[Nicolas] Cooker Baby

look at this little monkey crawling around ...

we may not be posting updates for the next several days, so here's one more video clip for you, taken yesterday after nicolas ate his first bowl of rice cereal and talked about it. look closely and you may see a couple teeth:

after his first bowl of rice cereal, nicolas couldn't stop talking about it . . .

today mary convinced nicolas to eat some rice cereal. after several previous failed attempts last month, he finally got the hang of it today. enjoy! there are two versions of this video: 1) just plain old eating: and 2) disco version of nicolas eating:

Unlce Lou came by this weekend to meet Nicolas in person for the first time (they'd met previously via iChat). Nicolas was a little fussy and not his normal cheery self, but they were able to spend some nice moments together, including the picture above.

we spent labor day weekend in nashville visiting relatives and introducing Nicolas to his only uncle, captain midnight. although he's staring at the camera here, he couldn't take his eyes off his uncle's face for most of the time they spent together.

yesterday was the first day nicolas sat up by himself without falling over. banal? yes. fun and exciting for us? of course. plus we added a few new pics to the flickr set.

nicolas and i attended a boot camp for new dads class today, to help rookie dads (guys about to be first time fathers) prepare for parenthood. as a former rookie dad who took the class six months ago i found it to be really helpful, so it was great to meet with the prospective fathers and answer their questions and put some of their fears to rest. i encourage any guys who are about to be dads to check it out and any guys with new babies to consider volunteering for a class - it's amazing how a little advice and support can make a positive impact on people. more info is at newdads.com .

we finally got little nicolas on some kind of a schedule and then he got this crazy idea to start crying about all this teething nonsense. so we're a little sleepy around here on some days. oddly enough (and thankfully) he usually wakes up happy and refreshed.

so nicolas has really gotten into this whole teething thing big time lately. lots of drool and recently some weird squealing that is accompanied by a grin, a frown then a hand or piece of clothing (or caterpillar in the above shot) in the mouth. he's also learned how to turn himself over now, which he seems to really enjoy. we're almost at 4 1/2 months ... amazing how time flies.

We took Nicolas to the doctor yesterday for a regular checkup. All signs are good - his weight has more than doubled since birth (he's an ounce under 16 lbs!), he's now 25 inches long, and his head is an inch bigger in circumference as well. His doctor said he's in the 75th percentile for weight and 50th percentile for length and head size, and his growth charts look pretty much perfect. Unfortunately he wasn't too excited about the good news because it came during his normal nap time, and was followed by 4 shots (ouch!). today was a good day though - we're back on schedule and starting to figure out a routine for him. maybe we can make it through this afterall.

mary's stepfather bill (nicolas' pa-pa) came over this weekend and held nicolas for the first time. it was a really sweet moment. more pics of nicolas and pa-pa in the flickr set.

uncle jim stopped by with his friend ruthie to meet nicolas for the first time. it was nice to see him again and he and nicolas enjoyed hanging out together for a little while. hopefully we can go visit him in jacksonville in a few weeks.

We've been having some fun around here lately. Nicolas is pre-teething, so we've got lots of drool and biting of everything, and of course a healthy dose of fussiness. But throughout each day we're also finding a good bit of time to laugh and giggle and get huge toothless grins from him that just make us melt. And today we were really excited, because Nicolas started reading! I know it seems impossible for a 3 month old to read, but see for yourself: Okay, so some skeptics out there may be saying, "Hey! He's not reading! He's just staring at the pages!" Yeah, well. If that's true, then why would he do this? He's obviously tasting the book so he can decide if it tastes as good as it reads. Don't you think? Or maybe he's just teething. Oh well, we're having fun either way.

We've been spammed! Just wanted to let you know that we've had to change the way you can post comments to the blog because a spammer has started posting to it, and we had 62 bogus messages this morning. So in order to post comments in the future, you'll need to sign up as a user with blogger.com and login before you post. It's free and only takes a minute, and we'd love for you to keep commenting, but we understand if it's too much of a pain to do so. Fortunately many of you who read the blog are already members - so keep commenting! unless of course, you're a spammer.

jeremy gave nicolas a bath tonight. nicolas really loves bath time.

we had a great time with nicolas today, despite his somewhat-fussy demeanor, he found time for several laughs and giggles with us. new pics in the flickr set.

today was the first day we heard nicolas trying to talk, or at the very least experimenting a bit with sounds he can make. mundane? sure. silly? a bit. exciting? yeah, it was pretty exciting for us all. it's a little over 2 minutes, so unless you're a die-hard nicolas or baby-talk fan, you may not make it through the whole thing. enjoy:

nicolas has been a blast lately. smiling a lot and making silly sounds. we've had a few recent sleepless nights, but we're hoping to get back on track and on a normal schedule again soon.