Not all of Troy and Tara's time is spent updating Henry's Web site.
Tara went back to work part-time at the beginning of the month. Troy has been caring for Henry by himself (!!!) on Tuesdays, and Tara's mom has come up to help the last two Fridays. Everyone's adjusting to the new schedule.
Henry and Troy were pretty frazzled on their first day alone together earlier in the month. But they did much better this past Tuesday. Troy and Henry went on a long walk from their house to the middle of San Francisco's Mission neighborhood, touring a daycare facility along the way.
Troy's still trying to convince Henry that breast milk out of a bottle is just as good as breast milk directly from Mom, but neither of them stressed out too much about it on Tuesday, which made for a much better day.
In the meantime, Tara and Troy have been trying to figure out a child care situation for Henry come September, when both of them return to work full-time. So, in addition to visiting daycare facilities, we've been interviewing nanny candidates, trying to find the right match.
Neither of us have been particularly happy about the daycare facilities so far. While nice as these things go, they all seem like little baby factories: all the kids eat at the same time, play at the same time and nap at the same time. That's very efficient of course, but we were kind of hoping for more individual attention for little Hank, who likes to determine his own schedule anyway.
The nanny candidates have been very good so far, and that seems like the best option. But nannies in San Francisco (like everything else here) are terribly expensive. So, as much as we would like to go that route--assuming we can find someone we are comfortable with--we're still trying to figure out if we can afford to do it.
With fewer worries on his mind, Henry's doing great! He's become quite the talker, oftening waking Mom and Dad up in recent days with his squeals. He's also become fond of singing along to the Grateful Dead and other groups. He's not gotten the tunes or words just right yet, but he's trying!
Henry's also making great strides toward moving himself around. While on his stomach, he routinely pushes himself up so that his face is essentially perpendicular to the floor. He's also starting to coordinate his arm and leg movements, simulating crawling. And he loves to stand up while being held by his Mom or Dad.
In the meantime, Hank's getting bigger and bigger. Earlier this month, he graduated to the size 3 diapers, which are for babies weighing about 16 to 27 lbs. Troy and Tara are convinced that he's already pushing 17 or 18 pounds. In comparing Henry to other babies much older than him, to Tara and Troy, the other babies seem tiny in comparrison!
In short, the kid's doing very well!
Troy and Tara have been working on some major updates to Henry's site over the weekend.
Last night, Troy added a panoply of new
photos to the site, as well as one new movie he found amongst Henry's archives. (Beware: The movie, which is of
Henry enjoying his mobile, is in MPEG format and is a whopping 40MB big.) The photo update brings Henry's picture pages nearly up to date, with picture from as
recent as Friday!
In addition to the new pictures, Troy and Tara created some new features for the photos section. Among them: a page of
monthly photos of Henry so you (and we!) can watch him grow; pages featuring photos from
April,
May,
June and now
July; as well as weekly groupings of pictures for April and May.
Troy also changed some of the navigation in the site, so if you have any of the interior photo pages bookmarked, you may need to update your links. If you happen to see any broken links or photos that won't load,
contact Troy.
Look for more photo and other updates in short order!
Troy added a new section to the site today: a
movie area to showcase Henry's latest (and archived) videos. Not only can you find recent movies of Henry rolling over and kicking his play gym, but you can also find video of Henry when he was still Fogbert; i.e. video from before he was born.
Beware, though, because all of the videos are in MPEG format and all of them are super-huge, ranging from about 12MB to about 100MB. In other words, if you're accessing the Internet over a dial-up connection, don't even both to click on 'em.
(Troy plans to look into putting up some smaller RealVideo versions of the files at a later date.)
Meanwhile, Troy plans to add some new photos to the site within the next several days. We have plenty of them of the little guy--and would
love to show him off!
Troy added two more movies of Henry to the site last night. Both are from last month and show Henry learning how to move the objects hanging from his play gym by kicking the arches on the gym itself. (See the entry below from June 8 for more details.)
You can view the video clips by clicking
here and
here. (Before you click, note that the first movie is about 12MB in size. The second is more than 15MB in size. They should only take a couple of minutes to load on a broadband connection, but they might take forever on a dial-up connection.)
Henry has a new trick: he's learned to roll over!
Troy was caring for Henry by himself yesterday for the first time. As Tara was getting ready to head into work, Troy was playing with little Hank in Hank's play gym.
Troy decided to put Henry on his tummy. Although Henry normally hates to be on his tummy, the books all say that giving babies time on their stomach is important so that they can develop the upper body strenght and coordination to learn to crawl.
Anyway, Troy put Henry on his tummy and Hal immediately start to rock himself side to side by pushing off with his right arm. Before Troy knew it, the kid had flipped himself over on to his back! Troy tried to get him to do it again for Tara, but the kid was not in the mood to put on a show.
But yesterday night, after Tara returned from work, Tara got him to roll over again. And not just once, but about four more times! The kid's really got the hang of it now.
Troy preserved the new trick on
video, which you can check out
here. (Beware, the page may take a while to download. The video's about 13MB in MPG format.)
That, of course, was the highlight of the day. The lowlight was Troy trying to get Henry to drink from a bottle. Henry had little use for that. Even though he was obviously hungry, after trying his bottled milk, he decided milk direct from mom was more than worth waiting for. Oh well. He'll learn (or his parents will!).
