On Stuff and Stability

In Boo's relatively short life, there's been a lot of major changes. He's already quite a well-traveled child! He spent his first 10 days living in Missoula, enjoying the fall colors and relatively warm weather. Then it was straight into the cold of winter- in-progress in Bethel. He went for his first snowmachine rides and enjoyed the sub-zero temperatures for the next few months. I went back to work and he went to daycare. Then there was a quick 10 day whirlwind to Salt Lake City and then it was life on the island, first living in one apartment and then a few months later, moving again. Along the way there was another trip with a week in California and a week in Portland and then there's my transition to house-wifing (wifeing?) and Dawson's switching of jobs. And of course, right when things were starting to settle down, there was the extended vacation to Akutan. So technically, he is almost 8 months old (7-7-07!) and he's lived in 4 different houses amid other changes.

In Bethel, he was a relative sleeping champion...just a couple of months old and already sleeping for 5-6 hour stretches! Then came island life without any of our stuff and the three of us sleeping on an airmattress that tended to catapult you a couple of feet everytime anyone rolled over (of course, it was a relatively improvement over sleeping on the floor!). That apartment temperature tended to hover at about 80 degrees, regardless of whether the windows were open, so I think we all learned to wake up every hour or so, panting with dehydration. Things went haywire and in moments of sleep deprivation madness, we tried everything we could think of (I'm using the royal "we", even though these were almost all my brilliant ideas). We moved Boo into his "co-bed" which is a relatively uncomfortable pack-and-play which attaches to your bed. When this wasn't working and we thought maybe we were waking him up, we moved him into the other room which was packed floor to ceiling with our unpacked boxes. It felt like moving a noisy dog into the garage and needless to say didn't work. So then we moved him back in and tried moving Dawson and a pair of earplugs into the other room (the idea was for him to actually get some sleep so he could pay attention at work). This is when we learned that it's not comfortable to sleep surrounded by towering boxes. So then we kept Boo in his bed and Dawson and I both moved out to the living room on Thermarests. Unsuccessful again. We all moved back in to the bedroom and tried various other remedies, from the bathroom fan to continuous play IPOD playlists. I even succumbed to downloading 45 second samples of lullabies off the internet which were guaranteed to bring blissful sleep. To be honest, I think the gap between the 45 second songs actually caused him to wake up about every 45 seconds (of course, this is hindsight after playing the songs for at least a month, and yes I could have actually ordered the CD where the songs weren't 45 seconds, but perhaps my middle name really isn't "patience"!). Then there was another move and more developmental changes. He learned to crawl and pull to stand (but not to get back down) and discovered that if he wasn't happy in his co-bed he would just try to crawl up onto our bed....this necessitated more changes To make a long sleep-deprived story a little shorter, we've finally begun to have a little success. Dawson took over on the brilliant ideas and thought maybe it was the Alaskan summer sun which was waking him up. He developed a technique of draping a blanket over his bed for a fort-like dark atmosphere. A-ha! It worked. Then we moved him into his own bedroom with the fort intact, and finally bought him a comfy crib and decorated his room for even more beneficial effects. In the last week, we've collected some used baby equipment...a crib, a changing table, a rocking chair and a high chair, and painted his dresser and decorated his room with a cool surfboard theme. We're generally down on accumulating stuff and would like to think that you don't need all this stuff for a baby, but I'm here to say that some of it is actually quite handy. Imagine...a rocking chair to sit on when nursing at 4 am....a nice high changing table to corral him from rolling over and having naked escapades midway through every diaper change...a high chair for him to sit at the table and eat Cheerios from a tray. The basics, I suppose, but we're just now getting around to basics. While we're not ready to get carried away with a fit of baby consumerism, a few things are pretty nice....I think we'll stay put for awhile...well, at least a few months!




The crib....in it's night-time dress.
Buck...hoping for a spare Cheerio.
How about that hair (takes after his dad)?

Speaking of "not staying put", we've been tackling the difficult job of taking a passport picture for Boo so that we can start our world travels. Here's a few potentials....You're not actually allowed to have a smiling photo...but don't you think they might be a little leniant on the rules?

(Check out that tooth!)

For an exciting preview of events to come...

Tomorrow is the 4th of July....the biggest highlight will be the arrival of Auntie Fun Times!! She will unfortunately miss the mainstreet parade and the "Cutest Baby" and "Baby Crawling" contests, but she's sure to see the big city fireworks display which generally happens sometime during this week at about midnight depending on light and fog. We can't wait for her arrival and we'll be sure to fill the week with fun activities (plus she just might have a few treats in her luggage...like a reported years supply of chocolate)!! Yahoo.