contents of excrement collection garment
0.4 -- Review documents re dinosaurs with client; remove documents from client's mouth
1.3 -- Finalize terms of napping arrangement with client

******

Beyond this major change, Silas' recent adventures have included a trip to Great Falls, Virginia for a hike and a cook-out with friends on the first hot weekend of the year.

He has also recently learned the value of a sippy-cup, and the difficulty of holding onto said sippy-cup.

Ahhh, I like....

Oops, dropped it....

It went that-a-way...

Just out of reach...

Back off, cat!

*****

Coming soon: a video of Silas eating, and promptly spitting out, peas.

Silas, Unswaddled

Totally off-topic, but GO MUDCATS! My uncle Haig works for the team--I'm a big fan!

First things first: Silas had an AWESOME week at daycare and I had a pretty good week at work. Apparently, Silas loves the attention he gets from the different ladies that work at the daycare and has a blast observing all of the other kids and activity occurring all around him. He was happy and smiley and sweet and napped like a champ all week long. He especially loves one of the ladies who works at the daycare, Trina, and spent many hours snuggling with her and laughing and talking. I had thought I would be jealous of any child care provider that he appeared especially fond of, but instead (so far at least) I'm thrilled that someone else appears to think my kid is as awesome as I do!

Me and my daycare buddies (Miss Trina is in the center) and that's my buddy, Isaac, on the far right

Mama and her friend Jamie took Isaac and me out for a lunch date on Thursday.
(Thanks to Jamie for the pictures)

Work went pretty well for me too. It was pretty surreal to be back and to start in on some of the projects that have been waiting for me. Weirdly, except for the pictures of Silas in my office, I often felt like nothing, including me, had changed in the last eight months since I've been there. It felt like I had never left. Also weird was being away from Silas for such long periods of time and not really knowing what he was doing at any given moment. I think I hadn't really thought of us as separate people yet and it's just now starting to sink in. Given that I went down to nurse him three times each day and left between 5 and 5:30pm, I wasn't super productive this week (at least by DC lawfirm associate standards), but I think that easing myself into it and giving Silas and myself some time to adjust is probably best for everyone--I don't get totally overwhelmed and suddenly decide that this whole full-time working mom thing is impossible and Silas can transition from being with me all of the time, to seeing me at least three times during the day, to just seeing me in the morning and when I get home from work during the time that Matt stays home with him.

In other news, Silas successfully slept unswaddled all night long last night. And. It. Was. Glorious. Yes, we were the people still swaddling our almost-six month-old, but he seemed to really need it. Every once in a while, we would unswaddle one or both of his arms and he would wake up every hour on the hour or, worse, fail to fall asleep at all. However, for the last week or two, even while swaddled, he's been waking up a lot during the night, requiring us to get up and replace his paci and/or pick him and walk him around for a half-hour or so until he falls back asleep. We couldn't figure out what was going on and know better than to try to let him just cry it out (Silas is a big fan of the "nuclear option" response to our trying to get him to cry it out, which involves getting so hysterical that he throws up and takes at least an hour or so to calm down even after we've given in and and picked him up and/or attempted to nurse him back into sanity, etc.). Two nights ago, he woke us up SIX times during the night and Matt and I were nearing the ends of our sleep-deprived ropes.

Last night, as I was putting him down to sleep at 7:15, I noticed he was already kind of sweaty and decided to forgo the swaddle, at least until he woke us up for the first time. Except he didn't. He slept without a peep until his normal early morning feeding around 4:30. He didn't wake himself up with his flailing arms (and flail he did--we watched him on the video monitor, and, honestly, it's amazing he still has skin on his face) or if he did, he settled himself right back to sleep. Maybe he finally grew out of feeling comforted by the swaddle and instead was just generally ticked off by the straightjacket-ness of it every time he stirred in the night. Who knows? But I'm excited to see if this whole unswaddled situation works again tonight. I'll keep you updated.

This picture has nothing to do with sleeping or swaddling, but Look! I found my feet! Trust me, they are delicious!

Also, Silas has finally moved on from rice cereal to...applesauce, bananas and sweet potatoes. Although Silas loves his rice cereal, it has a tendency to...stop him up, if you know what I mean. Quite honestly, Boy Wonder was in serious need of some fiber. So, on the advice of my good friend and co-worker Jamie, I purchased this fabulous machine that steams and purees fruits and vegetables and spent the last few nights making batch after batch of pureed apples, pears, carrots and sweet potatoes. It's incredibly addictive, and Silas appears to really love the result. So far, he's partaken of the applesauce (verdict: scream-between-each-mouthful-because-it-is-just-so-tasty delicious) and the sweet potatoes (verdict: not quite as awesome as applesauce, but still pretty awesome). Pretty soon, he's going to be peeling his own oranges and eating sushi with chopsticks.

Silas's version of the "Horn Aplenty"

My compliments to the chef!

Our Last Week

This is is Silas's and my last week together before I go back to work. I have really enjoyed my maternity leave and being able to have so much time with him. I'm a little scared about how we will both deal with my working full time starting Monday, but I'm also excited about returning to work, especially given that I haven't actually been at work since August due to my being on bedrest so long before Silas was born. As many of you know, Silas will spend the first two weeks at the Child Care Center at my work, where I'll be able to see him (and nurse him) several times each day if I want to. Starting April 27, Matt will be on paternity leave for the next 18 weeks and will take over the child care/stay-at-home dad/spouse responsibilities, which we are both very excited about. At his request, I am busily compiling lists of various jobs and routines for Matt, including an average day's schedule of napping, eating, and playing; a list of household chores; recipes for meals we eat often; and potential projects for Matt to tackle if he's feeling industrious, including writing some of these blog entries. I'm sure he'll have some great stories to share.

We've had a lot of adventures in the last couple of weeks and I took some fabulous pictures to document those adventures. Unfortunately, I also accidentally deleted all of those pictures before uploading them last night, so, really, you'll just have to take my word for it. We've enjoyed the nice weather and have gone on lots of walks.

Heading out on the town with my Mama and my shades.

Scoping out the ladies and showing off my mad swinging skillz.

We've had playdates with our friends JJ and Sean, Betsy and Sam, and our college friends Alex and Meghan and their future twins, Buster and Guster (Meghan is 14 weeks pregnant, and I'm pretty confident they're not actually naming the babies Buster and Guster, especially given that they don't know the sexes yet). UNC won the NCAA championship, and, although Silas didn't stay up for the game, he practiced his Tarheels cheers and songs and wore his lucky Carolina shirt on each game day. I'm pretty sure his lucky shirt is responsible for our win, honestly.

WHOSE HOUSE???? HEELS HOUSE!!!!

On the developmental front, Silas has finally started sitting up on his own using his arms to support himself. This is known as "tripodding" and Matt has been VERY stressed out about Silas mastering this skill for some time. Silas had tripodded for me for a few seconds here and there early in the week, but was usually too tired or grumpy to demonstrate his new skill for Matt when he got home in the evenings. On Wednesday, however, Matt, Silas and I stopped by the Child Care Center at my work to drop off Silas's paperwork, to get a good tour, and to play for a little while, and Silas took one look at his new buddies Isaac and Mackenzie and their sitting skills (they're both around 7 months) and tripodded like a champion for several minutes while Matt hooted, shouted general words of encouragement, and demanded high fives from every adult in the room. I'm kind of amazed that the Child Care Center ladies are still agreeing to take care of him after that display, but they assure me that they've seen worse.

From the dense foliage of the TinyLove! playmat, one can barely make out a juvenile human practicing holding himself erect in a sitting position.

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? The guy who can SIT BY HIMSELF, that's who!

Ignore this one. Mama just wanted to document my bald spot. Have I mentioned that she's evil?

Regarding napping (also known as "THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE"), Silas has regressed significantly and has refused to nap in his crib for the last couple of weeks, despite my dogged attempts to get him to. Seriously, people, I put him down in his crib for each nap and usually approximately one hour of jibber jabber/fussing/full blown screaming/swaddling/unswaddling/rocking/crying-it-out/singing/walking around later, give up and put him in his swing, carseat, or stroller to get him to sleep. I'm pretty concerned about what is going to happen next week at day care, but I guess we'll just have to see. During our tour of the Center they asked us if Silas was allergic to anything. Matt's response: "Just napping." They can't say we didn't warn them, I guess. Please think good thoughts that Silas gets with the program and naps really well for them next week so that they can all appreciate what a sweet, funny little person he really is.

Seriously, do you think anyone can resist this love machine?

He is also picking up new sounds. Hilariously, as soon as he learns a new consonant, that's pretty much all he says for the next several days. First, he got "da" down. For the next five days, all we heard from him all day long was, "Da dadada DADAda daaaadadada DA DA dada." Obviously he hasn't made the connection that Matt is his "dada," but that hasn't stopped Matt from being very superior about "dada" being uttered before "mama." Now, Silas has moved onto "ba" and everything is "BABABabababaaa ba BAba abbbaBABAba ba" all day long. I'm feeling pretty good that "ma" will be along shortly. Even if not, I'm pretty comfortable with my current position as the favorite (i.e., the food source) to let Matt gloat a little over Silas saying "dada" before "mama"--I'm magnanimous like that.