Aaron Update

Sorry, no new photos this week. Just a quick update.

Aaron is doing well with his sitter Julie. She comes Mondays from 3:30 to 7:00pm and at different times on Wednesdays and Fridays depending on her internship schedule. She plays with him, takes him for walks, sits with him on the swing, and gets him to go to sleep even when he is over tired, which is no easy feat.

Aaron's latest discovery is faces. When we hold him, he often reaches up a hand to explore our faces. He tries to put his fingers in my mouth, but with Thom, he loves to touch his beard.

He is also grabbing at anything else he can. When I bathed him yesterday, he was scratching at the wall, trying to grab the washcloth, the shampoo bottle, the cup I was rinsing him with - anything within reach. Except the waterproof book I tried to distract him with.

Sweater

With the days getting cooler, I finally had a chance to dress Aaron in this beautiful sweater my friend Lisa made for him. The colors are perfect for showing off his big blue eyes! And somehow she sized the sweater so it would fit him perfectly when the weather started to cool off.

Thanks, Lisa!

New highchair

Mom and Dad came to visit this week. When they arrived, Aaron was still sleeping and I asked Dad to help me set up Aaron's Svan highchair that we had bought last weekend, but which I didn't have time to assemble.

Soon after he got started, Aaron woke up and Dad pretty much assembled it on his own. Although Aaron can't sit up on his own yet, he can sit in the highchair pretty well, leaning to one side. Although he won't start on solids for another month, we hope he can sit in the highchair on weekday mornings while we have breakfast. He likes to sit with us at the table, but we've had to hold him on one of our laps and eat one-handed.

While Dad assembled the highchair, Mom played with Aaron. He was in a pretty good mood when he got up from his nap and laughed with Grandma while playing with her hand.

He's wearing a new outfit I got at Kohl's last week. It is size 6/9 months. He just turned 5 months on the 17th. He is growing out of his size 3/6 sleepers and with the weather getting cooler, I had to some warmer outfits in bigger sizes. I like the one piece sleepers that snap all the way down the leg since unlike the zippered sleepers, we can keep his trunk covered during diaper changes.

Jillian's Visit

Our friend Jillian (a former co-worker of Thom's from Order Fusion days) came to visit for a few days last week. We hadn't seen her since our wedding almost 6 years ago. She's been living in Australia for the past 3 years or so and this is the first time she made it out our way when visiting stateside.

She met up with her sister Kristen for the first few days, and then Aaron and I hung out with them last Wednesday, going to a few local attractions, including the 24 hour donut shop in town, which was so popular that Jillian had to go back before the end of her visit. Jillian and Kristen came back to our house for dinner and a movie before heading back to their hotel.

Kristen returned home on Thursday and Jillian came to stay with us through last weekend, our first house guest since having Aaron. Since his room doubles as the guest room, he slept in the play yard in our room while she was here. I was worried he might have trouble sleeping in a new place, but he didn't seem to mind a bit.

The first morning Jillian was here, she made us crepes, which we filled with whipped cream and some peaches I sauted up with brown sugar. Yum! The next morning, she made us some wonderful cinnamon rolls, which she started the night before. We were spoiled while she was here - an excellent cook!

Last Saturday night, we had a dinner party for 10, which Jillian and I planned and prepared - appetizers of caprese (sliced tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella), a variety of pizzas (with homemade crust) and some antipasto, main course of salad, stuffed shells and garlic toast. Many of the ingredients came from a local farmer's market we went to on Friday with Thom, who took the day off. You can rarely get a good tomato from a grocery store out here, so I have been starting to shop at the local farmer's markets which have wonderful produce. A slide show from the dinner party is below.

Jumperoo!

We started putting Aaron in his Rain Forest Jumperoo a couple of weeks ago now that he can hold his head up pretty good. He loves it and can entertain himself for 20-30 minutes at a time, letting us finish breakfast or prepare dinner. It has a lot of activities for him to play with. He especially likes the yellow monkey. Although the jumper has lights and music, we mostly leave it off since he has enough fun without the extra stimulation.

I took a video of him jumping in his Jumperoo, but I accidentally had the camera turned sideways to better frame the shot and I don't know how to use my video editing software to turn the video 90 degrees. (I know, it's sad when a software developer can't figure out how to use new software.) If I ever figure it out, I'll post the video.

The Jumperoo has three height settings. We have it on the lowest one and even then, we had to initially put a folded up blanket under his feet so that more than just the tips of his toes touched down. But we noticed within two weeks that his feet were nearly flat on the blanket, so we removed it. The Jumperoo is great for seeing how much he is growing in height.

A sitter for Aaron

So far I've been working on my new company while Aaron is asleep, but it is getting harder and harder as I'm busier and his naps are becoming shorter. So we had a sitter, Julie, come out a week and a half ago to watch Aaron while I was home. She is a student and we had met her at a takeout place where we were getting dinner once or twice a week starting when I was pregnant and where Julie worked at the register. The place was run by a catering company and they made incredible, 4 star restaurant quality meals to go, but sadly they had to close down the take out part of their business which wasn't profitable.

Julie is great with Aaron and he seems to like spending time with her. She has been out 3 times and is hopefully going to be coming 3 times a week to help with Aaron while I work from home. Until I start making money, we can only afford 12 hours a week, but it'll be a big help on the days she is here. Like me, she has a big family with lots of nieces and nephews that she has helped take care of, making her well suited for taking care of Aaron.

And speaking of work, that is the reason I haven't been able to update the blog more often. I've been working as much as I can when Aaron is asleep during the week and have had to limit blogging to weekends. But I will try to keep up with new pictures of the little one for all his adoring fans (i.e. Grandma and Grandpa).

The end of swaddling

These pictures of Aaron were taken with me on the swing two weekends ago. I'm in my PJs and not quite awake, so I chose a few close up shots of Aaron that Thom took. Aaron likes to be outside. He just likes to look around at everything. Sometimes, in the late afternoon and it's shady, I take him out by the eucalyptus trees which he just stares up at. But mostly we sit on the swing. When he is fussy and doesn't want to do anything else, he is content to just chill on the swing.

About two weeks ago on a Thursday, Aaron decided he was done with swaddling. After Aaron repeatedly got out of his swaddle and refused to go to sleep, we finally gave up and changed him from his onsie to some footed jammies. It took Thom at least 30 minutes to get him down after that, but then he slept through the night. I thought he'd wake up a lot since he wasn't swaddled, but he did great. We have swaddled him about half the time since then, but more and more he is going down at night unswaddled and sleeping until 5 or 6am.

Diapers

A few weeks ago, a marketing firm contacted me to offer me a free sample of Luvs diapers so I could review them on my blog. I'd never tried Luvs and it's the kind of thing I would blog about, so I agreed. I received a 40 pack of Luvs' new Bear Hug Stretch diapers, enough to test them out for the better part of a week.

Many of you know I was a Pampers fan from week one after the Huggies diapers leaked on us. I had bought newborn sizes of Pampers, Huggies, and for price, the Target brand. Somehow I didn't get Luvs. And after he hit size 3, we tried out Kirkland brand diapers from Costco and that is what we were using when the Luvs arrived.

I have to say I am sold on Luvs. The first thing I noticed about them when I took one out of the package was how thin they are - much thinner than the Kirkland or Pampers diapers. I was skeptical, but the first night he wore them, I was impressed with their capacity. I had found that the Costco diapers held more than the Pampers and I had been using them on Aaron at night. But the Luvs hold at least as much as the Costco diapers, maybe more. And being so thin, they take up less space in the diaper bag, which is a big plus.

The new Luvs diapers are called Bear Hug Stretch because the tabs that come around from the back to fasten the diapers are stretchy, making for an adjustable fit. The Pampers diapers have the same feature and Costco diapers have an elastic waistband all along the back, so this feature didn't really set Luvs apart for me.

What really sets them apart (in addition to capacity) is the inner lining. When we used Pampers, which have kind of a dri-weave lining, Aaron always had a lot of white lint to clean off his penis - not a fun or easy job, especially when he was fussy and squirming. But the Luvs diapers have a smooth lining and lint was not an issue. (The Costco diapers have a similar lining to Luvs and also are better than Pampers in this regard.)

Lastly, the Luvs diapers have the front side tabs very similar to Pampers, which I liked and which the Costco diapers do not have. Basically, Luvs has all the best features of both Pampers and Kirkland diapers, plus are the thinnest diapers for the capacity that I have tried.

And the best thing is price. You can get a 174 count pack of size 3 Luvs diapers on Amazon.com for $30.59, enough to qualify for free shipping. I worked out the cost per diaper and it is a fraction of a cent more expensive than the Kirkland diapers at Costco (which don't come with free shipping). And much cheaper than Pampers which are $39.79 for 160 (for size 3 Cruisers) on Amazon.com.

I'm three quarters of the way through my Kirkland box of diapers. Once that is gone, I will be switching to Luvs.

Big Day Out

Yesterday, Thom and I got out by ourselves for the first time in 4 1/2 months. My brother Jim agreed to babysit for us, repaying some babysitting I did for him about 16 years ago.

Sometimes Aaron seems to be a bit of a Mama's boy, crying when someone else holds him and calming down when I take him back. So in the nights leading up to our day out, I laid awake for short stretches of time worrying about leaving him. I wasn't worried about leaving him with my brother, just worried about him being without me for several hours. But I thought about all the stuff we needed to take over to Jim's - play yard, stroller (which would calm him down if he became overwrought), crinkly green frog, milk for more feedings that he should actually need, etc, etc. And in the end, by the time we dropped Aaron off, I knew he had everything he needed so he would be OK without me for an afternoon.

When we arrived, I went over his routine (needing to be swaddled for naps), all the contents of his diaper bag, anything I could think of that was relevant. I told my sister-in-law Barb that I knew they had experience with babies, but it was the first time I was leaving my baby. She was very patient with me.

They had already set out a play blanket on the floor for Aaron. It was a colorful blanket with a crescent pillow Velcro-ed on to prop up Aaron's head or to prop up his chest if he was on his stomach and had lots of stuff to look at and touch. Elizabeth seemed excited that Aaron was there and after I fed him and put him down on the play mat, she sat by him and was singing to him when we were ready to leave.

After we left Aaron, we headed over to the theater to see an afternoon showing of Julius Caesar. A friend and coworker of Thom's was in the play, which was our motivation for going, and a good excuse for our first break from the baby. I had never seen Julius Caesar before and it was very well performed. I called Barb at intermission and she was just finishing feeding Aaron. Everything was going well.

After the play, we went to collect Aaron. Barb had left for work by then and Jim was holding Aaron on his lap so that he was standing up. He seemed content and showed no reaction to our return. Jim said it had gone very well. The only time he fussed was when he got hungry.

It was fun to get out with Thom on our own and felt good knowing that Aaron was fine without us. I'm sure we will be doing that again.

The things kids say...

We were over at my brother Jim's house today dropping off Aaron (a story for another blog) and my brother made a remark about getting older. Since he just married Barb, a woman 15 years his junior, I said "Well now you've got a young wife to keep you young." Barb's daughter Elizabeth, 6, piped up "She's not young. She's 31."

All the adults cracked up. I told Elizabeth that one day she would know that 31 is young.