Moose at 5 weeks!

Sorry for the two weeks off. I had my third of four weeks of paternity leave last week, and we did a lot of fun stuff as a family. And Moose has just been growing since we last posted. On Monday, he had his 1-month check-up, and here are his stats:

• He weighs 11 pounds and change;
• His length is now off the chart; when he was born, he was in the 97th percentile. At this rate, he will tower over his Dear Old Dad by the time Moose hits junior high school! 
• Our doctor commented, "All babies should be like him!" 

In other Moose-related news, he has started following us around with his eyes. We'll call out his name, sing to him, and otherwise get his attention from 10 feet away or so, and most times, he'll turn his head to look. It's wicked fun to see babies develop like this. He actually first did this one of the nights that Becky's parents were in town--while I was downstairs with Grandma Mary Ann, I walked in a circle around Moose, who was lying on his back on our living room floor. I called out his real name, and--sure enough--he moved his head to follow me. He was 2 weeks old at the time!

It's hard to believe Moose is almost 6 weeks/a month-and-a-half old now. In other interesting items, he almost always unloads in his diaper three times in a row (we've learned to wait after the first or second stanza!), he's sleeping a little better at night, and sometimes will nurse and then suck down 2 bottles of formula in a sitting. I think I need to get a second job now for the future damage he'll wreck on our grocery bills.
 

Discovery Museum

Acton's Discovery Museum was another awesome excursion during my time off with my family.  I thought we could stay for two hours, tops. Instead, we spent two hours there, took a lunch break, pushed through Mouse's nap, and stayed long enough to be the last guests out. Will the last Wilsons to leave please shut off the lights? Our girls had a great time! They got to play train conductor, ride on bikes, splash around with water toys (including intentionally aiming water cannons at dear old Dad), and explore the dozen rooms at this fun old house.

Like with another day of play during my paternity leave (at the Franklin Park Zoo), the Discovery Museum was packed in the morning and almost empty after lunch [note to self for future trips].

Our girls loved playing in the spacious kitchen the most, pretending to serve me food. Why this doesn't translate into behavior in our actual house, I don't know. But it was a riot to see them pretend to cook food, bring over plates and cups and bowls, and be a waiter at their favorite restaurant, the New England institution of Friendly's (which was where we took our lunch break, much to the girls' delight). We were inside, outside, and on a wooden pirate ship. The biggest hiccup in the whole day was keeping both girls awake on the ride home at five in the afternoon.

I'm looking forward to paternity week #3 off next week.

3

As in, 3 weeks old.  As in: our little boy is three weeks old, and my awesome wife is just 3 weeks post-delivery. And they've both been to church for 3+ hours, and doing social stuff with friends, starting with his second week of life. At a party last night, one of our friends commented to Becky something like, "Who are you?! You just had a baby, and you're getting out of the house with no problem, and bringing him along!" Becky was also pleasantly surprised by this realization, and remembered that she stayed home from church and limited her social calendar for about 6 weeks when Our Dear Goose came along in March 2007. This has been a much better recovery for Becky than after our first two children. It's a blessing.

With that, here is photographic evidence of our dynamic mommy-son duo, starting with a visit from our good friend (and fellow Layton[ite]/[ian]...which is correct?) Jenn, who stopped over while Becky's mom and dad were here last week, and brought her 3-month-old with her.

Our Mighty Moose just seems like he'll be a tall kid.  His arms and legs seem long to us, and he was about 2 inches longer than either of his sisters. Physically, in some ways he looks older than three weeks, which is something that Becky's mom and others commented on and noticed as well. My former boss sent me an e-mail after Moose was born, which read, "Finally, someone to help you mow the lawn!" With Moose's growth rate so far, and his long legs and arms, I'm more inclined to think, "Finally, our ticket to retirement
...he's going to be an NBA forward!"

Utah grandparents + 19th grandchild

It was really cool to have Becky's mom and dad travel cross-country to spend a week with us last week. The highlight was them being in town for Moose's blessing. We took a ton of pictures of them with their newest (and 19th overall) grandchild, both before and after the blessing. Grandma Mary Ann gave us the cute blessing outfit that Moose wore last Sunday for his special day.

Our little man looks zonked here, but he actually started staying awake for longer stretches during the day towards the end of Grandpa and Grandma's visit.

It was great for our other kids to reconnect with their Utah grandparents too, and Becky loved all of their attention, conversations, good naturedness, and work (lots of work!) during their visit. We were unable to persuade them to stay longer, however. See you in a few months!

Moose's blessing

Dear Old Dad finally got his act together and snatched dozens of photos off of Becky's and her mom's cameras. We had a fun week with Becky's dad and mom in town, starting with their arrival on Saturday night ahead of our little boy's blessing in church the next morning.

That wonderful family moment seems like a good place to resume our blogging about Our Mighty Moose with photos of the star of that special day. It was awesome to have my father-in-law to join in Moose's blessing; he hadn't been there for our first two children. Also, several long-time friends who were there when I blessed Goose and Mouse attended this time, too: Marcello Trolio and Alex Lazar. I also invited James Favero and Dave Nieman, with whom I have served in our ward's Elders Quorum presidency for almost 2 years; our awesome (and former) Home Teacher Andrew Curtis, and other good friends Mack, Cale, Jim Preston, and Bishop Makechnie. It was a full house! It was also the last time our congregation would meet in its current form, so that made it extra special (though unintended, as we had planned to bless Moose on this Sunday before we heard our ward would split).

In an ideal world, we would have rounded up all 11 friends with my Dad (holding the camera) and our great friend Hugh after church to get one awesome group photo of the men who joined in Moose's blessing. Still, this photo means a lot to us, and it meant a lot to us that Hugh, Marcello, Moose's grandfathers, and Andrew made special efforts in their own ways to be there last Sunday.

The Moose surrounded by his immediate family, plus his Boston family of our good friends Hugh, Marcello, and Alyson (all on far left).

The original Fab 5: Hugh, me, Becky, Marcello, and Alyson. This core group has been having fun and making good memories as friends for 7+ years now--forming around the time that Becky and I started dating in May of 2004. It's so cool that all three of them have been there for each of our children's blessings.

Our Mighty Moose and his parents and big sisters. Welcome to our crazy life, little one! We are so glad you are here, and blessed that Becky felt so good just 2 weeks after delivering you that she was at church for all 3 hours. (And looked fantastic!)

It is a day I will always remember, from Becky bearing testimony of the eternal nature of families to our family party after church, having so many people who are important to us being there, our Bishop imparting tender words to me just before I blessed Moose, to the emotions I had of his blessing. I look at these pictures and believe that I will be united with these four (and perhaps more) immediate family members for all time. So grateful.

Sisters

I know, I know...you're clamoring for more photos of Our Mighty Moose. Truth is, the little guy is getting swarmed with cameras at home, from Becky's camera and her parents' one, and I have not been good at downloading their photos. There might be about 850 photos of him waiting to be e-mailed, blogged, and posted on Facebook. Welcome to the 21st century, kiddo! In the meantime, here are some cute recent photos of Moose's big sisters to tide you over:

At the Public Garden with our church's playgroup, in early May. 

Our little Mormon pioneer women! Seriously, watching them cross this massive field--with no one else around, and in those long, flowing dresses--made me think just a little bit about the many hundreds of Mormon pioneers who made much more difficult and far longer forced migrations in the mid-1800s. Our girls will hear of those tales in the years to come. When I stopped waxing historic on the moment, I simply stood yards away from our little ones and silently watched with wide eyes as Goose and Mouse, hand-in-hand, made their way to me on this beautiful day.

Here is another shot of that moment, below. I now wish I had taken video of their trek, too. It was just them, surrounded by nature, and under a bright blue sky.

And to prove that we're not all so poised and historic and serious, our girls clowned around on a national monument during my paternity leave, too. I think this above photo led to about 164 separate instances of Goose's favorite joke word, "kook-head," being used.

If she knew how inept I've been at getting more photos of her little brother on Timbeck5, Goose would probably throw this adjective at me, so I promise to up my game over the weekend. More on the Moose to come...

Garden in the Woods

One day, in week #2 of my paternity leave, I took our girls to Garden in the Woods in Framingham. It was the same day that tornadoes hit western Massachusetts, so it was stifflingly hot outside. I figured that being in the shade of trees was a good idea--one of my only options that didn't involve sitting in our home with the A/C on, as my goals were to: a) keep the girls out of Becky's hair for 6-8 hours, so she could nap; b) do fun things with my time off from work.

To be honest, I was uncertain how Goose and Mouse would like this outing. It didn't involve crayons, bikes, dolls, swings and other physical activity set-ups...basically, it was unlike any of the other day outings I'd taken them on during the time off. Come to find out, they loved it, for the most part. We got scavenger hunt maps for each of them and set out to locate plants with leaves larger than plates, turtles, pitcher plants (didn't see these), and a host of other cool items in the Garden.

We had a picnic lunch (I forgot spoons for the yogurt, so our creative little ones used the yogurt cap's plastic lids as spoons) in the shade on this awesome bench. I tried to envision dismantling it to stuff into my backpack and our picnic pail to bring home, but it wasn't to be. We found two or three frogs croaking in a pond (literally, not in the dying sense), saw lots of chipmunks, and wandered around for the better part of two hours. It was really cool, more fun than I anticipated.

Towards the end of the mile-long loop, which we slowly meandered on, we found the girls' most favorite site at Garden in the Woods: two small wooden bridges!

One is way in the background, near the upper left. We found another, smaller one further into the woods, so the girls had a blast skipping across one bridge, running to the next, and skipping across the second bridge. About 25 times! I almost had a heart attack about half of those times, as Mouse had a penchant for going too fast and going too close to the edge of the bridges, neither of which had railings.

It was a really fun time, and I'm so glad to incorporate nature activities and exploring the wonders of the world around us into our children's lives. I highly recommend the Garden in the Woods to all of our friends in the Boston area. 

Getting a family of 5 moving

Memorial Day itself, we packed the wee one and our littles into the Blue Bomber and hit the road to a friends' BBQ. A few friends who have gone ahead of us in the minivan family route have told us of their sheer terror of the first moment when all the kids, and all your stuff, and all of their stuff, and your husband/wife, are crowded into the van.

I waited for that moment of panic to strike. But, it didn't. Perhaps it will manifest itself on another occasion (like, next Monday, when Becky is home alone with all 3 kids all day for the first time since Moose arrived). About the biggest realization from this first trip out as a five-some that hit me was, "The Blue Bomber isn't big enough!"

We will, of course, make it work. Some of the cramped feeling has to do with all of the baby accoutrement that we tote around for the first few months or year (bottles, formula, heaping piles of diapers, binkies--all of which need to go into a diaper bag), and the big, bulky infant car seat. So, I think we'll get some of our minivan space back in time. We've had all 5 of us plus Becky's mom and dad in the van to go to/from church, home from the airport, etc., and it has been cozy but doable, so Blue Bombs away!

Zoning

Caught my little family zoning out in front of the laptop, watching Netflix, one day on my 2nd week of parental leave.

What amazes me most about this photo is that the one person who most needed to nap or zone out (my awesome wife) is the only one who actually heeded my call to say "Cheese!"

The day before #3 arrived

The day before our little boy arrived--Saturday, May 21st--was a nice spring day in our neck of the woods. I was determined to not let a raging allergy spell sideline our family outing. We wanted to get the baby here as soon as possible, and kick-start the motion, so we decided to take a really long, long walk. We packed a lunch and snacks, brought along our camera, and put the girls in our stroller for the mother of all walks.

Becky at 40 weeks. Little did we know that in about 12 hours after this picture was taken, she'd be in the hospital with contractions!

Our girls love this playground. Mouse is our little risk-taker at the moment: Whatever playground contraption her older sister is using, she wants to join in. This includes the rings (she isn't yet big or coordinated enough to do flips unassisted), the fireman's pole (instead, she jumps from about 7 feet in the air into my waiting arms), and the twisty poles, which are her favorite.

Goose could have spent the whole day collecting as many full-bloom dandelions as she wanted. 

Mouse let out a cute "Wishes" scream of excitement when she saw a whole field full of dandelions. I'm not sure where she got the name for them that she uses--"wishes." Becky probably knows, but as she is still not into blogging and is currently enjoying a full day with her mom and dad in town, I'm not going to bug her.

The happy old dad and one of his favorite people in the whole world, even if that world causes him daily allergies for much of the spring. We had a terrific afternoon of playgrounds and walks. We thought that the walking would help, but had mentally prepped ourselves that Moose probably wouldn't arrive on the scene until Sunday night, or Tuesday at the latest. Maybe the walking played a big role.

I look back on this day now and it seems to have so much more significance than I could have obviously known at the time. This was our last outing, our last day, as a family of four. It was cool to do so many outdoors things that day. I also personally felt a lot less anxious about going from 2 kids to 3 than I did going from 1 kid to 2. 

And now, here we are with three kids! I just hope none of them inherit their dear old dad's allergies!  

Sleeping buddy

Our girls are really just getting the Mighty Moose revved up for the next couple years of his life, when dolls and dresses and barrets will contest with his trucks and balls and rough-housing. Poor little guy woke up to see one of Goose's favorite dolls (whom she has nicknamed "Ellie," after one of her best friends from church), fighting for space in his bassinet.

Makes me want to stick one of my vintage "Star Wars" action figures in there too, to give him a fighting chance. But, I value those beat-up old figures too much...at least for now.

Future Red Sox fan

Yeah, we are starting Moose early on the Boston Red Sox indoctrination stuff:

Moose's hat is a Red Sox cap, though he shifted his head a bit at the last second when the photo was taken.

If you're a betting person, take heed: The Sox won the World Series in 2007, the year that Goose was born; and the Sox went all the way to Game 7 of the 2008 American League Championship Series, the year that Mouse was born. 2011 should be a banner year for the Olde Towne Team, if our children's births have anything to do with their luck.

First Bath

Our little guy had his first bath at home last week. Apparently, a sibling's bath is now a spectator sport in our house, with multiple participants:

And here is Moose, showing off his healthy set of lungs:

Phobia in Lexington

Last week, on the first morning after Moose came home and our girls were back from my parents' house, I took the girls to Lexington for the morning. It was a beautiful spring day outside. I went for the history of this little town (celebrating its 300th birthday in 2013, site of the first battle of the Revolutionary War), while the girls enjoyed one of its finest culinary offerings...The Candy Castle.

There is something about Mouse and her oversized sunglasses that crack me up. Also, these glasses keep disappearing and re-appearing in our house and minivan. This was an instructive visit: both girls immediately started grabbing any candy in their vicinity, instead of looking around for ones they would really like. We had to put a lot back.

After having some candy for a post-breakfast snack, we hit the Battle Green, where the first battle took place in April 1775. There were some fun moments here:

Girls portraying fallen soldiers on the Battle Green.

...And this is where Mouse's heretofore unknown phobia struck.

We were having lunch on the Battle Green, sitting on the freshly mowed grass. I thought everything was fine and fun. Well, Mouse started whining in a low pitch about the towering white flag pole behind her. Turns out, she was becoming very afraid that the flag pole would topple over onto her. I tried to convince her otherwise, but must have been that my brief explanation of basic engineering and history (the pole had been standing for decades without incident) didn't register. So, we had to move.

Chillin' out on some historical monuments. It was a fun first day of my paternity leave.  



Bringing the Moose Home

We were thrilled to bring Moose home last Tuesday afternoon. In fact, we took him on a little tour while we waited for my Mom and Dad to bring our girls to our house. First stop: our good friends the Browns. This visit became an impromptu ward get-together, as we also visited with the Cammacks, and then the Niemans dropped by! It was fun to see friends and show off our new little addition. And the gathering would have been even more impromptu and fun, as the Mullens were heading to the Cammacks' house, but we missed them by a few seconds. Truth be told, most everyone was there to see the Cammacks, but it was fun to tag along on the social time.

Later that day, our little girls came home and we got right into being a party of 5. Goose continued her over-eager mommy's little helper mode, while Mouse continued her cute aloofness. I'm not sure if it's a coping mechanism on her part, what with all of the change a new baby brings.

My Mom and Dad continued their role as life-saving family heroes, having taken our girls from our friend Deidre (who was an awesome help and spent Saturday night at our house) on Sunday morning. It is fun to see my parents as grandparents, and to see their hearts expand with each new grandchild for us and for my sister and her family.

After dinner, my parents headed home, and we began a new family chapter as a fivesome! So far, one week-plus into having a new little one around (and speaking just for myself, as I've been home for almost 2 weeks of a 4-week paternity leave) the transition from 2 to 3 has been a lot smoother than I anticipated. It's gone well, and Becky has been able to focus 100% on our baby while I hang out with our girls and do fun things each day in the area.