One step Ferber

After being called upon as a last resort, Dr. Ferber has revolutionized our evenings. Keep in mind that Pete was crying hysterically at bedtime every night, for a good while, until we broke down and fed him. We started the Ferber method of teaching him to go to sleep on his own last night. It involves some crying at first, but Pete is learning:

Last night: 32 minutes of crying before sleep, followed by an unprecedented nine-hour sleep
First nap today: 30 minutes, followed by unprecedented nap in crib
Second nap: 22 minutes
Tonight's bedtime: 7 minutes

It's certainly hard to hear your baby cry even for seven minutes, but that's a whole lot better than last week, and at least there's a reason behind it, and we get the extremely valuable bonus that Pete is going to be able to get himself to sleep without all the theatrics we've been using for months. If things go according to plan, the crying will stop completely soon. Oh joy. And knock on wood knock on wood knock on wood--especially since everything could be thrown off when we leave for the weekend on Friday.

Day care begins

As we had hoped, Pete was easily the least anxious of the three of us about his adjustment to part-time day care. So far, so good. Bedtime has not improved, but thanks to Jackie Brown's encouragement, we will let Dr. Ferber take the lead tonight. I've gotten his book and found that his ideas have always been wildly misrepresented when I've heard about them in informal settings.

Trouble sleeping

There is a developmental stage, usually between six and nine months, in which babies often abandon learn to keep themselves awake and become panicked when parents begin to leave the sleeping area. Ask me how I know. And Pete goes to day care for the first time tomorrow. We need good luck this week.

A great babysitter departs

If Pete had a plan, the motor skills to operate a keyboard, an understanding of the future, and some command of written English, he would post today to say what a good friend Lara has been to him this summer. And he would wish her a great year and promise to write news of crawling and walking and talking while she's gone.

Did we mention we're cows?

We noticed on this trip that Pete, who has always been calmed by singing, was starting to settle down if we played Sandra Boynton's Philadelphia Chickens CD, which is a big favorite of ours in the children's category. Then, on the last stretch of the trip, after he had been traveling and meeting new people all day with admirable cheer and resiliance, he got especially fussy. We tried singing--no dice. We stopped at Williamsburg and walked around, which he liked, but the car made him cry again. Carolyn got into the back seat and played with him, which worked for about ten minutes, after which more crying than ever. Then the CD worked for a few minutes, but more crying ensued. By this point, Pete was realizing that he was hungry, so were were in a world of trouble but only about 15-20 minutes from home. Then inspiration hit: we realized that it wasn't just the Boynton CD that was calming him. It was the first song of that CD, a chorus-line number sung by a group of cows. So we played the cow song again. No crying. At the end, and I mean instantly, full wail. Cow song again. No crying, then end and wail. Then papa got smart: cow song again, hitting the button to go back to the beginning just before the end. Bingo! About four more renditions carried us through to 10th Avenue. Then we let it end, and Pete cried for the last ten seconds, and we were home. Oh, best friend cow song!

Pacing ourselves

[To a former student]: I, too, walk in circles or pace when I'm on the phone. Carolyn has not found this one of my more endearing traits, and I admit I probably wouldn't like being married to a phonewalker either. However, the habit has been enormously handy lately, since Pete loves to be held and carried around. If I need to make a longish phone call, I can just wait until he's ready to bounce to sleep and make the call. Then everybody's happy!

To Illinois

We go to see grad school friends in Champaign-Urbana this weekend. They have a daughter, Frances, who is just a few weeks older than Pete. She will be the first baby girl Pete has hung out with. This will also be my first visit to the place my parents met.

Fair minded

Pete went to the State Fair on Sunday. With us, as you may have guessed. I had wondered whether he would go nuts for the animals. He's fascinated by our cats now (after not noticing them for months), and I thought barns of cows and pigs and lambs might strike him as wondrous, huge versions of Giddy and Kirby. In fact, the results were mixed. Pete was generally more interested in the human fairgoers than the livestock. The two exceptions were cases where he could get a good view of an animal's eyes, once with a cow and once with a lamb. The best connection was with the cow, who caused much kicking and trembling.

Little guy

I've started calling Pete "little guy" with increasing frequency as he gets older and seems less like a baby and more like, well, a guy, but little. All along, I noticed that I was saying "little guy" with an inflection that wasn't quite my own. This little strangeness carried connotations of great fondness, but I couldn't figure out why the phrase came out of my mouth the way it did. Then it hit me: I've been quoting Marge Simpson calling Bart her "special little guy," as she does when she wants to mark an uncommonly tender moment between them. This instance is one of many in which I've recognized myself having unwittingly quoted comedic sources--about 40% of what I say comes verbatim from Steve Martin's early albums--but it's the first evidence that my son is, in essence, being raised by a cartoon character.

Pppppbpbpbpbpthhhhhh!

Pete was making these great happy little raspberry sounds with his mouth about a month ago. Then they suddenly disappeared. A few days ago, I noticed one little one. Now he's a veritable happy raspberry machine. Happy day.

Bababababa

You may recall note #4 on Pete's development below, about speaking strings of syllables. Yesterday evening, we were eating dinner with Pete happily playing in a little chair next to us. Eating, talking, playing with Pete, eating, talking. Then BOOM!: "byaayayaya," says Pete. Carolyn and I both froze, looked at each other to confirm we'd heard the same thing, and we had it. Pete's first wordlike babble.

Pppppbpbpbpbpthhhhhh?

Pete updates:

1. Pete's all about rolling over now. I put him in his crib last night and stayed with him because he wasn't settled. He was having a grand old time rolling back and foth, back and ofrth, grabbing one side of the crib bars and then the other. He has gotten better and flipping completely over, too, and he's just starting to figure out how to lift up his knees and look for scooting traction.

2. For a little while, Pete was making delightful little raspberry sounds with his mouth along with his little happy squeaks. The little rasperries have now been replaced entirely by odd closed-mouth grunting noises from the back of his mouth. We try to get him to revert to the rasperry noises by doing them ourselves, as questions: "Pppppppppppp?" But we get no answers.

3. Pete started solid food this week--specifically, oat cereal mixed with breastmilk. The first time, he just cried and let the cereal sit in his open, wailing mouth. Taking courage from the fact that he didn't spit it out, we tried again the next day, and he got some of it down. Then, yesterday, after doing pretty well for half the feeding, you could see it click for him: hey, this is food! And pretty good food, at that! And he got all excited about the rice cereal, trying to grab the spoon and put it in his mouth, kicking in glee. I've discovered that Pete is now extremely good at reaching and grabbing with his arm extended (and when he does grab, his grip is tremendous), but he's not so good at bending his arm and reaching with any accuracy. Therefore, the key to feeding is to get the spoon within the radius of his arms. As astronauts know, it's getting into the atmosphere that's the problem, not the landing.

4. We've seen cousin Blake and other babies start to articulate the typical baby syllables at about Pete's age, so we occasionally say them to Pete to help him along: "baabaabaabaabaa, laalaalaalaalaa," and best of all "yaayaayaayaayaa." Pete made no sign of picking these up at first, until about a week ago, when he was wailing in deepest despair about something, he cried "AAYAAAYAAYAAYAAYAAA." Very clearly. We still haven't heard the happy syllables.

Milwaukee

We went to Milwaukee with Pete to do the site visit for the convention Carolyn organizes. Each of Sunday and Monday was by far the most car travel Pete had done in a day. He did really well with all of it until the very end.

Downtown Milwaukee--from the river to the Art Museum and then up the lake--is looking very good. What a contrast to the miserable state of downtown St. Louis! The city takes advantage of the lake and the river in ways that Philadelphia almost completely fails to do with the Atlantic and the Delaware. The Museum impressed me as much as everyone had said it would.

More pictures

This batch includes Pete meeting great-aunt Cynthia and great-uncle Charlie in Vermont, seeing his first baseball game in Des Moines, and attending his first pancake breakfast in Iowa City.

These pictures bring us up to three or four weeks ago; in the last ones, Pete is about five months old.

Leaving Petey

I, Erik, am off to Greece in the morning.

Pete is now

1. Flipping himself over occasionally
2. Reaching out for people and things
3. Noticing and becoming fascinated by the cats
4. Giggling madly when he touches human or cat hair
5. Imitating, with squeaks of glee, the motion of raising one's arms and then rapidly slapping one's legs

All this has happened in the last 10-14 days. This stage is a blast. I can't believe I'm leaving him (with Carolyn and swarms of my family to help) for 11 days now.

New Pete tricks

Off to Greece in the morning.

Pete is now

1. Flipping himself over occasionally
2. Reaching out for people and things
3. Noticing and becoming fascinated by the cats
4. Giggling madly when he touches human or cat hair
5. Imitating, with squeaks of glee, the motion of raising one's arms and then rapidly slapping one's legs

All this has happened in the last 10-14 days. This stage is a blast. I can't believe I'm leaving him (with Carolyn and swarms of my family to help) for 11 days now.

Storming

There was a big thunderstorm in Grinnell this evening--an Iowa summer doozy, complete with about five houseshaking claps, two of which made the tornado alarm (which seems to be very close to our house) get stuck on a constant high note for a while. The whole time, Pete was with Carolyn in Des Moines, and I happened to talk to Carolyn right at the beginning of the storm, so I knew they hadn't gotten any of it. Still, for the whole duration of the thundering, I was intensely anxious because I know that sudden loud noises really bother Pete. As in, at a certain level of intensity well below that of a concussive thunderclap, they make him scream inconsolably. So I spent the entire storm awash in a near-panic of parental protectiveness that had neither cause nor outlet.

Rolling

In the last three days, Pete has begun rolling over--first once in a while, and this evening a whole bunch. The sun of mobility rises.

Unruly Subjects

In a recent study on how babies walk (described here), "the data for 11 infants had to be scrapped because they refused to hold still to have their bodies measured." --CJ

Itsy Bitsy

"Itsy bitsy spider" astonishes Pete every time. And I mean *astonishes*. Regardless of his mood, as soon as I start climbing my fingers over each other, his face takes on this struck look--round open mouth, eyes open even wider than usual, and he shakes a little. It's great.

Thank goodness "Itsy bitsy spider" has a positive message. The spider goes right back up the spout again, undaunted. This may be a little creepy if you don't like spiders, but I don't feel bad repeating it over and over to Pete. Unlike, say, "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater," which I'm working on rewording.

Another Pete favorite is "I've been working on the railroad." Who is Dinah? The train's cook? The train's horn blower? What's she doing in the kitchen, and who is that with her? Is the speaker really working on the railroad "just to pass the time away"? There's something fishy about this song that I just can't put my finger on. -CJ