videos from my phone

Here are the videos from my phone.  None are too long and it is pretty amazing to see Attison's development (and change in looks!) over these three months!




Excuse my annoying singing in this one.  It seems to get him going some times.

Laughing in bed.

I have a fever today.  Had a horrible night, hot and cold, couldn't sleep.  But then I woke up to this guy, who loves to wiggle and giggle in the morning.

dancing, marching, and laying around

A video of Attison dancing and marching

half way between rolling over and not

Lavender blue dilly dilly....

and now for more pictures

 Found these pictures from when Grandma Linda was here. 

Baby legs!

We ordered these Baby Legs.  They are like legwarmers for babies.  They keep legs warm and make diaper changing a breeze.  Here are Attison's baby legs and mama's leg warmers. 

Jenny was sad she didn't get any leg warmers.  She has too many legs.

Conversing

More videos!
This first one is Tim talking to Attison about mom's coffee, which we went to again this week.  Surprisingly, we weren't the only crazy ones to brave the 9 degree temperatures to go have some coffee and conversation. 


The rest of the evening turned into babbling and nonsense.

Happy baby :)

It is 6:30 am

And we went to sleep at 11:30. 

11:30-6:30!  11:30-6:30!!!!!!

giggles and dimples

I tried to make a video of him laughing without me making silly noises and talking.  As it turns out, the high pitched sing-song voice and silly noises is what makes him smile (which you can tell after 35 seconds of interaction with a baby or read in any book ever written about babies). So please excuse my voice while these videos make your heart melt right out of your chest.

Visitors!

This weekend we had some guests.  Great Grandma and Pappap came.  We had 3 cameras, 2 batteries and got one picture.  It looks like this.

Sorry Grandma. 
I know you love that boy and he loves to giggle and smile and talk while you hold him, but of course I didn't document any of it.
I do have this picture though, and even though the baby boy looks totally different, Michael, Grandma and I all look pretty much the same. I love this picture too. 

That was right before we left Attison alone with someone other than Tim or myself and we went out to dinner (over Christmas).  Granted, the place we ate dinner was 3 blocks from Grandma's house, and I could have hopped the fence and ran there in 2 minutes or less, BUT we both left the building the baby was in.  For 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Then Grandma and Papa John came, and I only took this one picture of them too.  The difference is that I used the flash. 

Our friend Nick came too.  We didn't take any pictures of him. 

It was a great extended weekend, but a major picture fail.

Lost camera cord

Can't find the camera cord and not enough hours in the day to blog.  Will try to keep posting pictures from my phone!

At work.

In the Neighborhood

Last Friday we went to an event called "Creative Mornings Pittsburgh."  It is "a monthly breakfast lecture series" that is hosted in cities all over the world.  This month's theme was Happiness and the Pittsburgh Creative Mornings team hosted David Newell, or Mr. McFeeley from Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

Because we are cool and hip and young and live within walking distance from the historic Kelly Strayhorn Theater where Creative Mornings was hosted this month, we walked over with Attison, had some coffee and a scone and met Mr. McFeeley.

Mr. McFeeley talked about how he found Happiness in his job, working for Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.  He talked about how great Fred Rogers was and why "the neighborhood" was such a ground breaking show for kids.  He also showed us some puppets and said "Speedy Delivery" like 35 times.

Thanks to Mr. McFeeley, we now know that episodes of Mister Rogers Neighborhood are available on pbskids.org/rogers and we can we can watch them anytime we want.  We also have Mr. McFeeley's autograph to look back on this first tv celebrity meet and greet experience.

Speedy Delivery!

(If you are particularly interested, here is the video of his talk: http://vimeo.com/57538049)

Dancin'

Simplicity

"I have learned the art of simplicity is simply making peace with the complexity." - India Arie

I have also learned not to talk about a sleeping baby or he won't sleep anymore.  And I've learned that there is nothing predictable about having a baby. Here are some other things I've learned:

• when they say your laundry will multiply exponentially, they aren't kidding
• my house does actually look like a baby store exploded in it
• my house will never be as clean as I want it to be
• I can't finish anything in one attempt.  ANYTHING.
• I talk about poop and farting like I used to talk about the sunshine and ice cream
• sometimes when the baby pees, you just change the diaper and don't use a wipe. 
• the trade off for not doing a diaper change in the middle of the night is that you might just wake up and your bedroom smells like a subway station. (and not the subway with the delicious fresh baked bread and sandwiches, the one the homeless people slept in for the last 85 years).
• take longer showers
• everything is a burp cloth
• when someone says "can I help" the answer is always "yes"

There are probably more, but I don't have time to finish this post right now, the baby is calling...

And he rolls!

He rolled over for the camera.  We were so excited we made him cry.

Matt and Christine

Attison was waving at Matt. Matt is going to marry our roommate Christine.  Christine and Matt like Attison a lot.  Attison likes them too :)

 

And a video...that Attison is not waving in.
and we have a winner!

We crazy

Remember how spectacularly perfect and beautiful our newborn photos were? (Didn't see them? Look at the blog here.) Take a look at these photos and you will realize how amazingly talented our photographer Kelsey Kradel actually is :)

Sleeping

Our friends who have a baby they also blog about stole our idea about a post with baby nicknames we use.  So we are stealing their post idea about our night time routine.  Seems like a good idea to tell of some things we do instead of just posting pictures.

Attison's bedtime was consistently 8 pm for many weeks.  As his sleeping times got longer, the number of times he woke up got smaller and my ability to remember things has gotten stronger.  For almost two weeks he has been only waking up once per night.  One night he slept for 9 consecutive hours!! 

I thought if I moved bedtime to 9 that might give me one more hour of sleep (ie. He sleeps from 8-1, I sleep from 10-1. New pattern: he sleeps 9-2, I sleep 10-2).  This plan worked.  But then...last night he fell asleep snuggling a roommate while we watched a movie.  At 10:15 ish he woke up and was hungry, needed a diaper change and pajamas.  He was really upset with all of that ruckus and proceeded to wake up 3 more times before finally waking up for good at 7.  Tonight we moved back to 8 pm and so far so good....

1.  From approximately 6-7:30 (and when I say approximately, I really mean it) Attison is usually awake and  happy.  He is pretty vocal, cooing and laughing, flirting with anyone who looks his direction.  He tends to be ok laying down, playing with toys, being held, whatever.  Around 7:30 he starts to get a little fussy, indicating that he is starting to wear out.

2. If it is a bath night (which is every 2-3 days, depending on his last poop, which always seem to be massive blow outs requiring immediate baths) we start bath time around 7:30.  Attison's buddy Elliot is letting him borrow his baby bath, which as of this morning ('s massive poop blow out) we transitioned to instead of the sink puj tub.  Attison still loves bath time.  I really can't wait until he can play with toys, it's going to be the best part of the day :)

3.  After bath we put on our "night time diaper" which consists of two pocket inserts and one more liner outside of the pocket in one of our Bum Genius pocket diapers.  No more night time diaper changes!  With a baby that only wakes up once, I was finding the middle of the night diaper to be relatively dry and the act of changing said diaper to be disturbing to everyone.  (A cried, I have to open my eyes, T wakes up and JTD comes to investigate)  Next is pj's and a swaddler.

4.  I turn off all the lights, nurse the baby, rock in the glider and sing lullaby's to my boy until he falls asleep.  I'm still having trouble remembering lyrics so I tend to sing the same songs every night:  Goodnight my Someone (from The Music Man), Edelweiss (Sound of Music), Lullaby (Dixie Chicks), A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, You are My Sunshine and When You Wish Upon a Star.  If I notice that Attison is playing or not easily going to sleep, I stop singing and just be quiet.  Our pediatrician said that night time feedings should be dark and quiet to help the baby distinguish between day and night.

5.  Into the bassinet with sleeping baby! Since our house is real cold, we have a thermostatically controlled space heater in our room I turn to 65.  I turn on the monitor to go downstairs and party!  Or workout, if I haven't yet that day.  Or shower, fold laundry, clean, type inspection reports, play with knives - things I can't do with a baby who wants attention.

6.  Then sometimes he wakes up.  99% of the time all it take is the soothing vibrations on the bassinet and the binkey.  Sometimes I'll wait.  He'll suck real hard on the binkey like 12 times, spit it out and be back asleep.  The key is remembering to go back up after 45-60 minutes to turn off the vibration thing.  Batteries are expensive. If those things don't do the trick, we go back to #4, but spend more time rocking in silence.

All told, this kid sleeps pretty well.  I appreciate it every single night.  At Mom's coffee everyone always says: you can't even think about a "schedule" before 6 months.  Just when things seem to settle down, you hit a new milestone and everything changes.   Here's to tonight!

Our snow angel

Attison in one of his many car seat compatible snow suits.

Uncle Mark is a gifter... (Christmas part 4)

On Christmas day, Steph and Uncle Mark wore matching sweaters.

Uncle Mark is notorious for giving the craziest of crazy Christmas presents.  This, Attison's first Christmas, was not lost on Uncle Mark and he had a very special gift for the baby boy.  I asked Tim to describe this present for you, the blogging audience, and he said "Attison, who is very small, is trying to make sense of a very large world and he received a tool typically used by very large people trying to make sense of a small world."  I was looking for something more along the lines of "a magnifying glass on a tusk."  Sometimes we are very, very different...anyway...behold:

Now, don't go thinking this is out of the blue.  Here are some other gifts that Uncle Mark gave this holiday season:

An umbrella stand

A vase (?)

A thing (note that his eyes are closed due to the sheer beauty of the gift, as Uncle Mark looks on...)

"I wasn't sure if you had one" says Mark, as we enjoy the splendor of our new prized possession.

We Raufers take pride in our Uncle Mark gifts and display them proudly.  Notice the shelves from our bedroom in this newborn photo of Attison.

Is that a ceramic turtle doing a handstand next to a two headed elephant?  Yes, yes it is. 

Aunt Sarah and Uncle Andy

Aunt Sarah and Uncle Andy came to visit.  We didn't have time to go to the museum, so we went and got donuts and visited the secret, special back room of the library that gives you a sneak peak of the dinosaurs.

Here is a weird fact.  You can't take pictures in the library, but you can take pictures in the museum.  Seems like that is backwards, right?  Don't tell Andrew Carnegie, or his endowment, but we took a picture in the library of the museum.  Suckas!!!  (if you happen to be reading this from the offices of the Carnegie Museums [cough, KRSG, cough] please don't tell.)

No, that isn't a supermodel posing with my son, it's my sister.  And a dinosaur.

We took a picture in the bathroom too. 

All Holiday Traffic Stops Here (Christmas part 3)

NJDOT forgot to pick up their sign that they had parked in front of the Raufer house before the holiday.  How could they have known that this small house would be host to over 50 people on Christmas day?  Who would have guessed that dozens of cars would park on this street and walk to the house that their sign was parked directly in front of?  Rumor has it, one of the aunts called to have it removed, but they didn't remove it.  So to make the best out of every situation, Aunt June did this:

Merry Christmas New Jersey!

And here are some pictures of  Attison's Grandma making him laugh after the excitement of Christmas day.