Profile

I love Stanley's profile. Steve captured it pretty well here. 

Class of 2034

Stanley will be the class of '34 from college. That makes me feel really old.
Aunt Betsy and I are routing for Brown.

Developements

From Julia Posting from Steve's computer: 
Stanley is really developing at a rapid rate, at least in the eyes of his proud mom.  It is so much fun to watch as he starts to pull up to a standing position. 

He has also started to enjoy pulling toys out of the play box and towards him. Unfortunately, this usually leads quickly to have way over stimulated baby boy. One way to avoid the 'too many things to do problem' is put him in his stand-up thing. Each toys is staggered along the 360 degree circle. However, once in a while, he is so distracted by the next thing that he leaves one of his hands on the toy he had been playing with while his other hand starts interacting with the next thing.

And, his big deal that he just started today is getting his tummy off the ground using his hands. At one point he even had his knees underneath him. Wow!

Laundry basket

I am not sure how well this comes across in the video, but Stanley was enjoying going from sitting to standing under how own power. He needed a little guidance since the laundry basket was not as stable as he was hoping.

Grandparents!

Lele and grandpa Tom were here this weekend. It was great to see them and Stanley had a great time smiling and playing with them. We hung out and had a great dinner at home to celebrate my and my dad's birthdays this month. This morning we went to breakfast at Chloe's before taking them to the airport. It was a great time.

Hi Mommy

After a long day of work, it is alway wonderful to come home to Stanley. He is always happy to see me.
This evening, as I walked in the door, I could see him at the end of the hallway sitting in his stand-up toy. I started talking and he was trying to find from where my voice was coming. He was looking about the room.

Finally, as I walked into the kitchen he saw me. He stood up tall and put on a huge smile. What a fun welcome home!

My toys

We have been keeping all of Stanley's toys in a box on the ground under the coffee table. Today, Stanley had a big realization; he figured out that you could tip the box on its side. 

He tipped it back and forth for quite a while. 

All of the sudden you could see the bells going off in his head. He realized that he could take his other hand to pull out the toys. 

By the end of this adventure, we had quite a few toys out on the ground. He had a hard time getting out his Maui taco cup, but finally with two hands, it came out.

This was a big learning for Stanley. By the end of the little game, he was exhausted and cranky.

So long for our clean floor. I'm guessing we will have lots of stuff on our floors from now on.

Hello AC

California schools are loosing even more funding, maybe Stanley will be a future alumni of Allendale where I went to school. Next I need to find a Brown University Alumni one-sie.

Don't worry, I am not setting up his career path yet--maybe I should at least wait till he is 6 months old :-)

5 months old

Stanley turned 5 months old on Friday. Grandma Lolo said her favorite age is 3 months. I think mine so far is 4 months old. Stanley's personality and curiosity started developing and he has a very cute little laugh right now. Also, he has started to be able to play by himself for a lot longer. If we give him a toy and leave for a bit, he is quite content rolling from side to side on the floor playing with it. It is only when it gets flung out of his reach that he wants us to help him. 

 Traveling with Stanley is quite easy also. He just wants to be engaged. So be it if he only has a paper cup to play with--he will be happy. Also, it helps because he is very curious about everything. Today, while washing my teeth, he stared very perplexingly at what I was doing.

He loves to eat everything and anything in sight. He really enjoys plates and spoons. Shiny plates are just amazing, hard, cold, shiny, and thankfully he has yet to figure out that they are breakable. He also enjoys having his picture taken. He will put on his best face when the camera comes out.

Our main difficulty with Stanley right now is his sleeping. He hates to nap, hates to sleep, and still needs a lot of attention to get to sleep. Today I tried to let him cry it out for his nap. 45 minutes later, he was still screaming at the top of his lungs and we needed to leave. So be it for a restful nap. And, at night, we get one long stretch between 9pm-1:30 or 2am. After that I put him in bed with me and he eats pretty often. I know that I could stop him, but I really enjoy my cuddle time with Stanley. 

I loved the above picture, but just to show you how much he shoves in his mouth, check out below.

He often wakes up at 5am and is ready to play. He is cheerful, full of life, and completely awake. If I snuggle him in close, he will dose off some more.

At 5 months, Stanley loves:
- Walks
- Being outside even when it is cold
- bathes and his duck toys in the bath
- His Sophie!!!!
- His playstation
- The stand-up play circle thing--not sure what these things are called, but he is in it in the above picture
- Facing out in the Moby
- Laughing and dad
- Smiling at people passing by
-  His lounge chair especially watching mom and dad cook in the kitchen
- He really likes Halima
- Making bubbles with his mouth
- Eating his bottle lip and then making crazy noises


At 5 months, Stanley can:
- Start to sit up on his own from a laying position
- Hold himself up in a tripod for about 45seconds
- Stand with someone just holding his arms. He can stay like this for about 2-3 minutes.
- Start to put his knees underneath his body, but he has no upper body strength
- Roll from side to side. He can flip over, but he doesn't choose to do so.
- Grab at anything around him. He has even figured out that he can pull on the table cloth to help move things closer. Yes, this does mean we are in trouble.

At 5 months, Stanley dislikes:
- The sun in his face
- Going to sleep
- The car--I thought we were over this, but it is sadly back again
- When things happen and he cannot see. He will stop eating to crane his neck around to see something happening.

Tripod

Stanley has been improving his 'sitting' skills, though it more like 'tripod' making skills. Take a look.

though after a while the tripod as a complete unit leans a little far to one side

Stanley's Valentine

Thanks Grandma Lele and Papa Tom. Stanley 'likes' his valentine's day card.

He really likes it!!! Check out the slobbery sides.

Recovered

 We have recovered from the rough stomach bug that took Steve and me out on Sunday through Tuesday. The house is still a wreck and poor Steve's birthday dinner consist of Sprite and some soup from a Japanese restaurant about 1.5 blocks away. Steve even mentioned it was a bit far as we walked back. Here are a few pictures from Tuesday.

Stanley in his playmobile enjoying the toys between
spirts of watching 'Planet Earth' on the TV.

Once a parent, always a parent

This post was partially written last night and finished right now. 

Once a parent, always a parent. You cannot say time-out to parenting for a few minutes, even when something gets you down. In the morning, I started to feel exhausted. I slept for a few hours. About 2 hours late, Steve said he felt like a train had hit him. Anyways, I was just a few hours ahead of Steve, so he always knew what was coming and it wasn't good.

All this evening and throughout the night, I have been running to the bathroom, then would wash my hands really well and come back, grab Stanley so that Steve could take his turn in the bathroom. It was horrendous. Thank goodness the one time when both of us were vomiting, Stanley was asleep on the couch.

If I put my mothering and no-bad-language away for just a second...this s*cks!


Now its Sunday at 4pm

This was a doosy.  We spent the night up and down being sick. And, Stanley's 16 lbs 8 oz (we weighed him on Saturday) still feels like 50 lbs. In the night, Steve and I could barely standup without it invoking motion sickness and then I'm sure you can guess what comes next. So picking up Stanley seemed a little too risky. And, anyways, neither of us could deal with our energetic little son. So, last night we resorted to giving him Tylenol to keep him asleep. And I never let him watch TV, but today, we put him in his space station and standup thing in front of the TV while Planet Earth was going. He would play by himself and then watch the animals, play by himself and watch TV again.

I think Stanley knows that something is wrong because last night, he was starting to fuss, then he looked at me gave me a smile and was quiet. Poor kid; his parents are a sorry bunch.

So far he has been saved from this horrendous flu; I sure hope it stays like that. Figures crossed and hopefully lots of anti-bodies are in his milk.

Chinese Day Parade

Last night the three of us headed out to the SF Chinese Day parade. It was a quite a big deal especially because this is the year of the dragon.

Stanley was mesmerized by the lights, sounds, glitter, and crazy outfits.

The amazing lights and glitter of the chinese day parade

We mainly stayed in the parade set-up area. You got to see the floats up close and there were WAY fewer people. On the parade route, there were even bleachers setup where you could buy seats. Seemed a bit too much to be pushing through crowds for Stanley to be with us. 

Since this is the year of the dragon, there was a 250 ft long dragon.  Check out the head. I sure hope this was carried by multiple people. It sure looked heavy.

Just to give you perspective! It was taller than me. 

A little optimistic

I had the thermostat in our house come on at 7:45 on the weekends. Turns like I was a bit optimistic that we could sleep in that 'late' with our little Stanley. Here is Stanley dressed in many layers in the kitchen as we were trying to get the  house warm before 7:45am. I guess I'll change the thermostat to come on at 6:15 or hopefully 6:30 will work.  

Steve would like you to believe that Stanley dressed himeself--but no it was my dear husband Steve that put our son in his hippie outfit. He fits in with the SF crowd.

Hawaii Souvenirs

Steve and I usually just have memories of our vacations as our souvenirs. However, Stanley has two wonderful possessions from our trip: his Maui Taco cup and the airline bag tags.

When we were out to eat one evening, Stanley really wanted my Sprite cup. After I finished, I dumped out the ice and gave it to him. Turns out it was a great toy. It kept him busy throughout all of the car trips and stroller rides of our vacation. We even brought the cup home as his souvenir. It has been quite the hit.

The other item Stanley has found amazing are the colorful bag tags dangling from his car seat that the airlines put on the handle. They are bright, white, pink, with black writing. And, they make crinkle noises and he can pull on them because of the elastic. They have also been a great souvenir, but I don't have a picture of them. Amazingly, Stanley made it to and from Trader Joe's yesterday without crying at all; he was busy playing with his bag tags.

Another Halima Story

Before we left for Hawaii, Halima told us another story. She had the boys in the park. She put them in the stroller and walked them around the park. They were both quite content. Then she tried to leave. They both proceeded to cry. She went back in the park and they were both happy. She left, they both cried. She was saying to us, they were always in the stroller, how do they know we are leaving the park? Finally she just had to bring them home to their parents.

Seems like both boys have similar feelings. This nanny-share thing is working out well.

A Few Videos III

Finally, here is a movie of a baby whale, or "calf", breaching out of the water ahead of our boat.  We were waiting to see if the mama whale would also jump and "show the kid how things are done", as Captain John said, but she never did.

A Few Videos II

The next two are from our snorkeling boat trip.  We saw a bunch of whales on the boat trip back to the island.  In this video you can see the group of whales that came up very close to the boat, making the captain shut off the engines while they did their thing and passed us by.

A Few Videos I

Here are a few videos we took on our trip to Hawaii.  The first one is Stanley making his new noise.  He bites his bottom lip and then blows out making a kind of humming/raspberry noise.  It sounds strange and very slobbery.

A healthy dose of competition

Stanley hates his bottle again. It is definitely Steve and my fault for not feeding him enough bottles lately or over our trip.

Yesterday, he barely ate. He would eat 1 once and stop. Steve tried to feed him around 6pm and even though he was starving, he did not even let the bottle get near him. We know he was hungry because when I returned home he ate and ate and ate and ate. Poor kid. I was gone for over 12 hours and he only had 6 oz during that period.

Aprently, he had eaten 2 one oz servings. So Halima tried her tricks. She landed on a solution that seem to work well. Stanley ate 3 oz on that feeding. She put Peter and Stanley next to each other and fed them simultaneously. (I'm not sure if she had to use her feet to do this.) She said that Stanley would stop eating after a few moments, but when he saw Peter still eating, he took back his bottle and kept at it. A healthy dose of competition seemed to help our little guy.

Family Pics

We took some familiy pictures while we were out and about.  

Our beach trips

While in Hawaii, we hit up some new beaches (Wailea) and also went back to our favorites (beach near our resort and also Big Beach).

Here are some pictures from our beach trips. You can see that we tried very hard to keep Stanley out of the sun. We purchased a Costco sun umbrella that helped and we always had him in a hat, sunglasses, and UV clothes. All in all, it worked pretty well. He is just as pail as when we left.

Stanley in his sun guard

Stanley under the umbrella plus
extra clothes to keep out of the sun

Stanley hanging out with Dad

Stanley and Mommy

 We tried hard to keep stanley away from the sand, but he has started scooting and after a few moments he was covered with sand. Also note his straight legs--they are getting straighter quickly.

Grasping and Textures

It has been so much fun to watch Stanley develop while we have been in Hawaii. He has started to grab at everything and feel different textures.

He has figured out that if he reaches out to things, he can grab them. Now, everything that is Stanley's he reaches out for and also everything that is ours he wants too

Stanley also have been loving different textures. He was particularly enthralled with the wicker furniture on the hotel patio.

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Our Boat Trip

As Steve posted earlier, Stanley took his first boat trip to Molokini. We had a great time snorkeling and two different grandmothers watched Stanley for a few minutes while Steve and I hopped into the water together. Here are some pictures of the way out and at Molokini. 

We left early in the morning, but we put Stanley in long sleeves for the sun.

Stanley and Dad at the bottom of the boat watching the fish through the bottom windows

Note the hand. We had to warn people not to sit on him.
This is how we kept Stanley out of the sun.

 On our way back, we had an amazing show of whales. Here are 4 whales arguing or fighting(i'm not sure which one) but they were flapping their flippers and splashing about very close to the boat. 

Molokini in the background with whales splashing about
near our boat

A turtle in front of the boat at what the captain called
"Turtle Universe" --turns out it is wherever he manages to find turtles

My men reading

 Stanley has been really enjoying his books. I'm not sure he understands what to do with them, but he sure likes to read with Dad. Here Stanley is enjoying his books in multiple ways

Yum! My book is good

Readying with Dad about Maui

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I've got you beat uncle Flounder

As Uncle Flounder moves over to the left seat of a prop plane (i.e. he will be captain), Stanley still has him beat in the right seat of the 747.

Quick Update

Yesterday we all went on a great boat trip to go snorkeling at Molokini, a small island off the shore of Maui.  We saw tons of fish and on the way back we saw a bunch of whales (we had to stop the boat at one point because they were getting so close) and a group of turtles.  We'll post pictures when we get a chance.  It was a fun time. 

Also, Stanley is getting to be quite the ham with the camera and will usually flash a great big smile if we are taking a picture of him.  You can see it in some of the photos we posted earlier, but we will have more up soon so you can see what we are talking about.