Up to His New Tricks

     About ten minutes after I posted the last blog entry, James wowed us again with his many talents.  He proceeded to kick himself clear out of his pants, which is only slightly different than what he had been doing.  When he wears a onesie and pants, he will sometimes pull the pants down while he's playing with his feet.  In an effort to keep his legs warm, Patrick dressed him in a full-body outfit that snaps all the way up.  James would have none of that, though, and figured out how to move his legs up within the outfit and then kick out so that all the bottom snaps come undone.  Which he proceeded to do.  Repeatedly.

     Also, after weeks of trying, James finally managed to get his toes into his mouth.  He was ecstatic.  Patrick managed to get that on video, so that will be a good one for posterity.  :)

     Then, to top it all off, James slept all night last night.  Well, technically, he did wake up one time to kick around a little and make some noises, but he went back to sleep before I woke up to feed him.  This morning I had to wake him up to give him breakfast before I went to meet our movers.  

     Which reminds me, today we had all our furniture moved in, so we'll finally have somewhere to sit other than the floor.  Not that it's not a great floor, and we're making do with what we have, but I am really looking forward to sitting on a couch again.   Also, much as we appreciate my work friends lending it to us, Patrick is really sick of the air mattress.  I kind of liked it, but I imagine that's because it's been so long since we had our actual bed that I've forgotten how great it is.  

     Well, I probably ought to get James up from his nap now.  It's kind of late for a nap, and I'm afraid that now he'll be up all night.  Alas.  

James is a genius

So, James had quite a day today.  He began by learning how to roll from his back to his stomach.  He'd been rolling quite successfully from his stomach to his back for some time now, but the other way involved an awkward arm placement that kept thwarting him.  However, he overcame that obstacle today by learning about momentum.  He swings his little legs to the side and rolls right over.  He can now roll like a barrel around the living room, which means that we need to buy one of those gates for the stairs.  

On top of that, he also learned how to use the flaps on his book about body parts today.  He has liked turning pages for some time, but he doesn't really get that books go from left to right, so he hasn't been overwhelmingly successful in that particular arena.  The flaps have no such rules, so he does quite well with those.  The book is basically big drawings of babies in various outfits that cover specific body parts.  You then lift up the flap and see that particular body part.  James's favorite body parts were the tongue and the fingers, mostly, I think, because those flaps lift downward, which seems to be easier for him than the ones that lift upward.  Unfortunately, with the enthusiasm he's now showing for the flaps, they will probably not be long for this world.  But that's ok.  I'm still awfully impressed with him.  :)

Moving In

Well, the move-in is going well but taking some time.  On Monday, my mom was off (this is Melinda, by the way.  Patrick is out doing general maintenance on our heating unit and asked me to do an update) and helped Patrick get enough stuff here that we could start living in our new home.  Of course, it's a bit of a camp out now, as most of our stuff will not arrive until Friday.  Naturally, James has everything he needs, and Patrick and I are doing fine with what we have for now.  Patrick has been back and forth to the storage unit several times a day to pick up what he can since we have to pay the movers by the hour on Friday.  I'm off on Thursday and Friday for winter break, so I'll be of more assistance in the house set up bit then.  I can attest to the fact that it was absolutely wonderful to leave my house at 7:15 this morning and arrive at work fifteen minutes later.  

The neighborhood seems great.  We all three did a stroll yesterday and saw all kinds of neighborhood things.  The pool and tennis courts look really nice, and as I have been typing this (possibly five minutes), about a million kids on bikes have ridden by.  I think this will be a wonderful place for James to grow up.  Once we get some stuff set up inside, we'll post some interior pictures for you guys to see.  Right now, I have no camera.  It's somewhere in storage.  :)  

And by the way, Uncle Dan, the "guy" in the red shirt in the last picture was me, thank you very much.  Sheesh.  A girl gains a few pounds while she carries around a whole nother person, and this is the kind of comment she incurs.  

We're no longer homeless!

Today we finally closed on our new house! We've been trying since December, but it was in foreclosure and we had to sit around and wait for some bank in Baltimore to sign off on the sale. The bank had several thousand foreclosures to deal with (thank you sub-prime mortgage lenders), so they took a while to get around to ours. But the closing went fine, and now James has a home. We'll try to start moving in this weekend. The process took a lot out of Melinda, who has had to fight off the sniffles while faxing and emailing several thousand documents this week, so hopefully she can also get some sleep this weekend.
Melinda did a lot to get our house, but Bob Bailey, the world's greatest real estate agent, did even more. We had just about given up on selling our previous house in Duluth, but Bob got it sold. It is terribly difficult to sell a house these days, and it took a lot of work by Bob to find a buyer. Then once we sold it we thought the hard part was over, but we were mistaken. There are so many houses on the market right now that finding the right one is like finding the proverbial needle in the proverbial haystack (Barrow County has many actual haystacks as well as proverbial ones). One was really nice, but the "as-is" status was worrisome. Another one would have been great except that it was in a completely empty neighborhood. Then there was the house that was already inhabited - by roaches. Melinda really wanted that one. Then we found the big winner seen above, only to discover that it was set to be auctioned at the Barrow County courthouse in five days. Bob got it off the auction block just in time, and kept working furiously until we got it. We have no idea how much work it took, but we know it was not easy. So if anyobody needs a real estate agent, you should call Bob:

Bob Bailey
Prudential Georgia Realty
Roswell/East Cobb Office
3775 Roswell Road, Suite 200
Marietta, GA 30062
(770)973-8822
http://www.BBaileyProperties.comrbailey@prudentialgeorgia.com

Busy day

James is a little sleepy today. On Wednesday we went to see the doctor, where James got a series of shots. He did fine at the doctor's office, but the shots caused him some irritation that night and on into yesterday. A little Tylenol helped, but he still wore himself out crying.
Yesterday we went to see the inspection of the house we are trying to buy, where it was very cold. We had expected that the inspector would have turned on the heater really high in order to check it, but that was not the case. There was no heat because there was no electricity; the power company didn't get there when they were supposed to. So it was really cold, and Daddy did not pack all the really cold weather gear. We wrapped a blanket around James, but his face was still cold, and he kept wiggling his legs out. After a few minutes, we decided to hang out in the car with the heater on and listen to NFL Radio. We didn't get home until after dark, and James's eat/sleep/play schedule was thrown off. He was ready to stretch out and play after being confined in a carseat or blanket for much of the day. Daddy's suggestions that he go to sleep some time before midnight were ignored.
Today, we slept a little later than normal, and we also took a little afternoon nap. And I do mean 'we'; Daddy fell asleep on the floor beside James. I woke up first, though. Hopefully this weekend we can get back to normal.

James is 4 months old!

Today James is 4 months old, which means another doctor visit. He is up to 12 pounds, 1 ounce, and 25 inches tall. James did not enjoy the shots they gave him, but he got over it quickly. He is in excellent shape, according to the doctor, and on schedule developmentally. Hopefully we will not see another doctor (other than the now-unnecessary cardiologist) until his 6-month checkup.

Mommy is working furiously to complete the purchase of James's new house (we're planning to live there too), with the closing scheduled for Feb. 12 - next Thursday. Tomorrow, James and I are going out to the new house to meet the inspector. We'll try to get some pictures while we're there. It's a nice house, with lots of room for James to grow, and it's very close to Mommy's work. We are enjoying our time with the grandparents, but James has already amassed so much stuff that he needs a room (or two or three) of his own. Hopefully we can complete the purchase without any problem.

Good news from the doctor

We just got a call from the cardiologist (see previous blog entry regarding QT intervals), who said that nothing bad turned up during James's 24-hour monitoring. Whatever might have been going on with his heart when he was sick has now disappeared. Just for fun, we're still going to the other, more specialized pediatric cardiologist in a couple of weeks, so that she too can tell us don't worry, James is fine, that will be six thousand dollars please.

Super weekend

James got a new toy this past weekend, and he seems to enjoy it greatly. Meme got him a different chair, but it took us so long to get to Augusta to visit that by the time we got the chair, James was too big for it. So we traded it in for a bigger-size toy, seen above. He sits in a chair suspended from springs, and is able to spin around to play with the different toys attached to it. We got it assembled in time for the super bowl, so James got to watch from his bouncy seat. He's not quite tall enough for it yet, hence the pillow under his feet. But he likes it, and he's getting more used to being upright.
As mentioned in a previous entry, we have been working on exercising both sides of James equally. Today he rolled over from his stomach onto his back from the left side, completely on his own. Previously he had seemed to prefer the right side, and only went left with a little nudge from daddy. Now we'll continue to work on crawling, until he has perfected that. And we'll continue to bounce in the new seat.