Bear Sounds

Baby Bear's really learning some important growling skillz these days.  It's pretty impressive.  Check out the first couple seconds of these videos.






And some regular baby babbling...along with daddy terrifying baby man just a smidgy bit.

Sitty Bear

Lately he's gotten pretty good at sitting. Depending on his mood, he can sit unassisted on the floor for up to a few minutes and can sit up on our bed indefinitely. Something about the cushiness makes it easier to balance I guess. Huh. According to spell check, cushiness isn't a real word. Psht. Blogger's got a pretttty limited vernacular if you ask me.

Around 30 seconds into the video he gets pretty intense. Must be some sort of dominant bear ritual or something. After that it gets pretty boring though.

Stay Cool

 

I couldn't let Ryan steal all the glory with that picture in the last post.  Not sure if this one competes but it's the best I can come up with on short notice.  

 Before I tell this story, I guess I should explain that I get really nervous around cops.  Like I'm gonna get busted for breaking laws that I don't even know exist.  I feel like this is very rational and it serves me well as you'll see if you read on.

So earlier today I was driving past an officer and thought to myself "okay, stay cool, just look natural.  we don't want this cop getting suspicious of any foul play," and promptly crashed the van into the curb, peeled out when I floored the gas in an attempt to brake, finally found the brakes and violently skidded to a halt.  I even had the presence of mind to roll my window down and explain to the officer that I've got this fear of cops which will sometimes result in my inability to function physically.  Which is completely untrue since I was obviously way smooth and casual the whole time but he totally bought it.  Job well done, I say.  He never suspected a thing and I got to go on with my day without being arrested.

Okay and so this post isn't too disappointing  to grandma elkins, here's a picture of ryan and baby man.

...and baby man after a bath.

Lookin cool...and more random pictures

A Test of Sorts, if You Will

So...trying to figure this whole blog layout thing and I couldn't think of a more perfect picture to use for the test than the one above. Also I'm told that if you upload videos to youtube instead of blogger they don't look as crappy. We'll see how it goes.

Just Hangin'

Not much going on lately. We're in the market for a new home for baby man since he demands it. We may have found something that we all like out in Sandy...crap. I'm even boring myself. and we're only like 3 sentences in. hmm. The exciting part is that it's right next to this pretty cool gully so we'll get to go on some awesome scenic walks with the baby bear whenever we want. It's also pretty close to where my friend Poopers* is living right now so when we're walking in the gully we could keep each other company in order to keep those pesky rapists at bay. She claims that they're deterred by larger numbers but I can't help but fear that more people just invites a rapist party. We will just see who wins this debate.

Baby Man's finally started to babble. He's big on saying Mama, mumumum, baba, and blah blah so as you can imagine, we are having some riveting conversations these days. I don't have in on video yet but that's next on my agenda.

Here he is munching on his fingers, his favorite snack.


And here's a random video for the grandmas. It's nothing new, just baby man hanging out in his little toy car. He just goes bananas for it.




Oh and baby man's standing unassisted now!








...or not. well, whatever.







*she claims to hate this name but I can't help but feel she's lying. plus I've got to use some sort of alias lest online predators find out she lives in sandy

Spooky Stuff Part 2, Plus the Latest Thing: Furies

Baby Man's really been into scrunching his face up and breathing furiously through his nose lately. So much that he'll often do it when he's not even really upset which can get kinda confusing. Here's a preview picture but the video captures it much better.

Spooky 6 Months........................... and more samples from a devilishly brilliant budding film maker. Me.

It's some scary times around here what with the witching hour (err day perhaps) almost upon us. Baby Man insists on adopting his usual camera expression which in the context of halloween turns out to be very appropriate.

Also, he just turned 6 months 2 days ago. He's finally started rolling from belly to back recently but still doesn't have it down perfectly yet. And by that I mean that I saw him roll over one time with the help of his crib bars. But you know, he's getting there. Also, he's getting decent at sitting up. But honestly, he doesn't trouble himself too much with all the boring typical milestones that most babies get all hung up about. He's more into developing mental skills. Like telepathy, for instance. He'll stare at an object for minutes at a time with an intensity that you'd have to see to believe while frantically flapping his arms. He's big into drinking my "coffee" (basically warm milk with sugar) in the mornings, gasping and chirping at the dogs, and grabbing everything in sight and shoving it in his mouth. This includes things that he considers to be disgusting as well. He'll shove a rice cracker in his mouth, grimace, shudder violently, moan sadly, then quickly shove it back in his mouth only to start the whole thing over again. He loves being outside. In fact, if he's not sleeping, that's still the only way I can consistently keep him happy. We walk to the grocery store every day and still go hiking at least a couple times a week. It's so sad that winter's coming but Tess has started to convince me that snowshoeing might possibly be delightful. We will see.

Oh and look how skinny this bear is! He's up to over 70% in height but has dropped to 17% in weight. He's got the skinny lurp genes for sure. :)

He really likes showing off his slender baby physique whenever he gets the chance.

More random videos for grandmas...


He's really into standing up these days. Just standing rigidly still, that's it. Bouncing or any type of leg movement is currently for suckers.


Here's something that he was really into for like a week and hardly ever does anymore. He started violently gasping whenever he'd get excited, and in this case, seeing the puppies is very exciting.


lol...his dad has such a way with children. That's all I've gotta say about this one.


Here is his first encounter with a sippy cup. It was a hit.

Fancy Dandies

Last night we got the opportunity to get all fancy shmancy and go to the Governor's Gala, courtesy of John Pestana (guy who co-founded omniture and who's been big time helping Ryan and Jason with their company). It was some good times with good company.

Unfortunately, Baby Man wasn't invited due to his passionate personality. He's way too into Keepin It Real to attend these types of functions so Grandma Cupcake and Grandpa came over to watch him. They must have fed him really well because the next day, something of quite an alarming magnitude happened in his diaper as you can see here. It must be some sort of record.

Old Codgery Cudger

Lately Baby Man's been a big fan of sucking on his lower lip, making him look like an old toothless man. He augments this image with old man grunts and moans sometimes too:

Oh and just go ahead and ignore the depeche mode in the background. He seems to like it when I put on dance music and prance around while making dinner. He really gets a kick out of hopping around to the beat, like most babies I would imagine.



Here's my terrible filming skills at work, showing how he thinks it's funny when the camera comes towards him really fast. If you look closely halfway through, he lifts his eyebrow sean connery-style. It's awesome. But really subtle. And then later he tries to eat the camera.


I'm always having to clean under baby man's neck...like 3 times a day lately since he's developed such a drooling problem that it's pretty much constantly moist and there's usually a bit of a rash despite my best efforts. Anyway, after I wipe him off, I usually lift up his chin and blow on it so that it's dry for at least a little while and this always gives him the chills. I thought it was pretty cute so I filmed it:




And also for your viewing pleasure, I'm including some videos where absolutely nothing of interest happens. I'm thinking his grandmas might like it but even they might get bored.

Baby Bear in the Forest

Baby Man is turning 5 months old in a week. This is craziness. Pretty soon he'll be off to college. He's already been sleeping in his own room for a couple weeks now. I think he's teething because he's become a big time drooler and is always stuffing things into his mouth, as you can see here:
He's also starting to roll around like a champ. Well...rolling from tummy to back anyways. He got a bit behind with his baby milestones because he couldn't tolerate tummy time and would crumple into baby bear tantrums within seconds of being put on his tummy and would then just kinda thrash around, which is great exercise but not so great for learning. We persevered, though, and got him to start actually liking tummy time for a few minutes at least by the time he was 4 months old and he got caught up right away. He hasn't quite figured out how to roll onto his belly yet but he'll roll onto his side fairly often from his back so it should be right around the corner. Although I'm not sure how much motivation he has since even with all his improvement, he still really dislikes being on his tummy.

But enough about that. He's also started making these really loud chirping sounds, usually when he appears to be conversing with light fixtures. He especially loves this nighttime lamp we got for him. He'll sit there talking to that guy for like 10+ minutes. About what, I've got no idea. Sometimes he'll get so into it that I'll catch myself glancing over at the light myself to see what all the fuss is about. But, surprisingly, whenever I look there's just some lame lamp sitting there doing nothing. He's gradually becoming more independent. He goes to sleep in his crib now all by himself and can usually get himself back to sleep if I wakes up, unless he's hungry. Which happens a lot because he's a hungry little baby bear. He insists on helping me with all the chores and gets very upset if I'm not holding him while vacuuming, dusting (lol, like I ever dust. but if I DID, you can bet he'd wanna help), cooking, doing the dishes, etc. You can imagine that it isn't always feasible to be holding him so he gets upset fairly frequently. Occasionally lately he'll be content to hang out in his baby chair and watch me work while playing with some toys. Usually when that happens I'll just stare at him wondering if someone switched out my baby and forget all about the stuff I've gotta get done . I think those rare times are becomming more frequent though. Very exciting.

He gets scared by new things sometimes...


...but he's learned to retaliate with some sweet action ninja moves that his friend Ryker (aka mr Bugglesworth) has been teaching him:


And he's got some pretty amazing plotting skills...where he learned those I've got no idea.