Snuggling and Sitting

Kandy and Betty Jo came over for a bbq yesterday. I had a hunch that we would have more than enough food (we always do when Kandy is involved ;) so I invited Jill and Maya to stop by. Maya had a sleepover the night before so she was exhausted and crashed on our couch. Here is a pic of Finn waking her up and spending some time snuggling with her.

Doesn't he look like such a big boy sitting up? Such good posture!

First ER Trip

Friday was my first official neurotic new mom (possible over-reaction) incident. There's a little back story that makes it seem a little more logical than it first appears. One of my friends from school is moving to Arizona to go to law school so I organized a happy hour of all the original Strattonites that used to go out nearly every Friday night (we missed you Sheryl). Of course, this included Wes so after school he went and got Finn and stopped by to meet us for a little while downtown. It was a beautiful afternoon, although a little warm and a tad bit humid, so we decided to sit outside. When they arrived Finn was very warm and pretty lethargic. We just assumed he was hot and tired. He pretty much just laid on us and slept off and on. At one point he was lifting his head and dropping it back on my chest over and over like he couldn't hold it up. I got a little worried and took him inside to the air conditioning and wet his hair down. Once inside he perked up a little so Wes decided to just take him home and turn the air on. Wes said that he was pretty much back to his old self when they got home, although he wouldn't eat any of his cereal. I got home at about 7:45 and noticed that he was still really warm so we took his temperature. It was 101.4. I knew that anything over 100.4 is reason to call the doctor so we called the answering service. Unfortunately, they had just given the doctor all the messages and wouldn't be calling her back for another hour. Here's where the new mom neurosis kicks in. At this point I knew that he had had a fever for at least 4-5 hours. I really didn't want to wait another hour to find out whether or not we should go in to the ER and then sit around the ER for who knows how long. Had I discovered the fever earlier, I would have given Finn Tylenol and waited to see if he got better, but 5 hours into it I just decided we should go to the ER (Prompt Care closes at 8). So off we went...

When we got there, after a short wait, they took Finn's temp and it was 101.6. I half expected them to send us home, but they took us back and gave Finn something to treat the fever. The fever seemed to break after about an hour and Finn was much more himself. They took his temp again and he was down to 100.6. They also took a throat culture because his throat seemed red. About four hours after we arrived, they sent us home and told us to give him a rotation of Tylenol and Motrin every 4 hours. They didn't find a source for the fever. The Tylenol and Motrin helped, but he has still had a slight fever off and on all weekend. He's also been a bit crabby. I still can't feel any teeth so I guess we'll see in the next week or two if I dragged Finn to the ER over his first tooth. :) Here's a couple pics we took on my phone while waiting in the ER.

Who looks tired?

Sidenotes: A nurse gave us the blanket in the pic with Wes. Apparently, volunteers make them for babies who come to the hospital. We left the house with nothing but Finn and my purse. No diapers, no blanket, nothing.

Also, we were in an area right next to a door that connects the ER to another department and nearly every time someone walked through it, an alarm went off until someone came with a card to turn it off. So on top of sitting in the ER for 4 hours, we had to listen to an alarm constantly ringing.

Bathtub Mohawk

Finn has been sitting up pretty well on his own since right around 5 months. He still doesn't like to bend at the waist for very long so we have to have the Boppy behind him or sit behind him so he doesn't fling himself backwards. He is starting to outgrow his little bathtub, but we don't want to put him in the big bathtub alone because of the whole flopping backwards thing. Wes is having him get used to sitting in the tub by having him sit up in his little tub. Here he is looking adorable with a mini mohawk.

Finn's First Baseball Game

That's right. At five months old, Finn attended his first Major League Baseball game. I know that up until five months ago we rolled our eyes at "those people" who brought their kids to games. We are officially"those people." It was actually just bad planning on our part. We bougt tickets when they went on sale in February and figured that since Wes's sister Amanda lives in St. Louis, she could watch Finn while we went to the game. Or if she was busy, we thought we could bring Grandma Kandy along to babysit while we went to the game. However, they both ended up being out of town that weekend so Finn came with us. It ended up working out very well. We exchanged our tickets for seats in the wheelchair accessible section and we were able to wheel Finn's stroller right between our seats. There was plenty of room and we were able to stand up behind our seats when Finn got restless. Here he is looking super-imposed.

It was a little windy in our section and since we were under the overhang, we had to keep our jackets on, but other than that our seats were perfect. Finn did a great job and barely made a peep. He did get tired though and fell asleep on me for the first time in a couple months.
Here's a family pic after the game. Yes, I'm wearing a Cardinals shirt. Wes and I have a deal that unless the Cubs and Cardinals are playing each other, we root for the home team when we go to a game. Note Finn's camo pants honoring his dad's tradition.
The Cardinals lost 1-0 to the Brewers, but it was hat give away day so Finn will have a souvenir from his very first game that he can grow into.

Mother's Day

I had a fantastic Mother's Day. Wes gave me 3 presents, but I think he only realized he gave me one. The first present he gave me was Saturday evening. Finn went to sleep at 8:00 as usual and Wes rode his bike to downtown Urbana to meet up with some buddies. This left me alone in a quiet house to watch whatever I wanted on TV. Present number two was Sunday morning. Wes got up with Finn and let me sleep in. Actually, Wes does this every weekend and I consider it a gift every weekend so it counts. The real gift was a super cute rhyming book that Wes and Finn made for me. It's filled with pictures and "fun facts" about our lives since Finn was born. Best gift I could have gotten. Besides the time I got to spend with just Wes and Finn, we had dinner with Kandy and Betty Jo Saturday night and went to Springfield on Sunday to spend time with my family. It was a great weekend and is making me long for summer break. 3 weeks to go...

The Payton Cousins - Austin, Josh, Finn, and Donoven

He likes it, he really likes it!

We spent four days catching the rice cereal Finn was spitting out on a spoon and trying to shovel it back into his mouth. I decided I'd give it a week before I mixed in any juice or fruit to sweeten it up. I'm glad I waited because when I fed him yesterday he opened his mouth, let me put the spoon in, and even started moving his jaw up and down like he was chewing. So cute! Same routine tonight. Now that he's actually eating it I'm going to have to start measuring how much I make. Wes has both the camera and video recorder at school (what's with him taking all our stuff to school and leaving it?) so I've got nothing to post, but I will as soon as I can.

Finally...Part II

Finally, I have my computer back for good. The DVD/CD drive has been broken for months, but since it wasn't really an inconvenience, we didn't worry about it. But since our warranty is set to expire on May 5th, we decided to take it in and get it fixed. I finally got it back after about a week so it's time to catch up on the blog.

We went to our last swim class on Thursday. We really enjoyed it and I look forward to swimming a lot this summer. Finn is a great little swimmer. He kicks his feet and doesn't mind being on his back. He also tolerates going under very well. Here he is looking coy in his wet suit.

After the two Cubs vs. Cubs series (we're even on the season so far) we heard that there were baby baseball hats at Toys-R-Us. Luckily we had a gift card so we headed over to gear the little dude up. Unfortunately for Wes, they only had Cubs hats. I think blue is definitely Finn's color!

Finn has started sitting on his own fairly well. We have to be close by because he still doesn't really like bending at the waist so he gets bored with sitting pretty quickly and flings himself backwards. Whenever he is laying down he tries to sit up. It's pretty cute. We think he'll have a 6 pack by summer.

Finn has discovered that his feet can be fun. He especially loves to grab onto his left foot and kick it around. Wes said that he was like a dog chasing his tail this morning. He kep moving his foot and trying to grab it like he wasn't the one controling it.

Finn turned 5 months old on Thursday so we decided it was time to introduce rice cereal. Our doctor told us we could introduce it at 4 months, but that was right when I was going back to work and he was getting used to eating two meals a day from a bottle. We didn't want to introduce too much at once. I also have read that the later you introduce cereal, the better it is for his digestive system. So yesterday was the day. Here he is loading into his highchair for the first time. The video of his first non-mommy meal is below.

Complainer

Finn has started communicating in a new way. When he is bored or just wants us to hear about it, he starts going, "Ba ba ba ba ba." It's really cute - especially when he stops making the noise but keeps moving his mouth. Oh, and enjoy the super finger suck at the end. Sorry it's kind of dark.

First Food

Loves to Laugh