Eleven Months Old - August 15

Our little baby has blossomed into an incredible little boy over the past eleven months. It brings us such joy to watch him getting along so easily with others, giggling and playing peek-a-boo. His curiosity is insatiable and he doesn't shy away from risks. He's in every drawer, turning over every pile, tasting everything he finds on the ground; he scales the stairs, climbs onto chairs, crawls into water, and stands unsupported drumming wildly on the walls.

Eko has been practicing different modes of communication this month. Although not always on queue, he'll wave "hello" to anyone – his parents, total strangers, even animals. He's begun to clap, often when he hears music, especially his favorite Belefonte hits. One night, while eating blueberries with his grandpa Gary, he even put his fists together to tell us he wanted "more." Our applause confused him, turning his baby sign into clapping instead, but he clearly associates the action with the word and will clap with fists or open palms to ask for more food. Spontaneously, he discovered how to make a trilling sound by twiddling his lips with his fingers. For days he would trill anytime we started and he enjoys twiddling our lips, too.

It's also been an increasingly verbal month for Eko. He occasionally produces a sound that could be 'hi' while waving and asks for 'boo' when he wants to nurse. After weeks of wondering what he was saying, we realized that Eko was speaking his first word (or phrase) – Sasha kitty-cat (da-da kee-ka). He utters it in a kind of manic whisper while chasing Sasha or when he sees a picture of her. He loves making sounds, mimicking the tones we make, and will now moo and baa whenever we read his farm books. He even repeated the word “flower" (fower) when his mommy pointed one out to him in our garden.

Eko has become much more interested in trying new foods. Along with his daily intake of yogurt, he will now eat baby food purees without a fuss. He especially likes to feed himself, dipping this spoon into the bowl and, after mashing it around on his high chair tray, bringing it to his own mouth. In fact, the ability to feed himself is what kickstarted his appetite. He now happily chases bits of food around his high chair, mashing them into his mouth with all fingers, or diving face-first to lick food right off the tray. Occasionally he'll offer a few spoonfuls to mommy and daddy. With his love of blueberries, (due perhaps to the thousands of blueberries Jade ate while pregnant), we brought him to the Green Mountain Orchard to pick them straight from the bush. At first we would squeeze them into his mouth, but now he can gulp them down if we break them into pieces. We enjoy introducing Eko to a variety of foods and discovered that he likes Indian and Mexican food, as well as potato gnocci. This increase in solid foods has made him less reliant on the bottle, but when “boo” is available he still nurses eagerly.

It's fascinating to watch Eko gain more control over his body. Some moves are carefully practiced for days, while others seem to manifest out of nowhere. His crawl has been getting steadily faster over the summer and he climbs to a standing position using anything he can find for support. He is always looking up for the next level to climb onto. He practices squatting down from a standing position, and, after many head bonks, can catch himself with his hands when he falls. After one too many face-plants, he's begun to lower himself from a raised surface by spinning around on his tummy and going feet-first. And we've now learned that a perfect downward dog is a signal for us to prepare to change a poopy diaper.

Our little guy continues to be quite the social butterfly. He loves visiting mama and daddy at work and being tickled and ogled by all of their coworkers. He enjoyed showing off for Nick and his band, the Durians, when they visited us from NYC. He discovered he had the power to make them mimic him waving both hands in the air and wowed them with his lip trilling. We waved farewell to our friends Ben, Bridget, and Bella, who moved back to Wisconsin to be near family. On their final night east, we gathered with Junio, Katie, and Jubilee, eating Thai food and goofing off at a local playground. Eko had three-month old Sierra in hysterics when we visited Jess for lunch and showed Haley and Marley how he can hold his breath under water at Spofford Lake. Our friend Elise stopped by to meet Eko on her way around the country and Dalia played diaper hide-and-seek with Eko (rules: place clean cloth diaper on Eko's head. Next, place another diaper on your head. Find each other behind the diapers while giggling hysterically. Repeat two hundred times.)

We took Eko on his first family vacation to Ogunquit, Maine, where we stayed at the Meadowmere Resort, the same place we spent our Babymoon when Jade was 23 weeks pregnant. Eko loved crawling around the room, climbing the step to our private jacuzzi, and pulling all of his clothes out of his dresser drawer. We played in the resort's indoor pool as often as we could and Eko got his first taste of the Atlantic Ocean on a beach with very long, shallow waves. The moment we put him down on the sand, he crawled right in, splashing in the increasingly higher waves until they became too high for his liking. He got a little upset when the cold water began pushing him around and lapping his face, but he loved crawling all over the sand (and eating a lot of it, too).

Unfortunately, while leaving a restaurant on our second night, Jade twisted her right foot on a step, tumbled forward clutching Eko, and landed on her knee on a stone walkway. Eko fell the last few inches, but her knee took the full force of the fall and he was fine after a good cry. Jade was so terrified he'd been hurt that she didn't even notice how banged up she was for several minutes. The three of us spent most of that night in the York Hospital ER for x-rays, stitches, and strict orders not to hold the baby while standing. With Jade off her feet, daddy took Eko to the York Zoo on our last day. With wide and curious eyes, Eko watched the monkeys swing, goats nibble his toes, and lions pace back and forth, though in all honestly he was a little more interested in watching bees than lions. In the deer feeding area, he attempted to shoo away a deer from the pile of pellets daddy spread in front of him.

Thank you to everyone who offered to help our family while Jade was recuperating. We're especially grateful that grandpa Gary was able to spend a few nights with us. With her stitches out and her infection fought, she's now back to carrying Eko around and upstairs again. After six nights, she was finally able to put him to bed. He snuggled with grateful relief to be back to normal. It was a scary experience, but Eko's built solid and strong—in eleven months he's become one tough little guy. 

 

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Eko by-the-day slideshow
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Eko Song 7 - July 2012

Ten Months Old - July 15

Eko’s mobility is developing before our eyes. His tummy skooch has become a confident hands-knees crawl, but he’s not exclusive. He’ll pick whatever style gets him to the object of his curiosity the fastest, whether it’s a speed-crawl to the kitty or an otter-style tummy slide across a smooth floor to a forbidden outlet. He can quickly pull himself to his feet, then cruise around the perimeter of the room using tables, gates, banisters, our legs, even a smooth wall. We still have some time before those first independent steps, but for now, he doesn’t seem very interested in walking. He wants to go vertical. Once he’s up, he’s looking for the next handhold high above his head or digging in a foot or knee, always trying to get higher. He’s already climbed our stairs in less than thirty seconds! After a few tumble-filled weeks, he can now lower himself back to the floor just as smoothly and catches his falls most of the time. When he discovers a new move, he practices it over and over until he gets it just right.

Teething continues to preoccupy Eko, filling our days with the clove-smell of Gummomile oil and leaving no new object unchewed. Last month, we thought we were only dealing with the top four incisors coming all at once, when really his lower two incisors were close behind. Now his little smile has eight teeth which he uses to bite bits of our food, but usually then spits out since he has no way to chew it yet. He’s still not entirely convinced that food is a great idea, but we’ve tried to maintain a three-meal-a-day schedule to get him into the routine. His favorite is yogurt, and if we’re sneaky, we can mix some purees into it. He’s fascinated by whatever we’re eating, so we give him solids he can hold and taste, like orange slices (he nurses the juice out) and toast corners (demolished into a dozen soggy bits beneath the high chair). His real love is for blueberries.We have a routine: take a tiny bite, squish the innards into his mouth, and eat the rest ourselves. We’ve been practicing baby sign, so we're constantly demonstrating for Eko the gesture meaning ‘more’ as he begs for more and more berries. Meals usually have a few eagerly accepted spoonfulls before dissolving into manic finger-painting of greenbean goo all over his high chair tray. We figure the tactile/sensory exploration is just as important as learning about flavors.

Eko loves music! With a juke-box of a father, this is no surprise, but it’s still adorable. He gets so excited when we play Just Dance on the Xbox, waving his arms and bouncing (he ‘dances’ the most to Harry Belafonte’s Jump the Line, of course.) He’ll often bob to the music, even when we just sing or clap, and loves to drum on any surface, be it the couch or Jade’s head as he rides on her shoulders. And Jay has to run through his standard repertoire of Belafonte's Turn the World Around, Phish's Dirt, and Simon & Garfunkel's The Boxer when it's his turn to lull Eko to sleep.

We still enjoy sharing our bed with Eko, but as the summer has gotten hotter and he’s gotten bigger and more mobile, our queen-size bed has seemed more like a threat than the cozy nest it once was. Our fears manifested when he rolled out of bed in the middle of the night. The carpet broke his fall and he was more surprised than hurt, quickly falling back to asleep. (It was worse for Jade. She had nightmares the rest of the night as she kept him firmly in her grasp.) The next day the bedframe was dismantled and the bed put on the floor. Eko loves it—it’s like a whole new playground. But this experience only affirmed the need to get serious about the crib transition.

We hear of babies his age who, upon moving to their own room in their own crib, begin to sleep longer once they realize mom’s not going to be there for snacking all night. This was not the case with Eko, though we are slowly making progress. He now falls asleep in our arms much faster than before and transitions a lot more easily into the crib shortly after, though it can take a few tries. He takes all of his naps in the crib without much fuss. The trouble is that when he wakes up mid-nap, he’s on his feet within seconds and we have to pick him up, soothe him back to sleep, and cross our fingers that we can lay him in his crib again without waking him. Bedtime is even trickier. During the day, 90 minutes is a great nap, but it means a lot of interventions to get through a night. Once it hits 11:30, he simply refuses to be put back in that crib and wakes each time we transfer him.

So we accept that for now he’s a part-time cribber, a part-time cosleeper. Back to our bed he goes, where he seems to drift off next to Jade with relief. He clearly feels the most comfortable here: he sleeps deeply, only stirring a little to nurse or ‘ask’ for a change in position. Even in the bed we’re noticing that he needs less physical contact and less nursing to fall back asleep. The transition is slower than we imagined, but we’re trying to be respectful of his temperament while challenging him gently… and still getting enough sleep to function the next day.

Eko’s communication is also blossoming. He clearly asks for Mama-mama, and says Dada a lot, too. When we make sounds, he’ll often respond with his own version (an elephant trumpet is his favorite, but he can also mimic laughs, moos, and mews). He calls booby ‘boo’ and each time he and Jay walk the stairs, he calls out BA! when they get to the stair that makes a natural echo. (Daddy taught him that!)

We're fortunate to have seen many of our friends and family this month, some meeting Eko in person for the first time. Rob and Joanna drove up from Virginia to spend the 4th of July in northern Vermont and made a stop in New Hampshire. We spent a lot of time at home, catching up and playing with Eko, but the five of us managed to squeeze in a short hike up Black Mountain before they headed north. Eko demonstrated his amazing new standing abilities, repeatedly surprising Jade by pulling many drinks into her lap!

The following weekend was TogetherFest, a mostly annual event we've been hosting since 2004.  TogetherFest began as a 5-year anniversary celebration with our friends and family, but continued as more of a Harmon-Fee family reunion with larger gatherings occurring every few years. For our 13th anniversary, we decided to host a bigger event this year at the Path of Life Sculpture Garden, a spot we first visited when Jade was 31 weeks pregnant. To see original slideshow, click here. With a potluck brunch spread out and a few tents to shade us from the sun, we hung out with a bunch of adorable families in front of the driftwood band that represents creativity, eventually gathering everyone at family for a group photo and some songs. Kids picked berries and folks got (briefly) lost in the maze. It was great to see everyone, including Sierra and Jubilee (our youngest guests, at 2 months old), Jay's sister Maureen (who braved a dead battery and engine trouble to make it), and Jay's nephews, Billy and Jakob, who were meeting their cousin for the first time.

The Harmon side wasn't able to attend TogetherFest this year, so we hosted a separate event the following weekend to celebrate Jade's father's retirement. It was especially momentous to see Mykel and his family who moved to California two years ago and were meeting our Eko and Adam’s Demsond and Leo for the first time. Six adults and five kids all under one roof braving the oppressive heat and humidity! Children of all ages were walking a fine line between contentment and meltdown, but for every cry there was three times as much giggling and a lot of really sweet comradery. Sophia and Kai loved the lake, and the kiddy pool helped the little guys cool off! It was wonderful to see everyone together again and to have all of our children playing together for the first time.

Eko was very inspired by his older, more mobile cousins. The day after they left, he started crawling faster than ever. We'll find out how influential they were over the coming weeks, as Eko becomes even more adventurous on his feet.

Check out the
Eko by-the-day slideshow
and

weekly header project 
and 
Eko Song playlist

Eko Song 6 - June 2012

Nine Months Old - June 15

Nine months have passed since Eko's birth, which means that his time spent outside the womb is now equal to his time within. In only nine months, he's grown from a 7lbs. 6oz. wrinkly and fragile baby into a 21ish lb. semi-independent little boy. Every day he builds upon the progress he made the day before and every month he seems to have developed into an entirely new creature.

Last month we were excited to see Eko crawling for the first time, prompting us to start baby proofing. We gated the stairs and moved everything low to higher ground. Eko now happily roams the entire first floor in relative safety. It's such a delight to watch him crawl around the circle, disappearing through one doorway and reappearing around the staircase again, slowed down only by his fascination with the baseboard heater (very resonant), the paint tape on the floor (it's like a taggie), the cat door... okay, anything round, shiny, rainbowy, or made with nylon strapping slows him down... but he eventually makes his way back to the living room again. We thought our hands were full keeping him away from wires and the various only-visible-to-the-baby-eye items on the floor... But then, while playing on the bathroom floor, he reached his little hands up onto the bathtub and pulled himself into a standing position. With this new skill achieved, he now tries to pull himself up on everything, even the crib.

Yes, the crib.  Recognizing that Eko has reached a certain degree of independence, we decided now would be a good time to begin his peaceful transition to his own bed and eventually his own room. Since his birth, Eko has slept in our queen-sized bed with us, and for the first many months Jade could not imagine parting with him at night. But as he's metamorphosed into more of his own little person, she's felt herself take a step back, physically and energetically. It feels very natural and a lot safer for him to sleep in his own space.

We had been using a co-sleeper for naps, but since he began crawling (often in his sleep) the nest of pillows barricading him on the bed had become ridiculous to rebuild for each nap. We've had a crib for him all along, so we moved it into our room and to our astonishment, his first crib nap lasted two hours. He seems to view it as just another place to sleep. We even wonder if he's a little relieved to be on that spacious, cool mattress. He's adjusted so well to it that we've already had to move the mattress down—he quickly learned it was a great climbing wall. After a nighttime routine of bath, massage, and book, we're still rocking and nursing him to sleep and then easing him into the crib, and he's usually back in the big bed with us an hour after we go to sleep, but baby steps. Helping him learn to fall asleep in the crib and stay there longer is the next adventure. Still, he's consistently getting either two long naps or three shorter naps and around 11 hours at night, but his new teeth have definitely shaken up his routine. 

This month, Eko has been working on all four of his upper incisors, making him uncommonly irritable. His little nose has been running continuously and he's been teething hard on anything he can gnaw, from icy teethers and toys to buckles, name tags, and our cell phones (which is why our phones are occasionally gummed up with drool or green beans). He even grinds his teeth together, a chilling sound as he explores his new gear. For the most part, he seems to be handling teething calmly, but with so much physical development going on at once it's only natural that he experience bouts of frustration and fussiness, but these moments are in the minority.

Eko has also been extra sweet this month. Some days he's all smiles and wild laughter... especially when he's playing outside. Over Momorial Day weekend, while Oma and Grandpa were visiting, we set up our screened-in tent to create a shaded play space on our deck for him. Even though we put down quilts and carpets, Eko would continuously crawl to an edge and fixate on the deck's peeling paint. He's also splashed around in his kiddie pool while our resident bulfrog Rupert croaks in the distance, hiked Black Mt. for the second time, and ridden around in his new Chariot (courtesy of Graham and Lee). Eko loves being outside so much he's often upset to come back in.

Our teething, crawling, standing boy has also been adding new sounds to his repertoire. Wawa eventually turned into dada (which could mean mean "daddy," "Sasha," or something else entirely) and soon after he began saying ba-mama-mama. He'll also just blurt out "da" or "ma" on their own. When he's not mama-ing or dada-ing, he's mainly giggling, which can now be triggered with diabolical laughter or even staring. Our little happy guy has also just begun to see books as something to sit and enjoy rather than just gnaw on. It makes our book-loving hearts sing to see him get so excited about his farm animal book, and even crawl over to his book shelf to "choose" a few before bedtime.

No big trips this month, but we did bring Eko to Manchester, NH, to meet Jess and Scott's newborn girl, Sierra. And in anticipation of this year's TogetherFest, we visited the Path of Life Sculpture Garden in Windsor, VT, which we first wandered when Jade was pregnant. After all the rain we've experienced, the grounds were a little soggy for crawling, but we picnicked at the site representing Sorrow (and made it a little happier), swung for a while in the hammock at shady Respite, and ended with a trek through the hedge maze that represents Adventure. Afterward, we grabbed some local ice cream and a ginger wheat beer from Harpoon next door. Eko, now a master glass-sipper, was upset not to be offered a taste of the golden water in that pretty glass.

Just a few days ago, Eko came down with his first fever. He's obviously uncomfortable, acting lethargic and moaning a lot, but at the same time he's the sweetest little thing. He's still so easy to make giggle (a little deliriously—Miss Piggy cracks hm up!) and just wants to be held all the time, which we accept willingly. The fever also causes him to wake up a lot throughout the night. We're all a little dazed during the day, but he's already perking up and returning to his usual cheerful, adventurous self.

And so we wrap up nine months of sharing our lives with this incredible little being we call Kokopelli, Ekopotomus, and Doodle Bug. Don't be surprised if our next post begins, "let the walking begin." It's just amazing how much he learns and grows in such a short amount of time, but we continuously resist the urge to claim "it goes so fast." The fact is, it just never stops changing... nor would we ever want it to. Would we ever put down a book because we had just read a particularly well written chapter? No... we continue to consume the rest of the book and await the author's next one. Just because the moment changes doesn't mean it's gone, which is what this blog is all about.

Our advice to all parents and parents-to-be, revel in the experience and don't lament the passing of time. At the end of every moment is another one just waiting to be experienced. Keep this in mind when you find yourself saying, "the summer went fast" or "before you know it, they're in college."

 

Revel.

 Check out the
Eko by-the-day slideshow
and

weekly header project 
and 
Eko Song playlist

Eko Song 5 - May 2012