Catching Up

It's been a while since my last post, so we have some catching up to do. It's been a great ten days, busy with friends and errands and activities and some new "firsts" for Carlton. I'll start with a shot I'm posting just because it's adorable, from a couple of weekends ago. (The thing in my hand is strawberry smoothie made by Mark, who's quite the smoothie connoisseur...one of our weekend traditions!)

The boys got some good playtime that weekend....Carlton is okay with tummy time if it means fun time with his dad. He's also big and strong enough now to play airplane games, so bring on the fun!

That Sunday, the 11th, brought one of Carlton's latest "firsts," the first taste of rice cereal! He'd been acting hungry lately, and showing signs of really wanting food, so we decided to try it. Here is basically the sequence of how the first feeding went:

"What's this stuff, Mama?"

"I'm a little unsure about this..."

"Here goes!"

"Aack! It's just as bad as it looks!"

"Hmm, now that it's over, maybe it's not so bad after all....I got to make a good mess!"

The first feeding WAS pretty funny, but Carlton's getting used to cereal and starting to swallow a bit more these days, as opposed to it all running down his chin. You can see him trying to figure out how to get the food all the way to back of his throat to swallow; it's so neat to see him processing and learning new things.

Another recent "first" was his first time in his doorway jumper. It's fun to see him explore with his feet and learn about the cause and effect of the movement of his feet on the floor and the movement of the jumper. It hangs from the doorway between our kitchen and laundry room, and it's a great new place for him to hang out with me while I'm cooking dinner.

We recently had some friends over for a pancake breakfast, Peter and Sarah (and baby Henry), friends from our childbirth class that we took through our hospital. It was fun to see them now, several months later, no longer as pregnant, expectant couples but as families of three! Here are the proud dads with their sons.

And lastly, Carlton turned five months old a couple of days ago! To wrap things up, here is a shot of our sweet little five-month-old in his nursery, sitting up like a big boy in the rocker.

12 weeks later

The neighborhood moms' group that I'm a part of just had its last official meeting last week. It's a 12-week program - and then we intend to keep hanging out informally for playdates and walks - and so we took a photo of the babies in the beginning, and one at the end (an earlier blog post contains the initial photos). Here are the babies now, three months older and bigger! Carlton did great, as per normal when he is in the midst of people, activity and noise; he really seems to thrive in social settings, and gets bored with just me at home. Meanwhile, all the babies to his right were melting down during the photo shoot, but he just looked upon the chaos calmly. We love the third photo here...he looks gigantic, dwarfing the two little girls on either side. Looks like he's king of the sofa :)

Diapers, baths, thumbs....the life of a baby

Everything is more fun when you get to wear just a diaper. Carlton is even more spirited in his playtime when he is uninhibited by clothing. He loves being in the buff, and it is so fun to watch.

Along these "no clothes" lines, he recently took his last bath in the kitchen sink. You can see how well he was filling it up (and how delectable he found Mark's hand to be at the time). He has now graduated to an official baby tub.

Recently Mark and Carlton happened to wear matching outfits, so we had to capture it: button-downs and khaki pants. Like father, like son.

I'd mentioned that Carlton seems to settle for the fist or multiple fingers when it comes time to suck, but all the more is he finding his thumb these days. Ahh, sweet success.

Recent action

This past weekend we had a little getaway to Portland, Oregon. We three Sheerins had a fantastic time exploring the city, which is just a three hour's drive south of Seattle. We had heard such good things about Portland that we decided to do our first weekend trip with Carlton. He did great! He is such a social and high-energy kid that he loved being out all day, riding in the Bjorn, taking in the new sights, and interacting with all sorts of people. We stayed right downtown, went running along the river, checked out the Saturday Market and Powell's bookstore, sampled goodies from local hotspot bakeries and donut shops, hiked in the woods, had great pizza, and tried the popular local pub, McMenamin's. We attended church Sunday morning at a great intown church that had been recommended to us, and Carlton even went to the church nursery for half the service! A big weekend. The only downside was that it rained the whole time, so we didn't get any good photos. That being the case, and the fact that we haven't posted any videos in a while, I thought it was time to post some action sequences of our little boy.

One of the excitements of the weekend was Carlton rolling over for the first time! Mark had been playing with him on the bed in our hotel room, helping him to roll back and forth, and then he finally decided he could to it on his own. Video clip number one...

Video clip number two, also from this weekend, is just him being cute :) He had been being really vocal, and blowing raspberries, bubbling everywhere (which he loves to do these days), but then of course, as soon as we got the camera out, he stopped. Perfect.

The final clip is about a month ago, when our friends the Dentels were here. Carlton loves to dance in our laps and usually laughs uncontrollably, which is what was going on here. But in true form, he quit once the camera was upon him, so we only captured the tail end of a laugh.