Bradley Birth Class Reunion & Armenian Fest

Going to our Bradley reunion was a sort of surreal experience for me, because I remember seeing photos in my baby book of my parents going to their Lamaze reunion. And it always struck me because one of those babies went on to become Megan Mooney, a girl I went to school with for elementary and middle school.

So their was a weird sense of looking forward and backward in time as we headed off to our Bradley reunion. We'd agreed to meet central in the city, so we were meeting at the Lincoln Park Conservatory at the Lincoln Park Zoo. We parked early so we had time to take in the plants at the Conservatory before meeting up with everyone. Afterwards our plan was to stroll around the zoo for a while before heading up to Wisconsin for the Armenian picnic the next day.

In his little animals onesie for his first trip to the zoo. And you can tell how excited he is. (Notice the conservatory in the background)

A kiss from Daddy.

With our Bradley instructor, Julie.

Our Bradley friend David, with his daughter. She was born (full term) just a week before Liam.

His first little trip to the zoo, sleeping in front of the zebras.

Armenian Picnic

Richard Hagopian lived down the street from me when I was little, and he was my first husband (married with a candy ring at the ripe old age of six).

Richard, Erin, Terry & Liam in front of the Armenian flag that always hangs behind my family (Chardukian) table.

Liam wearing his Armenian-colored "Grandpa is my Hero" onesie in honor of Grandpa Jeff for Armenian picnic.

The Chicago Architecture Tour

I've wanted to do the Chicago Architecture Tour since I was in college. It just seems like one of those things that even the locals do and rave about. So one weekend when my mom and dad were in town, we all drove downtown to take the river cruise.

The first big shock was that while we were standing in line (with Liam napping in the moby wrap strapped to my chest) one of the workers comes up to me and explains that we actually have to pay for a full priced ticket for Liam or they won't let us on the boat. She says it in a really nice, "please don't shoot the messenger" tone. If she wasnt so nice (and so not at fault for the policy) I would have fallen over incredulous. It was just so patently ridiculous. But she went with me to the ticket window, and advocated on our behalf, saying that because I was wearing him and he wasnt taking up space, they should comp the ticket. Eventually the ticket window guy agreed, but boy would I have been pissed to put out all that cash for a not-yet-6-month-old kid to go on the tour! They really ought to warn people about that on their webpage. It would have been cheaper and easier for us to just hire a babysitter for that time.

The tour wound up being fun and interesting, and it was a good time spent with Grandma and Grandpa Schultz. I was glad to check another Chicago classic off my "to-do" list.

It was a sunny day, so we experiment with some sunglasses (he is confused by them).

Grandma and Grandpa Schultz were there too!

We got to hear more about the history and architectural theory of some of Chicago's landmark buildings.

Liam was "supposed" to nap while I wore him in the moby wrap, but instead he got all interested in looking around and wouldn't sleep, but being tired and hot made him crabby, so I took him downstairs where it was cooler.

Totally pooped out.

And his first solid food is...

...PEAS!

Okay, so it wasn't a big vote getter in the polls, but Terry and I both felt really drawn to the idea of bright green mushy peas. There is one school of thought that recommends introducing your baby to vegetables before fruits, because otherwise they will so prefer the sweetness of fruits that they won't take the veggies. (The other school of thought says that breastmilk is naturally sweet, and high fructose corn syrup is the #1 ingredient in most babyfood formulas, so kids already prefer sweets from birth). Regardless, we figured at least it couldn't hurt to do veggies first.

And there is something super delightful about the joyful spring green of newly steamed peas that just seems right when smeared all over a baby's face.

It has been really fun, and shockingly easy, to prepare organic babyfood for Liam from scratch at home. Somehow I was under the mistaken impression that making babyfood was something like the culinary equivalent of souffle paired with the scientific rigor of curing cancer.

Turns out not. Turns out all you need is a $1.50 for a one pound bag of frozen organic peas at Whole Foods, a hand held wand blender ($12-15), something to blend in, a pot or steamer or microwave, and water or formula or breastmilk to thin it out to the right consistency. The whole process takes me about 5-9 minutes, and I get food for him for the whole week. Three days worth of it goes into the fridge and the rest get frozen in an ice-cube tray that provides convenient portion sizes. Once frozen, I transfer the food cubes to a little tupperware that I mark with the date and what it is. Liam has a big appetite and really likes food, so he takes 2 cubes (which works out to about 2 Tbsp or close to 1/4 cup) each day. So my $1.50 bag of peas wound up producing about 8 full servings of babyfood. And it was organic. Did I mention it was only $1.50? And that the teeeny tiny jars of organic baby food go for a dollar per jar?

I have seriously no idea why everyone doesn't do this. I will be forever thankful to Ian's sister Meghan Fraser for opening my eyes to making your own, and to Ian and Sian who got us a little book that gives all the details of how to do it, and even recipes for what to try out when.

The biggest vote-getter by far was sweet potato with 7 votes. After that carrot (3) and two brave souls bucked the orange veg trend and voted for the darling green (and easily digestible) zucchini. After I put up the poll, I discovered that according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, you shouldn't make babyfood from carrots at home because certain cultiation conditions can lead to excess nitrates that produce anemia in babies. Who knew? So sadly no carrots, or I would have been whipping up some peas and carrots in a heartbeat.

After four days of peas we moved on to zucchini and then onto everyone's favorite: sweet potato! Liam likes the peas just fine, he doesn't seem to love the zucchini, and he adores the sweet potato (as everyone predicted). I believe we have a video clip of him crooning his way through the entire feeding, and leaning forward for more so fast I could barely get the spoon there fast enough to keep him happy. Unfortunately between two conferences for me and the upcoming move, I suspect we may be in Nashville before I can download, format and upload the video footage.

But until then, a study in peas...

Wow, that's surprising. This is not rice cereal.

Hmm, I'm gonna have to think about that one.

Ok, I love it!

Liam Learns to Eat Rice Cereal

Our pediatrician, Dr. Andy, told us to check it with him by phone when Liam turned five months old so we could talk about how he was doing with sleeping (not well at the time) and about possibly starting some solid foods. Dr. Andy gave us the go-ahead to start him on rice cereal very thinned with formula. We gave him a little bit at first to help him get used to the taste and texture and process of eating with a spoon. He looked horribly affronted at first, but eventually came around to the idea. Which was a good thing, because doing well with the rice cereal was the condition for moving onto more exciting foods.

Rice cereal, at first:

So let me get this straight, the rice cereal is meant to improve my complexion, right? Like an oatmeal facemask or something?

So this inconvenient metal thing goes in my mouth and then what? where's the tasty milk? This is a strange new system you people have dreamed up.

But eventually:

Okay, I get it. You want most of this stuff inside my mouth.

I like holding the spoon myself. Rice cereal makes me happy (and sleep through the night!)

Yeah, I'm awesome. I got this spoon thing covered.

We're REALLY rolling (and it makes mommy nervous)

Friday Grandma Schultz came down. We all took Liam to the newly opened Five Guys burgers in Rogers Park. Then after Grammy left, my childhood friend Jenni came to stay with us and meet Liam for the first time. He ate rice cereal, during which he flirted with Jenni the whole time. This mostly consisted of broad grins with a mouth full of food. No manners that kid. I could already hear boyish jokes about "you like seafood? see food."

After he was fast asleep, we watched "Phoebe in Neverland" (which was amazing, you can stream it on netflix). I went in to check on Liam and this is what I found...

Liam, proving he's finally mastered rolling from back to tummy.

And when I put him in his crib for a nap the next morning, the first thing he did was flip right over.

Self proscribed tummy time.

He will now do it pretty regularly. Yesterday at Ravinia he rolled over on the picnic blanket to get a better look at Sian, Ian, Dustin and Becky.

But the big problem is that he does it all the time at night. It makes me nervous as heck after reading an article on how "unaccustomed tummy sleep" puts a kid at nine times greater risk of SIDS. And while the risk drops off around 6 months, it still happens up to one year. And often as he sleeps on his tummy his face is pointed towards his mattress, which makes me worry he won't get enough air (one theory on what causes SIDS). So last night, for example, I caught him tummy sleeping four times and rolled him gently back onto his back.

Today when the peds office opens we'll check in on whether I'm worrying unnecessarily. And we'll practice tummy time hoping he learns to roll back from his tummy to his back.

Update: I called the pediatrician's office today. The nurse tells me that until he can roll himself back over onto his back at will, we are supposed to use some kind of sleep positioner. So right now he's got tightly rolled receiving blankets strapped to either side of his trunk (using his swaddler) to keep him in place on his back, and we're redoubling rolling efforts during the daytime.

The Doctor is IN (or "I love reading, because it is tasty and delicious!")

Consider this fair warning: you probably should have your Depends in place before you get to the last photo, cause Terry and I pretty much wet ourselves when we saw it.

Liam has a few board books we read to him often, but he also loves to play with this soft book from Dr Seuss called "The Circus McGurkiss 123" that has all sorts of squeaks and rattles and parts that move.

Liam in his corner of the couch "throne" playing with atomic ball and doing a little reading from Circus McGurkiss

Hi there! This is fun!

Oh good joke doctor Seuss! You funny man you.

Hmm, this reading thing is complicated

You are what you eat.

Guh. That is not as tasty as sweet potato.

Happy baby.

And finally, brace yourselves...

The doctor is IN. Now that I've done all that reading, I'm smart like Daddy!

Grammy Mac visits!

Terry's mom Denyse came to visit us for a few days in July. It was wonderful because she actually stayed with us at the house, so we got to monopolize her time. Although she did sleep on a futon on the floor, so maybe not so wonderful for her back. But she was there for Liam's first ever taste of real food (photos and video forthcoming, I swear). And one day she and Terry took Liam downtown to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see some wild cool new exhibits. Terry reports that Liam really grooved on the ones that involved mirros (he's so into himself in the mirror, its hysterical) and crazy colorful lights.

Here's a couple of cute pictures of Liam with his Grandma McDonnell...

He sleeps through the night!

Just a quick one: that magical day has finally arrived. For the first time last night Liam slept solidly through the night. He had his rice cereal and bottle and went to bed around 6:30 pm and didn't wake up until 5:15 am. What a champ.

Unfortunately I woke up at 1:30 am and couldn't get back to sleep until 5 am. So I still feel like roadkill. But hopefully he'll keep up his new-found skill and I will adjust.

Brief update on food and sleep

The last four nights Liam has eaten a quarter cup of rice cereal before bed (1 Tbsp of the rice cereal flakes plus 1.5 oz of formula). He always makes a weird unhappy face when we start, and he spits some out early on, but then he gets into it, and opens his mouth when the spoon comes towards him. Once he gets going he still sometimes spills it out the front of his mouth, but it has more the look of a kid who hasnt mastered this whole spoon eating thing than actively spitting it out.

The doctor said that after he went four nights of tolerating the rice cereal well we could move on to other solid foods, introducing one new food every four days. That means technically we could start tonight, but I think we are going to do one more night of rice cereal so that Grandma Denyse (who comes to town tomorrow) can be there to share in the fun of his first REAL real food feeding.

We are excited about exposing him to a world of new tastes, and will eagerly hit up Whole Foods tomorrow for some wholesome organic produce. Be sure to vote in our little poll to the left there if you want to share your thoughts for what Liam's first little food should be.

On a related note, this morning I checked facebook to discover that an old high school friend with triplets born two weeks after Liam finally got all three of her boys to sleep through the night (11 hours straight). I was totally thrilled for her, but also green with envy. Despite my envy, I have to celebrate because last night was his best night of sleep ever. For the past few days he has gotten himself onto much more of a schedule, taking 5.5 or 6 ounces every three hours through the day, then 1/4 cup of rice cereal at night followed by a 5 ounce bottle (although last night he didnt finish the bottle). Last night he went to bed at 6:30 pm, and then was a bit restless at 10:30 but Terry got him settled back down without a bottle. Terry fed him once in the middle of the night around 1:30 or 2 am and then he didn't wake me up until 6:45. Woohoo!

Fingers crossed that this is a sign of good things to come. Because I'm really not looking forward to "sleep training" him with tears and whatnot, but on the other hand, he simply must sleep through the night sometime before he is 2 years old. I cant take another year and a half of only sleeping 5 hours a night. Last night was glorious: I crashed out at 8:30 pm myself, and woke up at 4 like clockwork to check on the little man, then dozed a bit restlessly until he woke up at 6:45. I still feel tired, but one night does not make up for the cumulative loss of five months.

Play Time on the Mat, Then & Now (3 VIDEOS)

The one constant in the past couple months has been Liam's love of his little playmat (thank you Rachel a thousand times over for the amazing gift!). When I got the footage off the video camera there were three different clips of him enjoying his mat. It was amazing to see the changes in his ability to play so clearly over time.

I suppose to the average viewer there's just a whole lot of nothing going on in these clips. They aren't going to be big hits on Youtube or win America's Funniest Home Video or anything. But they are these wonderful preserved moments of the day to day times with Liam, and how quickly he is changing. So they are here for the friends and grandparents who don't get to see him every day. And to preserve for our own memories, so we can revisit his little moments year from now.

The first clip is from early May and mostly just shows him hanging out and taking swaps at the dangling animals. Its sort of a long clip of him doing nothing, so feel free to fast forward. At the end of the clip I make his favorite little red bird chirp (thanks to my Aunt Randi for such an engaging gift). You can see him starting to process, because after each chirp a little flicker of excitement pass his face. In this one he's wearing a darling little organic sleeper suit from Terry's old college roomate Jason, and his wife Sarah (the parents of Davis, seen in the 7th Inning Stretch Video at Liam's first cubs game).



Early in the morning on Father's Day, while Daddy was still sleeping in, Liam plays on his play mat. He's rocking the super cute "crazy monkey" diaper from my Aunt Julie. If you listen closely at one point you can even hear the crazy pterodactyl sound he was working on for most of mid-June.



By the end of June he had developed the ability to half roll, and was busy showing off his skills on the mat. You can also see him take some meaty grabs at the dangling animal, grasping them in his tiny fist from time to time. This was the last day he could wear the little size small FuzziBunz diaper. Now he's onto the mediums!

Liam Bottle Feeding: Holding Hands and Holding Bottle (2 Videos)

Here's a fun little one, just a snippit of regular daily life around here. He first one shows Liam drinking his bottle while he holds his own hands, and then shows off his standing abilities. The second one shows him with his newfound ability to "hold" his bottle with his own hands.

Let's Give Sitting a Try

We've been holding Liam in a seated position on our laps for some time, giving him some support on the trunk or under the arms. So one morning when he was doing particularly well I got the idea to let him try to do it on his own, with a little help from the Boppy pillow.

He did a pretty good job, just a little slumping to the side.



This early success then paved the way for his first experience using a high chair at a restaurant in Nashville. Again, some definite slumping, but not a total failure.

First Tickles (Video)

One day I was getting ready while Terry was playing with Liam on our bed, and I heard Liam start to regularly "coo." Terry was kissing him on his side by his hips right where his chubby little ham hock meets his belly. And each and every time he kissed him there, Liam cooed his little laugh. It was the very first time that either of us had ever done something that could so routinely get a laugh out of him. In other words, it was parental glory. And he's pretty darn adorable cooing like that.

I like to think of it as Liam's first ever experience being tickled.

Liam Rattle

Here's a little movie of Liam when he was first figuring out his rattle, long before he mastered two-handed play (ok, so "mastered" might be an overstatement). You can see that he shakes the hand with the rattle much more often than he moves the non-rattle hand, and he seems to check out the colorful rattle to see what's going on.

Starting solid foods! (aka rice cereal bath)

He is now taking a little bit of rice cereal mixed with formula before bedtime each night. This began as a really hysterical event where he spit it out, dribbled it out, looked seriously affronted by this inferior "spoon" technology we were foisting on him He has such a darn expressive face, and his arched eyebrows and vague shadow of discontent seemed to say: what is wrong with you people and this stupid little metal thing? hey, where'd that amazing bottle thing go? why aren't we using that?

That first night he wound up wearing most of it. I think I had to swab some out of his nose even. He started crying about halfway through the tiny serving (about 1.5-2 Tbsp) so we dumped the rest into his bottle and fed him his night bottle.

The second night was marginally better, but still no great triumph. The third night was a little better. He actually leaned forward with his mouth open each time, but then when he made contact with the spoon and the rice cereal his face screwed up into a look of consternation. He would reach up and grab the spoon in his little fist while I was trying to feed him.

The fourth night was something of a breakthrough. He's still no great expert at the whole spoon thing, so I spend a lot of time putting the food in his mouth, then scooping it up off his chin and putting it in again. But last night he finished his entire serving without crying or losing it. What a champ! And he seems to get the connection between the spoon and eating, because when he holds the spoon in his own hand, he puts the big round end into his mouth, but never the other way around.

Terry and I are both super excited to move into the realm of food. The pediatrician says that after four straight days of him doing well on rice cereal (eating the whole thing without negative reaction), we can move on to introducing pureed veggies! So if all goes well tonight, we can do veggies as soon as tomorrow. It is just another step on the road of watching our little guy become a little person. And watching him experience the world for the first time is a precious and wonderful thing.

Random details from the texture of life

Sometimes I just feel like I want to get down the little details that seem so much a part of the texture of life now, because I can feel already that even ten years from now I might not remember. I had all the best intentions of keeping a diary from pregnancy through... I don't know...college? And as soon as the not sleeping and working and keeping baby alive became a reality I realized I just didn't have the time or presence of mind to do that.

I have worked on Liam's baby book a fair amount already, mostly because I remember LOVING my baby book from a very young age. Maybe it was a particularly time-distended form of narcissism, but I just loved looking at those pictures of me young, of my parents smiling at me, seeing what people wore then, reading what I was like, what I did. So I have some of his pages lovingly assembled already, and I'm geeked out in advance about being able to fill in those pages for "first halloween" or "first christmas" and eventually (gasp) "first day at school" and more.

But I also realized that I should probably forgive myself for my inability to keep a journal, because essentially this blog is not only for you all, friends and family far and wide, but also for us in the future. Like today it is a cold rainy Fourth of July in Chicago. Terry took Liam downtown to the Art Institute to see the new modern wing. Liam seems to be a fan of art. He likes to stare at the paintings we have in our house from Ghana and his Aunt Bri. When Terry printed out different black and white images for him as a newborn, his favorite to stare at was one from Piet Mondrian. Mondrian is nice enough, and there are some abstract works that I like. But mostly I can't stand art that looks like my infant son could have done it, so I am using my time to work on a dissertation chapter.

So here are some random thoughts that I've been loving about our little family lately:

Nicknames come and go. We don't use "gremlin" or "fillet o'fish" so much anymore. Now if he's a cute sweet little guy we call him "the bugger" or sometimes "the little bugger." If he's being crabby or fussy for reasons we find confusing (this is probably our fault, not his) we call him "the critter" which can also be usefully turned into an adjective, as in "he was really critterific last night."

He still LOVES his play gym. We rotate in and out different things to hang from the top to keep him interested. Totally without warning a few days ago he became a manic "side roller." While in his crib or on his back in the gym he whips his legs up and then over to the side. This movement is usually enough to allow him to play footsie with the bars of his crib or the arches of his play mat. Often he gets his top half mostly over as well. So but for that tricky arm underneath him this would be a roll. And once he mastered this little side move, suddenly he was constantly doing it. So when I put him into bed at 6 pm last night I put him with his head to the right side of the crib. When I checked on him at 10 his head was facing the other direction. Neither Terry nor I had moved him, he'd just squirmed himself around. Once in the middle of the night he was making a bunch of noise and when I went in I found him perpendicular in his crib, laying the short way across. Like Austin Powers trying to make a y-turn in a short space, Liam was sort of stuck half way through his super rotation. I gently reoriented him the correct way in the crib and he went peacefully back to sleep.

Terry will often report that in the middle of the night he actually has started sleeping on his side while sucking his fist, fingers or thumb. He looks incredibly darling like this, so the two of us with stand quietly at Liam's door peeking in and gushing in hushed voices about what a cute little bugger he is. We had friends over for dinner last night, and I actually dragged some of the other ladies to the door to peek in just to bask in his cuteness, as he lay there on his side sleeping peacefully.

For about a week and a half or so he has also taken to "holding" his bottle while being fed. This is not as glamorous as it maybe sounds. It is a lot more like having a druken copilot. But when he is sucking eagerly on the bottle with his little hand holding it next to mine there is something very sweet about it.

And even before he took to holding it while eating, he learned how to swat it away when he was done. Before this when he was done he would purse his lips shut and if you kept pursuing him and got it back into his mouth he'd make an irritated face and push the nipple out with his tongue. He'd even turn his head to the side to avoid the bottle. And then came the hand swipe. At first I thought it was just random movement, because his hands are always flying this way and that. But then I realized that the hand swatting would happen once or twice when I tried to re-offer him a bottle towards the end. Then if I kept it up the hand swatting would happen in coordination with any of the other signs of being done: pursed lips, turning head, irritated face.

Liam's First 7th Inning Stretch (Video!)

Hopefully I'll get my act together in the next couple of weeks and post some of the little video snippits we've been taking of our favorite chubster. This first video comes to us courtesy of Emily, who had her fancy camera at the ready when Liam went to his first ever Cubs game this spring. You'll also see Davis Baker, and his parents Jason and Sarah. Jason is a college roommate of Terry's, and their baby Davis was born five months before Liam.

So here it is, a sort of confused but alert little baby rooting for the Cubbies.