the eric update - day 423: really pretty much almost probably just about standing unassisted ( and walking )!

it seems like just yesterday that i was commenting about the fact that odin was in a gray area with respect to crawling , so it's hard to believe that we're at a similar point with standing unassisted and - maybe - walking!

over the past week or so, he's been intentionally letting go of whatever he's holding onto and standing by himself - sometimes for 5 or 6 seconds; but it's hard to capture on camera, so i thought i might entice him with a set of keys. the ploy almost worked, but not quite :-)

of course, the increased frequency of letting go of corners of tables and whatnot has dramatically increased occurrences of ouchies ( in fact, if you look close to his nose, you can see the results of another recent scrape-up ), but he seems to be surviving.

and while he's been walking with the assistence of a walker for quite some time, we've noticed that occasionally when he stands unassisted - if he's really motivated - he'll even take a step or two!

we might be in this gray area for some time to come, but he's so coordinated when he walks with his walker, that i suspect that sooner rather than later he'll be tearing around the house on two feet!

the postcard project: republic of the fiji islands.

uncle matt and auntie deb sent this wonderfully detailed postcard from fiji where they were recently fortunate enough to lounge around for over a month!

of course, by sending us a postcard from the far flung locale ( at least relative from western michigan they know quite well that they're forcing us to plan a vacation there - them's the postcard project rules afterall.

if you know anyone looking to sponsor any postcard project adventures - national geographic, perhaps - feel free to send 'em our way :-)

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 422: guess odin's new and favoritest food!

while odin certainly isn't going to turn down any thin mints and he still loves to chomp on cheerios we've happened upon a new favoritest food that he simply can't eat fast enough.

it's crispy and crunchy and probably not a traditional baby food - can you guess what he's grasping in his grubby little baby fingers ( and yes, we know he could use a good scrubbing under his nails, but it's not as easy to do as you might think :-) )?

the eric update - day 421: the power of hindsight.

yes, it's true. the power of hindsight makes it frighteningly obvious that if you have an infant who is fascinated with pulling the night-light out of its electrical socket it might not be a good idea to try and deter his efforts by placing the diaper pail in front of it, if he has also recently discovered that tipping over diaper pails can be a fun way to pass the time when he doesn't feel like sleeping.

maybe next we can just put a blinking neon arrow pointing towards the night-light to make it even more captivating.

you'd think we were just begging to have piles of old, dirty diapers strewn all over the floor :-)

the eric update - day 420: apples and oranges.

has it really been four months since odin took his first bite of an apple on the same day that we had our first sighting of actual tooth enamel?

within the past few days we've had two more teeth poke through on the bottom to make eight total toofers which makes it all the easier to eat the apples.

he likes to crawl around with his apple that mamma has "started" by taking out a few bites and it strikes me yet again, how quickly he's growing up as he grips the apple, knawing off chunks and merrily eating away at it until deciding that he'd like to play with this or that before eventually returning to the apple which inevitably becomes coated with mauja's hair.

in case you were wondering, we have had "loads" of incontrovertible proof that infants don't digest dog hair :-)

yes, we've finally been worn down by the sippy cup industrial complex - at least when it comes time for imbibing watered down orange juice :-)

he's beein doing so well with his shot glass and "open" sippy cup that it took some practice to get him to figure out how to use it with the sippy lid attached. in fact, he never seemed very interested in trying when when we filled it with plain ol' water, but mastered it quite quickly when we filled it with juice. imagine that :-)

the postcard project: nashville, tennessee.

jeff sent this postcard from nashville, tennessee which many people think of as being the "home" of country music, thanks to the country music hall of fame, despite the fact that healthcare is its largest industry with more than 250 health care companies doing business within the city limits.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 419: and then there was one ( nap )?

while we've had some very occasional sleep "issues" for the most part, we adhere to a fairly regimented routine that seems to keep everyone happy. odin is almost always in bed between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. and although he still often wakes once in the night for food, he usually has a restful night's sleep until 6 or 7 a.m.

two months ago he dropped the third of his three ( 9 a.m., 12 p.m. and 3p.m. ) daily naps and just this week, we think he's decided that he does need his noon nap either, deciding instead to play on his BIg Boy Bed and excited as ever when we finally clue into the fact that he's probably not going to fall asleep.

suddenly we're realizing just how much "free" time we had when he was taking 3 naps a day now that we're down to one :-)

and as another indication that it's really time to Batten Down The Hatches, odin has learned when he's not taking a nap that he can tip over his diaper pail ( which is actually the one-step trash can that we puchased on our First Family Field Trip the day after arriving home from the nicu )!

fun!

the eric update - day 419: odin's epicurean adventures! his first taste of chocolate!

well, if we're going to feed him blecky beets then i guess it's only fair to give him his first taste of chocolate, no?

more specifically, it's his first taste of a "thin mint" girl scout cookie. and before you all start hollering about the trans fats in the cookies, we only gave him a quarter of a cookie :-)

he enjoyed it so much so that we had to deploy his rarely used bib and looked as if he thought we surely must be joking when we told him that he couldn't have any more!

odin - the trading card!

john/fd ( and here ) has done it again; this time he's whipped up a trading card maker.

the eric update - day 418: the endlessly entertaining shower door mirror.

on the off chance that you were wondering, odin still enjoys crawling up the stairs to play in front of the shower door mirror.

and every so often he likes to bring one of his toys that are actually toys along with him ( yes, while he likes to play with dolls, i think he might like his matchbox cars even better ).

i'm fairly certain that he knows the baby in the mirror is, in fact, a reflection of himself but i guess i'll never know for sure, since when i snapped this picture he seemed intent on trying to give his reflection the toy car, so maybe things aren't as clearly defined as i'd like to think.

as i snap a few pictures wondering if can yet distinguish between himself and his reflection, he sees the flash and looks right at me and i wonder he might be thinking as he tries to process the sensory input that tells him that i'm simultaneously in front and behind him.

the eric update - day 418: odin's epicurean adventures! yucky beets and other stuff that pops wouldn't eat even if you paid him.

in our continuing attempts to break odin's "jarred" habit kris thought it might be nice to whip up a concoction of pureed beets, apples, peaches, barley and brewer's yeast.

i kid you not.

i'm not sure exactly when, but somewhere along the way me and beets decided that we couldn't live together and the very smell of them makes me want to gag. i can't imagine the gastrointestinal awefulness that must result from blending them together with all the other ingredients and surely will not ever, ever, ever be caught eating the deceptively innocuous looking slop.

but apparently odin didn't inherit my disdain for the evil purple taproot , as when i paused to take a picture he clamored for me to cut it out and resume to shoveling it in!

despite the fact that i was fighting the urge to gag, you will notice that i was still skilled enough to feed him the mixture that could almost stain your shirt just by looking at it the wrong way without a bib!

you must admit that i've got the spoon feeding skills to pay the bills!

the postcard project: lincoln memorial, washington d.c.

auntie m sent this postcard from washington, d.c. featuring the lincoln memorial which you might not know was actually the third memorial to honor abraham lincoln.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 417 : The Never Ending Toy Struggle.

it began with Forbidden Foliage continued with the Incredible Interestingness of Power Supplies and Captivating Container Cupboards; it seems that the more determined we resolve ourselves to try and keep odin engaged in his "real" toys, the more determined he becomes in proving to us that those aren't really toys at all and are, in fact, boring artifacts that serve no purpose other than to occupy space and get in his way as he scrambles towards far more fascinating objects of his interest.

in addition to simply waving this toy and that toy in front of him and exclaiming "see! see! IT's A TOOOOOOOOY! fun!", we've also adopted the montessori technique of limiting the number of toys available by rotating sets of toys in and out of circulation. the theory being, i suppose, that he's not savvy enough to remember that the "new" toy is actually the same old toy that he played with a few weeks ago.

the results of an unofficial test of the efficacy of the ploy revealed that the "new" toys we unveiled today were able to deflect odin's attention from the remote control for exactly 32 seconds.

as if to mock my experiment, moments later odin sleuthed out a package of batteries which he found so profoundly interesting that it took no small amount of cajoling to convince him that dinner might possibly be more fun than removing and replacing the duracells from their packaging.

i kid you not that not more than two feet away lay a vast array of underused and unerappreciated "real" toys.

the eric update - day 416 odin's epicurean adventures! on breaking the "jarred" habit!

since learning how to eat chunky, crunchy foods like cheerios without gagging we've been slowly tweaking his meals to try and change his preference for eating only jarred foods, which he acquired because we could never seem to puree homemade food finely enough to prevent him from choking.

after 27 days of intensive work ( o.k. maybe it wasn't that intensive ), odin has pretty much lost any preference for food in a jar and will happily gobble up pretty much anything we toss together.

and we don't even have to puree it to remove every last chunk!

tonight odin enjoyed a blend of garden fresh tomatoes, spinach, ground lamb ( maybe the bone soup had an early influence because he definately enjoys eating meat and doesn't seem inclined towards vegetarianism ), cheese and even a little bit of onion!

it's a little tough to tell because he's already a little tired and ready for sleepy time, but he really does like the concoction.

everyone while everyone might be bored of me belaboring this point, but there's chunks in them thar spoonfulls! and not just chunks of solid lamb, but there's also pureed bits of tomato which makes it both chunky and smooth which can sometimes cause the most problems if kids have motor delays because it can take a lot of control to let the smooth stuff go down while keeping the chunky stuff around for further processing.

the postcard project: puerto banus, spain.

kristin and steve, who reside in silicon valley, were nice enough to send greetings from puerto banus, which is on spain's costa del sol.

while i haven't been there, i have been to madrid which was so much fun that we're very much hoping to get a chance to take odin there and while we're at it, i guess we've got as much as an excuse as we'll ever need to visit puerto banus while we're there :-)

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

Study Finds 29-Week Fetuses Probably Feel No Pain

i'm not so much interested in the results of a recent study that claims that fetuses prior to 29 weeks can feel no pain and its implication for abortion policy. rather, i'm interested in the following quote:

"Not all physicians agree. Dr. K. S. Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said, "There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that pain occurs in the fetus." For example, he said, tiny premature babies, as young as 23 or 24 weeks, cry when their heels are stuck for blood tests and quickly become conditioned to cry whenever anyone comes near their feet. "In the first trimester there is very likely no pain perception," Dr. Anand said. "By the second trimester, all bets are off and I would argue that in the absence of absolute proof we should give the fetus the benefit of the doubt if we are going to call ourselves compassionate and humane physicians."

i must admit that kris and don't remember this to be the case and in fact, the nicu we remember was remarkable because it wasn't filled with screaming, crying kids in way that you might imagine. most of the time if you heard crying, it was from the "older" nicu infants or full term infants brought into the unit with complications.

it never really occured to us that we could have been in the intesive care unit for over a full month before odin was even capable of feeling pain.

and regardless of whether it's 29 weeks or 28 or 27, it does highlight just how much brain development still needs to happen with micropreemies outside the womb.

the eric update - day 415: the case of the ever expanding pants!

while we try not be overly neurotic about odin's weight gains and really are quite impressed with the fact that he weighs over 20 pounds ( 9 kilos ), we'd be lying if we didn't admit that we probably spend more time talking about how his clothes fit than your average parent of a "full term" infant.

and we likely talk more about this pair of jeans than any other article of clothing because not only are they obnoxiously large on him given their 6-12 month sizing, but they apparently are growing!

over the past few months, each time we put them on him, they improbably fit him worse than they did the last time we tried and we can only conclude that they're made from some sort of space age fabric that for reasons unknown has never been used to make any adult pants that i've ever worn.

at the rate they're lengthening and widening, we figure that we may never have to buy him another pair of jeans again!

and yes, of course we're thinking of cutting off small swatches of the pants and putting them in petri dishes to see if we can grow new pairs to sell on ebay.

the postcard project: uluru, australia.

sillykitty who heralds from brisbane, australia sent this lovely postcard of the sandstone formation known as uluru in the uluru-kata tjuta national park in australia's northern territory.

uluru is revered as a sacred place amongst the mutitjulu aboriginals and has numerous rock caves and ancient paintings and sounds like just the kind of place that we might just visit with odin someday.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 414: odin's first Really Big Ouchie.

amongst the many things that are amazing about odin's adventures thus far are that somehow in the past four hundred and fourteen days he hasn't caught a single cold and he hasn't had a Really Big Ouchie.

and while we can still be amazed at his ability to fend off infectious agents, today has the dubious distinction of being the day odin gave himself his first fairly good self inflicted wound when he cracked his mouth on the edge of the dresser as he tried to dive out of mamma's arms right at precisely the moment that she was starting to lean over to pick up something off the floor.

it's a little hard to tell but his cheek is swollen and his lip is cracked on the corner of is mouth and the inside of his cheek, which experience tells me is one of the worst places to crack your lip because it takes forever to heal. you can still see the red marks on his face even though this picture was taken hours after the initial incident.

but as if to make us admire even more greatly his is strength and resilience, soon after the intial incident he trekked off to our local car dealer with kris only to unexpectedly sit and wait almost 2 hours for an oil change for our jetta tdi.

he never complained once.

the postcard project: chapel hill, north carolina.

kelliamanda claims she was late to postcard project game with this one that she sent from chapel hill, north carolina featuring the lovely looking university of north carolina, but since it has taken me three months to upload the card since receiving it along with a unc t-shirt ( it still fits - thanks! ) i say we're all living proof that it's always better to do somethings late than never :-)

yeah, i'm talking to you. the one standing off in the corner who has been meaning to send a postcard for months but just never got around to it!

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 413: a slow sunday, hanging out with evelyn.

what better day is there than a slow sunday to hang out with your cousin who also happens to be almost exactly your own adjusted age?

it's fascinating to watch their play time together evolve over time and odin and evelyn are engaging in a lot more truly independent play, observing each other closely and perhaps picking up a new behavioral trick or two along the way.

and if i'm not mistaken, odin appears to be close to learning a few new lessons about sharing as they often seem interested in the same thing and aren't quite sure what to do when the other baby gets what the other one wants.

for now everyone's on their best behavior, but i suspect that sooner rather than later one of them might resort to underhanded techniques to get what they want :-)

the eric update - day 412: no, he still doesn't like to wear socks.

it's hard to believe that cooler weather will soon be returning to western michigan so we've been trying to get odin, who has always had a barney rubble sense of style, to get accustomed to covering his feet at least with a pair of socks.

it looks like we'll have a bit more training to do as he thinks it's great fun to try and take them off. he had some trouble removing this pair of super stretchy socks, but it certainly wasn't due to a lack of trying on his part.

we could try and put some shoes on him to try and stymie his sock removing escapades, but for now that just seems to make him more upset than it's worth since he figures out rather quickly that there's no hope of him getting them off in a timely manner.

at least with this approach we can keep him preoccupied during car rides :-)

the eric update - day 411: The Imitative Clapper!

odin has never been overly enthusiastic about imitating people, which we can sometimes cause us some concern, depending on how neurotic we're being about trying to be observant about detecting any possible developmental delays sooner rather than later.

and while he may never decide that imitation for imitation's sake is an fun way to pass the time, he's at least temporarily decided that he'll humour us by copying our clapping!

interestingly, he still seems to have a solid mix of skills that one might look for in both actual and age adjusted terms. clapping is often seen around 10 months which seems just about right since he just celebrated his 10 month "adjusted" birthday a few days ago.

usually we're lucky to get just a few claps before he gets distracted and remembers that there are far more fun things to be doing :-)

the eric update - day 410: time to batten down the hatches!

while odin has been crawling and climbing for quite some time and we've been forced to take some rudimentary baby-proofing of the house ( mostly to prevent unsupervised stair mastery ) and we haven't really had to concern ourselves with fully battening down the hatches because he hasn't seem overly preoccupied with things we didn't want him to be preoccupied with beyond the Forbidden Foliage and Incredibly Interesting Power Supplies.

but something has changed in the past few days and i suspect things may never be the same.

it all started when we noticed that Mister Intentionality's interest in his changing table has moved beyond pulling off a few clothes; it's a little hard to catch him in the act, but we strongly suspect that when he's roaming around his room after he's awaken from his slumber on his Big Boy Bed that sometimes he tries to climb up onto and into the shelves!

within days of attempting to scale his dressing table, odin has taken a new interest in investigating the knobs on the various drawers and shelving around the house; and while he's always enjoyed playing with the knobs, and managed to occasionally, accidentally open a drawer or door, he's never seemed overly interested in intentionally opening them and pulling out the contents. that is, until yesterday.

and today, he uncovered the coveted Candy Drawer which, for unexplained reasons, just happens to at just the perfect height for Wee Ones to play with all the Super Fun Wrappers!

the individual bite sized wrappers could be and endless source of amusement if we weren't such mean parents :-)

of course, after foiling his efforts to eat obscene amounts of candy, odin discovered, for the very first time, the Container Cupboard.

and now we know that things will never, ever be the same.

the postcard project: austin, texas.

i don't know how to explain it, but we've received more postcards from austin, texas than any other place in the lone star state. coincidentally, it also happens to be one of the few cities i've visited ( and enjoyed immensely ) in texas.

ellen sends this postcard from the legislative reference library where she's a librarian.

it's probably a little known fact that this is actually the second postcard that we've received from a librarian!

see, they really are a lot cooler than you might remember :-)

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

Odin's Adventures! ( the magazine )

hmmmmmm. i wonder if anyone would buy it :-)

made with the excellent magazine covr application.

the eric update - day 409: even the strongest amongst us cry. sometimes.

yes, it really is true. even though odin is quite a mild mannered, if just a bit serious infant, a long day full of adventures without an afternoon nap can occasionally break even the strongest of spirits and bring about a fit of sadness.

but not enough sadness to call forth the crocodile tears. in fact, i think i can count on one hand the number of times i've seen tears. before we graduated from the nicu it wasn't that uncommon because he wasn't "old" enough to even have functioning tear ducts capable of doing much more than keeping his eyes moist and infants don't normally develop "real tears" they are about seven or eight months old.

so i guess we're just such spectacular parents that he chooses not to really turn on the waterworks.

but he can still look pretty sad, even without the tears.

building a better second womb?

the new york times magazine recently ran a very lengthy article on heidelise als' efforts to change neonatal intensive-care unit practices to help better the micropreemie odds:

"Als's proclaimed mission is to make the intensive-care unit safe for the development of the brain. In a series of innovative studies, she has shown that a gentler environment in the N.I.C.U. can alleviate many of the complications of premature birth. ''You have to watch the baby, to listen to the baby,'' she says. ''The baby is a partner in everything you do.'' Als argues that N.I.C.U.'s must become quieter, darker and more responsive to a baby's desire for comfort and movement; ultimately, they should be as reminiscent of the womb's nurturing environment as doctors and nurses can make them."

we were fortunate enough to spend most of our time in a nicu with personnel that tried their hardest to keep the environment quieter and darker. or at least as quiet and as dark as is possible given the circumstances.

but after we transferred to different nicu for emergency eye surgery we learned that not all nicus put as much effort into keeping things quiet and we'd have to ask to have the light dimmed ( even at night ) etc.

hopefully miss als' work will become more recognized and adopted in the future so frustrated parents don't have to fight for what's so seemingly obviously good for babies born too soon.

the eric update - day 408: people really do win on the snowdeal show ® !

yes, it's true. people really do win on the snowdeal show ®!

i'm happy to announce that fellow flickrite, mcbeth ( and here ) is the official winner of the postcard project camera contest!

i must admit, i was a little suprised that her winning entry was actually the only properly labelled submission that we received so i can't blame my horrible delay in declaring a winner on having to sift through hundreds of cards - instead, i have only my stupendous ability to procrastinate to blame.

oh well, the n50 is a fine film camera and it's in excellent condition. or at least it was until this photoshoot. i did discover that it needs a new battery, but rather than delay things even further by waiting for the day that i actually remember to pick up a new one, i'll just put in the mail Real Soon.

i won't even bother to wipe it off so maybe she'll find evidence of odin's drool and fingerprints :-)

the postcard project: madison, wisconsin.

this postcard from fellow flickrite, mcbeth, is not only our first postcard from madison, wisconsin but it's also the official winner of the postcard project camera contest!

congratulations!

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 407: making mamma a card! or happy birthday to kris!

august 15th is not just the day that thomas edison made his very first phograph recording ( curiously the honor went to "mary had a little lamb" ) and the first day of the woodstock festival - it's also kris' birthday!

i thought it might be nice to see if odin wanted to try his hand at making mamma a personalized birthday card ( o.k. maybe some might remember that odin signed my father's day card, and you'd be wrong and cynical if you thought i was trying to "one up" kris on her fantastic idea. wrong, i say! ) with some super sized crayons.

although he demonstrated a superb crayon grasping technique we still managed to get more on the highchair table than the paper itself. but we'll still give him an "A+" for effort. and did i already mention his outstanding ability to hold and manipulate the crayon?!

i guess before we can even broach the subject of learning to color between the lines, we'll have to work on emphasizing that paper and crayons are not actually food.

perhaps we're confusing things by being artsy in his highchair. regardless, while orange might be a nifty color, it sure doesn't look like it tastes very good.

for a bit of perspective, it's interesting to look back at what we were doing last year for kris' birthday when the biggest event of the day occured when she got to hold him for the very first time after he was put back on a ventilator after "crashing" and "improving" meant contracting pneumonia.

thankfully, today was a little less eventful :-)