Mikey Likes It! Um, Not So Much.

Over the past few weeks, Nathan has been becoming increasingly difficult at feeding time. We're not sure if he's sick of the menu or has acid reflux or what. He's also began waking up more and more during the night, driving his mother crazy. We were wondering if his feeding troubles were making him hungry at night and causing him to wake up more. So, we decided to try a little experiment the other night. We thought we'd give him a little baby cereal and see if we can possibly fill him up a bit more with something a little harder to digest. Here's the results...

His face in the second picture is probably the most accurate representation of his feelings on the matter. He was not a huge fan of it. I told Liv to dump a little maple syrup in there and his thoughts on the matter might change. She would have none of that nonsense. Grandma Dudley came over last night and here's a video of her and Liv trying to force feed the child.

The jury is still out on how effective this is going to be. I'm not sure how much he actually swallows and we need to observe his sleeping habits for a spell before we can decide if this is helping any.

On a happier note, Liv and Aunt Rachel went shopping for the lad last week. They got him some swimming trunks for the pool this summer. I guess you can slip them over a normal diaper and not have to buy those expensive swimming diapers. Anyway, today Liv went back and got the matching sun hat so we don't burn the boy's pasty white coconut. The picture I took of him modeling his new hat is absolutely priceless...

My Son the Banana

No explanation necessary, really.

Endurance

I finished another good book today. It was called Endurance by Alfred Lansing.

The book chronicles a failed Trans-Antarctic expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton in the early 1900's. Twenty eight men set out on Dec. 5th 1914 to land on the Antarctic continent. The name of their ship was Endurance and the name foreshadowed the trials that were to follow. Shackleton's plan was to be the first person to cross the Antarctic continent and then meet up with another ship on the other side. However, on Jan. 15th 1915, the Endurance became stuck in pack ice and all progress was halted.

The crew stuck with their ship believing this to be only a temporary setback until the ice broke up. However, the ice held fast all through the Antarctic summer and on into winter. Eventually, in October 1915, the Endurance was finally crushed and sank by the pack ice leaving the crew adrift on the ice in the middle of the Antarctic ocean. The crew lived off seals and penguins for months, riding the drifting snow as far north as it would allow. In April of 1916 they were forced into 3 small lifeboats as the ice finally began to break up beneath them. Over 100 miles from the nearest land, they managed to survive for a week on the water. After finally making landfall on a lifeless Antarctic rock of an island, it had been 497 days since they last stood on land.

Finding land was only a partial victory as the nearest actual civilization was a whaling station on another island over 800 miles away. Soon Shackleton and 5 other men were forced to leave the rest of the crew and set out in a 20 foot lifeboat across some of the most treacherous waters on the planet. After weeks of rough sailing, the small group made it back to civilization after 17 months in the Antarctic wilderness.

This really was a pretty good read. It always amazes me what people can endure and accomplish when they have no choice but to do so. Although this was largely a story of people sitting around and waiting endlessly for the best moment to make their move, it was still rather entertaining and not as dry of a read as one might think. It was well written and a really good story of adventure and perseverance. It's probably a good book to tackle during the summer, because it made me cold just reading it!

Inmate Number 62704

The Sangamon County jail would like you to be on the lookout for an escaped inmate. Inmate #62704 is described as a caucasian male in his teens (13 to 14 weeks). He is about 25" tall and weighs 14lb 7oz (as of today's weigh-in). He has thinning blond hair with a pronounced bald spot on the back of his head. Here are some photos to help identify this dangerous criminal...

Don't let his cute looks fool you. The suspect's diaper is considered to be armed and extremely dangerous. Please notify the Sangamon County Sheriff's Department if you see this escaped inmate.

It's a Tough Job

It's such a difficult job being a baby. All the pooping, sleeping, eating, pooping, crying, and pooping really takes it out of you. Sometimes you just have to crash for a while...

Sir Poops-A-Lot

This morning, the teeny little super guy once again managed to somehow poop and miss his diaper. I don't know how he does it, but he seems to get more outside the diaper than in. So after getting him mostly cleaned up, we decided to go ahead and give him his bath before dressing him again. So I threw a blanket over him while he laid on the drier in his skivvies. As always he managed to turn the whole situation into a photo op.

Now that his tongue works he likes to show it off.

You've gotta love the red socks and the fat little legs.

Your Daily Dose of Cute

The boy just seems to get cuter every day...

We caught him praying in his sleep a couple days ago...

We went over to Grandma Dudley's this weekend. This was the first visit where he actually took notice of Claire. They seemed mutually curious...

The jury is still out on if the boy looks more like me or his mother. There are lots of people in both camps. There is one thing that everyone agrees on though. He's got his father's big ears.
While at Grandma's, Liv got the boy to start laughing. He's had a couple giggles here and there, but they were rare and very short lived. Not this time, though. He was in full belly laugh mode and enjoying it. He's never done anything close to this before, and luckily I had the camera with us...

I Guess He Likes Monkeys

Liv got a video of the boy jabbering the other day. He's getting to the point where he'll have a couple talking sessions most days. They last only a couple minutes, but they are very informative! He seems to have a special place in his heart for monkeys. He loves Mogli, the Nate sized stuffed animal that usually sits atop the back of our couch. He also seems to like the little monkey that resides in his new jungle gym as you'll see in Nate's latest video...

What Are You Doing, Son?

Nathan weighed in at 13 lb, 11 oz today. That's another week at 1 oz per day. He's been getting more vocal over the past few days. He's starting to babble here and there for a few minutes at a time. We're trying to catch it on video and should have something for you soon, hopefully. We did manage to get video of another of his strange new habits. I think he's trying to suck on his upper lip. It's pretty funny stuff...

Like Father, Like Son... Unfortunately

Liv was snapping some more cute pictures of the boy the other day...

I loaded them on the computer and took a closer look at them. When I stopped on this next one I couldn't believe my eyes. I had seen myself doing something exactly the same in one of MY baby pictures. I got the picture from mom and dad to post on here with his. Can you spot the similarity?

Since Kermitt is a family website, I won't specifically call out what obscene gesture we were both showing off. I know what we were thinking too. "I think I've had enough pictures today. For payback I'm going to do something that you won't realize right now, but you'll find it later on and you won't be able to ignore it!" If you look at the very next picture that Liv took, you can see the face of a child that knows he just got away with something very bad and can't be punished for it!
Score: Nathan - 1, new parents - 0.

Can Ya Smellllll... What Nate... Is Cookin'?

As some of you may already know, Nathan will sometimes show off the people's eyebrow. For those that don't know, the people's eyebrow refers to the signature facial expression of a professional wrestler called The Rock. Since it's such a random occurrence and it only lasts a few seconds, we've not been able to catch it on film... until now. Liv got lucky the other day and nabbed a shot of him doing it. It wasn't his best performance to date, but you can see the resemblance...

Once it warms up a little more, I'm going to start Nate on the weight set in the garage to work on those arms. We've decided to make him wait until he's 2 for the tattoo though.