Already as tall as his dad?

Well, not quite, but he does have a new vantage point on walking trips now.  Calvin has pretty much outgrown the sling and the front carrier, and he sits in the stroller just fine, but it's hard to see the zoo animals from that position, not to mention that strollers don't do park paths very well, so we got him a backpack instead.  He loves it.  We tried this new method of travel while out for our evening walk Monday night and you'd think we'd given him a space shuttle!  He reached for every tree as it passed him by, continually poked and grabbed at his dad's hair and neck, and laughed and chatted the whole walk (a great step up from his usual zombie-like behavior when riding in the stroller).  It was clear that he could see the ducks better when we got to the pond, too.  Of course it's now cold again, but we're sure outdoor weather is just around the corner and this will definitely be our first choice for outdoor travel from now on!

Swimming lessons

Today we celebrate an important milestone in our lives:  as of today Calvin has been out longer than he has been in (think about it - you'll understand).  Actually, it's more of a realization than it is a celebration, really.  In fact, today would have been just like any other day if we hadn't already had something really cool scheduled:  swim lessons!  For Calvin, that is.  We've been wanting to do this for a long time and were excited from the minute we woke up this morning.  Unfortunately the class time really bites into Calvin's morning nap time, and that meant that we had to get him up after only 30 minutes of sleep (instead of his normal 2 hours) to put him in the car and head to the pool.  The shortened nap time probably contributed to the wariness he exhibited as he and his mom headed into the water.  We were just sure that he would love swimming because he loves his bath so much, but the first five minutes were actually pretty iffy.  As Cortney held him, swaying him with the water up to his chest the way the instructor showed, we were a little concerned to see him begin to pout with a very concerned look on his face.  The other six babies seemed to be loving it!  Only Calvin had some reservations.  But after we spent a few minutes of "close circle time" where the babies toes were all touching, he really seemed to get into it.  In true Calvin fashion he refused to crack a smile during most of the half hour class, but we have come to accept that our child takes discovery quite seriously, and the fact that he spent nearly his entire time in the pool with a stern look of steady concentration glued on his face doesn't mean that he didn't have fun.  On the contrary, it means that he was so excited about what he was doing and learning that he just couldn't take time out to smile!  That's our Calvin.  And in the last ten minutes, while playing with a floating octopus, he finally got comfortable enough to start kicking and splashing the way he does almost nightly in his bath water.  Strangely enough, it was about this time that all the other babies had lost their patience with the  event and started whining or crying.  Calvin, however, was just warming up, and he even cracked a smile for us during the "up and down" activity at the very end.  Survey says?  Success.  We can't wait for next week when daddy takes his turn in the water!  And, of course, there are lots more pictures in the Calvin's 38th week photo album.

Halloween down on the farm

Thankfully last week's snow turned out to be just a teaser, and today a bit of true fall visited the area:  bright blue sky, wispy clouds, temperatures nearing 60, and a light, crisp autumn breeze.  We were on our way to the grocery store to stock our pantry and deck our front porch with pumpkins when we decided to completely reschedule our day in order to enjoy the beautiful fall weather.  What were we thinking, trying to buy pumpkins from the grocery store when there is a famous pumpkin patch literally two minutes down the street from us???  So instead of cleaning and lazing about after unloading groceries (sans pumpkins) we headed off to Wiard's Orchard for Calvin's first taste of this fun fall activity.  What an amazing way to spend a fall day!  There were animals (which Calvin is too young to pet), basic carnival games and activities (which Calvin is too young to take part in), and, of course, fresh cider and donuts (which Calvin is too young to ingest).  What Calvin could do was play with pumpkins, and this he found fascinating - until he found it exhausting, after which he merely conked out and slept through the rest of our visit.  But whether he enjoyed it or not, we did, and we even came home with a small family of pumpkins (not from the national chain store, but from our local centennial+ farm) that we chose directly from the patch (the Halloween equivalent of cutting down your own Christmas tree, just warmer).  And fall really lends itself to beautiful pictures the way that no other season does, so we also came home with a plethora of photographs, a favored handful of which we have posted in Calvin's nineteenth week album to share (yes, those are just a handful).  We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

A Saturday down on the farm...

The actually sleepless nights, the kind where we truly get NO sleep, don't come along very often, but last night was one of them.  We'd like to say that it was because we were out partying, but we'll have to blame it on the aftermath of the vaccines.  Calvin whimpered through a lot of the night and constantly wanted to nurse, mostly for comfort.  So much for his "big boy" status!
But this morning brought a bright, new, promising day - at 5:30.  Babies, probably children in general, have no respect for Saturdays as sleep in days.  So, with the weight of that realization upon us, we decided to take advantage of our early wakefulness by going...garage sale-ing.  Isn't  that what young parents do?  And Calvin got his 2 month old portraits taken before we headed home.  But it was the afternoon that was especially fun.  Earlier in the week we had passed a road side sign for U-pick blackberries and decided that would be a good activity, especially with this weekend's acceptably cool weather.  It reminded Cortney a little of picking raspberries when she was little on her Grammie's farm, and reminded Jon a little of looking for hay in a needle stack.  On the way home we stopped by the local farmer market and picked up Michigan grown dinner.  Michigan grown, yes, but dinner more closely resembled a southern farm meal - Barbecued pork, sweet corn, fried green tomatoes, and homemade blackberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream.  Yum.  Once again, Calvin will have to enjoy it indirectly later.

Yep, we're townies

With the Art Fair looming around the corner, many of the actual locals, or "townies" in A2-speak, are packing up and heading out, if they haven't already. Then there are those who choose to stay and fight for their rights to the town - hence the second annual "townie" party. Well, even though we're now in the outlying township, we still feel like we've never moved away, and being a "townie" is just a state of mind, anyway. So, it was off to the "Ingalls Mall" (who knew that space in front of Rackham had a name?) to celebrate with the rest of the bunch. It turns out that townies are a weird crowd, from the barefoot hippies to the standard local character Shakey Jake to the absolutely unusual at-least-80-year-old man wearing a white top hat but no shirt. But we guess that we fit in alright - we had a dancing baby on the tabletop, after all. Curtis joined us for dinner as well. We all felt badly for the Dutch carillon player up in Burton Tower whose concert of classical bell tolling had to compete for sonic attention with the RFD Boys. Ah, well - we'll have to make it back to another concert in that series later in the summer. We topped off the night by passing the near-empty not-so-local Ben & Jerry's to wait in a local line at local Stucchi's for a local root beer float. In the words of Curtis, holler at your local!