My first eye doctors appointment

Today we went to the eye doctors. For me! I know, you probably thought it was for Mommy because a) she has a wierd eye problem called strabismus and b) babies don't go to the eye doctor! I mean, do they? Well, GUESS WHAT. They do.

See, there are lots of eye problems that can affect how well you see. Some of them, if you get them treated when you're a baby, can be fixed so that you see fine when you're a big kid or a grown up. Like Mommy's strabismus, for example. That is a problem where her eyes don't line up right. Her brain didn't know what to do with that so it decided that it would just ignore one eye. So Mommy has no depth perception, which means I probably can't count on her playing tennis with me. Oh well! When Mommy was little they didn't treat strabismus as early as they do now. She did not have surgery until she was 3.5 years old, but now they do it on babies even less than a year old some times!

Anyhow, a group of optometrists (and apparently Jimmy Carter!) called InfantSEE have decided to give free vision tests to babies to help find these sorts of problems. Pretty cool! Mommy wanted to make sure I didn't have the same problem that she had so she made an appointment for me.

This is the chair I sat in. Well, Mommy sat in the chair and held me.


The doctor put some glass things in front of my eyes and flashed a little light around for me to look at. Then he leaned the chair (and me and Mommy) back and put some drops in my eyes. Ack! It was like pinkeye all over again!

I had to wait a while for the drops to do their job, so Mommy read me a book about glaucoma.



And then she let me play with it.
Then the doctor came back in and turned off the lights. He put another glass thing in front of my eye and then shone another light into my eye! Ow! My eyes were sensitive to the light! I don't know what was in those drops, but I didn't like it!

When we finished, he said that my eyes looked great! Perfectly aligned. Phew!

OMG MORE TEETH!

I'm getting more teeth! Mommy looked into my mouth yesterday to check on the progress of my most recent teeth (the top two in front, both have come through the gums now) and she found a surprise! The two next to those are just about to break through! I could have told her that! Do you think I can't feel them??

Tickle games

Mommy plays lots of tickle games with me. This one is her old standard:


Tickle game from meandertail and Vimeo.

She's added a new one lately. I especially like it when she flours the baby!


Lets eat the baby! from meandertail and Vimeo.

Busy Saturday

Yesterday we had a busy day. In the morning, Mommy and I went to the Farmers' Market and met Jax and his Mommy and Daddy. We had never met Jax's Daddy before, but he's a geek like my Daddy so I'm pretty sure that Jax and I will be playing some geeky games together when we get older. I'm going to start getting my Dark Elf army together, just so I'm prepared. It was SO HOT at the Farmers' Market that I thought I was melting, and Mommy's hair was so sweaty that it looked like she had gone swimming.

After lunch we met up with Julianna and her Mommy and went to the Museum of Life and Science, which is just down the road from us but we have never been to. It was totally cool! First we sat in a big room where there were a bunch of blocks.



Then there was another room that had some other things to play with, like one of these things:


...and a bunch of other toys with balls that were really meant for older kids. This one was like skee-ball, except you put the ball in at the top and it ran down a ramp with a loop. Then it flew off the ramp and into different colored buckets. Thats what I'm watching here.


This museum had a lot of cool things. Some animals (we saw a baby muskrat!), a whole thing about weather that had some cool stuff to play with, and a cool butterfly house! Inside the butterfly house was a little exhibit where baby butterflies had built chrysalises and some were hatching out of them while we watched! That was neat.

Another tooth!

I got those first two teeth like, two and a half months ago. No more action on the tooth front until recently, when Mommy could see my top front teeth BULGING out under my gums. Well, they sure took their sweet time popping through, but the first one (my third tooth) came through about two days ago. Woo!

I guess I had to come back eventually... part III

Here are a few more pictures from my trip.

I have a doggie at home and G-G and Sky King have a similar sort of doggie at their house. Except she's far more licky and jumpy than my doggie, who is sort of old. This freaks Mommy out a little bit because... dog spit!


Here's the toy I was playing with that makes it look like I'm driving the boat. It is motion-activated, so when I press something or move something on it, it makes noises or plays a song. G-G bought it for me at a garage sale somewhere and she could not figure out how to turn it off, so the whole way home it was making noises at her when her car went over a bump.


Mommy and G-G and I drove down to Massachusetts somewhere and met Mrs. H. for lunch. When I was born, the H's sent me my Red Sox hat, which you've seen before. They also sent me a Red Sox OUTFIT. Mommy had to take ten million pictures of me wearing it.

I guess I had to come back eventually... part II

When Mommy and Daddy got back from their boring meeting, we went to visit Melissa and Matt and their new baby Madeleine. They had some cool toys there that I don't have at my house, so I played with some of them.


Mommy held Madeleine and said that she couldn't believe that I was ever that small, even though I was!! In fact Madeleine was the same length as me when we were born and only two ounces lighter.


Here's a picture of all of us together:

I guess I had to come back eventually... part I

Well, our vacation in New Hampshire is over now and we're back in the sweltering 100 degree heat of North Carolina. Hooray!

At the beginning of our trip we went to Uncle Jim and Aunt Sara's new house in Nashua. They have done some redecorating since we were there last, so it is starting to look good and less like an old lady lives there with her ten cats. Some of their other friends (some of them that Mommy knows too) came over to visit.


This is me and our friend Sarah playing on the floor.


Here's Uncle Jim showing me off to his friends.


Here's Uncle Jim playing with me.


I took a nap up in Uncle Jim and Aunt Sara's room. Daddy decided to join me (P.S. Uncle Jim and Aunt Sara didn't force him to sleep on the floor - they would have let him sleep on the bed if he had wanted to!).


Here's me with Uncle Jim and Aunt Sara.

Next up, visiting new baby Madeleine!

Did you think I didn't love you anymore?

Well, I do. Its just that I'm on vacation again! I know! I'm up in New Hampshire again visiting G-G and Sky King. Mommy and Daddy went to some boring science meeting this week that was convieniently located in New Hampshire (considering that before Mommy and her family moved here she thought they just bussed people in for the primaries - surely no one lives in New Hampshire! - its quite the koinky-dink!), so my doggie and I stayed with G-G and Sky King while Mommmy and Daddy did their boring science work. I mean, as far as I am aware, there were no blocks, no exersaucers, no stacking rings, NOTHING at the meeting. I don't know why they wanted to go so bad.

ANYHOW. We all stayed up on Lake Squam at a friend's house. It was fun - I even went swimming in the lake with Mommy and G-G! Mommy and Daddy stayed with us some nights and spent some nights at their boring meeting, staying up really late drinking with other boring scientists. What do I care - I have been sleeping through the night for almost two weeks now, so I wouldn't have even seen Mommy at night! I know!!! Mommy had to work with me a little bit on this but eventually I went along with her plan. The first night we got to New Hampshire, I woke up once because I was a little hyper from all the traveling. But other than that, not a peep. I guess now that I'm seven months old and moving up into the big baby's room at school, it was time for me to give up the night time feeding (and time for Mommy to have a gin and tonic after I go to sleep!).

When Mommy and Daddy's meeting ended we went back to G-G and Sky King's house in southern NH. Then we went to Massachusetts to visit Matt and Melissa and their new baby Madeleine. That was fun, except I was a little tired. Mommy tried to get me to take a nap but there was so much other fun stuff I could be doing so I didn't want to and I just cried and cried. Mommy said that she remembered when I was as young as Madeleine she hated to hear me cry at all and would comfort me ASAP, but now she lets me cry when she knows she's doing something for my own good, even if I don't want to do it. Like go to sleep when there is a lot of other fun stuff to do! She felt like a really seasoned Mommy. Anyhow, you're suppossed to comfort babies as young as Madeleine when they cry because they need you. But me? I'm going to let you in on a little secret - I totally manipulate my Mommy sometimes. For example, I put on the very sad-faced cry when she puts me down to play with my toys while she goes to the bathroom, or do the dishes or whatever. Sometimes it works, mostly it doesn't. But I keep trying!

Anyhow, we had fun visiting everyone and we're going to visit them again on Monday.

Daddy left today, he and the doggie drove home and it took them 14 hours. YUCK. I would have been screaming the WHOLE TIME. One thing we have learned on this vacation is that I get fussy in cars other than Mommy's. It's because Mommy's hybrid is so fuel efficient that I hate driving in other cars. I never cry in her car (I mean, we drive together for an hour every day), but I cry in all other cars. I don't know, its just my thing.

Mommy and Daddy got me a few new toys. Well, also G-G and Sky King got me some toys that stay up here. In one of them, it looks like I am driving a boat. I'll try to post a picture of that later. Since I'm all keen on standing up now, Daddy picked out a toy for me that helps you walk. Only it doesn't have a brake on it so it rolls away whenever I try to use it, which I am so not ready for. They also bought me a shape sorter, which I like, but so far only so I can bang the blocks together with my hands. I like to bang all sorts of things together - paper, stackable rings, rubber duckies, puffs, my bib, whatever! I am not picky.

Anyhow, its time for me to go to sleep, so I'll talk to you soon! I promise to post some pictures when I get back.