Fun weekend!

This weekend was a fun weekend! On Saturday morning, Mommy and I met our friend Anna and went to the Farmers' Market. We bought lots of vegetables and then went back to Anna's house and she made us breakfast! Yum! While Mommy and Anna talked, I played with Anna's pets. She has a dog named Ostrich and a cat named uh.... I forget! Azreal! I don't know how to spell that though.



Anyway, I love cats and her cat loved me too. He kept rolling around near me and sniffing my face. It was great!
Then on Saturday night we went to my friend Julianna's house for dinner. She has a neat playroom with lots of new and exciting toys!


Then I went to the grocery store with Mommy and Daddy. I helped them get some bread.



Daddy got me a balloon and tied it to the shopping cart, so I was entertained the whole time!

In the afternoon we went to Jax's house for a playdate. He has lots of cats, so I got to see MORE cats! Mommy took some pictures at the playdate too, but they're all on her big camera still. There were some other babies there from the Mommies group. I brought my favorite toy, the irritating musical toolbench!

Then I went for a walk with Mommy and Daddy. The sun was bright in my face for part of our walk so Daddy pulled me backwards and Mommy ran behind me and made me laugh.

Chatting

My family lives in North Carolina, but its only me, Mommy, Daddy and the cats and dog here. Everybody else lives somewhere else. New Hampshire, England, Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, Texas... and that is just my relatives! I have lots of friends who live in other places too. We use our computer to keep in touch with people. I write on my blog, and Mommy writes on hers too. But sometimes we want to talk to people, so we do video chats on Skype.

We have used Skype to talk to my great grandparents, Mom-mom and Pop-pop, who live in Florida. Here's a picture of Daddy and G-G talking to them. They were walking around the house giving them a tour.


Last weekend we talked to Nan and Grandad and my Aunt Sharon, Uncle Kevin and my cousins Zoe, Lauren and Jack. They live in England.



We have also talked to my Aunt Denise and Uncle Mike and my cousins Madelyn and Molly, who live in Philadelphia. If you want to talk to us sometime, email Mommy and she'll tell you how!

Keeping up to date on the latest research

I have a pretty demanding schedule as a baby. This weekend was a holiday weekend, but did I get to do anything fun? No, I did not. I had to read some papers to make sure that I am up on the most recent scientific literature.
Lets see here...


Hm. I'm sure they mentioned a similar phenomenon in this other paper. Now where was that....


Well, I'm not sure that I'm totally convinced by this gel shift analysis.


I think this other group had a slightly better experimental design.


What do you think Daddy?


Yeah, I agree. I think this really does change the whole paradigm.


Boy. This paper is booooring! Snore!

I'm 10 times more grumpy than you.

At least. Maybe 15 times more grumpy. See, I have a cold. I have had it for the last, oh, 10 or 11 days. At first I was fine, just messy. My nose was running constantly, so I had booger face all of the time. I had a cough too, a nice chunky sounding one. But I didn't feel too bad.

This weekend though, GRUMPY. Now I don't just have a cold, but I have a fever too. For the last three nights, my fever has been between 102 and 103. UGH. I know I'm not happy, but I don't know what I want.

I want Mommy to hold me. No, I want her to put me down. No, I want her to HOOOOOOLD MEEEEEE! PUT ME DOWN!! WAAAAAAH! I want Daddy!! DAAAAAADDY! Wait! WAIT!! Mommy! Want Mommy!!! No Mommy, put me down!!

I want a drink! No, not that drink! No drink!! Get away from me with your boobs and your bottles and your sippy cups! I don't want any of it! No wait! That boob!! No, not that one, THAT ONE. NOOOOO! NO BOOB!

I'm tired. Tired! Yaaaaaawn!! *rubs eyes* Mommy! I'm tired! I'm so tired I can barely hold my own head up! Put me in my crib! Put me DOWN AND PUT ME IN MY CRIB!! Nooooooo!!! Don't leave me! I want my pacifier. Where is my pacifier?? *throws pacifier out of the side of the crib* My pacifier! How can you put me in this crib with no pacifiers?? I'm tired! Wait! I don't want to go to sleep! Nooooo!!

Its exhausting being so indecisive!

And tomorrow I can't go to school because I have a fever. And I know Mommy is all "I have to give my talk tomorrow!" blah blah blah. I don't care. I want her to hooooooold meeeeee! Nooo!!! PUT ME DOWN!! MOMMY!!

I'm 8 months old!

Hey everybody! I'm 8 months old!


I'm so happy, I could just clap!
(which I did for the first time today, at least the first time that Mommy has noticed)



Clap your hands say yeah! from meandertail and Vimeo.

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??