Hanktastic - Mr. Fantastic

Yesterday was a big day for Henry. He slept through the night (12 straight hours!) for the first time AND he rolled from his stomach to his back...and we both missed it. Nick was at jury duty and I was at Story Time with Cole (which was a different kind of first for me - had to carry him kicking and screaming out of Barnes and Noble). But Grandma Debbie witnessed Hank's first step towards mobility and they celebrated together.

And then last night we camera phone stalked him so we could witness his new trick. He didn't disappoint.

Since drafting this post we are on night #6 of sleeping through the night - fingers crossed he isn't teasing us. While he made great strides in that department, he has not rolled over since. Nick and I are happy to take sleeping over rolling.

The Zoo - Round 2

We took Cole to the zoo this weekend with Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Jess, and boyfriend Dan. As you probably (don't) recall, besides some good people watching, the first trip to the zoo was pretty uneventful.  This trip went a little better and Cole was much more interested in the animals. We all got a kick out of hearing him say, "elephant, hippo and bear." He especially liked the fish and reptiles. My favorite part was when a lizard ran towards Cole, right up to the glass, and Cole freaked out, stumbling back in Grandpa's arms. Luckily he was just startled, hopefully not the start of any long term animal-phobias.

The lizard that scared Cole

Cole had some interesting favorites at the zoo. He enjoyed a couple activities the zoo probably isn't all that well known for. It was very difficult pulling him away from the "jumping-on-the-sewer -cover" area. He also didn't want to leave the "free-style walking/curb hopping" section either.

Cole discovers the manhole cover

Oh what fun.

Curb hopping

Wipeout

We also fed the goats, which I think Cole enjoyed but we didn't get a huge reaction out of him. He did, however, get a nice reaction out of us when he decided the goats were full and popped a goat pellet in his mouth. The boy sure does love his snacks.

Another brilliant Cole brainstorm came at the giraffe area. He must have really liked them because he tried several times to crawl under the fence to get a closer look. Thankfully, even at his size, there was no way he was crawling under there, unless we didn't watch him for a couple hours and he dug his way under. Hmmm, kind of surprised the zoo hasn't run into that problem.

P.S. Baby Hanky was home with the Grandparents Stear being spoiled

P-p-p-puker Face, P-p-p-puker Face

Yeah, this was definitely one of our more disgusting family experiences. I was playing with Cole and the pictures below shows the result. Kristin was not happy and went straight into the "I told you so" mode. If you see her she will act like this always happens and she always has to tell me not to play so rough with Cole after he eats and I never listen and he ends up puking...blah blah blah. The truth is this is really only the second, maybe third, time.

Since Cole was upside down, puke managed to land on the top of his head. Luckily it was just about bath time. Surprisingly, Cole kept his cool and didn't freak out, even though he couldn't open one eye. I also stayed surprisingly cool and didn't chuck Cole or anything to try and avoid the vomit. I think it was just too funny to be worried about getting puke on myself. Once the smell kicked in it was a different story though. I wanted no part of the "fun" anymore. Thanks to Bella, messes get cleaned up around here pretty quickly. (For those wondering, Bella is our dog that we never talk about and barely acknowledge. And forgot to feed dinner to the other night. Sorry Bella. We still love you.).

The Learning Process

Watching Cole do new things makes me see the learning process in a new light. He seems like a smart kid and has a big vocabulary for his age, but watching him try stuff out (i.e. experiment) is interesting...He will do "stupid" acts over and over again while figuring out the situation. His latest moment was putting his foot in a little bowl and getting it stuck. I found him bent over with his hands and head on the floor and butt up in the air. He started to panic and scream, so I quickly unstuck his foot. Once unstuck, he instantly tried to jam his foot back into this little bowl. I guess he's just thinking, "Hmmm. Wonder if that will happen again?" Only Henry watches with curiosity, the rest of us know, "Yes, you will get your foot caught again, fall down and probably need more stitches."

Cole also tried to fit his body into his little drum. Yep, the drum is maybe a 1/3 of his size...not going to happen. Kristin recently had to get him unstuck from between the couch and side table. I guess I will give him credit that he at least did fit into this crevice.

I'm sure we will continue to see Cole (and Henry) attempt, what Kristin would consider, highly extreme and dangerous experiments to see how things work. If the boys can keep themselves out of the hospital it should be fun to watch.

Cole found something to lean on so he could try to get two feet in the bowl

We took both ends off the drum to give him a chance

I'm in!

Moving Day

Baby Hanky has been living in our room for weeks now - by my estimates a good month longer than Cole ever did. Both boys are/were noisy sleepers; Cole did lots of whimpering and snorting, Henry is a grunter. He has overstayed his welcome and it is high time he started sleeping in his crib. The big delay in getting him out has been our lack of a baby monitor. I know there are people out there (Michelle) who have survived sans monitor and everyone is alive and well. I also know that there are people out there who likely think Cole is old enough to sleep without a monitor and those people are probably right. However we still bought Henry a monitor...a pink one, which ended up saving us about $15. We are still not sure if it was worth the savings or not. We'll find out when he's older if he ever has to have a certain kind of talk with us...if you know what I mean.

Update: For some reason we couldn't get the second camera to work, so we are sending it back and we will brave it with only one camera. I am pretty comfortable with Cole not having a camera. He is pretty loud nowadays and is not shy about letting us know if he wants something. We'll see how Kristin does.

Update Update: So Henry has spent a couple nights in his crib and it seems to go okay and he is starting to sleep longer, except for last night. He woke us up crying several times. Well, actually he woke me up and I in turn woke Kristin up because she is partially deaf, which is totally annoying on a daily basis. Anyways, it finally dawned on me that the only difference between last night and previous crib nights was that we did not have him swaddled. I mentioned it to Kristin, she swaddled Henry and he wasn't heard from again until late morning. Needless to say, we felt like idiots for not thinking of that sooner.