Dedication week & weekend, pt 1

We're still running a couple weeks behind with the updates. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Daddy's friends from Chicago/Wisconsin started coming into town for Brennan's dedication. First was Sarah. Sarah, Brennan, and Daddy went up to Maine that Thursday for the day, getting their Lobster Roll fixes in Kennebunkport. Sarah's a prok with kids -- here's Sarah giving Brennan a snack after getting back from Maine:



Sarah was a pro at getting Brennan to giggle:

So much to catch up on...

We have so many pictures, so much to talk about from the last few weeks, most significantly Brennan's dedication. But rather than cramming 100 pictures in one post, we'll catch up in order, first, with Carl giving Brennan his first "solid" food -- rice cereal -- which, of course, isn't very solid, but it's a start:




Yummy! This weekend, we're going to be pretty busy. Carl's meeting up with a friend to go wedding dress shopping, while Brennan and I go to the Cultural Survival Bazaar in the city. Then tomorrow, we're going with (Boston) Adrienne to the Framingham Botanical Gardens. Might take us a while to get pictures of all this up, given our backlog, but we'll get to it as soon as we can!

Father's Day

Sunday was our first father's day as fathers. We had a lot of fun. After going to church, we went to the Met for brunch. Brennan was even happier than normal -- staying awake for most of lunch and smiling, laughing, cooing. Just hanging out in his carseat and watching us eat.


And then eventually he got tired:


But notice his fingers touching each other while he's napping. When he's awake, he can just sit there and stare at his hands -- putting them together, touching them -- he's very good at entertaining himself.

Not much else is knew. We completely rearranged our third floor to basically turn it into a guestroom, in anticipation of a new bed arriving later this week. So no more air mattresses and couches for our guests!

Other than that, we're just getting ready for our busy upcoming weekend. We'll have four guests for the weekend -- three adults + a 16 month old. So it will be somewhat of a crazy household for a few days.

Back on track

After a handful of rougher nights while Brennan was getting accustomed to sleeping on his tummy, following his new-found skill to roll over from back-to-tummy, the last two nights have been great -- Brennan has slept through the night from around 7 til 6:30 without our help. This is great for Carl, as I like to wake up with Brennan when he gets up between 6 and 7 so I can have some time to hang out with him before going to work. So Carl gets the benefit of no night feedings plus being able to sleep in.

Yesterday, Brennan had his four month checkup. He's 16 lbs 6 oz, and 26". This puts him at a 90th percentile for height and the 75th for weight. I've noticed Brennan getting a little skinnier lately -- must be him getting taller. He also had some shots yesterday -- which made for a fussy rest of the day home with dad (and a fussy visit with papa in the city for lunch). But today, he seems to be happy again, so we're happy too!

Rolling around

So after three nights in a row of sleeping through the night, we were in for a different kind of surprise on Wednesday night. Around 3am, we hear him fussing. No big deal, we figure. We knew he wasn't completely done with night wakings. Carl goes in there to discover him -- on his tummy! Apparently he had rolled over in his sleep. He's rolled over from tummy-to-back plenty of times before, but this was the first back-to-tummy. Carl figures this is why he's fussing, so he just puts him back on his back and goes back to bed. A few minutes later, he's fussing again. I go in there this time, and whatayaknow, he's on his tummy again. This time I pick him up, wrap him back up in his blanket, and put him on his back. I step out of the room and watch him first kick the blanket off himself, and then roll over to his tummy, and then right back over to his back. By this time he's pretty awake and realizing that he's a little hungry. So we give him a little snack, and then he's back to sleep for the night.

Right after feeding him, I went right up to the third floor to consult our favorite what-to-do baby guide, "Baby 411." Turns out we don't need to stand over his crib and return him to his back every time he flips over -- if he's strong enough to flip over to his tummy, we can let him sleep like that. But for Brennan, it's going to take some time to sort out what to do when he ends up on his tummy. In the meantime, he's been a little fussier the last few nights, waking up a couple times a night and needing a little help to get back to a comfy position. He moves around quite a bit in his crib -- sometimes ending up pressed against the rails or in some other uncomfortable position. Of course, it's difficult to balance -- if we run in & help him out each time he gets uncomfortable, then he won't learn to sort things out himself, but at the same time, we need to sleep too, and we don't want him to get stuck, so we have been helping him out a little when he gets uncomfy. But even in these last few days since he's been doing this, he's gotten better at getting himself back in position. Tonight when he went down to sleep, he flipped over to his tummy and found himself not too comfy sort of near the rails, but we gave him a little time to figure it out, and 10 minutes later we went up there to find him in right in the middle of the crib -- still on his tummy, but asleep and nice & comfy. Since this happened for the first time Wednesday night, I think he's ended up on his tummy pretty much every time he's fallen asleep, for a nap or at night.

Taking a snooze on his tummy:



This week the Red Sox hosted the Yankees. Brennan watched the games with me on DVR in the morning:


Posing for a picture during a commercial break: