First Trip to the Park and Other Fun Things

Last Thursday my new friend Jackie invited Otis and me, and several other moms and their kids, for a morning at the park. (It's weird--once you have a baby you are automatically welcomed into this whole new social network of other moms!) I went mostly to socialize since Otis can't really play at the park yet, but I decided to put him in the baby swing just to test it out. He really liked it, and hung out there for a few minutes, happy for his mama to stay close and swing him about three inches back and forth. Jackie was sweet to photograph this small milestone since I forgot my camera.



I emailed it to my parents, who of course shared it with their friends. One of my dad's Lutterbein Lumber colleagues said Otis is starting to look like a Lutterbein! Now I can see it too. He definitely looks like Steve, but now I think he might have Lutterbein eyes. (Yay, some of my genes got in there, too!) These are eyes I don't have, but my dad and his Uncle Dick and Uncle Ed have them. They're good looking eyes, deep-set.

Otis is growing SO fast. We are already starting to forget how it felt to hold him when he was a "bitty-tiny" newborn. At his last doctor visit, he was in the 80th percentile for height and 85th for weight. I'm happy to report that he's been getting 100% of his calories from breast milk for the past several weeks now--after some trouble with weight gain early on and the doc's recommendation to supplement with formula. The one good thing that came from that is that now Otis takes a bottle like a champ, and dad gives him one bottle of expressed breast milk while I'm away at work in the afternoons.

Steve is the cutest dad ever. He might not want me to share this information, but I will anyway: he sings the funniest song ever while he's changing Otis's diaper. The words are "Poopity doopity poopity doo, poopity doopity Robert Goulet...Poopity doopity poopity doo, poop, poop Robert Goulet," of course sung in Robert Goulet's voice. Otis loves it!

Otis is doing lots of cooing and laughing these days. His favorite sounds are "nnn-guh" and "ow-ooh." And his favorite joke is fart sounds. It makes him laugh really hard. We have this on video and will post it soon.

Just in the past couple of days, Otis has started tolerating us reading books to him. I asked Steve's sister Ruthie for advice on how to encourage Otis to fall into a regular nap schedule, and she recommended reading the same books before each naptime and before bedtime. It's fun to read to him. When we read "Pat the Bunny" he pats the bunny and likes the peek-a-boo page. We also have this sweet book called "Mommy Hugs" and it talks about ways other animals hug their babies. It's an opportunity for lots of cuddling, which I probably enjoy as much as, or more than, Otis.

We have stopped watching a lot of TV because whenever it's on, Otis becomes a zombie and stares at the screen. Scary!

I have been devouring a book on infant brain development. It's fascinating. Just learning about the biology of how the brain forms (Probably something I should've learned in high school biology at some point but didn't--way to go EHS.) is amazing and it reminds me how much of a miracle it is that Otis was even conceived and grew inside me and so forth.

That's all I can think of for this long-overdue update. This is so fun. We love him so much, and sometimes we just can't believe he's ours!