New favorite picture

This is my new favorite picture of Andrew. He has lost that newborn look and moved into the infant stage. His eyes look dark in this picture but are still blue so far, although I think they are changing to green. AJ's uncles have nicknamed this the Zoolander picture. I haven't seen the movie, but apparently the reference is to making a particularly funny modeling face.

Farmers Market

As a big fan of Farmers Markets, I have been taking AJ for the past few weeks on the theory that if he grows up going to them, he will develop a love for them. Joe is not a fan (he views it as inefficient and it involves shopping, two of the deadliest sins in his book), so I go with AJ's Grandma and Grandpa Liss. AJ is wearing his Hawaiian shirt in the photo, which combined with his current Friar Tuck hair line makes him look like a mini middle-aged man in the midst of a midlife crisis. Red ferrari not included.

Playtime

AJ has started to be more into playtime recently as his motor skills start their very preliminary stages of development. His favorite toy at the moment is his rainforest bouncer pictured above. It has little noises and lights that are triggered by hitting a parrot or a monkey. I am pretty sure that AJ is just randomly hitting these things without realizing the concept of causation, but his eyes still bug out with surprise and delight every time he triggers something. He lets out happy little squeals periodically for up to half an hour at a time when he is in this thing.

Smile!

A couple of weeks ago, AJ smiled at me for the first time. I called Joe at work to tell him that my job satisfaction as a mom had just increased 110%. AJ smiled three times in a row that morning and then gave us nothing for the next week. In the past week to 10 days, however, he has started smiling a lot and smiles at more people. Despite lots of trying, I can't seem to capture on camera the exact moment when AJ smiles. I tend to either get the big open mouth that he does right before smiling or the lame little half-grin that is left after the smile fades. AJ's Aunt Annie was able to get a good picture of his real smile, and I will post that one as soon as I get it from her.

Baby Om

AJ and I are going to a weekly Baby Yoga class. It gives us an excuse to get out of the house and a chance to meet some other moms and babies. The yoga is modified so that we use our babies as a prop in some of the poses, and some of the class is not real yoga but is just for fun, like today's "baby dance party" to Aretha Franklin music. There is a big age range in the babies in the class, and I love seeing the 3 month, 6 month and 9 month olds to get a preview of the fun things that AJ will be able to do in the coming year. There is a super-energetic 9 month old in the class who is crawling and exploring everything. She loved it today when her mom was swinging her in big arcs from side-to-side like a pendulum, and she does this cute thing where she coughs because she likes to hear the sound of her own voice.

AJ is wearing his yoga pants in the picture above. Ommm....

AJ's Mentor

Puppy Power! AJ's Uncle Will came home this weekend with a new puppy who he named Wrigley. The neighbor's boy, who is 4 years old, thought the puppy's name was Wiggly, which is very logical based on the puppy's enthusiastic reaction to everything. When we introduced AJ to Wrigley today, Wrigely immediately stole AJ's pacifier and started sucking on it like a baby. Since AJ has had a hard time figuring out how the use the pacifer, we joked that we needed Wrigley to train AJ.

Grandma Julie's Visit

Joe had to work all weekend, so AJ's Grandma Julie graciously agreed to come at the last minute to help me with the little guy, as well as to give me some encouragement as we try to get AJ moving toward a more regular schedule. Having a child of my own gives me so much appreciation for my mom, who had three children ages 3 and younger when she lived on a farm with challenges like a well that would occasionally run dry. I don't know how she did it with two children, much less three small ones, and she managed to keep her sense of humor intact and have a lot of patience with us. Mom had some good suggestions for making meals and snacks ahead of time on the weekends or at night when he sleeps so that time spent on food prep during the day is minimal. And my mom reiterated great advice that I have heard from other people to enjoy spending time with the baby rather than obsessing with housework.

Mom loves music and made up a song about AJ that she sang for him when she was here. We had an idea that she should offer her services to compose custom lullabies about babies that incorporate lyrics about the child, such as references to family members, pets, and the town where the baby lives. If anyone is interested in a custom lullaby for their baby, let me know.

For his part, AJ charmed mom by smiling for her several times. I was sad to see mom go today when she had to leave, but we have another visit planned in two weeks that I am looking forward to.

Concert in the Park

These last two Fridays we have gone to our town's concert in the park where the local symphony plays in the evening and everyone brings a picnic and wine. It is a relaxing way to start the weekend. Joe has been stuck working these last two Friday evenings, so AJ and I have gone with Grandma and Grandpa Liss and Uncle Dave, as well as some other family friends. Uncle Dave was holding AJ this week when a woman came up to him and asked him how old his baby was. It was very amusing to see 22 year-old Dave's flustered reaction as he quickly explained that AJ was not his child!

That guy has some [insert my maiden name here] in him...

Joe recently made the observation that AJ "definitely has some [insert my maiden name here] in him" because he is a night owl. [Insert my maiden name here] (and especially my grandpa and dad) are known for staying up late at night and for not being particularly early risers, although in recent years my grandpa has become an early riser to hunt for Hot Wheels when his favorite stores open. As a general rule, however, we are definitely night owls, not morning larks. [insert my maiden name here] also love to read, and when we get into a good book, we often will stay up late at night reading (or sometimes even all night if the book is really good). Last week when Joe was on his first business trip, I was nervous about handling the little guy on my own, especially at night. Around the same time, I started reading a historical fiction book, my favorite genre, and got into a book on English history during the time of Henry the VIII called The Other Boelyn Girl. And I pulled a [insert my maiden name here] when I stayed up after AJ's midnight feeding reading in bed until 3 a.m. I regretted it the next day when I was wiped out and didn't have any backup help! But I also felt like I was back to my old pre-baby self.

Anyway, Joe says AJ has a little Leniton in him because AJ hates going to bed and because AJ and I are often still snuggled in bed in the morning when Joe leaves for work. Joe catches the train for work each morning sometime between 5 and 7 am, depending on how much work he has on his plate that morning. I think Joe is a little envious when he sees AJ and I still sacked out while he has to get into his corporate uniform and trudge into the salt mines. Last night I stayed up late to get this blog set up for the first time, and AJ and I slept in this morning until 10:00! In honor of the fact that AJ has a little Leniton in him, I am posting some pictures of AJ with some of his favorite Lenitons.

Daddy's First Bath (7-18-07)

Last night Joe gave AJ a bath for the first time. We have been trying to figure out ways for Joe to feel more involved with AJ, since he goes to work in the morning before AJ and I get up and often has to work late or travel out of town. It has been frustrating for Joe, because AJ is usually in his fussy stage during the hour or two that Joe gets to see him every day, and I hate that Joe misses out on all the great moments when AJ is so happy. So we decided to try to have bath time in the evening, rather than in the morning, because AJ loves his bath. It was great to see the two of them together having fun last night. It is true that dads do things different than moms. For example, Joe likes to shake AJ upside-down when he is fussy and tell him he is shaking all of AJ's lunch money out. With the bath, while I am very careful not to get any water near AJ's face because it might upset him, Joe started a "water fight" with AJ in the tub last night by spraying him with the vegetable sprayer from the kitchen sink. Water definitely got on his face. But they had a great time!

One Month Update

AJ had his one month checkup at the pediatrician on July 11th. He is now 24 inches long (two feet!) and 11 lbs, 8 oz. He is in the 99th percentile on the growth chart for height, so if infant height correlates to adult height, it looks like AJ is going to be tall like his daddy. We have been watching old Liss family home videos recently, since we just had them converted to DVD, and there are some hilarious ones of Joe playing basketball in junior high wearing shorts that are so short that they look like underwear, especially with his extremely long teenage legs sprouting out of them. It reminds me of that recent T Mobile commercial featuring Charles Barkley and Dwyane Wade.

The second photo above is one that I took on the advice of my friend, Corey, who suggested taking a picture of AJ each month in the same location next to the same prop so that we can track his growth in pictures. We will do it again each month.

Iowa Visit

This week we made the first of what are sure to be many trips to Iowa to visit my family. This visit was also special because it was the first time that AJ met his great-grandparents on my side, my Grandma and Grandpa Leniton, and it was our chance for AJ to meet his Aunt Nicki and Uncle Brett before they move to Santiago, Chile on July 7th to teach at an international school for two years. We are so excited for them!

The highlights of the trip were Great-Grandpa Leniton's first diaper change EVER (after four kids and eight grandkids), asking my grandma for parenting advice, having our four-generation family picture taken, and seeing my mom, Grandma Julie, with AJ again. I especially love hearing her sing to him. Joe's family recently had all of their old home videos converted to DVD, and my mom was commenting that she was so sad that our family didn't make any home movies when my siblings and I were little. Seeing my mom with a baby recreated some of what that must have been like for us.

Fairy Godmother

This weekend AJ's godmother, Kim, came to Chicago to visit us--yea! I have known Kim since we were two years old, but I had never really seen her around kids. I had forgotten that she worked at a daycare back in the day and was really impressed with her ease around AJ. He ate up the extra attention and totally fell in love with her. The highlights of the weekend for me were getting out for an hour to shop with Kim (trying on clothes two weeks post-partum is a bad idea!), having sushi for the first time since becoming pregnant and lots of girl talk. The highlights for AJ included getting spoiled by his godmother, who brought him the personalized "My First Cubs Jersey" from the photo above.

Getting back to normal

Now that we are about 10 days after AJ's birth, I am finally starting to feel like my old self. The pictures I am posting show my swollen feet and ankles somewhere around my due date (affectionately referred to by my friend as "cankles" because there was no distinction between my calves and ankles) versus what they look like today. I think I am also coming out of the baby blues. My tip-off that I was feeling down came when I put on a Kenny Loggins CD of children's music that my mentor at work had given Andrew and started sobbing uncontrollably at Kenny's rendition of the Rainbow Connection. After seeing this, my mom and Joe started insisting that I take a nap whenever AJ is sleeping, rather than responding to e-mails, throwing in a load of laundry, etc. The extra sleep has put me in a much better mood.