A boy by any other name

Jo and I are known for naming things. Our cars, our computers, even our fridge! In fact, almost everything in our house has a name. For example, at our place Morpheus is a sheep that speaks like the ocean, Fat Birdy is a rather large and random ornament only recently outdone by Fatter Birdie... well you get the idea. The point is, Mr Roo is no exception. He has a ridiculously long list of nicknames and it was only after I started jotting them down that I realised quite how out of control this nomenclature really is. Here are the ones I can remember, in no particular order.

• Rooey
• Roo
• Marty Roo
• Tuesday

(ok so the first few are obvious...bear with me)

• Mardi
• Fizzlecrank (corrupted World of Warcraft reference)
• Sailor Jim
• Bub
• Squeaky monkey
• Boy
• Legend of the squeaker
• Puddin/Pud/pudding bowl
• Tigertron
• Stank the Crank
• Pygmy suckerfish
• Blue eyes
• Buggie
• Screamer
• Farty Marty
• Spotty
• Papi
• Gaseous Maximus
• Squirmy worm
• Mr Wiggle
• Fish
• Snuffy puppy
• Billy
• Fussy lumpkins
• Chubby chops
• Glow bug
• Squarker
• Gar (Legend of the Seeker ref)
• Baby starfish
• Grumpelstiltskin
• Snooks/snooky poops
• Grunter
• Roofus farty bird
• Squeak
• Captain Smiley

And those are just the ones I can remember!

In other news Marty continues to be a water boy, throwing himself into baths and showers with much gusto. A couple of days ago we had him in his bath and he was locking his head back as far as we'd let him and swishing his hair around in the water! He came out looking like Beaker from the muppets!

Like a fish in water

This boy sure loves a bath!

Feeling hot hot hot

Thought you might like to read today's weather warning, give you a little sense of how insane this summer has been. 100 degrees F is roughly 38C, so a touch over body temperature meaning it is miserable! 96F on the other hand is lovely!

Special weather statement

National weather service Austin/San Antonio TX
1122 AM CDT Monday August 24 2009

...Hot afternoons highs will continue today...

More hot afternoon highs will come today...as highs rise to the 100 degree mark again in a long trend that has continued since June. Afternoon highs today will be between 5 and 10 degrees above average for late August...and will be near to slightly above the record daily high for august 24th. The heat index this afternoon to the early evening will rise to near 106. Overnight lows tonight will be in the 70s.

The last recorded high for San Antonio on August 24: 101 in 1988

As of August 23rd, 2009 the number of 100 degree days for this year was as follows:
54 at San Antonio International airport
65 at San Antonio Stinson field
63 at Austin Mabry
61 at Del Rio

Weather service recommendations:
Use of light weight and light colored clothing...using enough water to deal with the summer heat...and trying to avoid outdoor activity at the hottest time of the day will make it easier to deal with the hot afternoons. Also check on the children and elderly and make sure pets have shade and plenty of water.

Jacwabbit's recommendations:
Crank the A/C then take a watermelon and half a mint bush, blend and drink. Sadly I'm at work instead!

Spot update

As we thought, the Roo's spots are nothing more than bothersome prickly heat, which you can apparently treat with diaper cream (who knew?). We'll settle for keeping him cool since it doesn't seem to be bothering him at all. Still no sign of any major break in the weather although we did have a lovely mini-storm early Friday morning with lots of lightning and really loud thunder! Marty startled once and then was totally chilled about it - more interested in watching the flashes and listening to Mrs Bick while we changed his bottom. I say 'we' loosely because I was suffering somewhat less than silently in bed with a tummy bug. Nothing major, just one of those low grade ones that makes you feel like you constantly want to vomit without the satisfaction of ever reaching that full level of misery. Luckily Jo wasn't struck down until later that day, by which point I was much improved (and on a mission to buy a Peking duck - but that's another story)

We had a great weekend. The Roo slept well and played hard. On Saturday night I had a mini belated birthday party where we ate lots of good food and played the Aussie version of Trivial Pursuit (in teams, each team with a non-Australian 'handicap'). Our friend Joanne ordered the game online and luckily it arrived the day of the party or we would have been stuck with the American version which is close to impossible unless you know that habits of Fox news broadcasters from the mid 80s. Marty did so well at just hanging out with us all, even while intense political 'debates' raged overhead.

Here are some pics from today's playtime. Yep, he has mastered independent eyebrow control and often pulls a less than faintly skeptical face at his Poggie and her antics. I have never managed the eyebrow thing.

Playtime in his big boy diaper

'Can I eat it?'

'Ok Poggie, I get that one is a turtle but if this other one is a bug, how come it only has 4 legs?'

Yeah Boppy, what's with the 4 legged bugs??

Awwww

(and to all of you who skipped straight down to the photos...shame on you!)

I ain't no fatty!

Well only a little. Jo did recently dream that she had to go and get him out of the hamster tank... But just to make sure that y'all don't think Marty is a fatty pudding based on that last (unfortunately angled) photo, here's some more recent pics that I was saving...

Hanging out with his sleep bunny

We've been practicing smiling but this is more likely wind. Still, he does have a terribly cute and disarming smile!

We're off to see the pediatrician tomorrow because he has a rash down his neck, shoulders and back. It is most likely heat rash given that it is still so bloody hot, but they want to be sure. We don't mind, his doctor rocks and it will be good to touch base with him and just reassure ourselves that all is well. Will keep you posted as usual!

The daily workout

Love me?

Skype

Quick note to say that Jo, the Roo and I are back on Skype. Just look for jacwabbit or click on the button on the side of the blog (although not 100% sure that works, especially the 'status'. Best plan is try calling or send a chat first and if we have free hands we'll answer and if not we'll try to make a time to chat properly!

And just a reminder of who you might catch on the webcam - nope that's not Buddha!

Can't guarantee he won't be screaming tho...

The eyes have it

Sorry for the posting delay. Long story short the card reader in my computer - the thing I rely on to strip images off my cameras - kicked the bucket in a blaze of 'device not recognised' errors which lead to me not simply fixing the problem by opening up the computer, unplugging it, spitting on the contacts and reconnecting it... nonono the minute I got in there and realised how dusty it was I had to take the whole bloody thing apart piece by piece and clean every last dust bunny out of there! Who knew the heat sink would be so hard to reseat and so central to the whole working computer thing...

Anyhow, we're all good now but I'm too tired to post properly so instead I'll respond to the question we keep getting asked which is 'what colour are Marty's eyes?'. The answer is deep navy blue around the outer iris fading to steel blue in the middle, but you have to be in the right light, so I hope you'll settle for this close up. The question I want answered is what colour will they eventually become!?


Oh yeah, and this is what happens when we try to take a family photo while rushing out the door on little to no sleep and another 40+ degree day...

Ahh familial bliss...

Wool lite

Mr Handsome dressed up in one of his gorgeous knitted gifts against the draft of the A/C

Just a super quick post to get another couple of pics up. No real major news at this point. It is still stupidly hot - 40+ (100F) every day and over 30 at nights. It sure has been a crazy summer! The Roo is doing well and growing his way out of most of his wardrobe. He turned 1 month today and I'm sure he's hit the 10 pound mark but his weight gain is in the healthy rather than the 'supersize me' range. We had a horrible night Sunday (why is it always the night before I have to go to work) but a much better night last night (bliss!)

Friends of ours from New Zealand gave Marty a 'sleep sheep' which I was somewhat facetious about early on, mostly because it was a sheep (lame giggles). But now I take it all back - the sheep, who we have dubbed Morpheus, is a godsend! It plays different kinds of white noise that help baby sleep and he totally loves the ocean waves one. And the best thing is that they even sound good to us, so Morpheus is probably helping all three of us sleep better! It does have one option for 'mother's heartbeat' which sounds disturbingly like someone sloshing vast quantities of blood through plastic gutters... Not so soothing, at least not to me!

Morpheus the sleep sheep

Water baby

A fine summer evening on our deck

Firstly, apologies for getting the wiggly woo stuck in everyone's head, even mine! I was going to use Feist's 1 2 3 4 but my video editor didn't like the mp4 format. I'll try to be more considerate next time, or not :D

One of the perks of being up at 4am. Josie spotted the tree outside our deck shaking and discovered there were two raccoons having a lovely time! She came in to see if I wanted to hop up and see them too and I was heard to mutter something along the lines of "it's probably better if I don't". Hehe, I was tired!

It has been pretty busy here, probably no great surprise. We took the Roofus Farty Bird to see the lactation consultant Friday and that went really well. Because of the high bilirubin in those first days and the need to pump him full of food to clear it from his system we've been both breastfeeding and expressing/bottle feeding (which is lovely because I get to help!) He's only having breast milk and he does feed well on the breast, we just wanted to make sure it was working consistently (sometimes you'd think we had him in thumbscrews from the hollering!) Jo got 100 gold stars for milk production (we will soon need a new freezer) and he has absolutely no problems with weight gain (he was 9 pounds 11, nearly a pound up from last week!) and of course he fed perfectly on the breast while being observed. It was helpful though, we got some good tips on positioning him (because he's %$#@ heavy now) and some new super slow bottle teats.

Last night we took Marty to his first party and he did so well! He was chipper, he fed and had lots of cuddles. We didn't get close to making it through the queue of people who would have liked a cuddle but there'll be a next time! Jo and I were both impressed by how well he did! He wore the stripy outfit with the crab on it that he was swimming in a few weeks back and it was nearly too small to get the poppers done up!!

But back to the title of this post. Master Martyn is certainly a water baby. He loves it! I'm pretty sure he'd stay in the bath all day if only we were strong enough to hold his puddin head aloft for that long!

This was the first bath of many...

And he just loved it and was so chilled out!

So we took him in the shower...

And he loved that so much he kept his eyes open the whole time!

Little water baby!

Let's all do the wiggly Roo

Just a little something for all the patient Marty fans out there. I figured it was time for a little live Roo action!

You asked for it...

Y'all keep asking for pics of us with Marty Roo, well here they are! In between work, eating, cleaning and looking after the Roo this is what we spend most of our time doing:

Yep, attempting to sleep!

Things I have recently learned:

• I don't mind poop but I hate the smell of baby vomit.
• It can take 3 hours to watch a 45 minute show.
• Marty's fingernails grow insanely fast and they aren't soft!
• He has supersonic hearing but only for the soft fall of a freshly dunked teabag into the sink and apparently this noise is incredibly painful as it invariably sets off the screaming.
• The batteries in PT Cruisers are buried behind 90% of the engine> Random maybe but it died yesterday and if it weren't for the power of the internets I wouldn't have been able to find the bally battery let alone replace it. Who puts the battery under the air filter??

And since my blog was derailed by the masses screaming for pictures with the mummies (arrrr) you will all have to wait until tomorrow for the cute post. Oh and lesson number 43, tomorrow can be days away...

Oh ok you can have this one too - mostly because I forced poor Josie to get dressed so that I could take her photo for you all!

A quick postscript on the crying:
While I'm here. Of course, we're only letting him cry when we're absolutely sure there isn't a reason for it other than Mr Fussy Monkey wants to be awake and even then we only let him do it for about 5 minutes and we never let it go to the full scream. He has a different kind of cry for hunger, wet and wind and quite a different cry for pain (someone still needs to learn cause and effect - he pokes himself in the eye and then screams at us like we did it!) Actually, on the whole he doesn't cry much at all (yet) and not for long - but he does have his fussy moments where even he doesn't seem to know what he wants other than to tell you he's mad. We hear you boy.