He Yunyi

We found a baby floating ring and it works so well for Costa.  For the first time today he was able to completely relax in the water.  He figured out right away how to kick his legs and move forward.  He even stuck his face in the water numerous times, sometimes even deliberately!  This is quite an improvement from the baby that would shriek and cling to me as soon as his feet were immersed in the water.



( more summer fun )

Today is Costa's 10th month birthday and he decided to celebrate it by climbing up an entire flight of stairs for the first time.  Before this he's only managed to climb up one or two steps at a time, never more than that.  And today, all of a sudden, he climbed up the entire flight! (I was right behind him the whole time, don't worry.)

I will have to try and post baby pictures later today.

So we are in the process of moving to a new apartment.  Our old apartment is a one bedroom, extremely cramped apartment with noisy, horribly inconsiderate neighbors.  The new one is an over 1000 sq feet two bedroom townhouse with a strict noise policy and a swimming pool! Yay! We're actually only subleasing it for a couple months; then we will probably be moving into student housing because that is a lot more affordable, but we are kind of tempted to sign a lease and stay for a year.  We'll see how it goes.  It'd be fine if we're both working part-time...but I don't want to count on that for the next year because my job is not that dependable for the long term.

Now for some baby pictures....

Costa discovers yogurt...


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So here are the pictures from last weekend, when Costa experienced both his first time in a wading pool and his first hike.

Here's our attempt at an artistically interesting photograph:



 

( more pictures this way )

 

Tonight Costa just started randomly kissing his relection in the mirror.  It was pretty cute.  You could tell he was making a special effort to turn his face up enough so as to go for the lips and not bump noses.





I also have pictures from this weekend that I should post eventually.

More baby updates since I'm posting: Costa has learned that raising hands upwards=pick me up and I think he's also starting to get the concept of waving goodbye.   He is definitely going through the "I like mommy best" stage, but nothing too severe so far.  I can still leave him with his grandparents just fine, but when I return he gets all excited and immediately crawls over to me.  If I leave the room, he'll come look for me.  He likes his dad a lot too though.  When Matthew will get home for work or school, Costa will throw up his hands upon seeing him, as if to say "pick me up, dad!"

So I was just changing the baby's diaper and he wasn't too happy about it because he has much more important things to do then sit around and have his diaper changed.  It's always a bit of a struggle to get him to stay on his back.  When I finished changing him, I announced, "There we go!" and his slightly annoyed little face changed to happy and he started clapping his hands.

This afternoon we took the baby and the new camera to the park.  We got to really try out our zoom lens and I really like the effect it created compared to just using a regular lens and being up close.  Here's what I mean:



( more pictures, mostly of baby but there are some of birds as well )

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Costa has just figured out how to clap his hands. It's pretty cute, he'll get up on his knees and bounce up and down while clapping his hands. He ends up getting so excited he will often fall over backwards.

So Constantine turned 8 months old on Sunday 

His first tooth has just barely erupted from his gums. He seems to be a bit more interested in solids now that he has his first tooth. Not that the tooth is much help to him while eating, it's still just barely peaking out of the gums. But it sort of seems like maybe a switch clicked in his head when he started getting his tooth and he's starting to get the whole concept of eating (I think he just assumed that food was for playing with before.) He seems to love broccoli. Lol, didn't inherit that from me.

He's still getting over his cold, he has a runny nose and crankier than usual (though that could be teething causing that too, I suppose).

He started babbling last month, but I haven't heard it from him for a couple weeks now. He seems to have a habit of trying out a new milestone a few times, and then waiting several weeks to start doing it seriously.

Here are some baby pictures, some of the very first ones taken with my new camera:




 

( more pictures! )

 

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The baby is sick again. (I say again because he was perfectly healthy for the first six months of his life and now this is the second time he's been sick in two months.) My FIL thinks he may have a sinus infection from the way he's been shaking his head back and forth and he has a really horrible sounding raspy cough. He's had a cough for about a week now (started off really mild the first few days) but has only been really sick since Thursday night/Friday morning. I am concerned because the cough just keeps sounding worse. I think I will call his ped tomorrow (why does he always get sick on the weekends?) and see what she says.

Here's a video of him that I took a couple weeks ago and have been meaning to post:

In the video he is laughing hysterically because his uncle is pulling and pushing his straw in and out of his drink. For some reason he only found it hilarious when it was this uncle doing it. If we tried doing the same thing with a straw, not funny at all.

And here is one we took today of him laughing at his dad being silly.

It is time for some Easter baby pictures.  I am actually only a couple days late posting these, not over a week, as we observe the Orthodox Easter which was this last Sunday. 




( more pictures! )

The car is still at the mechanic's.  They're having a hard time figuring out what the problem is because it's not dying for them.  I don't think they've driven it far enough, because it's only happened to us when we've driven 8 miles or so, but I think they've only tried driving three or four.

But....we now have a theory as to what's the problem.  They think it could be that we've been using Costco gas.  Apparently, they've had other people bring their cars in with issues after they've been fillled with Costco gas. They said we should do one tank of Chevron for every two Costco.  But I've been googling and I see it seems to be a common problem to get bad gas mileage with Costco gas.  The one time we calculated it, we got horrible gas mileage, like 20 miles to a gallon when we should have been getting at least 27, if not better.  And people are talking about getting up to 25% better mileage with non-Costco gas, so that could definitely explain the discrepancy.  We'll have to see what happens with a tank of Chevron.   We might never get Costco gas again.  It's not really worth saving $.10 a gallon if it reduces your fuel efficiency by 25%.

Well, I really hope this is what the problem is.  I'm using the in-laws car for now. I feel bad because it's a huge inconvenience for them, MIL is having to take the bus to her two jobs and to make me feel even worse, my transportation duties was canceled yesterday at the last minute.  It was still helpful to have to go get my TB test read, but I feel bad that I borrowed if from them and then it turned out I didn't even have to have it.

Matthew is going to get the car this afternoon, fill it up with Chevron gas, then drive it 8 miles or so, take it back to the mechanics and see if he is able to re-start it after he shuts it off and then that way if it does die they'll be able to look at it right away and figure out the problem.  But I really hope it is just the Costco gas.

( much cuteness this way... )

So the only good thing about getting stranded at the daycare was that it gave baby the opportunity to try out a swing for the first time ever.

Here is baby swinging without the "whoosh":



Now, here is baby swinging with the "whoosh":



Obviously the whoosh makes swinging so much more fun.

Have you heard of Quorn?  It's a vegetarian food that is made out of a kind of fungus and then used to make fake meat products instead of using soy.  I needed a veggie meal today to eat with my family, who were eating ribs.  It was the only meat substitute I could find at the store so I bought a box.

Quorn's motto is "it might just surprise you..."  Yeah, it for sure surprised me.  The nuggets were covered in a very thick layer of mold.  They had completely turned green/black. Very gross.  Now I'm looking up quorn and I'm finding that it's not really accurate to say it comes from mushrooms, apparently it is more similiar to mold.  I assume they don't intend for the mold to completely take over the product and grow all over it though.

It sounds like a pretty controversial product in the U.S., while people in Europe eat it without a second thought.

I am pretty sure that will be my one and only experience with quorn.

Stupid internet is telling me it is 33°F outside, but that cannot be true because it is beautiful outside.  Just beautiful.  There is no way it could be so sunny and so beautiful and still be 33°F, please tell me it isn't so!!!!!

What a mean trick to play on someone, having a gorgeous spring day with a 33°F temp.  Of course, there's still time for it warm up, but still.

And why can't I unbold my font, stupid LJ.

So today Constantine went to Grandma's house and was so excited to see that Grandma had bought him a big, red ball!




 

( more pictures... )

Here's a couple video clips I made yesterday of the baby eating his oatmeal.





He really doesn't look like he is enjoying it much. Baby oatmeal is the blandest stuff ever, and I actually like eating plain oatmeal (the normal adult stuff of course). I started adding cinnamon in it today which makes it taste a lot better, at least I think so, and hopefully baby agrees.

Last night we all went to a talk by the president of Gonzaga University about Physics and the existence of God. The baby behaved himself pretty well. He just sat on Matthew's lap quietly for the longest time staring at everyone and then when I noticed he was starting to get bored I pulled out one of his toys, and he was quiet for awhile after that. I finally took him out when I noticed he was starting to get hungry and we hung out in the hallway for a bit. I took him back in and tried sitting near the back and Constantine tried flirting with a girl that was sitting next to us. He started off by giving her huge adorable baby grins. When that didn't get her attention, he started making cute little cooing noises at her. So I took him back out since I didn't want him to distract anyone. I think he liked being out in the hallway better, since then all the girls that were walking by would smile and coo at him and he'd give them big grins in return. He is definitely a flirt.

After the talk was over we were starving so we decided to splurge and go to an Indian restaurant. When they set the curries on the table, before we realized what was happening, the baby had stuck his fingers in one. He screamed. We had to pull his fingers out of the dish, which I don't get, because he definitely seemed to be crying because the dish was too hot, so why didn't he pull his hand back himself? Do babies not have the whole automatic withdrawl reflex that adults have going for them if they touch something hot?

The curry really wasn't that hot. To me it felt uncomfortably hot, but definitely not painfully hot. I'm guessing that being a baby he's a little more sensitive to hot temperatures, because he was definitely screaming like he was in pain, tears running down his cheeks, the poor thing. I felt so bad for him and I'm so glad the curry wasn't any hotter than it was.