Back in the swing of things

Margaret's cousin gave us a baby swing when they moved away from Maryland and it has been a necessity.  Josh sleeps great at night but he has not been the best at napping except in his swing.  He will not nap more than 40 minutes in his crib but he will go 1-2 hours in the swing.

Then this past Monday the unthinkable happened.  We put Josh in the swing and it wouldn't start.  I had just replaced the batteries so I knew that was not the problem and I couldn't hear anything from the motor so I knew we were in trouble.

My first instinct was to run to the store and buy a new one but we decided against that.  We've been getting worried that Josh will get too big for his swing and we don't have the swing available when we travel.  A new swing would cost $150-200 and Josh is about to outgrow them anyway.

Mark and Ellie were already coming over so Mark and I took the swing apart to diagnose the problem.  As I expected, the problem seemed to be with the motor.  We got the model number and I found a website that sold the motor for only $2 (plus shipping) so I immediately ordered it.

Unfortunately this still meant we had to go several days without the swing.  Our nanny who started a few weeks ago (more about her in a post coming soon) would have to deal with Josh and no swing.  I was very concerned about this but the nanny survived and said Josh did nap in the pack-and-play.  She also took him on several walks during the week to get him to nap.

Yesterday the new motor arrived and Margaret and I installed it and put the swing back together (no small feat considering it had 5 different sizes of screws).  Amazingly the swing worked and we are back in business.  Josh took a 1.5 hour nap in the swing today and we all appreciate its return.  We do still need to get Josh to nap better outside of the swing but it is good to have it back.

Very upset about the swing!

Despite what the picture looks like, I am actually helping

Putting Humpty Dumpty back together

Happy to back in the swing

First time in the swing, 6 days old

A few more pictures :-)

We'll try and post more content later in the week...but for now, some more cute pictures from our photo shoot with Emily Rose Portraits :-)

Rollin' with the homies

We have been waiting patiently for Josh to roll from back to front. He did front to back a month ago, and keeps looking close but won't quite go the whole way around. Well today I came in to get him up and found this:

Julian and I are a little sad we missed the first time, but we will have to get used to that. And the second (and sixth) time were still petty exciting :-)

We did finally get a video of Josh rolling over from later in the day.

PS - can you guess what episode we were watching?

Professional Pictures!

We decided to get some professional portraits done so that we would have some good pictures of Josh as a baby. I went to grade school with Emily (she was in Ellie's grade) who has done portraits for lots of my facebook friends. A friend of mine let me know that she would be in town to do photo shoots in Maryland (she is normally based in Florida), so we decided to do a photo shoot. Josh has had a lot of skin and behavior problems so I had been nervous about booking in advance. Fortunately Emily was able to fit us in with late notice. She did a great job! You can't even tell that Josh spent most of the time screaming :-P I would highly recommend Emily Rose Portraits to anyone looking to do photos :-) Her facebook page has updates about when she will be in the Maryland area. Here are a few of her great pictures:

She even made his unhappy face look great!

Faces of Josh 4 months

I put together another faces of Josh video.  This one goes through his first four months.

4 Month Checkup

Josh had his 4 month doctors appointment on Friday and everything went well. He is a whopping 15lbs 13.5oz and has gone from the 10th percentile to the 60th!! His height is now in the 70th percentile :-)

We saw a different pediatrician for this appointment (we wanted to make sure we knew all 4 doctors in the practice) and he believes that waiting until closer to 5-6 months is better for solid food. The other doctor we had been seeing had mentioned that sometimes introducing solid foods can help with eczema, but this doctor wasn't sure he felt like it would make a big difference for Josh. I had been thinking that I wanted Josh to be a little bit better at sitting up unassisted before we started solids, so I think we will wait a few weeks and see how he is doing :-) It also works well to let him settle into a routine with the Nanny before starting him on solids.

Overall Josh is doing very well! He is hitting all of his milestones. The doctor gave us some new suggestions for treating his eczema, but if that doesn't work I might need to do an elimination diet to see if he is allergic to something. Hopefully it won't come to that (mostly because I don't want to have to waste my frozen supply!).

Josh did end up getting another low grade fever from his second round of shots, but he didn't seem too upset by it this time. His eczema cleared up a bit after the shots too, possibly because his immune system was fighting the pathogens and not him--just my theory based on the hygiene hypothesis :)

His next checkup is at 6 months, so we will have to see if he keeps up the pace in his growing!

Four Months!!

I can't believe it has been 4 months already. Time has just flown by. Our four month checkup is not until Friday so we won't have his stats until then. Unofficially we think that Josh will be well over 15lbs... he has been growing SO FAST! I packed up most of his 3 month clothes today and pulled out the rest of the 6 month ones. He can easily roll front to back, and although he hasn't done back to front yet I think it is due to lack of motivation and not lack of strength or skill. He can rotate himself 360 degrees when placed on a play mat by kicking and turning. He is reaching for all kinds of toys, cups, food, or anything he can get his hands on and put into his mouth (including other peoples fingers). We have not given him any solid food yet but he is starting to seem interested in it! He is certainly interested in our adult beverages :)

The last 4 months have not been at all what I expected parenting to be like. I thought I would be finishing my thesis by now, and instead I'm just about to start writing. I decided to take a few extra months of maternity leave because Josh (and I!) were not ready to leave him with someone else. We have hired a nanny to help out starting in late May so I can start getting some work done. While it might not be the smartest move career wise, I know that the extra time has been really helpful for both me and Josh. He is doing so much better now, much less fussy (as long as he naps...), and growing so well. Personally I'm doing so much better too. The first 2 months were so hard for us, it has been really great to have 2 months to enjoy being a Mom instead of going right back to work and missing Josh finally being a happy baby.

Crabby but cute!!

One day I'll feel bad for making fun of Josh with these pictures...but I just think he is too cute not to share :-)

Cute

Crabby

Unsure...

Recent discoveries

Josh has finally discovered Jeter...he can't quite grab her tail yet, but I think he is close.

He also discovered baseball, he likes watching the nationals

He is getting more and more interested in toys too :-)