I forgot to mention that last week at Weight Watchers I had them weigh Joe too. He was 13.2 pounds!
(And I’ve lost 17. Woo hoo!)
Also, my mother wrote an essay about living in Degirmendere, Turkey, when she and my dad were first married. It finally found a home in the Today’s Zaman newspaper. Read it!
I’ve been meaning to post all week but I’ve been working like crazy. I was tempted to turn down some assignments so I could spend more time in this beautiful weather with Joe. But if you’ve been watching the news, you know that now is not the time to turn down money!
We had a nice visit with Joe’s Grandma and Grandpa last weekend. Joe’s teething pain eventually settled down and we all went to the state fair. Joe spent the day studying his hand, so it really didn’t matter where we were to him, but the rest of us enjoyed the exhibits and the atmosphere.
Joe’s Grandpa got him a Radio Flyer Roadster, which you can tell Patrick really wishes came in adult size. Joe will be toodling up and down the sidewalk on this before we know it:
On Tuesday Joe and I met up with the other Baby Mamas (and their babies) for a stroll around Maymont. He slept through most of the walk but was wide awake for some play time in the grass afterwards.
His new favorite thing is what we call his “Command Post,” an exersaucer handed down from his cousins. His feet don’t quite touch the bottom yet, but he likes to be spun around and shown the different toys on it. One of the rattles makes him laugh so hard he can’t catch his breath!
Joe’s Grandma and Grandpa are visiting all the way from New York. They were only here a few hours when he decided this would be a good day to start teething. Yikes!
Poor thing has gone from a little fussy to all-out screaming all day, and the only thing that soothes him is gnawing on somebody’s knuckles. All this, after we’ve bragged for so long about what a calm and sweet baby he is.
We finally got him to sleep with the help of Hyland’s Teething Tablets, which my sister highly recommended. He hardly ate a thing all day though, so I’m expecting him to wake up hungry any second.
The books say it can be weeks between these first signs and when the tooth actually appears, so he might not wake up tomorrow with his first choppers.
Still. He’s growing up too fast!
Joe likes to stare at Patrick now. How cute are these two?
It arrived yesterday. After Patrick set it up, Joe and I hopped in for a little story time.
It’s so comfy and looks really great in his room. This is where Joe will get his nighttime bottle and story from now on!
I spent the rest of yesterday afternoon knocking on doors for the Obama office in Petersburg. I haven’t done that since I was 17, working on the Clinton/Gore campaign. We went to 50+ houses and only met one crazy person. Even he was friendly for a crazy guy; he just wanted to make sure we had a heads up on the race war that will ensue if Obama is elected and assassinated. OK, thanks dude!
Today Patrick and Joe are heading out to a car show while I finish up some work here at home. It’s HOT today, so I don’t even think we’ll do our usual Sunday-paper-on-the-porch thing. I’m so ready for fall …
I just uploaded a bunch of old footage we had sitting around on the video camera. Here we are leaving the hospital with Joe, just a few days after his birth:
Most of the other videos are from around the same time, when he was brand-new. You can see them here.
Joe is sleeping off a rough morning.
He had his two-month checkup today, including two shots. In the right thigh, he got a shot for hemophilus influenza. In the left thigh, he got a shot for diptheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis, hepatitis B and polio.
Thank goodness they can pack all that into two shots. Joe was cranky and crying before the nurse even came in, so seeing him get the shots wasn’t so bad. He just kicked the crying up a notch or two. (If he had been smiling and cooing when he got them, it might have broken my heart.)
In happier news, he is growing like a weed! His current stats:
Another month down, and Joe is still getting cuter every day.
My mother has always said that my dad has a third-grade sense of humor. After seeing this outfit he got for Joe, you may be inclined to agree:
(That look on his face really completes it, no?)
Last weekend we went to USA Baby and ordered a nice cushy glider for Joe’s room. The wooden rocker that’s in there now is lovely to look at but not very comfortable for story time or snuggling. So in 4-6 weeks, we’ll have this chair (in a solid blue):
This weekend we’re going to visit Patrick’s former workplace (and the site of our wedding reception), the Airborne & Special Operations Museum. They’re having the annual Airborne Day with freefall demonstrations, the 82nd Airborne Band and all kinds of fun stuff. We’ll let Joe soak it all in, and remind him that pretty much every man on both sides of his family has been Airborne. No pressure!
Next week is his two-month checkup at the doctor’s office, and you know what that means: shots. I bet we’ll both be leaving there in tears.
Joe’s favorite place to hangout (besides the changing table, the big weirdo) is his rainforest baby gym:
It makes rainforest sounds and has lots of colorful moving parts to look at. Here is a quick video of him enjoying it (sorry for the poor quality — it’s my cell phone camera):
We went to our first playdate earlier this week. It was especially for babies (I think the oldest one there was 9 months old). Joe was on his best behavior and was a big hit. I’ll post photos of that soon!
Joe Tremblay 