woof! woof woof!

We’re making a valiant effort to keep Patrick’s toy collection relatively battery- and computer-chip-free, but you can’t keep a boy from liking what he likes.  And, sure enough, his favorite book is the one with the built-in sound effects.  It’s called Woof, and it’s a board book featuring pictures of dogs–as well as a little button that, when pressed, makes an arfing sound.  Patrick has figured out how to push the button himself and likes to imitate the barking by going, “Uh!  Uh uh!”

Good grief, the other toy in this picture is a sound-and-light extravaganza, too.

Patrick the Biped

Crawling remains his favored mode of locomotion, but drunken staggering is a close second.

Walking Short

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(Snow would like you to notice that she walks very well, too–without anyone making any kind of big fuss about it.)

Glee!

Back in June when we were in St. Louis, we found a nice toy store that happened to sell a little noisemaker Patrick had really liked playing with at the Children’s Museum.  We got it for him, and it inspired one of the funniest faces I’ve ever seen him make.

Wiggly Smile

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It’s a big dog party!

On Saturday we took Patrick to the Reliant Park World Series of Dog Shows, a huge canine extravaganza that features breed judging, agility, flyball, Frisbee, and something I’d never seen before: weight pull.  The biggest hit for Patrick was an activity called “Meet the Breed,” where each hour several different breeds were available for petting.  Here he is meeting a smooth collie and a Scottie.

Ferberizing our OPAC*

Well, we finally had to give in and go hardcore with the sleep training.  A couple of weeks ago, we went out and bought Richard Ferber’s Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems and Marc Weissbluth’s Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, and implemented the Ferber plan of “progressive waiting.”  Yes, this is the one where you let the kid cry, while trying not to cry yourself.  (My mom assures me that this is a method parents have been using for centuries.  But Dr. Ferber provides a chart.)

And then a miracle occurred.

Patrick has been sleeping, really and truly sleeping, all night long.  He still isn’t too keen on the actual going to bed part (in fact, now he hates not only his crib but his entire room), but he almost always falls sound asleep within ten minutes and often within five.  And when he wakes up at night, he can settle himself down without parental intervention.  You cannot imagine what a difference this has made.  (Well, unless you’ve gone through this yourself, which I know a lot of people have.)

*Outstanding, Perfectly Adorable Child.  You librarians get the joke, right?  Catalogers??

Retreat, retreat!

Good grief, I’ve been neglecting the blog for so long that I’m lucky I remembered the password.  Sorry about that.

Over Fourth of July weekend, we attended couple of days of a weeklong annual retreat held by a group of long-time Bennett family friends.  It was a lot of fun, much like a big family reunion, and I enjoyed meeting people I’ve been hearing about for years, as well as showing off Patrick to a very appreciative audience.

The retreat was held at a tennis ranch (I say that as if it’s a common term, but I’d never heard of such a thing before), which made Patrick happy because there were tennis balls everywhere.

Balancing act

Patrick is a little closer to walking, as he has just in the past day or two developed the ability to stand unassisted for several seconds at a time.  He’s still too astonished by this to do much about it, but I’m sure he’ll figure out the next step–so to speak–sooner or later.

Rendezvous on the Mississippi

Last weekend we met up with Nana Pat for a working vacation (work for me, vacation for everyone else) in St. Louis.  I was attending the annual conference of the American Theological Library Association, and I bribed my mom to co-present a session with me by offering a couple of days of grandson time.  It worked like a charm: I got her expertise for my roundtable discussion, and she got two days of sightseeing and hanging out with Patrick.

Check-up…check!

Patrick had his nine-month check-up today and did very well.  He entertained himself in the waiting room by pushing a chair around and was generally on good behavior.  (It’s a lot easier to take a kid to the doctor when said kid isn’t actually sick.)  His stats were right on target: 20.00 lbs, just shy of 30 inches tall (though the height measuring technique the nurse used looked to have a significant margin of error).

Everyone kept telling him he didn’t have to get any shots during this visit, but that seemed like false advertising, since he did have to get stuck by a needle for a routine test.  This being health care in America, we had to go to another part of the clinic and hang out in another waiting room for the lab, but Patrick did enjoy playing with the pager they gave us (it’s like waiting to have your blood drawn at Applebee’s).

Mind your manners

Another visit to the Children’s Museum of Houston today.  The Tot Spot was pretty crowded, but Patrick played happily for well over an hour, and Micah and I had fun watching him (and, I admit, playing with the blocks–I love blocks).  It’s really interesting to watch the little kids interact with each other.  They have very little sense of boundaries or personal space, so they’re always colliding with each other, but mostly they’re cool with it.  Patrick committed only one major social faux pas: he took a little girl’s admission sticker and ate it.

But he did display very fine etiquette at the tea party.