As promised, here are more pictures of Andrew in his zebra costume. As you might suspect, he hates the hood--thus, we have only one picture of him in his hood! (Don't know what his mother is doing . . .)







We threw in a couple more gratis. The first is a picture of Andrew enjoying his cheese. The second is what I call an "Eves baby" shot--he looks quite a bit like his Wells cousins, I think. (He's also wearing 18-month pajamas, if you can believe it. He's such a long body that 12-month footie pjs no longer fit!)

All your base are belong to us . . . has nothing whatsoever to do with this post, but one has to start somewhere. I meant to post yesterday, but blogger was temporarily down, which means that you'll have to put up with whatever stellar thoughts coalesce in what few remnants of a thinking brain that I have left after a couple of hours in the writing center (and to think, I get paid to help people with their writing! After a sentence like that, you'd think I wouldn't be legal).
Today's post, unfortunately, promises nothing as interesting as my brother's recent description of his Yale law school class (see link at right. Who knew that we might only be two--or is it three--degrees separated from Woody Allen, whose son is in Justin's class?). However, one must say something! (My father once commented that "nature abhors a vacuum. . . . And so does Rosalyn.")

The highlight of our week has definitely been Andrew's increasing sense of balance--he has multiplied his feat of Friday (standing alone for a few seconds) a few times since our last post. I suppose that must say something about the excitement present in our week!

Saturday was our ward's annual chili-cook off (we were told not to call it the "halloween party," because it was thought that this might discourage some of the singles from attending a fest meant primarily for children). It was also Andrew's first foray into the exciting world of trick-or-treating. He was dressed as a zebra (his mom's yard-sale find)--the costume itself didn't seem to bother him so much; it was the hood that drove him crazy. Although I thought he looked darling, he evidently didn't think so and took drastic measures to remedy the situation. In short, he puked. Not copious quantities, but sufficient to make both him and his mother have to change clothes! He didn't stay long after the puking incident--he and Dan went home (where Andrew was promptly put to bed), and I stayed because I had agreed to do some face painting after the dinner. Most unusual request: six-year-old Dane Dorius (one of our old primary students) wanted me to paint "The Kraken" on his cheek. As I had no idea what this looked like, he tried to explain it to me. He told me that it was a cross between a crab and an octopus--what he got was a reddish sort of shape with long green tentacles. Definitely not my best artistic endeavor!

I'm also slowly coming to the conclusion that maybe I worry too much (please, no smart-alecky comments here! I know what you think.) Daylight Savings Time has definitely not been as onerous as I was afraid it would be. Saturday night (in part because his bedtime was later, due to the ward party), Andrew slept from 7:30 to 5:30 (6:30 pre DST time). And this morning, after a brief wake-up at 4:45, he slept until six. So far, none of the 4 am wake-ups that I've been terrified of. Of course, knock on wood, there's always tomorrow . . . That would be an appropriate "trick," wouldn't it? (Possible retribution for eating his Halloween candy for him).

We have some photos of Andrew to post, but as blogger is not currently letting me load them, this will have to wait until another day!

Oh, and one more tidbit for Andrew's grandparents (who are probably the only ones interested in this piece of news)--Andrew is cutting his two top teeth. For the record, this makes four.

Two Andrew milestones of note occured today. First, our "early bird" actually slept from about 7:15 last night until 6:30 a.m.! We were excited on two counts--first, he slept all night without waking up his parents, and second, he slept past six a.m.! Our second milestone was perhaps more momentous. After getting Andrew out of his crib after his nap, I set him on his feet on the floor. Then, just to see what would happen, I gradually removed my support. To my surprise, Andrew actually remained on his feet for a full 2-3 seconds before sitting down! This is the first time he's stood on his own, independent of any support. (Although granted, any more he only needs minimal support to get to his feet). Anyway, not much in terms of the whole scheme of things, but enough to make a mother excited!

Around here, the use of nicknames provides an interesting insight into etymology (the history of words, for anyone who's not familiar with that term). For instance, as a child I was affectionately known as "Rosalrocerous." I happened to mention this once to my friend Karin, who promptly told her then fiance, and they both took great delight in calling me as many variations on that name as they could: Rosalrumperocerous, Rumpasaurus, and other bone-chilling variations. (I think, in case anyone was wondering, that the "rump" originated during a particularly humiliating session of bowling . . .). Dan has a much more varied and storied past, in terms of various appellations: Skidmore, Horsey Trot, Skeeterumpus, Raheee, Beaver Pelt, Dan-o, Boone (as in Daniel).

More recently, however, we've been fascinated by the evolution of Andrew's nicknames. Initially, he was known as the "Bug." After a brief flirtation with "bugger" (rejected quickly for obvious reasons), this became "booger," a similarly distasteful (if less offensive) moniker. Or "buggy." Other variations (for some reason we seem to have a fascination with bodily excretions): poop stain, poopie, etc. Lately, the various nicknames seemed to have merged into his most recent--the daring, stimulating, original: boo boo. Or boo-boo boy. Take your pick. (As I write this, I'm particularly impressed with both our creativity and our eloquence in choosing these names. Clearly Andrew is destined for greatness of some kind--I just hope he doesn't choose to manifest it in his next diaper.) Other options, for the curious (we know that not everyone who reads this post hangs on ever factoid about Andrew, so if you belong to this category, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. Although that too, come to think of it, is probably about Andrew. What can we say? We don't have much of a life!) include: pu-ju, squidget (you know, a squidgy midget), squatty boy, and Sasquatch.

As this is the season of ghouls and ghosts and other frightful things, we thought we'd take a brief moment to celebrate all the things we're afraid of.

Andrew: vacuum cleaners (apparently we don't use it often enough!); grass (on a recent, memorable outing to the park, Andrew was positively distressed every time his bare toes or hands encountered the stuff); and electronic crib soothers (see earlier post).

Daniel: Billy (his mom's doll, aka first boyfriend--anyone who has seen Billy in his current state of disrepair will know he's freaky beyond belief. Chucky eat your heart out!); vienna sausages (Dan says: "I'm all for tubular meat, but these are midgy tubular meats"); and PDA.

Rosalyn: Daylight Saving Time (terrified--there's no other word for it. In one week, Andrew will go from waking up at 5:30 am to 4:30. Psychologically, I don't think I'm prepared to deal with this); vampires behind the shower curtain (don't ask); interminable conversations with ESL students about the appropriate usage of "which" and "that" (I don't know, okay?).

As you can perhaps tell from the above post, we've had a positively scintillating week. Dan went to lab every day, I went to the writing center every day, Andrew pooped multiple times every day (and crawled around naked), etc., etc., etc. (I did, however, find some fabulous deals at Gymboree . . . One more thing Dan's afraid of--that the shopping will never end!)

Here, doing a bit of fall cleaning. (Don't worry--this was a brand new garbage can, purchased a scant thirty minutes earlier).

Some Andrew-isms to enliven your mid-week stupor!

We've noticed a couple of new phenomena in Andrew's life the last week or so. The first is one I've dubbed "captain hook." All of you are, of course, familiar with the infamous tocking that betrayed the alligator that Hook was so deathly afraid of. Well, Andrew similarly has discovered a way of announcing his presence. He's latched onto a little white cup (almost like a second appendage) that he won't let go of even when he crawls around. If he's particularly intrepid, he'll crawl as fast as his little arms and legs will let him across the kitchen floor toward the hallway, with the little white cup betraying his presence with its reptitive "knock" "knock" "knock" against the linoleum. (If you look really closely, you can even see the fine string of drool trailing from his chin--indicative, no doubt, of his intentness).

The second Andrewism doesn't have a picture, but you'll be able to use your imagination. Andrew, like most babies his age, has been industriously babbling away. Lately, he seems to have picked up a new sound "Ch" "ch" which he likes to repeat at regular intervals, particularly when presented with either of two food favorites: cheese and cheerios. While I'm tempted to read this as an early attempt to communicate, I think he just really likes the sound: he also says it to me when I go to pick him up after his naps!

Our final salvo for the day is a picture of Andrew enjoying the baby-sized pumpkin his Grandma Patti sent him.

Over the river and through the woods . . . and over the river . . . and over the river . . . and still no grandma's house. Or, in this case, St. Benedict the Abbot's church. Yesterday, we all piled into our trusty Honda Civic and headed to the city of three rivers (better known as Pittsburgh, previously Fort Pitt, previously something else that I can't remember . . . ). Our goal was IKEA (well, my goal anyway), a fabulous shopping icon with cheap furniture, houseware, and kids "crap" (Dan's term), which we made in a timely fashion. Actually, we were heading down for the wedding of Tracy Paxon (a former Ewing lab member) to James Gibson. However, since we arrived in Pittsburgh around 1 o'clock and the wedding wasn't until 3, we thought we'd while away the time shopping. We left IKEA around 2:20ish, with just enough time to get us to our destination (or so mapquest suggested). Our directions, however, turned out to be somewhat lacking (although it's entirely possible that the whole thing was the navigator's fault). At any rate, when we were told to merge onto US 19 from US 51, we didn't realize that 19 almost immediately diverged from US 51. About ten miles down the road we finally realized that we were no longer seeing signs for 19--however, this being the outskirts of Pittsburgh with horrible little intersections and lots of traffic and a grand tradition of crappy roadsigns (meaning you can't read the sign until you're driving past it), it had taken us over twenty minutes to navigate these ten miles. By the time we had corrected our error, gotten back on US 19 and driven a few miles down the road, we realized that, since it was 3:40, we had most likely missed most of the wedding, and it seemed more sensible to go find our hotel and put Andrew down for a nap (who, incidentally, was less than pleased with this unexpected hour and a half confinement in the car, after being in the car most of the morning). At least we made it to the reception, where Andrew was a big hit. During the toasts, about 75% of the people in the surrounding tables were watching us trying to feed Andrew his mush instead of watching the toast-givers. (We must say, Andrew was much less dry--in more ways than one!--than Uncle Arty). Another highlight of the evening was watching Dan's advisor Andy's little girl, Selma. At first, she reminded one forcibly of Elmira, from Tiny Toons (I'm going to love him and squeeze him . . .) as she grabbed any young male in her vicinity in a big bear hug. Her mom told us that she's going through a hugging phase, but it looked to us more like she was boning up for a career in professional wrestling. As the evening wore on, however, she became a little more gentle. In fact, Dan tells me that she reminded him of me, when I get tired--in other words, she started to do the "limpet" thing, clinging to her chosen host until he was forced to drag her across the room.

At any rate, we enjoyed the reception. But we did get lost on the way back to the hotel. (Of course, at this point we had driven up and down this road four times by now--since this was the route we'd been lost on initially--and everything looked familiar!). We eventually made it, not just to our hotel, but back to State College, to Andrew's infinite relief. He will not soon allow us to put him placidly into his car seat! His new m.o. consists of arching his back resistently if we even sit down in the car with him. The one thing we did learn from our excursion is that Andrew is infinitely more adaptable than his mother. (Infer into this what you will.)

Other highlights (or lowlights, as you wish) from the week. Andrew seems to be developing some form of stranger anxiety. He does all right as long as his parents are within eyeshot, but after that, all bets are off. This week, in a spectacular case of scheduling, I had my yearly exam the same day (and approximately the same time) that Dan had an interview. Needless to say, both were fairly important things for us to attend, so, one of Dan's labmates generously pitched in to watch Andrew for the twenty or so minutes that we were both going to be gone. In her words, Andrew was enjoying the party and the attention of a room full of people, until the people (including his father) gradually left the room and he realized that she was the only one there. Then he cried for twenty minutes until Dan came back. During this crying spell, our intreped heroine coerced two of her lab-mates (both similarly unversed in the arts of small children) to help her change Andrew's diaper. We think it says something about the strength and wiles of our little man that it took three grown-ups to put a clean diaper on him--and it was only a wet one! Most surprisingly, Andrew was able to outwrestle a man who is 6'4 and weighs 280 lbs, as Andrew apparently got away from the largest of the three would-be diaper changers. (Not that this is a new event--Andrew routinely gets away from one or both of us. We wonder if maybe he's planning a career as a streak. See previous post on "runaway bum").

All right. Now for the moment you have all been waiting for. (No, not Dan's graduation. Or mine, for that matter). Picture time!

As part of his newfound "separation anxiety," Andrew has also developed a talent for monitoring his parents' actions at all times and in all places. Below, you can get a glimpse of the "all-seeing eye" of Andrew.

Dan says: "Looks like he has the Halloween disease."

We bought the horse for Andrew to ride, but apparently, in this bout, the horsey won. (We're still not entirely sure how Andrew managed to so dextrously insert himself beneath the horse).

This last one is for Trisha. Andrew has recently developed a propensity for occasionally snuggling with blankets, mattresses, anything related to a bed. (Of course, nothign really stops his momentum for long aside from actually going to sleep). Today, as Andrew was crawling around on the floor (and across the blanket Trisha made for him) he would stop every once and a while to put his cheek down on the soft blanket before quickly resuming his explorations.

My first year here at Penn State I remember playing a game of Ex Libris with some fellow ward members. For anyone not familiar with this game, it requires you to write the first or last line to a novel, and then everyone tries to guess which response is the correct one (like balderdash, only with novels instead of obscure word definitions). One memorable evening, the cue was for Milne's House at Pooh Corner. I wrote, "It's raining, Pooh," said Christopher Robin . . . or something to that effect. The individual reading all of the entries, however, missed the crucial comma in Christopher Robin's statement, which came out as "It's raining poo. . ." You can probably imagine the reaction. Even now this line comes back to haunt me occasionally.

Why do I bring this experience up now, you ask? Well, the phrase has come to seem somewhat portentous around our house this week. (I apologize in advance for those of our gentle readers whose "gross-out" tolerance is rather low!). In the last couple of days, Andrew has had some rather spectacular blow-outs (in quantity and quality). At first, we were somewhat mystified as to the cause, until we realized that, for the last couple of days, we've been feeding him a tasty little Gerber mixture called "plums and apples." (With an emphasis on the plums, apparently). Clearly, plums are a hazardous ingredient to add to an internal plumbing system that already processes with admirable regularity!

(It might be indicative of the level of excitement around our house that we're reduced to a discussion of Andrew's bowel productivity. Needless to say, this was not, perhaps, the most exciting week that we have ever had). We did reconfirm that Andrew likes to suck/chew/gnaw on dill pickles, although we have to watch him carefully, or he'll try to bite off chunks too big to swallow. As you can perhaps tell from this post, Andrew remains the most exciting thing to have happened to us.

Today was a day of reckoning. Well, for Andrew at least. Today was Andrew's nine-month check-up at the doctor's office. And the results are . . . (Since we know all of you wait with bated breath to find out how our son is growing, or not). Andrew now weighs in at 22 lbs 15 oz (actually, 15.5 from what I saw--so he's practically 23 lbs--good thing we got that convertable carseat when we did), measures 30 1/4 inches, and has a head circumference of 47 centimeters. Actually, he's maintaining a pretty consistent growth rate, at 90th percentile for height and 80th for weight.

He continues to be the delight (and bane) of our existence. Lately, our house has epitomized the case of the early bird and the worms (well, at least I think I qualify as a worm, Dan maybe not so much so). How so, you ask? Well, gentle reader, let me explain. In the last week, Andrew has slept to or past 6 am perhaps twice. Most of the time, he prefers to rouse his parents at the somewhat less civilized hour of 5 (well, between 5:15 and 5:45). For those of you who are naturally early risers, this may not be so bad. For those of us who prefer not rising until after seven of the clock, this is not so exciting. Suffice it to say that I face the prospect of Daylight Saving Time (by the way, did you know that there is no "s" after Saving? http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html) later this month with trepidation, not to mention dread. If any of you have suggestions on how to encourage our son to sleep later, please let us know! We will be grateful for any and all advice. This morning he woke up at 5:15, and after an abortive attempt to feed him and change him, we (well, I) put him back in his crib where he remained, playing quite happily until 6:15 or so, when he started to make himself a little more vocal. If the walls separating our bedrooms weren't so darn thin, we might actually have been able to sleep!

My final comment for the day. I think Baby Einstein is overrated. I bought a DVD for Andrew at a garage sale, and, despite the pleasant calming pictures it flashes across the screen tantalizingly, Andrew couldn't be more oblivious. He'd much rather try to help me type this post. Currently he's waving Stop, Train, Stop! at me. Perhaps he thinks that will provide better inspiration for the somewhat insipid material I have to work with today! Anyway, back to Baby Einstein. I recently read a commentary in Time magazine on Baby Einstein v. Barbie. The author's contention was that Baby Einstein represents those parents who are anxious for their child to get into the top preschools, so they can attend the top kindergartens, the top elementary schools, and so on. Barbies, on the other hand, are for those parents who just want us to be happy. (I must confess that we're likely to fall in the latter category, although I'm not sure that we really want to endorse Barbie, particularly not for Andrew). The author's concern with this distinction was that currently the media seems to portray those overambitious parents as the majority of today's parents, when, as he rightly pointed out, the vast majority of parents fall in the latter category. I think he's right to decry the media fascination with these overobsessive parents (when the real crisis seems rather to be with those parents who are indifferent or hostile), but I'm not sure that his respective toy choices are necessarily the most representative! (See http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1538507,00.html for the full article.)

For those of you who know that this is my century, you won't be surprised to hear that today was not my day. Well, I should qualify that. In some ways, today was a very wonderful day: we got to listen to general conference (and were only mildly distracted by Andrew's propensity to use us as human jungle gyms), and a dear friend of mine, Cory Holding, was in town and came by to brunch. (Even if I hadn't liked her before, it's very hard to resist someone who find your child as "joyful" as she did!). So I suppose it would be more accurate to say that today was not my day only in the sense that it was rather hard on my clothing. I started out this morning by pouring nearly half a cup of mixed berries down my skirt (they stained the floor--I'm not yet sure what they will have done to my skirt, which, luckily was old and black). To cap this off, Andrew ended the day by puking all over me, which necessitated, yet again, a change of clothes.

We enjoyed conference, particularly the repeated theme of finding healing and comfort through the atonement of Christ, and the admonition to "do all things in wisdom" (necessary advice when sometimes I'm tempted to try to do everything, which may be ambitious but certainly is not wise). Since we listened to conference via the internet, Andrew didn't seem terribly fazed by any of it--except, of course, for a few disturbances during the Saturday afternoon session. Something seemed to frighten him--perhaps the disembodied voices, but more likely the missionary choir. Every time the choir sang, Andrew turned his big eyes on me and his lower lip started to tremble just as tears began to pool in his eyes. One time, he was so distraught that he actually started crawling away from me, crying out for comfort. (It was actually pretty funny--someone ought to tell Brother Brenchley that his choir frightened our baby!)

Saturday seems to have been Andrew's day for being terrified by innocuous music (although some could take issue with this term in the present application). Not only did the MTC choir scare him, he exhibited the same reaction earlier in the day when, in a misguided attempt to carry out one of the suggestions in our Baby Prodigy book, I turned on some ABBA and tried to dance with him. (I probably shouldn't make confessions like this--I know that some of you are thinking that it was probably my dancing that scared him; the rest of you are thinking that ABBA itself is scary enough. But hey, we have a limited selection of danceable music. Our other options were nursery rhymes or a random assortment of musicals, like The Scarlet Pimpernel, Jekyll and Hyde, or Into the Woods. And much as I love these musicals, I suspect that Andrew may have inherited his father's more discerning musical taste.)

Besides random moments of terror, Andrew has made another developmental leap: he has learned to follow simple commands from his mother. Not "no,"which tends to cause Andrew to stop temporarily whatever he is doing, look at me, grin, and go back to whatever mischief he is currently engaged in. Distractions are much more effective in this respect. He has, however, figured out that the correct response to "give mama kisses" is to put his open mouth on my cheek, slobber on it profusely and try to suck it. A few times he's even tried to gnaw on my cheek (putting into use his only two teeth). But whatever--he's rather proud of himself and I'll take whatever misguided shows of affection I can get!