Surviving The Storm

Tommy's gorgeous smile!

So we all survived the month of September which included the major stressors of starting school, two rounds of Oktoberfest and Quentin and Lisa's wedding...Pheww! Yea October! Tommy's definitely enjoying having a little more free time to just hang around with his sister.

Tommy demonstrating how exhausted we all were!

Not only did we have all of those events but Tommy added another group of friends to his circle when I joined the Wisconsin Athletic Club and brought Tommy to the childcare almost 5 days each week. He seemed to really like it and the caretakers just loved him! They all say he's the sweetest baby and has the best disposition! Unfortunately, even though I take every infection precaution available, its still been impossible to keep Tommy from sharing germs with the other kids...everything goes into his mouth and then when he gets tired he rubs his eyes and Viola! new illness. The day after Quentin and Lisa's wedding, Tommy, Karina and I all came down with runny noses and sore throats (well I just assume Tommy's throat hurt since Karina's and mine did). Tommy got pink eye first eventually in both eyes, then Karina's right eye a couple of days later and finally my right eye two days after that. Karina's eye got goopy just in time for her school photo...boo! All three of us with infections in our right eyes! This was six applications of eye ointment each day (well I guess only five applications, since I didn't have to both of my eyes, hoping that I could keep from spreading it to the left eye, but I had to do both of theirs prophylactically) for at least five days! Then Tommy got another infection in the same eye...the one with the blocked tear duct...it seems so much more susceptible than the other eye!

Here's Tommy trying to smile and get his
red swollen eyes to open normally!

Tommy has become an entirely proficient sitter and now really enjoys lying on his tummy. He's gotten exponentially better at leaning forward while sitting and being able to straighten back up. This makes playing much easier! He does still spend a fair amount of time on his tummy and will actually stay there and play for quite awhile. I figure this can only help him get stronger for eventual crawling.

He still likes the jumper but does this funny "jump, jump, jump, stand" where he suddenly straightens his legs mid-jump and lands jarringly in a standing position and laughs, rather than continuing to jump. His jumping is also impeded by Karina as she seems to be unable to leave Tommy alone in the jumper. She loves to push him as though he's in a swing and twirl him around really fast (much to my dismay) so the suspension cord gets all wound up. Karina's antics at the jumper drive me crazy and result in many threats for timeouts and keep me from wanting to put Tommy in the jumper in the first place! So he's not in there anywhere near as much as Karina was! Also he has a big sister to entertain him while he's "just" sitting and still likes his exersaucer.

On the nutrition front, Tommy's been trying new baby foods every few days and seems to be enjoying them all! He seems interested in holding the spoon himself, just like Karina did, but luckily, also like Karina he can be persuaded to let me feed him if I make enough funny sounds!

As I mentioned before, he loves electronics, so I got him holding the remote...it's even funnier because he happened to be up on the couch after nursing wearing only his diaper, making him look even more like the quintessential male couch potato with the beerbelly (or in his case the milk-belly!)

"Here's my remote control"

"You point it at the TV like this..."

"...or you can just suck on it...that's pretty fun too!"

"Here's my cat, Bart"

He is still quite the talker, and gets into repeating himself when he's made up a phrase he likes. At the after wedding party, he kept saying something like, "Hey di-kah" over and over again. It seemed to be his greeting for everyone as he was passed from relative to relative. As expected everyone just loved him and commented about what a sweet baby he is...and how nice his sister is, too! He has also been saying "Da, da, da, da" but were not sure that he's actually referring to Daddy, yet! Speaking of relatives, he certainly seems to recognize and relate easily to his grandparents and Aunt Beth. He had a great time playing with his cousins, Elsa and Claire at Opa's birthday party!

Sitting with Aunt Beth at Opa's birthday party

Oh, and one last tidbit...he finally got his first tooth (the bottom center right) on October 8th. Karina is so proud of his tooth that she tells everyone...and I mean everyone...that her brother got his first tooth!