Pulling Up: The Sequel

Scott and I learned this weekend that not only can Lincoln pull himself up on bookshelves and couches, he can also pull himself up in his crib. We discovered this when we woke up Sunday morning and were greeted by Lincoln standing in his crib, staring at us. As a result, we have now lowered the mattress in the crib to the lowest setting. So now he can lay on his tummy and stare at us, sit up and stare at us, but (at least for now) he can not stand and stare at us on weekend morning.

With all of Lincoln's new developments, he has become a lot more fun to play with. Some of his favorite games include crawling through "obstacle courses" of pillows, large stuffed animals, tunnels, and (unfortunately for Cheetara) cats. He has also been known to crawl over Scott and myself, although he prefers to "attack" us by grabbing our faces or belts, strings, etc. I have a feeling that if we could read his mind, we would just hear the mantra "gogogogogogogo - must keep gooooooooing!"

Pulling Up

It seems that every day Lincoln is reaching a new milestone. Yesterday I set him in the living room to do some work in the kitchen. After a couple of minutes I came back to check on him, and saw this:

Yes, Lincoln is pulling up now. He's been standing up against furniture for a couple of weeks. Now it seems he's able to stand up by himself using a table, couch, or (his most popular choice) the bookshelf. Miss Lucy thinks he'll be walking early, and I'm inclined to think so, too. Unfortunately, his ability to stand up is not matched with an ability to sit back down. So for now, Scott or I need to be close by in case he needs to do a quick landing.

His reading choice in the photo is the "Journal of Post Keynesian Economics". Apparently "Fluffy Chick and Friends" was no longer stimulating enough for him.

A Sunday Drive...

Lincoln likes to spend leisurely Sunday mornings sipping a nice mug of milk before he heads out for a relaxing drive around the living room in his Fisher Price baby car (you can't see the steering wheel from this angle, but it's there). He does all of this, of course, wearing his monster-truck hat set at a jaunty angle to impress the ladies.

Scott and I realized this weekend that Lincoln's noggin has officially outgrown this hat. We thought we'd let Lincoln wear it around the house, though, since it has so much personality.

Some Family Updates

I've done an awful lot of "Lincoln" posts lately, so I thought it was time for a "Linda" update (poor Scott will have to wait for his update). First, though, I want to mention that to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, Lincoln wore his John Deere shorts outfit (courtesy of great-aunt Susan). For anyone familiar with farm machinery, you can guess the color of the outfit. No pinches for my boy!

As for me, I submitted a rough draft of my dissertation to my supervisor about two weeks ago. It clocks in at about 115 pages - much shorter than Eric's (my old officemate) dissertation - his was well over 500 pages!! I'm currently waiting for my supervisor to read it and give me feedback. There's a slim chance that I could graduate this semester, although that's looking less and less likely. I'll probably end up defending at the end of this semester and graduating at the end of the summer or fall semester. Meanwhile, I have a huge job of editing and proofreading to do. Scott has graciously agreed to help me proofread, and we've already had exciting debates about whether page numbers go before or after punctuation marks in quotes.

Some 8-Month Portraits!

This morning we got up early to go to Portrait Innovations and have some portraits taken. Lincoln's first portraits (at 4 months) were taken at JC Penney's, and we wanted to see what the differences would be like. First, here's two of the pictures. In the first one he's standing all by himself!!:
In this next one he looks incredibly cute. Unfotrunately, he wasn't incredibly smiley today. Anyone that's been around Lincoln for any length of time knows that he loves to smile and laugh...unless he's getting his picture taken by a professional.
Portrait Innovations did a great job. The photographer had a hand-held camera so she could get pics from lots of angles, and the photos were taken on the floor - so no worries about Lincoln falling off the "stage"! Other big plusses were that we got to keep a CD of all of the pictures taken (low-res), and they stay "on-time" (so no waiting 2 hours past our appointment time). We ended up paying a bit more, but we got tons of pictures and a change of clothes. So a definite thumbs-up.

Hot "Poo"tato (not for the squeamish)

I'll apologize in advance for this somewhat graphic post, but as a parent of a baby the topic of "poo" seems to come up pretty often...

As Lincoln gets older, his digestive system has been maturing and his previously semi-liquid mild-smelling poo is tranforming into a semi-solid horrifically-smelling assualt to the senses. He has also become "irregular", sometimes pooing every day, sometimes going for 3 or 4 days without a "delivery". As such, Scott and I (along with our unwitting daycare provider) are playing a constant game of hot pootato. No one wants to be home alone with Lincoln when he finally poos, but as days pass wihtout a dirty diaper, we each know that the odds of either of us being stuck with changing duty goes up exponentially. The risk is exacerbated by the fact that Lincoln can't sit still long enough to do a quick "wet only" diaper change, which means that when he poos we risk having him try to crawl away while diaper-less and dirty...

I've decided that when Lincoln turns 16 I'm going to show him and his buddies this post and then maybe...just maybe...that will make it all worthwhile...

A Visit from the Hauners - and babyproofing.

We had a very exciting weekend this past weekend - Grandma and Grandpa Hauner came to visit! Lincoln was very excited to see them, and recieved lots of extra-special attention all weekend. The (older) boys went to the car show, and Lincoln and I went with my mom and sister to the Plaze to enjoy the weather and do a little shopping. I got to see the cute bed linens Mary picked out for her baby's room, and I bought a couple of "bath buddies" for Lincoln. Unfortunately, we were having so much fun visiting with my parents, I didn't take any pictures :(. Lincoln impressed his grandparents by sitting in the "big boy" chair at restaurants (also known as the hgh chair) and using the "big boy" stroller (ie not using the baby carrier).

In other news, now that Lincoln is mobile the term "baby proofing" takes on a whole new meaning. As I've been typing this, I've had to stop several times to: 1) Move the power cord so Lincoln won't grab it, 2) Move Lincoln out from under the rocking chair, 3) Rescue Cheetara from Lincoln's "petting", and 4) Set up a "tunnel" for Lincoln to crawl through. And I thought babyproofing just meant covering up outlets and setting up a baby gate!

Kings of the Mountain 2007

In February, we spent a few days at Copper Mountian with my parents. It was a great trip, and here's the proof...the annual King-family skiing video. Check it out if you've got a few free minutes.



Also, if you're interested, here's a link to the video from last year.

Kings of the Mountain 2005

Lincoln really gets around

Now that Lincoln's moving faster, it seems that I've been moving slower...at least, I've been slow at getting his crawling video uploaded. Here it (finally!) is. He can really get around the house fast. He can go from the kitchen to the living room to the tv room in a blink of an eye. Visitors to our house may notice that furniture is slowly disappearing - first our ottoman, then one of our coffee tables...nothing is more fun to Lincoln than a table leg these days!

Two More Ski Photos

I couldn't resist posting a couple more ski pictures. The first one is Joni and Lincoln wrestling on the fabulous quilt that Joni made.	The other photo is proof that I really did ski on this trip.
This has been a milestone week - On Monday Lincoln started crawling for real - moving without his tummy on the floor. He is pretty fast doing his army crawl, so I can only imagine what sort of trouble he'll get into when he gets up to true crawling speed! He also had another "first" - he went from crawling to sitting all by himself! I have video of him crawling so I'll upload that soon.