Guests

July has been quite the busy month so far. The first half of the month was essentially entirely devoted to entertaining guests. My pal Ian Johnston and his family came to stay with us for a couple weeks as part of their American vacation. Ian and I became friends when I lived in London, England in the 90s. He's since moved to South America and then to Portugal, while I moved to California, New York and Maine. In any case, we caught up with each other again.

We started readying the house at the start of the month, but no amount of preparation could have readied us for the inscrutable force that is the Johnston clan. Being somewhat new homeowners and parents, we had little context of how to host a family with two small children (3 and 5) while caring for our own 5 month old. It was quite overwhelming at the start, but things began to settle down into a pretty nice groove by the end of it.

Pictures will be posted soon, but we lent our camera cable to Karen, so we can’t upload photos right now. For all the Alden fans out there, he is doing well. He can roll over now and is enjoying rice cereal (brown organic!) and milk every night. He's decided he prefers sleeping on his side, despite attempts to place him in his crib on his back. He rolls in his sleep and wakes up angry and confused when he ends up face down. (Alden - "Tummy Time? At 2 am?! What the hell??" Ilana, groggily - "You got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out of it... Alright, alright, I'm coming".) He's taken a shine to metal and glass (perhaps because they are cool and it’s been warm lately) and continues to be very mellow and charming.

A long video of not much going on.. you know, for the Grandparents.

Evaluations

I had my annual job performance review today, which I've been dreading, as my productivity has taken a nose-dive since the kid arrived. Here are the data to illustrate what I mean:

When you subtract the time spent pumping milk, cleaning and drying the beast shield and walking back and forth from my office to the lab, that leaves about 4 hours remaining in the day for actual work. It's been really embarrassing, actually, I keep thinking that to can get X done in a day (because I got X and Y done historically pre-Alden) and now I can only get through about 20% of X before I have to abandon the project in order to milk myself. Compounding the problem is the fact that I lack the presence of mind to remember exactly where I left off when I return to the lab, leading to many an incomplete DNA prep (I forgot the lysis buffer TWICE!) and partial digest. RAPDs have not been working for 3 weeks now, despite numerous attempts and I left the Hg vapor bulb on Mike's epifluroescence scope all weekend (ACK!!!). Really dismal performance on my part. So my heart was pounding at the mere idea of an appraisal. However, the verdict was (shockingly) positive. I even walked out of the meeting with merit raise. Naturally I met this news with incredulity. How, I asked my supervisors, could they justify this? Apparently, they're impressed that I came back to work "so quickly", despite my sleep deprivation/spongy brain. In Britain, Willie reminded me, I'd still be on maternity leave for a full year. He and Susie think my "dedication to work" is admirable. That slays me. Ah, the sweet promise of low expectations. All I can say is thank god I work for Brits! An American would have fired my ass months ago.

On another note, I'm sorry for the long posting delay. We have been hosting out-of-town guests for the past week or so and will continue to do so until next week, so things have been crazy busy. Updates, if any, will be spotty until our guests have gone. Lots more info to come then, I suspect.

Rodan Attacks!

Alden has discovered his voice... and has confirmed our long-held suspicion that he's half Kaiju (that's Japanese monster, for you non-Godzilla fans). I don't think Mothra stands a chance. Alden decided he liked making this noise a few days ago, and it continues to evolve. It is a little disquieting if you don't see him when he makes the noise, I assume he is unhappy or in trouble, but the opposite is usually the case.

Alden takes a stand

Lately Alden has been into standing. He sometimes gets upset if he sits too long, and it is because he wants to use his legs. He still needs some help with balance, but he can support himself for thirty seconds up to a minute before his knees buckle. He has a wide stance like a surfer or a colossus. Our camera has some funky default settings, so I apologize for the image quality. In my sleep-deprived state, I neglected to notice that the backlight feature was turned on... oh well. The long, uncut edition of this clip is posted for the benefit of the Grandparents, I'm afraid. All you other lurkers out there may wish to skip to the exciting finale. Music has been added at the request of our sole commentator - your wish is our command, Aaron.

Critters attack

A groundhog appeared today and eyed our garden hungrily. Kerstin chased him around the yard and he sought refuge under our shed. Here he is, glaring at us after the runaround.
We've located his burrow in the raspberry patch and have also discovered a have-a-heart trap in our basement. The gopher doesn't stand a chance... if only we could figure out what to bait it with... But rodents aren't our big concern. The deer have discovered the new trees in our orchard and have been systematically stripping them of their leaves. It's really frustrating. Kerstin set up mesh cages around all but the cherries, so now they're after those. We need more material, but neither of us have the time to do it lately.
On the home front, Alden continues to enjoy indulging in rice cereal at dinner time and it's still pretty hilarious to watch. He gets better at it every day.

Solids and poop

A reallllly long video of Alden Eating

We started Alden on solid food this week (a 1 to 1 ratio of rice cereal and breast milk, not really a solid in the technical sense… a colloid perhaps?). He seemed to know what to do, he just had some problems figuring out how to do it. This was his second solid meal, the first had a soupier consistency that got all over the place. I am very excited about the silicone spoon we use to feed the little fella. It was expensive as far as spoons go, but I feel better about using it because he chomps on it pretty hard. Plus, the flat front is handy for scraping food off his face. I highly recommend them. The instructions for the spoon (no joke) were in Japanese, and they said we could cut the spoon to perfectly fit Alden’s mouth. We have not been that ambitious yet.
The upside to starting solids is in the input. It means that Ilana no longer needs to be tethered to the little lad during the day. Going to the store/gym/bank without worry of depleting the precious milk supply is great. The downside is, of course, the output. Breast fed babies' excretions are the color and consistency of butternut squash soup and smell like buttermilk 5 days past it's expiration date. Alden's newest poops are still pretty liquid and sticky, but are darker now and much more... fragrant. Like a port-o-potty sitting out in an open field all summer. It makes the diaper change a lot nastier.

Hot, hot, hot

It's been really frigin' hot this week. The entire eastern seaboard is in the midst of a heatwave and even though we are pretty far north, we have not been spared. Thankfully, we haven't experienced the triple digit temps that have stifled NY and DC. But temperatures in the 80s all day are pretty high for us Mainers. Seeing as we lack A/C, we basically hang out in our undies all day and think cool thoughts. Or play on our activity mat and get sponge baths. Today Alden allowed me to document some of his more interesting developments over the past couple weeks.
He's finally starting to use his arms to prop himself up, but still only lasts a few minutes before cranking.
He's discovered his toes - the classic "happy baby" pose.
Alden loves to read.
Hands are SO INTERESTING! He'll study them for minutes at a time.
Kerstin has trained the tyke to stick out his tongue when he smiles. I'm trying to get him to disassociate the two actions, but as you can see, I'm not getting very far.

Boggle Time

Gillian and Evelyn visited today. We played a rousing game of Boggle and ate Bachelor Burritos. When I tried to hold Evelyn for a bit, Alden got jealous and wanted in on the action. So here I am, bouncing one on each knee. It was trickier than I thought to get both babies set up. How people with twins manage this EVERY DAY is beyond me.

The kids fell asleep in their wraps after the game and the burritos. Alden has discovered the fleshy part of my thumb and is utterly convinced he'll get milk out of it some day. He fell asleep sucking on it. We are both greatly enjoying the sling now that Alden has control of his head. Thanks Aaron and Liz!

Hanging with friends and wooden spoon

Tummy time with Evelyn in the AM - She's showing Alden how it's done. (On a side note, it may look like Alden is in the foreground in this picture, but he is not. Both babies are equal distance from the camera. His head is that big!)

We've also introduced a new friend, wooden spoon. This particular spoon was made by my brother Aaron 5 years ago and Alden is quite taken with it. Actually, he jealously covets the spoon. Despite (or maybe because of?) a few self-inflicted bonks on the noggin, Alden still squeals with delight when it's presented before him.

Alden laughs