Could it be that Parker is starting to form his first words?

I’ve blogged a lot about child development on this site, and obviously language development is one of the cornerstones. We’ve been working a lot with Parker to help him along and communicate better with us. We like to point at things and tell him what its name is, especially when he’s particularly interested in a certain item or thing.

Well, one thing that he’s been long interested in is our dog Cookie. For some reason, she is the most amusing thing to a six-month old, even when she’s just laying on the couch. And of course, every time he looks at her, we tell him her name, “Coo-kie”.

In recent days, it would seem Parker is trying more and more to identify her. At first, it started with just a “keh” or “kuh” sound when he saw her. But now that we’ve been saying it more and more, it’s developed into more of a “Keeeee” or “Kweee” or, even better, ”Koooeeee”. Obviously a lot of this has to do with imitation of speech, as most babies don’t really understand at this age that things have certain names by which to call them, but, he only makes these sounds when around Cookie, and has started to do it without prompting.

I’m not going to go as far as to say our son has spoken his first word, or that he is now ‘talking’, but I would say he’s definitely headed down that path.

Parker has his six-month pediatrician appointment on Thursday, and then will start going every three months for a while (instead of two). An update will of course follow.

I try to keep finance talk down to a minimum on this blog, just because everyone is at different financial points in their lives.

The other day, Rachel brought up the possibility of opening Parker some sort of savings account right now, just so we can contribute a little bit of money to it each month so that’ll he have a good start of money later down the road. We were both fortunate to go to college with a least some financial stability thanks to either CDs or savings accounts/bonds setup in our names when we were much younger.

We’ve been looking into a couple options; a savings account, certificates of deposit, or perhaps another popular option, a 529 (an education savings plan designed to set aside money for future college costs). In any case, we’re just looking for a nice way to provide Parker with some financial stability when he’s ‘on his own’. Each obviously have their advantages and disadvantages, but by starting something now when Parker is so young, contributions don’t have to be as large and can be spread out over the next 18 years or so.

I think financial responsibility is an important thing to instill in children, because when you go to college, it hits reality. When you’re responsible for deciding what to purchase, paying bills, rent, etc. I don’t necessarily advocate that children (well, teenagers) should HAVE to get a job, but I’m going to encourage Parker to get a job when he’s old enough because I think it teaches a lot about financial responsibility and money management. Plus money you earn on your own in a way is more valuable.

In any case, this is a long way down the road, but obviously the earlier we get started on this, the easier it becomes and the more we can provide.

On Sunday, we introduced Parker to Cheerios (well, technically, Great Value Toasted Whole Grain Oats).

For the first few, we just fed them to him. And let me say, the first time a child experiences something actually solid, it’s quite a picture. Amazingly, though, he didn’t choke and was able to get a few down without incident.

Babies, in general, don’t develop the pincer grasp until a little later down the road (sometime around 8 months), so it’s difficult for him to actually pick up a Cheerio and put it in his mouth. But, he is able to pick them up in a couple of fingers and move them towards his mouth. Last night, he actually succeeded in feeding himself one.

Here lately, he’s also been crawling up a storm. He just constantly moves from one end of the room to the other (babyproofing, anyone?). Only problem is, he gets frustrated when we actually move him, so we’ve helped that by letting him spend more time in the playpen where he can move around at will, but still be contained.

Thanks to our little tax credit (er, Parker), we also got back a substantial tax refund this year which will be used to pay off my car, buy some new furniture (hello, sectional sofa!), and, as we’ve already purchased, a PlayStation3. Parker has been doing so well with sleeping lately that we decided we were finally ready to advance our gaming lives after he goes to bed. So far, it’s been a lot of fun.

Parker has a six-month checkup next Thursday on his half-birthday, but I’m sure more posts will come before that.

So Parker has ‘officially’ started using consonant sounds when ‘talking’, most notably ‘ba’.

It doesn’t sound like much, but using consonants is a key development stage in language development, where the child is actually forming his mouth to make certain sounds, especially in imitation to things being said to him.

That said, I think I’m going to start posting a little more frequently on here, probably something like three times a week. I feel like the site can drag sometimes without regular posts (even though readership is way up), so be looking for more frequent posts!

He did it!

Parker is now sleeping with both of his arms out (we just wrap the blanket around his body). We just decided to switch to it one night, and he slept throught he night. He wakes up very occasionally because he’ll roll over and get frustrated, but it’s been incredibly.

Really, if you told me at Christmas that in one-month, Parker would be out of his swaddle, sleeping through the night, I would have laughed at you. He’s done so extremely well.

He’s growing more every day, and in the past few days, he’s started ’smiling’. He’s been smiling for a long time now, but now he actually will do a cheesy grin every so often, as if he’s smiling on purpose for a camera and it’s pretty much the most adorable thing in the world. As soon as we get a photo of it, I’m sure we’ll post it.

That’s all for this update!

Ever since my wife has started her new job, I usually end up watching Parker by myself a couple nights a week.

Rachel has watched Parker, well, for at least 8 hours by herself for just about every day since he’s been born (given, four of those hours usually consist of nap time–which, as a parent, let me just say is the reason people are willing to have more than one child). ‘Single’ parenting is tough, especially with an infant.

Rachel and I have a good system when we’re both home, as if/when he gets fussy, generally a trip into the other parent’s arms are enough to pacify him (this, of course, being after all forms of his own personal entertainment have been exhausted). But when you’re at home by yourself with a five month-old that 1) can’t explain to you what he wants and 2) gets frustrated by his failures at independence, it can surely be trying.

But beyond all that, the moments of pure joy that come with bonding with your child are worth every bit. Tonight, Parker and I had one of those moments.

He was sitting on my stomach while I was laying on the couch. I was holding him by the hips so that he wouldn’t suddenly fling himself onto the floor (and thereby ending ‘Daddy nights’). We’re practicing language development right now with Parker, specifically using consonant sounds when communicating (so a lot of da, ba, etc.). I had my head laying flat on the couch, and would pop it up on occasion and shout ‘Ba!’ at Parker. Soon, he started laughing. I decided to up the ante, by doing it while he was laughing. Let me tell you, I’ve never heard something laugh that hard and that deep.

And the end of the game, I just pulled him down and hugged him. It was so simple–a baby’s laugh–but knowing that he found our game so amusing that he had to laugh that hard just moved me beyond words. He laid on my chest, trying to catch his breath from his guffawing. And that was it. It was barely a minute, but it’s a moment that carried me through the rest of the evening.

He’s in bed now, but I look to his room and hope he’s thinking about how much fun he had tonight with his dad. And even if he isn’t, that that moment carried him for the rest of the night.

As many of you may already know, Proposition 8 (the California gay marriage ban) is being debated right now in federal court. Ted Olson and David Boies (opposing lawyers in 2000’s Bush v. Gore) have brought a lawsuit on behalf of gay couples against Proposition 8.

The Supreme Court has barred cameras from the courtroom, but in our technically-savy age, we have both liveblogs and Twitter. Feel free to follow along at http://prop8trialtracker.com and/or http://twitter.com/NCLRights!

Today, Parker turns five-months old! It’s hard to believe that it’s been this long since he came into the world, and even harder to believe how much he’s grown in those five months. He’s sitting up unassisted now, eating baby food like a pro, giving hugs and kisses…

An update on the swaddling, too. We started swaddling Parker with one arm out beginning last week, and his transition to it has been incredibly smooth. The first night, he woke up twice and went back to sleep quickly. The second night, he only woke up once. And now, he’s sleeping through the night once again. Plus he looks even more adorable doing it, since his arm typically is up over his head when he’s asleep. We’re going to make sure he is comfortable with this before transitioning to the second arm out, but we really did not expect it to go this well.

Happy Five Months, Parker!

Infant care has changed a lot since even we were children.

Instead of the tummy, we’re encouraged ‘back-to-sleep’. Instead of pretty crib blankets and bumpers, the crib should be basically a mattress and fitted sheet. To keep our children warm in this environment, many baby experts encourage ’swaddling’, which is, essentially, wrapping them up in blankets like a burrito like so:

Swaddling serves a number of purposes, the primary being warmth and preventing the baby from startling him or herself awake. As you can imagine, after a while, the baby 1) gains enough strength to unswaddle and 2) begins to dislike being so constricted while sleeping. As I’ve mentioned, Parker has been sleeping through the night for some time now, and we had decided we would continue to swaddle him until that no longer worked.

In the past week or so, he’s been waking up 4-5 times a night (at minimum, 2) and breaking the swaddle. So yesterday, we decided it was time. Cold turkey rarely works with a baby (especially sleeping habits), so we came up with a plan to transition Parker from swaddling to unswaddling. The first step was to swaddle him, but leave his right arm out of the swaddle (as that’s the one he usually breaks from the swaddle first). We’ll try this for a couple weeks and then move to the second arm, before finally completely unswaddling him.

So last night, we laid Parker down to bed with one arm out (he’s a pro at putting himself to sleep), and after about 10 minutes, he was asleep. After about an hour or so, Parker woke up crying. At that point, we were pretty sure we were in for a long night. We got him back to sleep and waited.

Amazingly, he didn’t wake up until 2 am! After letting him cry, a quick reswaddle and he was back to sleep, and slept the rest of the night. I woke up very impressed by my little guy and definitely think this was a step in the right direction. There may definitely be some sleepless nights in our future, but that he was ABLE to do it was definitely a positive for us.

I will, of course, continue to update on our transition.

As we close the door on 2009, I wanted to take a moment and wish all the readers of this blog the very best in the New Year.

Thank you for reading my blog over the past year. It was featured yesterday in WordPress’ Rising Blogs with over 380 hits coming in (the largest single-day haul in the history of the blog) and is fastly approaching now over 5,500 total hits. I never expected to see so much as 500 hits, let alone 11 times over.

I hope this blog has brought some happiness to your life. If nothing else, to at least see the growth of a human being from conception to (so far) four months. The physical and mental development of a baby is the spiritual and scientific miracle on this Earth. Parker has been, without a doubt, the greatest accomplishment of my life and not a day goes by when I don’t thank God for putting him in my life.

And of course, without my wife, none of this would be possible. She has been a wonderful spouse and a fantastic mother, and this journey is only as good as it is because of her.

From our family to yours, I wish you the very best 2010.