chicken feet: part 1

First of all, here is Isaac modelling some very cute socks that Shelley Winiger made for him. Aren't they awesome? They're really soft and comfy, and fit his feet just perfectly right now.
Now moving on to the meat of the story.

Haha. Did you get it? "Meat".. Okay, too many bad puns in Tests and Measurements.

We went to Isaac's cousin's birthday/ a Day of the Dead party last night and ate lots of good food and had lots of good conversation. Poor Isaac didn't seem to like his chicken costume much. I, on the other hand, thought it was adorable. Here you see him with his cousin Malachai (not the birthday cousin), who was a rooster. Too cute.

Isaac has been sitting up on his own lately.

And we were having such a good time...

before he toppled over! :( Poor little guy. At least that chicken costume cushioned his head and the carpet was soft.

He was a little cranky/overwhelmed at the party though. Finally at 9:30 we went home and both Isaac and I crashed. And now, here I am up at 5:00 in the morning because I started thinking about my research project and had a short kick of writing down what I was thinking about and looking some things up. I didn't really make much actual progress but I think it's always good to write things down. Otherwise, my brain can't seem to hold onto those ideas until the morning!
Today (Halloween) I believe we will go get some candy at Rite Aid(I got my single check rebate from that awesome diaper deal about 6 weeks ago!) and hand it out tonight. I don't know whether or not I will make Isaac dress up again, but, well, since I'm so excited about it being his first Halloween (although he probably doesn't share my excitement), stay tuned for part 2.

five months

Lately I have no time. But Isaac turned 5 months old today (well, actually the 22nd, I'm back dating the post)! Here he is eating some rice cereal on his own terms.


Here he is showing off his strength. I think he is on the verge of crawling.

And, here he is sitting up strong!

roughhousing with neuroscience

Isaac has been very active lately and has been tiring us all out. He now purposely makes funny faces at the camera. He has been very interested in my neuroscience book, particularly in wrinkling the pages. And now, for a lot of pictures. My, mister, what big eyes you have!
Here he is getting ready to go visit Auntie Anna on the train for her birthday!

At the Olive Garden, ordering a martini.

We were finally both looking at the camera.

Here's Papa and Isaac outside with our beautiful fall leaves.

And once again, because they are two handsome men and look good in pictures.

Who's that dorky lady? Who decided she should be in a picture?

Isaac was fascinated with pulling the leaves off the poor dying bushes.

To add to the fall theme of the pictures, I decided Isaac need a picture in the leaves outside. I don't know how he felt about that. He didn't look overjoyed.

Yesterday, Isaac and Papa went to the big park to swing on the swings.

They both swang at the same time.

Isaac thought he would pull out his Uncle Mikey face.

He balanced himself on one of the bouncy toys, with Papa ready to catch him if he got wobbly.

I found some pictures from when Auntie Anna was down for the week (yes, they are almost a month old - better late than never). They are downright ridiculous.

Yep.

Yep.

Aww. This one is cute though.

Isaac also tried to play the talking drum with Papa yesterday. Really he just wanted to put it in his mouth, but he was a good sport and hit at it a little.

And then, some videos to get you through what will probably be another shortage of Isaac photos and footage as another crazy week of grad school unfolds - starting in 10 hours.
Isaac makes music. He needed to get his energy out somehow.

Here he is making some cute cooing sounds.

And here is one from riding the train. That was so fun. We really liked it. The end.

midnight gardening

I'm pretty sure all my neighbors think I'm strange/creepy because I always have to go dig the hole for our compost at some crazy time of the night. In fact, all my great strides in "gardening" have been accomplished after 9 pm. Hm. I found one of those pretty pieces of glass (the round shiny ones) in the dirt tonight so that's my prize - that and my one pepper harvest from about a month ago and my three little garlic plants growing up. Well, also that we have freed up a bunch of our bowls again, but that's a peripheral bonus. It's alright, it's not like I need a ton of stuff in the garden. I think this year it is necessarily more experimental than it can be next year. Right now the goal is to put compost under the entire area of that little garden square, so the soil will be nice and rich for a fatty summer garden. I hope we get to keep the same plots next year. That would be sad to do all that work and then have to give up my little square. I have a feeling I'll be able to keep it though. I might find some more sticks to stake it out better and set up clearer boundaries for wandering children.

It was Auntie Anna's 18th birthday yesterday! Isaac and I rode the train(very nice way to travel - I recommend it) up to see her and I'm so glad we got to be there for that. She had some awesome cake that she shared with me, and we had a delicious dinner at Olive Garden. They don't give you anything for free at Olive Garden on your birthday though. That's so lame. They said, "We've heard too many stories." Well darnit, just check people's IDs then. If she turned 18 and she has a drivers license to prove her birthday, they should give you something. Having a fake ID just to get free stuff at a restaurant would be dumb.

I am still well behind on schoolwork, but since two tests are over now (and I most definitely aced the test today - probably the easiest test in my academic career to date), I feel like there is hope. There are some readings I can put off until I am caught up on the more pressing scholastic matters in my life. I just want to catch up sometime very very soon. Probably not tonight though... I'm very tired. I started falling asleep in Cecilia's afternoon class today, and that, my friends, is very hard to do. I guess Isaac will just have to spend a few extra hours at daycare tomorrow while I do some intense studying. Clearly the idea of catching up on the weekends has proved less than fruitful, so I will have to take matters into my own hands (or rather, use some other helping hands) on this one.

Aunt Christy and Uncle George had us over for dinner tonight. That was so nice of them! It was fun to see them. I feel like we've been so disconnected, which is really sad considering how close we live. As things become less hectic (really, will that ever happen?), hopefully we can visit more often. And, I got this chicken costume from Erin for Halloween for Isaac. It is WAY too cute and it makes me very excited for Halloween. I think they are going to have a Dia de los Muertos party and I hope we can go. :) I don't see Isaac needing candy this year, but I definitely need to show off this adorable costume.

swing low

Isaac went to the big park with Papa today and I was called to come over and take some videos and pictures. It was actually pretty nice outside, so it was good to take a little break from studying.

We found out that he can swing by himself. He seemed to enjoy it.



There was a video of me swinging Isaac, but I decided that was unnecessary to post. I'm thinking if I look this dumb with my own kid, I should probably tape myself in therapy so I can see what stupid expressions pass over my face and try to control them in the future. My face is definitely overly expressive when I don't mean for it to be. No surprise that Isaac can make a million faces.

Then he rode on the bouncy toys.

And then, when he got home, he did some reading, writing, and 'rithmetic.

Isaac's poop turned normal again, after going through a lovely spectrum of dark brown, green, dark yellow, and then normal. The whole thing was just bizarre to me though. I have no idea why he had black poop. He seemed a little more fussy than usual today, but no fever or vomiting, so I'm just attributing it to chance. If anyone wants to see a picture of black tarry baby poop, I did actually take one. For the sake of everyone reading this, I won't post it though. If you want it you'll just have to email me or something.

I forgot to mention, when I was talking about all of Isaac's cute genes, that of course the DeBen side lent some really cute genes to the pool too.

Here's Great-grandpa Wally when he was little! Isn't it funny how there's a resemblance? I love it! When you see pictures of me at age 5 or my grandma at age 5, we looked almost exactly the same. In fact, you can trick my younger siblings into saying it's me. I think it would be fun to see some baby pictures of Papa too.

Okay, maybe some more studying before bed. Little Isaac is of course already sleeping, but he might get hungry soon!

black Saturday

Isaac had some black, tarry poop this morning. And also this afternoon. The pediatrician isn't concerned, but if his next bowel movement is that way, I'm going to seek a second opinion. Maybe our pediatrician neighbor downstairs will be a good starting point. From what I've read, black tarry stools can indicate stomach bleeding. That doesn't sound particularly pleasing to me. And no, Isaac hasn't had any solid foods for about two weeks now, so that rules out allergies or too much iron, unless they snuck him a bunch of iron-fortified formula at daycare.


I'm supposed to be reading my hundreds of pages of articles and textbooks that I should have read in about 36 hours from now - anyways I figured you all needed some new Isaac pictures.
Here Isaac is getting ready to try out for Wheel of Fortune. He pulled out his fake ID and pretended he was 18. They almost bought it. Well, after all, there are little people out there in the world.

Isaac thought he might try to brush his teeth. Then he realized he didn't have any yet.

So, he decided that gnawing on his toes would help the teeth come out. If it doesn't, the toes are tasty so it isn't wasted energy.

This is Isaac's interpretation of "Sit on your bottom." I'm not sure I'll use it for the initially intended purpose because he doesn't have great posture, but I kind of liked it. He's hanging out at the Erb Memorial Union at U of O.

Woah! Isaac is doing pushups now! No wonder they say he's the strongest baby in daycare.

Isaac has started experimenting with the idea of really crawling, instead of just faceplanting and kicking his legs. He's getting some good elevation in the tummy area, although the movement isn't coordinated enough to be efficient yet.

I think I have come to terms with the reality that letting Isaac stay at daycare more continuously throughout the day is better for him and me than snatching him up and carting him home, only to bring him back an hour later. So, hopefully this new approach will lead to us actually being able to spend quality time together after I'm done with classes, instead of time where I'm trying to play with him and trying to clean up around the house and trying to study, but doing a really bad job at all of those things. I'll let you know the results. So far, it has led to a great reduction in stress.

Also Papa applied for a bunch of new jobs. Pray that he gets one of them....

grad school hookey

I'm skipping my classes this afternoon. But, Isaac is sick so that's my reason. He can't stay at daycare all day and expose all the other babies. Still no time for pictures. Three things:

1. Not to be overly proud, but I'm starting to think the babies in our family are just cuter than other babies. Not that the other babies are ugly. Ours are just cuter. By ours I means the Hurliman, Capri and Compaore sides. I don't know about the other ones.

2. I'm trying to take my cousin's observation from Mother Teresa to heart: "We can do no great things, only small things with great love" or something like that. But, instead of applying it to so-called menial tasks, which I would frankly rather be doing, I'm going to try to apply it to my attitude about grad school. I've been feeling pretty negative about the whole thing and I need to remind myself that it's not something I should just quit. It's just so hard with a little guy when you are always worried that someone is not doing as good of a job as you could be doing. How handy it would be to be in three places at once. I feel like I've been getting pretty close to that lately.

3. I wish I could talk more about what we're doing in clinic, but, it's confidential. So you won't be hearing much about that. It is fun though. That much I can say!

For now, I'm going to just enjoy the afternoon with my little sweet boy.

I'm sick

It sucks and I hope Isaac doesn't get sick. I'm going back to bed.