Rawley's been out in the real world for 4 weeks now, and we're pretty impressed with his progress and new skills. At this point, he's begun to seriously grasp things with some degree of intent, although he still wildly flails his arms around and has very little control of them in general still. We like to refer to him as a "curmudgeon," the definition of which means, "a bad-tempered or surly person." He just entertains us by growling a lot, making somewhat surly faces (of course accompanied by really cute, nice ones too), and in general having an air of a grumpy old man whenever he hasn't been fed or is getting tired. We also refer to him as a "squiggler," because it seems like he's always wriggling around now and trying to move.
The squiggler himself. He has a very large belly which takes down about 6 ounces of milk at each feeding now. I love his red-tinted hair and how he's half bald in the front - I told Paul it's because he has my family's super bald baby genes and his super hairy baby genes mixed together. This is a good example of a "curmudgeon" expression as well.
Previous to this week, he's been pretty simple to understand - if he's been awake for more than an hour to an hour and a half, he's crying because he's tired. If he's crying after (or while) eating, he probably needs to be burped. And if he is crying when he wakes up, it's almost always because he's hungry. So, we followed that formula pretty solidly, but this week he's been staying up for longer stretches of time, and sometimes it would appear that he starts crying simply because he's bored or we're not holding him. It's a little bit hard to find ways to stimulate a baby who can't even control his limbs yet, but he does seem to like looking at light and going outside, as well as just being bounced, rocked, and held.
He likes to be held up sometimes too - all his limbs and neck are getting stronger every day.
We do actually clothe him on occasion.
We noticed after his umbilical cord fell off that he seemed to have a very "outie" belly button, and my mom said it was possibly he had a slight hernia. After a trip to the pediatrician, he sure enough does, but apparently belly button hernias are pretty common in little babies and will go away eventually on their own and are harmless. So, for now, our little chunky baby has a very big old belly button. He gained a whole pound in the past two weeks, making him 10.5 pounds now. He has a huuuge belly and kind of skinny little legs with beefy arms. His proportions are quite adorable in our opinion.
One day Rawley will realize just how silly his dad is!
Rawley had his first grand adventure this week. We've been keeping him out of public places so far to try and avoid his getting sick (newborns are particularly susceptible to everything), but yesterday my mom, sister, and I went with Rawley to Thanksgiving point to look at the gardens. Rawley was covered up most of the time in his stroller to protect him from the sunlight and mosquitoes, but he LOVED the massaging effect of the cobblestone path that we pushed him over throughout most of the garden. When we stopped pushing him, he'd immediately wake up and start kicking and bemoaning his situation to us.
Although he doesn't know how to smile yet to tell us he's happy, moments like these are pretty rewarding.
We also got him some really cute, "hip" baby clothes at the Carter's store in the Tangier Outlets mall near Thanksgiving Point. Paul tells me he doesn't Rawley to become TOO hip, which I think we can avoid, but I do get pretty excited when I see little boy clothes that are actually cute and tasteful since they seem to be very few and far in between.
When no milk is available, Dad's hairy leg will do.
Paul's a stupendous dad, and I'm pretty sure Rawley agrees with me.
This week and last week have officially been nap weeks. We've all been trying to catch Z's when we can, especially myself and Paul. School started this week for Paul, and I just finished up my job/internship with the library. A lot of sleeping in various places happens, at pretty much all times of the day. Thankfully, Rawley slept for a full 5 hours straight last night after our long adventure, probably because we thoroughly tuckered him out.
Adventures take a lot of concentration and a pacifier.
Much sleeping was caught up on this week.
Naps outside...
Naps inside...
Leg naps...
Back naps...
Milk-drunk naps...
Snuggle naps...
Frog naps?
SOLDIER HOLLOW CLASSIC HERDING COMPETITION / SWISS DAYS
Sheepherding competition!
This weekend, we had the awesome opportunity to go to the Soldier Hollow Classic sheepdog herding competition as well as Midway's "Swiss Days," which is essentially a craft fair with a few Swiss-like things thrown in.
Sometimes ya gotta feed the mushroom-hatted baby, but the sheep herding is also intense!
It was really fun to go to the sheepherding competition. Of course, all the dogs we saw competing were border collies. Paul grew up having two border collies that were brothers, and is very partial towards the breed. I was five when we had a border collie puppy, and it would constantly nip rather painfully at my heels, so I've never had a good impression of the breed. After watching the competition and observing the dogs, though, it's very obvious how intelligent they are. Probably a little too high-energy for a first dog for us, but somewhere down the line we'll probably get a border collie or a dog related to one.
A few seconds of sheepherding.
The way the competition worked was first, the dogs were told (by their masters' whistles) to run all the way up a hill to go and find a group of five sheep. They then were directed by whistle to go through a series of gates, then do a "split" where the sheep were in two separate and distinct groups, then the dogs were directed to herd the sheep into a small gate where their owner would close the sheep in and their run would be over. Now, we watched about 5 runs or so, and each run took around 7 to 10 minutes.
Honestly, from our assessment, it seems like sheep herding with the dogs is actually not that efficient (Paul: "Why don't they just get some land rovers to do this? The dogs aren't very good at it.") Admittedly, what they were able to do was still very impressive, but there were quite a few runs where the dogs weren't even able to finish in the allotted time limit because they weren't very good at herding the sheep. Even so, it was very cool to watch as the dogs did what they could to bring the sheep through the gates. Some of the dogs were very obedient to their masters, which made for great runs. The dogs really depended on being able to hear their owners' whistles though, and since it was quite windy a lot of them got confused when they weren't able to hear. The owners with the loudest whistles were often the most successful.
Bagpipes - I love the huge mallets for the drum.
They also had bagpipes there, a frisbee catching dog show, an obstacle/agility course show, and a wild animal show. The bagpipes were legit - Paul wants to learn how to play them since he has a mouthpiece for one somewhere - and are tied to his Scottish heritage. I told him next summer we should go to the Scottish Heritage Festival they have around here in Utah.
Frisbee dog show.
Agility show - this dog has won championships.
Perhaps my favorite event there - the "Splash Dogs" competition where regular people brought in their dogs to see which ones could jump the farthest into the water.
Anyway, the shows were pretty cool but not extremely impressive. What was extremely impressive was the GIANT RABBIT they had out where you could pet it after the wild animal show. Called a "Flemish Giant," they can weigh up to 50 pounds and be 4 feet long. Now, I've never in my life wanted a rabbit as a pet, although I do think they're cute. But this thing is awesome. I'd keep one as a pet anytime. It was huge and fluffy - two characteristics that are hard to beat.
My phone camera's not good, but here's the rabbit at the event. He was so fluffy!
Some random dude showing off a huge Flemish Giant.
Aw, look - I want them both!
"Wait - you can't bring a rabbit bigger than me in to the apartment!"
We also went to "Swiss Days" in Midway, Utah at my sister Brooke's suggestion (she went with us to both events.) Rawley got a little more upset at this point of the trip, since he had been happily snuggled up to Paul's chest the whole time we were at the sheepherding competition by a harness. We put him in the stroller for Swiss Days though, and he did not take as kindly to that. He did end up sleeping most of the day, though, so it wasn't too hard to convince him to stop crying with some jostling and bouncing.
Some of the booths as well as the town hall at Swiss Days.
The town hall was built in 1940 so it's not exactly super historic, but they had this cute dancing wooden doll display that opened up above their clock.
They had an antique shop there, and we saw this eagle with lederhosen draped on it. Paul thinks it's someone's Nazi heirloom they wanted to get rid of to avoid a record of their ties to the regime.
Swiss Days was interesting - the town was mostly founded by Swiss settlers it seems, and they've tried to hold on to that heritage over the years. Although the festival itself wasn't all that interesting - mostly just a craft fair, and Paul and I aren't too likely at this point to spend money on random crafts - they did have some really tasty pie and ice cream there, which we indulged in. They also had a mother's lounge and diaper station set up there, which was SUCH a Utah thing to do (it was sponsored by the health department.) I took advantage of the mothers' lounge for a bit, but it was weird because there was totally a dude in there. He was trying to help his wife wrap a baby wrap correctly, but I couldn't figure out why they couldn't just do that outside. Mothers' lounges are not for dudes except in emergencies, ya'll.
The tasty pie!
Paul obviously loves crafts.
The traffic to leave at 5:00 when we headed out was very awful. We figured it was so bad because two festivals were within a few miles of each other (the sheep herding and Swiss Days fests were very close together), but eventually we got to an area where a large moving truck had apparently somehow grazed some rocks on the side of the canyon. There was stuff from the moving truck scattered on the side of the highway, and it was clear that the truck was completely out of commission as well. We think that was probably a strong contributor to the road block since it looked like it had just happened.
Overall, we had a lot of fun at both of the festivals, and it's always fun to hang out with my sister as well (although we missed having my mom along because she was a little sick and didn't want to be around Rawley with his still developing immune system.) Someday we're going to have to go back to Midway because it was such a cute little town. There's not very many places in Utah I could see myself living happily (too dry, kind of ugly, and dusty looking), but Midway seemed a lot more like Missouri where I used to live or even Virginia.
We went to Bridal Veil falls again because it's such a nice park - this time with a baby!
Don't worry, we had the breaks on!
We found these weird white berries? Anyone able to identify them?
The base of the falls.
This needs to be the image accompanying some super deep poem about fatherhood.
Today we took Rawley to church for the first time. Our pediatrician told us that probably at around 4 or 5 weeks old he would be okay to go out in public if we were careful about keeping him away from sick people and shielding him. He started to think about crying during sacrament meeting, but this kid is obsessed with motion. As soon as we start rocking or bobbing him, he suddenly decides he's not sad anymore and stops crying, pretty much no matter how sad/screamy he was seconds before. In some ways this is good, because it means we can almost always stop him from crying (unless he's really really hungry), but it also means we were sitting there rocking him with rather large motions for half of sacrament meeting until he fell asleep. We also find that these days, when putting him to sleep, if we lay him down he often wakes up a bit and starts to wiggle around and threaten to cry. However, if we keep our hands on him for 20 seconds or so while he's lying in the crib before walking away, he often stops wriggling and will go to sleep. Paul likened this to how we feel sometimes - although we can't see God there with us, we need to feel his presence in our everyday life to feel happy in this life.
First Sunday at church, and we put him in some overalls since he doesn't really have pants that fit him currently (they're all too big.)
First Sunday at church, and we put him in some overalls since he doesn't really have pants that fit him currently (they're all too big.)
It's been fascinating to see Rawley develop these past few weeks (he's a month old today!) He's really starting to depend on us and trust us. He's developing patterns with us, and realizes important things - like A. "I'm being held by mom or dad, so I can stop crying or not cry as much now," B. "I can tell food is about to come from that bottle or from mom and I'm definitely looking forward to it," C. "Mom or Dad is far away from me and not holding me anymore, so I'm gonna cry," and D. "I'm outside or somewhere interesting, so I'm either going to sleep or be happy about it because this is cool." Those are just some of the developmental steps we've been seeing in him. It's been fun to take him out this week and do things - he's already a little charmer. At least 4 middle aged ladies have approached us or seen him and told us just how adorable he is and asked his age, etc. He's definitely a keeper, and we sure love him (even when he's waking up 3 times a night!)
<3 <3 <3
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