Niklas used to love these.







Pictures
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • 2008-2009
  • 2007-2008
  • 2006-2007


  • News
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • 2008-2009
  • 2007-2008
  • 2006-2007
  • 2007-01-01: We took Niklas over to Jared, Dana and Aaron's house for New Year's Eve. Dave and Malia were also there with their three week old, Layla. The three babies quickly formed a Legion of Doom type alliance wherein one or two of them would be crying at any point during the evening. In support of this, Niklas decided to forgo his usual 6:30 bedtime. He was still up when the party broke up at the very new-parenty hour of 11:00. Still, a good time was had by all. Niklas says that even though 2006 was unequivocally the greatest year in the history of his life, he has high hopes for 2007 and he wishes everyone a very happy new year. Also, the Legion of Doom will likely crush us all by 2008.

    Here are a couple of cell phone pictures. The first is from Christmas Eve and features Niklas trying to eat his own hand. The second was taken last night and is the last picture of Niklas taken in 2006.





    All of the December news has been archived here. There are also a few new pictures up here.


    2007-01-02: Andrya is taking this week off from work, so Niklas is having a good time hanging out with his mommy. Today, they took a walk, played in the bouncy seat and navigated the dangerous waters of the living room floor in the boat-gym type thing. Niklas even had his first giggle. He really likes it when Andrya claps his feet together. Why that's funnier than the jokes about 80's TV stars I've been regaling him with, I don't know. I pity the fool who doesn't find Mr. T funny. Pity!

    Sources (Andrya, mostly) report that Niklas was remarkably unfussy all day. This, of course, came to a dramatic end when I came home and gave him a bath. Even though he's typically down for a fun aquatic adventure involving the occasional hair washing, he screamed at me as though I were cat and he was a guy who was really, really enraged by cats for some reason. Maybe a cat had conspired to steal this hypothetical guy's family home, who knows. Anyway, Niklas was displaying the full might of his rage face. Then Andrya rocked him for a while and he went to sleep. I'm pretty sure he was messing with me. I'll have my revenge, Niklas. When you least expect it, but most likely after you're able to expect things.


    2007-01-04: Niklas often requires a diaper change right before I leave for work in the morning, right around 7:30. Would you believe 7:45? 8:15 it is, then. Anyway, this morning when I took off his diaper, it was only wet. This is pretty normal as the 8:00 hour is not a particulary poopy time of day for him and he had taken what may very well have been the biggest crap of his life a couple of hours before. After I had cleaned him up and dried him off, I put the new diaper under him. He proceded to poop all over that. He loves that game. I gave him a couple of minutes to finish up and cleaned him up again. Where he's been stockpiling poop, I don't know, but he's had a ton of it the last couple of days. To reinforce this, he then deposited a few pounds of poop on the changing pad, carpet and, depressingly, my pants. Then he grinned at me in a "Ha! I just got poop on you!" kind of way. Then I had to go to work in second-string pants.


    2007-01-05: Niklas has recently graduated to the size 3 diaper. This change was neccessitated not so much by his increased bulk (though he is packing plenty of that) as by the Target's failure to stock adequate supplies of size 2 diapers. Nonetheless, it's good that we've made this change as Poops MaGee has been generating waste enough to fill a hypothetical size 8 diaper. By the time he gets to the top end of the size 3 range (24 pounds, I think), we're going to have to duct tape a trash bag around his waist to catch all of the overflow.




    2007-01-08: Niklas had a pretty eventful weekend. Minal and Rajan brought their son Jai (who is two and a half) over to meet Niklas on Saturday. Niklas thoroughly enjoyed watching Jai behave like a typical two year old. I, on the other hand, saw the future and was afraid.

    Niklas has started grabbing his feet. This is very important as it will help him to defend his socks against Bangles the Hippopotamaroo.



    Hippopotamarai come from an island in the South Atlantic. They have the upper body of a hippopotamus and the legs and tail of a kangaroo. They are purple with green spots and are renowned for their sock stealing abilities. What they do with the socks is unclear, but several mariners have reported seeing hot air balloons made up of tiny bits of multicolored cloth moving quickly across the horizon. Hippopotamarai have also been rumored to knit the stolen socks into coats for the homeless. Whatever their scheme is, remember: a hippopotamaroo will not hesitate to steal your socks.

    There are a few new pictures up. Check them out here.


    2007-01-09: Niklas had a good day today. Books were read (by Tammy, not Niklas I assume) toes were grabbed, ships were captained and poop was pooped. Tammy also took Niklas on trip to the bookstore wherein he did not act a fool. For those scoring at home, the bookstore is popular, the Pizza Hut is not. He's ambivalent toward the bank.


    2007-01-11: There's been a good deal of fussing going on lately. As is per usual, Niklas went to bed around 6:30 yesterday. Instead of sleeping through the night until about 3:00 as he typically does, he woke up yelling at 11:30, 1:00 and 2:30. I suspect that this is part of a ridiculously convoluted plan for world domination that starts with Andrya and I not getting any sleep. Or maybe he's just acting like a baby, who knows? This morning, Andrya said that he hadn't woken up so often in the night since "he was little". It's hard to believe how much he's changed in the last four months. He's bigger, louder, cuter and, most certainly, more devious.


    2007-01-14: There must be something good on TV at 5:00 in the morning because Niklas is fairly insistent upon waking up then. I guess it's possible that he wants to start some marathon training or something, but seeing as how he's my son, the TV thing is much more likely. Other than that, he had a pretty good weekend. Saturday involved a lot of hanging out and playing which elicited a lot of smiles and a bit of laughter. Later, when Andrya and I went to check on him before we went to bed, he was asleep with both of his legs up in the air. That was kind of funny. Then he farted which took it up from "kind of" to "extremely" funny. I'm easily amused. Today was much of the same but with a lot more spitting up. He eats about five ounces at a time, six times a day. I would guess that he kept about half of that down today. This led to some spectacular messes which he seemed pleased with.

    There are a few new pictures up. Check them out here.


    2007-01-16: Niklas has followed up his awful, awful stretch of night time screaming at irregular but frequent intervals with two nights of waking up at 4:00 and then 7:15 or so. Unless he's sleeping all the way through the night, that's about as good as it gets. In unrelated news, I owe Niklas $200. He's off to the doctor's office today for his four month checkup. I'll post a report on that as details become available. I expect to find out that buying him summer clothes in the 12 month size was a sucker move.


    2007-01-17: Niklas's doctor's appointment went very well. He now weighs 15 pounds, 15 ounces, is 25 inches tall and has a head circumference of 41.8 cm. Why the doctor mixes english and metric measurements is a mystery. At least they used inches instead of hands or something. Anyway, Dr. Sharma was impressed with Niklas's strength and motor skills. I'm sure she was impressed with his cuteness, too, but she didn't mention that. She probably didn't want to upset all of the ugly babies in the office.


    2007-01-18: I forgot to mention yesterday that the doctor's visit also included shots. Though still not popular with The Niklas, there was much less yelling this time around. In other news, Andrya had an early meeting this morning so Niklas and I did some hanging out. After not spitting up all day yesterday, Niklas tried to make up for that all in one shot by puking up an estimated 12 ounces of milk. I wasn't a huge fan of hardwood floors before he was born, but I imagine that if we had carpet in the living room we would have to invest in a steam cleaner. Other than that, a good time was had by all.


    2007-01-22: Niklas had quite the eventful weekend. I missed it all as I was in Minneapolis discovering that the people of Minnesota are much, much better than me at hockey. Much better. One day, I'll have my son avenge me. I'm putting Niklas on a strict training regimen tomorrow.

    There are a few new pictures up on the pictures page.

    Friday
    Niklas is not a big fan of change. Usually, when he wakes up to eat, I'll take care of his diaper before handing him off to Andrya. Since I was out of town, Andrya was on diaper duty as well. This new development apparently enraged Niklas, though not so much that he didn't want to eat. I don't think there's enough rage in the world to distract him from eating. In Minnesota, I had a dream that Niklas spit up on me. I get the crazy feeling that this will be one of those dreams that actually comes to pass.

    Saturday
    Andrya discovered that you can now distract Niklas from his random bouts of daytime fussiness with either toys or a game of peek-a-boo. Bibs, it would seem, are good for peek-a-boo. I don't have a picture, but I did put together this mock-up.



    Niklas's Grandma Meeker came up to spend time with him while Andrya was a shower for Aaron. Niklas had so much fun that he didn't want to take a nap. He also set a new record for the amount of spit up on the floor at a given time.

    Sunday
    Niklas got to hang out with his Grandma a bit more on Sunday. Then, Andrya read him a couple of books and they played on the floor. A good time was had by all (except for me as I was stuck in a traffic jam in Wisconsin). I got home after he went to bed, so I was a little sad that I didn't get to hang out with him. When I peeked in at him sleeping, though, he stuck his legs over his head and rolled around a bit. I like to think that was a "hello" from behind the wall of sleep.


    2007-01-25: Niklas has declared a vendetta against the floor over the last few days. I am his unwilling accomplice in this campaign. This is partially due to changes in his poop schedule. A couple of months ago, he would only poop between about 10:00 in the morning and 2:00 in the afternoon. This was awesome for me, because I was at work and thus only had to deal with poop on the weekends. Last month, he switched this up and started pooping between three in the morning and noon or so. He would usually go while Andrya was giving him his three o'clock feeding, so I was able to dodge that one as well. Now, though, he's pooping when he gets up at six. This shouldn't be a problem, but I've managed to imcompetence it into quite a mess.

    To wit, on Tuesday, he woke up crying at six. The first thing I do when he gets up is change his diaper, so I put him on his changing table. Before I had a chance to take his diaper off, he started to poop. "Success!" I thought in my naivete (or, if you will, stupidity). I waited for him to finish, then whipped off the diaper hoping, apparently, to set some sort of speed record for diaper changing. Sadly, I had not allocated enough time for the diaper to absorb the recently deposited poop so it flew out the side of the diaper and onto the carpet.

    Who learns from mistakes? Me*, that's who. On Wednesday, he once again pooped as soon as I put him on the changing table. After my experience the previous day, I waited a while for the diaper to suck up the poop. So long, in fact, that the poop leaked out the back of the diaper, through his sleeper and then onto the changing pad. I accepted my defeat and took that diaper off. Before I could put the new one on, he pooped again. I managed to get out of the way, but the carpet lacks my cat** like reflexes.

    Third time's the charm, right? It is, if by "charm" you mean "third day in a row that poop gets everywhere". This morning, I decided that I would change him as soon as he was done pooping while at the same time being extremely cautious with the diaper that contained a bunch of free flowing baby crap. I successfully removed the diaper and set it down next to the changing pad while holding his legs so as to keep his poop covered butt up in the air. I was unsuccessful in keeping poop from dripping off of his butt onto the changing pad. I was also unsucessful in keeping poop from leaking out of the diaper while I cleaned Niklas up. I was quite dismayed to see a spot of poop on the floor. I was more dismayed to see that it was caused by a stream of crap running from diaper down the front of the dresser.

    *this is often not the case.
    **the cat in question is probably very fat and a little drunk. old, too.


    2007-01-26: No poop on the carpet today! Cue the Queen. On the other hand, this success was balanced by rage the likes of which has not been seen since 1996 or so. Niklas woke up this morning at about 5:15 and started screaming. How long can a baby scream? Our policy is that he's not allowed to get up before six, so at least 45 minutes. He settled down for a little bit, but by the time I left for work, he was back to yelling. Maybe he's auditioning for the role of the Schoolmaster in some sort of production of The Wall. Anyway, here's an artist's conception of Niklas this morning:




    2007-01-29: I suspect that life might be easier if we just soaked Niklas's clothes in milk before we put them on him. That way, he might not feel so obligated to spit up all over everything. The past weekend was an extravaganza of puke the likes of which, I'm confident, has never been seen. Also, Poops Magee has reduced the number of poops he takes in a day, but not the total volume. This has led to a couple of spectacular diaper overflows that laid waste to sleepers, sleep sacks and sheets.

    Niklas rolled himself onto his back from his stomach on Saturday. He seemed quite perplexed after he did it, so I don't know if we can expect a repeat anytime soon. When he was real little (also, dark haired and pointy-headed) he would roll from his back onto his side or stomach, but only when he was asleep.

    There are some new pictures up. Note the lack of dark hair and pointy-head these days.


    2007-01-31: I have no issues with my socks, nor does Andrya. However, we weren't completely able to pass this non-sock hatred onto our son (Niklas, I may have mentioned him here before). Niklas has no problem with his right sock, but he's been kicking his left sock off at every opportunity. It's not an exaggeration to say I put his right sock on his foot ten times before work yesterday. You might say "why did you keep putting the sock on if he's only going to kick it off twenty seconds later?" I would then say to you, "shut it, I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately." Later, we would both apologize and have cocoa.