6 Months

As he was born on March 21st, Sam is now 6 months old. He dazzled the congregation today, pulling on people's hair, crowdsurfing his way through the pews, and smiling at anyone who would smile back.

Some updates:

• He gets his six month check-up and shots on Tuesday
• He's making raspberry noises
• He likes carrots, but isn't so kean on bananas, applesauce, pears, or oatmeal
• When he eats something especially new or strange he does this funny electric shake, like you're giving him shock therapy and not just applesauce
• He is inchworming his body a little bit--he reaches out his army and wiggles his bottom and moves his leg. There's no sign of an actual crawl, but he's working on it
• Like his father, he turns cranky almost exclusively when he's hungry or tired

Those are the Sam Chronicles for this week.

Teething

This was one of our more productive days. I did five hours of class, we went back to Old Home and visited with various friends and family. I feel worn out, but still reasonably coherent.

I’m becoming more balanced about teaching and preparation. I still struggle with Western Civ, but I think this is just the nature of teaching outside my field.

Samuel continues to be quite charming. He took some nice naps and handled the car well. He was tired/hungry at dinner, which is hard for him in unfamiliar places. If he’s hungry, that makes him mad, but he won’t eat unless he’s sleepy sometimes. The challenges of baby moods…

He is probably teething. He slept unevenly last night and was fussy this morning. I suspect we have one coming. It will be hard, because I hate seeing him uncomfortable. Sadly, pain is part of growing up or being human.

Baby sitters and other matters

Yesterday I took Sam to school with me. It was a pretty interesting day. I did my early classes regularly and then Sam came for my hour with first year students. (This way Emily was able to run up to school.) We also met the person we think will be Sam's babysitter. Her name is Kim and she's the student gov president and has a lot of experience. She'll take him for 90 minutes on Mondays while I teach. She can have him on campus, in my office, and Emily'll be able to go up to school for the day. I think it will work very well. But I can hardly believe it--the first baby sitter and hopefully more time for Emily to work on the dissertation.

We're adjusting a little better. It was a bigger change this summer than I realized it would be: geographically, academically, famiy, emotionally, etc. There have been some nice points of continuinty--church, school, etc.--but it's still a pretty big change.

Spoons

Here's Sam eating his first spoonfuls of mixed instant oatmeal. It was combined with mother's milk and he liked it. He opened his mouth automatically and got almost as much in as he spit out. Just in the last week he's begun reaching for things, is rolling over a little better, and is doing the first motions toward what will be his scoot.

Williamstown

We visited the maternal home this last weekend for my grandfather's 96th birthday. Sam stole the show and we all had a lot of fun. He's clearly more extroverted than we realized--he loved being passed from person to person. Whenever an aunt would smile at him, he would just beam. It was fun for me since this was a place I visited regularly as a child. Above are some pics with grandpa and the two aunts.