4 Months: Doctor's Visit

Well of course our child is very advanced. Everyone thinks so!

He's tracking well for both weight and height (I guess they call it length if he's not standing up), although they'd like to see him put on weight a little faster. We have a strategy for accomplishing that. Meanwhile, we got some new data. It was disappointing, though, because the nurse who took his length measurement just wasn't paying very close attention... she really rushed through it without double-checking if I had him positioned correctly against the little head-thingie. He came out with a length of 25.25". That sounded short to me and Mary, so we measured him again, as accurately as we could, when we got home... twice. We think he's at least .25", maybe as much as .75" taller than the careless nurse registered, so we're going with 25.75" on the chart. Give it an asterisk, just to be rigorous.



He's still 25th percentile for weight, and he's now 60th percentile for length. That makes him the 3rd to 6th percentile for weight/length; or, as we like to say it, he's in the 94th to the 97th percentile for skinniness.

My prediction is that he'll soon tip the scales at least in the 33rd percentile for weight. As I mentioned... we have a plan.

The good news is that he's healthy, thriving, and everyone thinks he's the coolest. Took three more mean jabs in the legs—boosters for his immunizations—and only cried for a few minutes afterwards. Broke our hearts to see him in such pain, as it always does. But he's back home and, so far, happy. Last time, that didn't last long, but we have high hopes. He's twice as mature now as he was back then.

4 Months: One Third Birthday Boy

August is 4 months old today!





We're excited because this also happens to be the day of his 4-month pediatrician visit, which means we get renewed accurate data on his height and weight progress. This is especially important to us this time around because, aside from my being a data geek, we're also interested to see whether his weird shift from "average" to "lanky" has reversed itself. Back at 8 weeks he was more or less at the 50th percentile for both height and weight. Then, at 3 months, he was 75th percentile for height, but 25th percentile for height. Mary and I are both tall and reasonably slender, so this ratio might not have surprised us, except that he started out "average".

These past couple of weeks he seems to have had some kind of growth spurt, in both dimensions. I expect he'll ease back toward the center of the bell curve, on both measures, but not completely return to 50 on either. We'll see. I'll post an update to the growth chart... because I know this kind of thing is galvanizing to the general public.

3 Months: Fly Boy

Sequence of photos from yesterday. August does like to "fly". Mary took a bunch of pictures...








And from those, I stitched together a nice Fly Boy tripych (click for larger version):

3 Months: Mary's Boys

Beautiful day in Boston today. We took a walk, the whole family, and Mary snapped a few photos of her guys:





Yes, those are socks on his hands, but if you can think of a better way to keep his little hands warm when mittens are overkill, then scoff if you will!

3 Months: Happy Bloggiversary

It's been exactly one year since my first post in this blog. I started blogging about pending fatherhood long before we had announced that Mary was pregnant. Obviously, readership rose dramatically after we made the announcement!

So it's one year and 141 posts later, and we're still going strong. That's one post every 2.6 days or so. I only implemented my analytics capabilities in September of last year, but since then, the most popular post to the blog has been my lists of great (and not so great) cowboy names. Since January 16, that post has been visited about 1.5 times per day by people searching Google for kid-naming fodder. Baby-naming posts in general have been far more popular than other topics including photos.

Still, more than half the page views are from family and friends just visiting the front page to see if there's any new August content. He definitely has a public, so I'll absolutely keep blogging: August's public won't be denied!

3 Months: At Home With August

3 Months: What I Missed

I went out of town for two nights this week. While I was sitting in the airport Wednesday waiting for my flight, I was on the phone with Mary, who of course was hanging out with August as he did his Jungle Gym exercises. Right in the middle of a sentence, Mary said "he just rolled over!". It seems he was able to flip from his back onto his belly. And I missed it!

Serves me right for abandoning my boy (apologies to Daniel Day Lewis).

3 Months: Charm Child

You can't resist his charms.


Charm Child, don't try to manipulate our feelings with your charms!

3 Months: Gym Video

3 Months: Blast From The Past

From very early on I've thought August looked quite a bit like me, especially like me when I was a baby. Well, courtesy of my sister Lydia, who sent up some photo albums from my parents' archives, here are some pictures of me... we're not entirely sure when these were taken, but Mary thinks I look about two years old.







I have to confess the likeness isn't as close as it had been in my imagination. But it's there.

3 Months: Nap Time

3 Months: Conflicting Advice

Starting during pregnancy, we were surprised by the amount of conflicting parenting and pregnancy advice that's out there. In the "old days" before the Internet, young parents had recourse to any number of books, but I'd be surprised if they ever regularly consulted more than two or three different sources of information. Today we have the Internet, and that means even more advice, and of course, much of it conflicting.

Some of the more judgmental books we own would categorize our style as "accidental parenting": giving the kid what he wants whenever he seems to want it. Not allowing him to cry if we can help it. Not keeping him on a rigid schedule.

Our routine consists of a loose, regular time for going to bed, a loose time-frame for waking up, and naps as he'll take 'em. We've instituted a sort-of-regular bath time for nights that he has one. That's about it.

Many of our books advise a different path: they say kids need a regular schedule so they'll know what to expect. Makes 'em feel secure. So we've tried, every so often, to put the kid on a schedule. It's awkward for us, because we're not particularly regimented ourselves. But I have to say we're far more tolerant of it than August is.

August won't be "put down" for a nap until he's tired (very tired... he fights sleep like his old man does). Attempts to do so result in discord, escalating from whining, to grunting, to crying, to anger, and finally, despair... the worst of all. We've tried a variety of methods for accomplishing the art of the put-to-sleep, but nothing works unless the boy is good and ready.

Same with feeding. This kid eats frequently, in small doses. The ideal of the regular, periodic "feeding session"—where he actively feeds every three to four hours for 20-45 minutes—is foreign to us. He fusses when he's hungry, he eats for food and comfort for anything between 10 and 45 minutes, and then he's placid. He does this every one or two hours or so. Sometimes he doesn't want to go 30 minutes between feedings. Other times he can hang out two or more hours, but it's not predictable. We've tried to stretch the times between feeding, but such attempts have resulted in the same escalating unhappiness I described above, eventually leading to a violent objection on the boy's part which we just can't ignore... we don't like to let the boy cry. We don't like to see him sad, and when he's very sad, it's heartbreaking.

So what are parents to do when their best advice tells them they're doing it all wrong, and they find they really can't (or don't want) to do it "right"? Get on the Internet, of course, and find some advice that matches what you're already doing. For us, we've found this expert, Dr. Bill Sears, whose advice is to follow queues, rather than setup a rigid schedule. While we haven't explored it all in detail yet, it mostly makes sense to us. And now we feel like good parents again! Thank you, Internet... what would we do without you?

3 Months: Name Game - Flapper Names

As I've mentioned before, I get a lot of traffic to this site from people searching Google for "flapper names". I did some research today and found out why... there's really nowhere on the web, that I can find, where flapper names are listed—neither specific, famous flappers nor a generalized list of flapper-sounding names.

So here is the beginning of a list of flapper names. Some of these are inspired by actual flappers (Isadora), or fictional flappers (Daisy), and some are just names that sound to me like they'd work well for a flapper girl of the 1920's.

Please do comment with suggestions for additions.

Waldron's list of Great Flapper Names:

• Daisy
• Dixie
• Evelyn
• Fanny
• Frances
• Isadora
• Lillian
• Louisa
• Norma
• Olive
• Zelda

Update: we should also include

• Fern
  

3 Months: The Plant Whisperer

3 Months: Photos

A couple of photos from this afternoon's activity session...

Leg lifts:



Fisticuffs:

3 Months: New Toys

There are some new toys in the house. Some for August, and some for us.

First, we have this brand new, jungle-themed activity mat thing, which is awesome, and which August approves of quite thoroughly:

Then, I ordered the coolest little video camera in the world, the Flip Video, from Pure Digital.



This thing is dead simple to use, integrates beautifully with my Mac, and costs only $140 for the 1-hour of video version.

Combine the two, and you get to capture awesome moments like the following:

3 Months: Birthday Boy

On or about this day in 2001, our dog Watson was born. We recognize April Fool's Day as an apt birthday for him, so today he turns seven.



Watson came to me a few months before I met Mary. I thought it was something of a shame that he should live with me, a bachelor, when he would clearly be a perfect family dog—one that can be trusted with the kids, no matter what kind of abuse they might accidentally dish-out.

When we found out we were having August I was happy that Watson would get to fill the role of Family Dog, even if only for a while. He's seven today. If he lives to age 12, which is a fairly long life for a big Lab (Watson's 100lbs), he'll live until August is five. I'm hoping that'll be long enough that our son will be impressed with an image of a big, happy, loving Lab as his "prototypical dog". Our family had a wonderful yellow Lab who served that role for me, and it resulted in a life-long love of dogs in general, and Labs in particular. I think we're richer for having these friends in our lives, and I hope this gentle introduction will set August up for a future of happy canine companionship.

So today it's all about Watson. A couple of pictures are here, and he has his own page, as well.

Hang out on the lawn mode:


Chase ball and swim mode: