Pie, Ponies, Patricks, Etc.

It's been a busy week. There is work as usual, plus some other stuff:

We had a Pi Day party. I let Ike help me with our two pumpkin pies. It took about 50% longer and was at least 70% messier than if I had done it while he napped, but I'm glad we did it together. It was a good opportunity for me to work on being a more present parent. No pictures of the finished pies, nor of the pie buffet. It was fun, though!

The weather was warm enough (in the 50's) that we went on two walks to the park. Plus, today, we went to the nearby model airplane runways to watch the hobbyists fly their little planes. It was fun and chilly.

We said hello to Francis, and we said goodbye to Rusty and sold him for scrap metal.

I took Ike to see the farm animals. He rode the pony without me walking by his side. He looked exceptionally bored the whole time, but as soon as the ride was over and I went to get him down, he begged for more.

Felix started on solid foods, and he thinks that is pretty awesome. I made my own baby food today, which I think is pretty awesome.

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, which is a bit of a  big deal in our house. I will prattle on all day about my Irish ancestors. Eric will pretend that he's Irish too. (Scots-Irish ancestors do not count. They were the oppressors!) We'll eat corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and Irish soda bread. Everyone will be grateful that we normally stick to more flavorful and healthful cuisine the other days of the year.

Adventures in a Toddler Bed

A couple of weeks ago I went in to check on Ike and to change his diaper before I went to bed, which is something we do basically every night. I found him stark naked and curled into a ball in his crib. It was hilarious, but only because he had not made any sorts of messes in his naked state.

The next morning I was feeding Felix in my bed when I heard the pitter patter of Ike running down the hall and into a room. He entered with great triumph, arms spread wide and declared, "TA-DA!"

That afternoon we tried to put him down for a nap, and as soon as Eric left the room, Ike followed him. After that, Eric observed Ike as he climbed out of the bed. It was apparent that the crib would no longer contain him. That day the crib morphed into a toddler bed, and we placed a child-lock on the inside handle of Ike's doorknob so he couldn't get out. With great skill he got the child-lock off the doorknob and came darting out of his room again. Clearly, he was quite proud of himself. (The crazy thing about the whole crib situation is that he sleeps on the floor at his babysitter's house, and he stays on the floor in his designated spot without any reminders from his babysitter. Not only that, but even after he wakes up he stays in his spot until she comes to get him.)

That evening Eric outsmarted the toddler by taping up the childlock so Ike couldn't get it off his door. He was trapped in his room.*

Since then, he has fallen asleep on the floor for pretty much every nap and every bedtime. Each night in addition to changing his diaper, we also move him to his bed.

Twice he has fallen out of his bed. On one of those occasions when Eric went to help him he found Ike, disoriented, trying to crawl under his bed. I once came upon him on the floor, after having put him in his bed. His legs were under his bed, and his head was out in the open.

On Sunday night Eric found him sleeping in his laundry basket, with his legs hanging out. That's the best one so far. Since then he learned to use his laundry basket as a stool to enable him to reach his light switch. With the lights on he was free to play in his room endlessly. Obviously the laundry basket has been moved to Felix's room since that occasion.

I imagine that one of these days he'll choose to sleep in his bed, but I'm not counting on it being any time soon.

*Yes, we now regularly lock our child in his room. It is an effective way to get him to go to sleep. If you think this makes us monstrous parents, then you are entitled to that opinion, but I don't need to hear about it.

Felix - Five Months

At five months old, Felix's five favorite things are:

1. Mom.
2. Mom.
3. Mom.
4. Mom.
5. Dad and Ike.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, but this baby loves me, and I love him. He loves interaction from most people, but he especially loves it from me. I can get him to chuckle pretty consistently, and it's always funny.

Felix loves to be held. It's a good thing that he is such a tiny guy (only in the third percentile for weight), or else I'd get pretty exhausted holding him as much as I do. I rock him to sleep for naps and bedtime. He doesn't sleep quite like Ike did, but he's still a good sleeper all around.

He comes to work with me, and my co-workers love him. He gets passed around at meetings sometimes, and he's often on the lookout for me as he gets shifted from one person to the next.

Felix is incredibly wiggly. I love it. Sometimes when I place him on the floor on his back he'll rotate all around. He's close to rolling onto his belly, but he hasn't quite managed it yet.

He doesn't spit up as much as Ike, but he does spit up a lot. It's gross. I'm ready for that phase to be over. He's starting to act interested in food, and that's pretty cute too.

The outfit pictured on the right is sized 0-3 months. It's still big on him. Right after Easter last year, when I was still not very pregnant, I bought a gender-neutral Easter onesie figuring that my baby would be about six months old around Easter. I'm pretty certain that it will still be quite large on him six weeks from now. It's a good thing I got it on clearance.

Dream Job

Janssen wrote a really interesting post, which got some really great comments, about dream jobs. It got me thinking.

I happen to really love my job. There was a time when I couldn't say that, and there are always going to be certain things about any job that you don't really like, but right now the job I have (professional genealogist) is my dream job.

For a while I thought about going to nursing school. I really thought it would be awesome to be a labor and delivery nurse, or maybe even a midwife. I still thought this would be a cool job after birthing Ike, but after Felix's delivery I realized I don't actually want to be a nurse at all. It turns out I have no interest whatsoever in dealing with gross stuff, even if a baby does come out of the mess.

As part of my job sometimes I get to do media interviews, and I really enjoy that. Sometimes my interviews are very "how-to" based. I like those, but the ones I like better are the ones where I get to share with the media person about their family history. It's so fun to present information to them that they never knew. It takes a lot of behind-the-scenes work to get to a story worth sharing. That part is challenging, but it's also fun. I think the really fun part, though, is getting to share the information and tell the story on camera.

So, maybe that's my real dream job. Getting to be a host of a genealogy show. Any producers out there who want to take me up on that?

Either that, or I want to replace Diane Rehm when she retires. This is a dream job, after all.