Lots more pictures

It's been a while, so we've piled up more photos than usual here. This batch includes documentation of Pete's ventures into smiling, grabbing, finger-sucking, and toe-grabbing, as well as pictures from the family gathering in Utah for my grandmother Venice's funeral. Cousin Blake makes his first appearance in this batch.

The gift of sleep

Pete slept through the night (until about six, more or less when we usually get up) for the first time on Mother's Day. Good lad.

The circle of baby is complete

After a few weeks of straining for them, Pete successfully grabbed his own feet last night as we got him ready for a bath. We gather that this is likely to kick off--so to speak--a couple of months of foot obsession, featuring much self-cramming of feet into baby's drooly mouth.

Wiffle dreams

It's common knowledge that parenthood causes people to sleep more lightly, what with listening for baby and getting up early and all. (After Pete was born, fellow parents started amending this to "YOU WILL NEVER SLEEP WELL AGAIN!" But that's not the point.) An unexpected side effect for me: I'm suddenly starting, for the first time, to be aware of my dreams most nights. I don't remember much yet, but I do catch moments here and there. Last night, I was playing wiffle ball. I have no idea why. But I really ripped the pitches I faced. Now that's good dreamin'.

Fingers

Pete is getting really good at finding his mouth with his fingers. This is an excellent development because it helps him calm down, or even go to sleep, on his own. It also creates a fun face featuring two or three fingers jammed wayyyy into his mouth beneath big wide eyes and raised eyebrows. Capturing that face on "film" (i.e., memory card) is now a high priority.

Ha!

Pete definitely laughed this evening, as we gave him his bath. Specifically, as Carolyn wiped off what we call "all of his necks." It was swell of him to do it while we were both right there.

Kick kick kick

When Pete starts to feel a fairly strong emotion, he kicks his legs emphatically, back and forth, as if he's marching in place. I gather this is pretty standard baby behavior, and Pete now applies it to many kinds of emotions, more and more including excitement about a toy or face that interests him. What a world it would be if this reflex never left us: I would know, for instance, how a given class was going by checking whether students were kicking unrestrainedly during conversations. Or some students would learn how to kick kick kick as if interested in what's going on the way I used to try to maintain an attentive facial expression in certain classes. Especially good actors might brag that they could keep kicking in a class or at a lecture even when they dozed off for a few minutes. We could try to cut off discussions in faculty meetings when pretty much everybody has stopped kicking. Kick kick kick kick.

Grab

Pete has started grabbing stuff. He's not very good at it yet, but he got the idea last Friday night that if he keeps opening and closing his fingers and moving his arm around, he'll sometimes strike gold. Or strike toy, more accurately. The next day, he improved upon this model by trying to pull the grabbed objects to his mouth. When he gets better at that--and he's working on it--we will enter a world of slobber.

The uncertainties of parenthood

I just heard a sound behind me that was made either by a) a woodpecker outside or b) Pete, pooping. Both are common sounds here. I guess we'll never know.

It's a world of babies!

After some telecommuting, Carolyn is back working in Iowa City today. A tough transition.

But there are two reasons to be happy: 1. our carseat can be used without a base--who knew?--so we don't have to get one in a rental car this weekend, and 2. turns out hotels provide cribs on request, so we don't have to take our travel crib. I tell you, there's a whole world of baby stuff that's been going on right under my nose while I had no idea. Oddly, I have become most aware of that fact at Coral Ridge Mall. The first time I wheeled Pete in there, I realized that there are hundreds of strollers in that place at any given time. Hey, wha' happened? I had never noticed. And there's a family restroom for toddlers. And a little room just for breastfeeding. The breastfeeding room is always about 20 degrees too hot, however. I think the Sbarro workers use it as a sauna betwixt their shifts.

Adventuring

Carolyn has been working from home in the afternoons this week, so Petey and I have started having adventures. I learned a lesson yesterday: I cut a trip to my mailbox a little too close to feeding time and had a wailing Pete on my chest (in his Baby Bjorn) all the way back across campus. But he is generally doing very well and sleeping better at night, which means that I'm back to my old, caffeine-fueled day-night routine. I'm getting work done, too, but everything's up in the air when Carolyn goes back to work full-time next week. Gulp.

Alien baby

Some parts of calming a baby down are intuitive for adults. Like Pete, for instance, I would find a way to protest if I were wallowing in my own poop. I don't like to be hungry or tired any more than he does, and I understand being calmed by quiet environments or music or darkness. On the other hand, it's very difficult to imagine being put to sleep by having a giant human bind my arms to my sides (a.k.a. swaddling), turn me on my side, bounce me to jiggle my head a little, and blast fairly loud white noise into my ear. And yet it this is standard baby practice and works for Pete. What an interesting and familiar little human he is! And what a strange alien creature too!

More photos--2-5 weeks

New Pete photos: Page 1 * Page 2 * Page 3

Speed

We took a little trip to see Aunt Bess (Carolyn's sister) in Des Moines last night, and fate allowed us to understand the interpretive key of our present lives. To explain, a selected chronology of the trip:

1. We leave the house with crying baby (who often cries when being packed into the carseat--which, beautifully, is a portabebes in Spanish). Pete cries through Grinnell and for the first couple of miles on route 80, and then settles into his customary vehicle slumber.

2. We arrive at Babies 'R' Us, and I add a second apostrophe to the store's name to indicate the second missing letter in "Are." Then we go inside, strolling Pete. As long as we keep rolling, he stays awake and calm, sometimes verging on drowsiness. If I slow down or stop too long to look at something, he careens into fussiness, and I get moving again.

3. After we leave Bess's house, Pete cries again until we hit the onramp to I-80 and settles down on the proverbial dime, exactly as he did the previous time we drove that route.

4. A point placed out of sequence for maximum dramatic effect: while at Bess's, we happen onto the first part of the movie Speed, whereing LAPD bomb squad dude Jack (Keanu Reeves) must keep a bus running at more than 50 MPH lest it explode. See! See! We are living in Speed, and baby crying is the bomb on the bus! Now we can rest easy.

Mighty feets of fatherhood

Unexpected fact of baby life: now that I'm spending a lot of time carrying a baby around, I'm discovering a lot of things that I can and can't do with me feet. For example: I'm getting pretty handy (get it?) at operating the CD player and receiver of our floor-level stereo system with socked feet.

Petezilla

In Pete's first two weeks, he grew an inch, to 20.5 inches. In the eleven days after he dropped the usual bit of weight after birth, he gained 21 ounces, ending up at eight pounds, six ounces. Extrapolating those rates (.5 inches/week, 1.9 ounces/day), we see that when Pete turns 21, he will be just over 47 feet tall and will weigh about 915 pounds. I'm sure he'll carry it well.

Photos

Photos of Pete: Page 1 * Page 2.

You can click on any photo (on the linked pages, not here) to see a larger version.

Hello, World

Erik here. We're using this blog to collect serious and (mostly) silly things we've written and collected about Pete going back to his days as in utero protoPete. The pre-natal commentary generally comes from Plans (grinnellplans.com), an online community of Grinnell students, alumni, staff, and faculty. When our comments reference specific people from Plans, we will anonymize them. If you want to start from the beginning, go to the archives and read up from the bottom of each monthly page.

Birthdays

Who was born on your birthday?

My birthday list is uncommonly uninteresting. I share November 26th with Charles M. Schultz and a few other notables, but it's a short and relatively undistinguished list. Pete fares better, however; January 20th is a great day for film (Colin Clive, George Burns, Fellini, David Lynch), and other 1/20s include Theobald Wolfe Tone (leader of the 1798 Irish Rebellion), Leadbelly, Buzz Aldrin, and Bill Maher--along with former Virginia running back Terry Kirby, after whom Kirby the cat was named.

Where names come from

After all the joking conversations about Pete's name here, it occurs to me to share where the real thing came from. The middle name came first: "Jacob Simpson" echoes "Jacobson," Carolyn's last name. The boy's middle name was the first decision we made and the only one on which we never wavered.

The decision on "Peter" came much later. We were tossing around a bunch of boy names. Then friends of ours set up a baby name game with a bunch of people: one group shook up a Boggle cube, and another laid out a bunch of Scrabble tiles. Both groups came up with names that were in or suggested by the visible letters. Some of the results were common names, some funny, such as "Yoda." The Boggle group listed "Kit." I thought "Kit Simpson" sounded like a wicked cool name. Later, we asked ourselves what more mainstream names had the same kind of sound. Pete! said we. Peter? asked we. I like Peter, said Carolyn. Hmm, said Erik. The rock! So do I. Let's keep thinking about that. We also liked the trochaic effect of "Peter Jacob Simpson." Now, of course, we think our little guy couldn't possibly have gone by another name.

And that's how Pip became Pete.