Crawling and barking

Okay, so William can crawl now. This is getting serious. He thinks he's a puppy, though. He loves to chew on things--anything, really. If it's in his hand, it's in his mouth. Sometimes he just bypasses the hand requirement and just opens up his jaws. He's got quite a grip.

Anyway, he sometimes sticks a sock in his mouth with one hand while on all fours, and takes off through the apartment, with the sock still hanging from his mouth. We'll have to teach him to fetch, next. When he's crawling around, with a sock (or stuffed animal, or wood block) hanging out of his mouth, he makes small squeaking noises while lunging gently forward, as if he were barking.

A Halloween trick

Mirjam mentioned this in her blog, but I wanted to write about it, too.

Last year in October I bought three pumpkins for a part of our Halloween decorations. One large pumpkin for me, one medium-sized for Mirjam, and one tiny pumpkin for the little baby nobody yet knew about. The three pumpkins sat in our living room for months next to the old chair--we never got around to carving them, and the drafty window helped keep them--but nobody ever caught on to the significance. I forgot about that until I read Mirjam's blog.

William the Destroyer

Today William was on the bed moving around, heading for the small bookshelf where we keep the phone, alarm clock, books, papers, and other things. I stretched my leg out to keep him from advancing forward and eating something. As he tried to climb over my leg, I noticed his back legs were not moving in unison, as they usually do when he's trying to get somewhere. They were kicking one after the other, as if he were trying to crawl! He's almost there. Oh, the humanity. It's time to do a serious child-proofing of the apartment.

Bedtime

I just put William to bed. I went through his normal routine. We all had dinner together about 6:30; William had some banana puree and avacado puree. Mirjam left for her orchestra class at 6:45, and a few minutes later I put William in his little tub to splash around in. I pulled him out after about ten minutes, and dried him off and dressed him, even though he prefers to be naked. I wrapped him up like a burrito in a couple of blankets, set him in his crib in our room, and read to him "Goodnight Moon."

As usual, he listened quietly all the way through, staring intently at each page. "Goodnight little house. Goodnight little mouse." I turned off the light in the closet, which I was reading by, and left the room, closing the door behind me.

A couple minutes later William started to make some noise, which soon turned into crying. Normally he falls asleep without a peep. I went in, picked him up, consoled him, re-wrapped him, and set him back in the crib after he was calm. A few minutes later he started crying again. I let him cry for a while, but after almost a half-hour he was only getting louder.

I picked him up, patted him on the back, walked around the darkened room, and after he had calmed down, I laid down on the bed, with him on my chest. He kept his head down and sucked on his thumb as he continued to whimper and sigh for a couple minutes. Mirjam called at 8:06 to check up on us. I rolled over to answer the phone, holding William close to me to keep him from looking around and finding something to play with or eat. After hanging up the phone we laid there for about fifteen minutes as he fell asleep with his head on my arm and his hand on my face.

Working up an appetite

Holy cow. Yesterday I saw William scoot across the room faster than I've ever seen him. He's still not officially crawling, but he got up on all fours and fell forward four times in a row to get to something across the room. Just up and down and reach. Up and down and reach. He especially likes cables and cords of any kind. Whether it's bookbag strings, a USB cable, or the phone cord, if he sees it, he wants to chew on it, and he's going to go after it.

We had to move all of Mirjam's giraffes to the top of the bookshelf because he had launched his assault on them. It's not his fault; they were right next to the bookbag. He also likes to eat anything that makes noise, including paper and krinkly plastic. If it moves or makes noise or is the remote control, he wants to chew on it.

Dinnertime

Today is William's first real food day. We bought him a high chair attachment so he can sit at the table with us now. Mirjam made him a small bowl of scrumptious rice cereal. Yum!

William was so excited to get his first taste of real food, he could hardly keep his hands away from the little baby spoon. One of us had to hold his arms down and the other had to aim the spoon carefully as William lunged forward with his mouth wide open for each bite. It was a lot of fun for all of us. Soon he'll be graduating to other real foods such as bananas and avacados. How exciting!

Moving day

William is officially mobile. He's figured out how to move in any direction. The last couple of weeks he's been getting steadily better at pulling his legs up underneath him as he supports himself with his hands. He then slowly rocks forward and back a couple times, and softly lunges forward, pushing off his hands and leaving them back and to his sides. Sometimes he still shifts backwards, but he's really getting the hang of it. He's even picked up on the ability to bring something closer to him this way.

If he's lying on his stomach and reaches for something that's out of reach, he methodically gets up on his hands, gently jerks his legs forward and softly lands on his chest, and he reaches out again to try to grab whatever's in front of him. If he can't reach it yet, he slowly gets back up on his hands and knees again and repeats the process enough times until he can grab onto it with his tiny fingers and quickly bring it to his mouth and chew on it.

Don't feed the animals

William has gotten very grabby lately. He likes to latch on to whatever is closest and pull it in toward his gaping, eager mouth. He especially likes to grab hair, pillowcases, fingers, cheeks, his stuffed giraffe, and his wooden teething ring from Germany. Of course, two can play at this game--now I'm biting back.

If he reaches toward my face, I start chomping away at his hands and quickly move up his arms to his shoulders, neck, and chest, and he starts squealing and laughing wildly, which of course only encourages me to continue. Sometimes I go for the inner forearm, bypassing the shoulders and neck, and head straight to his stomach. Anything for a laugh.

Ready for takeoff

After church this afternoon we were sitting on the blue couch outside the bishop's office talking with some other people in the ward. William was on the floor, lying on his stomach. For the past week he has been pushing himself up onto his hands to get a better view of things and occasionally he's pulled his knees up under him as well, so that he's kind of been on all fours.

Well today he got up on his hands and knees, and after pulling his knees forward, he sort of pushed his hands backwards and fell onto his chin. Of course we erupted in cheers and wanted to see him do it again, as he looked up at us and laughed right along with all the excitement.

First signs of a tooth

Today we discovered William is growing his first tooth. He's probably been working on it for a while, but we just noticed it today. When he was laughing, I saw his lower gum and thought I saw something white on the right side. I thought, "That couldn't be a tooth already, it's too soon." I felt it and it was definitely the start of something harder than a gum. Later in the day, I was going to ask Mirjam what she thought, but before I could ask her about it, she announced to me that "William is getting his first tooth!" Confirmation. We are both excited about all the new things happening with William. I'm sure he's excited too, but he hasn't told us yet.

Driving Master William

I took William with me to the bank during Mirjam's violin lesson today. His car seat is in the back and faces backwards, so I can't see him when I'm driving. To keep him calm, I made up a song for him about how I like driving with him: "Wenn ich mit dem William fahre, fahr' ich gern, fahr' ich gern...."

On the way back home I noticed that the rustling behind me had diminished as I was singing. I turned around in the middle of the verse to see him staring up at me! He had cocked his head around to the right and tilted it back so that he could look at me from his rear-facing car seat. I felt so proud of him for finding a way to find me in the front seat, I couldn't help laughing, and when I did, so did he. Every time I looked back, he was looking up at me, smiling and listening to me sing to him.

It's fun to travel with a friend.

Sneaky, sneaky

William rolled from his back to his stomach for the first time today. I wasn't home, but Mirjam told me about it as soon as I walked in. Of course, she didn't see it either, but we know it happened. She had just changed his diaper, on a blanket on the floor in the living room, and left him lying on his back. She left the room for a moment to throw away the diaper and wash her hands, and when she came back--no more than a minute later--William was on his stomach! He has gotten very good at propping himself up, and so he just looked up at Mirjam with his big blue eyes and smiled when she came back in the room. This isn't the first time we've missed out on something because we left the room for a minute.

A couple months ago (he was seven weeks old at the time) Mirjam and I had just finished changing his diaper and laid William on his stomach. We left the room to throw away the diaper and wash our hands. When Mirjam returned to the living room she yelled for me to come back quickly. I ran in and saw William lying on the blanket on the living room floor--on his back! We put him on his stomach again and told him to repeat the action. He just looked at us for a while and grunted. But after a couple minutes of encouragement, he slid one arm forward so that it was no longer propping his chest and head up, tilted to one side, and did a sort of slow sideways flip to end up on his back. Mirjam and I cheered, of course and wanted him to do it again. William surely thought we were nuts.

Up all night

The family flew to Germany on Tuesday, which means we arrived on Wednesday, but weren't coherent until Thursday.  It is now 6 a.m. Saturday, and having been unable to sleep since about 3:30 a.m., because that's what international travel does to me sometimes, I decided to write a little about our adventures flying across the Atlantic.  *Edit: this turned out to be quite long, so grab a glass of lemonade.*  Oh, I am typing on a Germän kezboard, sö if things löök a little fünnz, it#s becäuse söme öf the kezs äre bäckwärds. 

The flight from Salt Lake City to Atlanta (three hours) went just fine.  Of course Delta is now charging real money for anything more than pretzels and apple juice on domestic flights.  Caveat emptor!  An announcement about menus over the P.A. in the terminal reminded me of the new food-for-cash policy, so I quickly dashed to the nearest food counter to purchase two $2 bagels and two $1 bananas before boarding the plane.  Yes it was pricey, but I thought they would be more filling than one $8 dollar sandwich on board.  We also brought two water bottles and some granola bars with us from home. 

Once we were airborn, William slept in Mirjam's sling for most of the flight.  Of course he's so curious, we had to let him get up and look around at all the interesting people.  He cried only briefly a couple times, and take off and landing went fairly well.  The plane had three seats on each side of the aisle, and the woman who booked our seats tried to give us some extra room by putting my seat on the aisle and Mirjam on the window, in the hopes that no one would want to book the middle.  Didn't work.  The guy who got the middle seat graciously offered it to me in return for my aisle seat so Mirjam and I could sit next to each other.  He had an iPod, so I would have agreed to just about anything at that point.  After his initial attempts at small talk couldn't distract me from sitting next to my favorite 3-month-old, he started listening to a John Grisham audio book.  Oh, Delta also charges two dollars for headphones on domestic flights so you can listen at dangerously high volumes to the bad in-flight movie on the five-inch screen above you. 

The flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt was a little harder on us all.  Hey, you try flying east for three hours and then eight more and see what that does to your mind.  This time, the in-flight meals and movies were all free, probably only to avoid any allegations of international imprisonment.  I just remembered, Delta lost $2 billion in the last quarter.  That was announced the day we flew.  Anyway, we got pretzels and apple juice, we got a tray full of airline "food," we got movies at deafening levels, and in the "morning" we got a nice little pre-packaged wet wipe instead of my favorite "hot towel?"  I was really disappointed about that.  I also look forward to being asked if I would like to scald my face first thing in the morning.  Alas, $2 billion is a lot to lose in one quarter.  Oh, for breakfast we also got a warm croissant, four ounces of orange juice and a cold banana, which probably also cost me a dollar, but I forgot to ask for an itemized bill at the airport, so I couldn't say for sure.

At the gate in Atlanta, I asked if we could get a bassinet for William, but was told they were already reserved.  I went back later and asked if we could get our seats moved a little further forward, and I was told that the coach class starts only five rows in front of us.  With a smile on my face, I returned to where Mirjam was sitting and shared the good news, when , a few moments later, I was called back to the ticket counter. 

The woman who paged me took my boarding passes, scribbled something on them, and after I asked if there was a problem, she informed me that she was changing our seats so we could have the bassinet that we had reserved.  It took me a couple of seconds to understand that apparantly, she wasn't able to match up the name from her printout with my face immediately after seeing me for the first time in her life.  Clairvoyance, people!  It's a great thing! 

Our new seats were directly in front of the class-dividing wall and William's bassinet was connected to it after takeoff.  The wall's always a nice place to sit because you don't have another seat inches in front of your nose, but you give up some toe room.   The seats on the plane were in a 2-5-2 arrangement, and Mirjam and I sat by ourselves on the right side.  From our position in the first row behind first class, we could see that it wasn't even close to being full, so you know what we were thinking from Nova Scotia to London.  William cried a little more on this flight, but that was probably because the contrast between the classes was more prominent--it was oh so close.  Also, he was a little more tired.

Mirjam's parents picked us up from the airport in Frankfurt.  We were all very tired at that point, not having slept much the last 24 hours.  The four-hour drive home was especially hard on William.  It was a warm day, and the car didn't have A/C, which is still considered a luxury in Germany.  Between the heat and the long drive, William relenquished his role of being the model child for a while.  He cried and cried until finally we had to pull over at a rest stop. 

We nibbled on some food that Mirjam's mom had made.  I had forgotten how good German bread, meats, and dairy products are.  Oh, man, I'm glad I'm here.  *Drool*  Anyway, after a little cooling off, we got back in and drove at an exhilerating speed (love that Autobahn!) for a while longer until William just couldn't take much more.  Another rest stop.  This time, a deli was selling bratwurst, so of course we had to have one.  These aren't your dad's Johnsonville brats, mind you, these are the real thing--Thüringer Roster--and there *is* a difference. 

After a brat and a walk with William, we got back in and zoomed off again.  We were so close to Zwickau, and there weren't any more rest stops, so Mirjam had to (*warning* close your eyes while reading this next line) take William out of his car seat and hold him in the sling to quiet him down.  

That evening, William went to bed around 6 p.m.  He didn't wake up until about 8 a.m. the next morning.  There he goes, doing that perfect baby thing again.

Family photos

We had our first family photo session yesterday at Sears.  I told my dad and he laughed and said he used to go to Sears with the family, too.  I don't remember that, but he's got the pictures to prove it, so I'll believe him--this time.  You were right, Dad, they do a good job for a good price.  It's the price that attracted him, I'm sure.  To be fair, we had a coupon, too, otherwise I probably would have grumbled a lot more about it.  In the end, it was worth it, and we'll be sure to get more pictures professionally taken, probably from Sears, as soon as we have more kids.   I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. 
 

 

The games people play

When William is lying on his back, I take both his feet, pull them up in the air and let them drop while saying "kaaa...boom!"  At first, the corners of his mouth twitch upward.  With each "ka-boom!" his smile widens, his mouth opens, and sometimes I even get a laugh.  He seems to like it; either that, or he's already learned to just humor me once in a while.  It works best when he's well rested, otherwise he doesn't find it as amusing.  It's always good for a distraction from crying.  
 
He also likes it when I bicycle his legs, faster and faster, while exciting my voice.  I also like to bounce his hands and arms around, or try to tickle him under his chin and on his chest, which I think he's starting to understand is supposed to make him giggle.  He's still learning.

 
While I'm on the subject of smiling and such, I've heard that smiles from newborns are usually just gas.  Well, I am going on the record right now to state unabashadly that gas and other internal discomforts produced a completely different facial and aural reaction in my newborn.  He wasn't laughing, I can tell you that, and neither were we. 
 
Being three months old, he now has less gas, or at least has learned which muscles to flex and which muscles to relax in order to produce the most relieving effect.  Ahem.  He also smiles a lot more lately.  I wonder if the two phenomena are related. 

Favorite noises

I think my favorite squeak that William does is this: "nnn-G!" That's with a hard "G" on the end. Mirjam said her favorite is "mmm-MA!"

Tonight when I came home from work, Mirjam said he had been crying for hours, but he wouldn't fall asleep. Sometimes when he cries, his chin tenses up really tightly, his lower lip sticks way out, and he frowns so hard it looks like his cheeks might fall off. It's terribly sad and terribly adorable at the same time.

I guess that qualifies as more of a favorite facial expression than a favorite noise. But there is absolutely nothing more adorable than when he stretches when he's just waking up. His little body slowly contorts this way and that, fists clenched and arms up by his head. It's so cute I could just eat him up. In fact, sometimes when I'm holding him close to my chest, so that his ears are just at my mouth's level, I take a nibble or two.

First post

This will be a space where I will keep the world informed of the latest news regarding William. I'm hoping to set up a family site where we can regularly post pictures, this blog, and other stuff. I also thought about having Mirjam write a blog in German. Two perspectives, two languages. More to come.