Pre-Simon June House Progress (June 1 - June 14)

For the first two weeks of June we continued living in the house while the construction continued and more and more of our house became unusable.  By the time we headed to the hospital on the 14th for the beginning of labor we were pretty much reduced to just our bedroom and the bathroom.

On June 8 they built out the frame for a big window in the temp kitchen (which will eventually be a small family room off of the kitchen)

Play time!

Simon loves his play mat. I don't know if he realizes that it is his hands that make the hanging toys move, but he sure likes it when they do! He isn't much of a fan of tummy time on the mat yet. Though he definitely has the crawling motions down he isn't quite strong enough to support his weight for long and he doesn't have the know-how to spread his hands to distribute the weight.

Basement Floor (May 19 - June 1)

I just realized I hadn't posted any house pics since May, which means it's time for a ton of house construction posts to catch up.

First up, let's jump back to the end of May for the basement floor.  It had been just wet sand since they tore up the old concrete earlier in the year, but now that the foundation was finished and the sewer and water pipes were in place they could pour the new floor.

Our basement in May 2011: wet sand and the occasional pit

Picture of the Day: 8/21/11

Simon shows off his "Cubs Fan" face

Poor Little Boy! (aka 2 Month Dr Visit)

Simon had his 2 month doctor visit on Friday and got a weigh in. I thought he was close to 15 pounds. He almost doubled his weight the first month so I figured he'd come close to doing the same in his second. He didn't. He gained on average an ounce a day - which is nothing to scoff at I suppose. He is now 11 pounds and 13 oz (at 1 month he was 9lbs 8oz). He is now in the 50th percentile in both height and weight.

Unfortunately, his 2 month doctor visit is also when he get a first round of vaccines. Four as shots and one orally. The poor guy held up to the shots quite nicely. (It was more traumatizing to dad who had to hold him while the nurse gave him the shots.) A few horrified moments when he tried to figure out what was going on, a couple unhappy shouts and then nursing and his first shots were done without much drama. Or so we thought...

Guy Smiley

Right on schedule, Simon is learning how to smile.  He first started trying it out when Grandma Cindy and Grandpa Ken were visiting at the end of July, but it was rare and his smiles were still fairly small.  While I was watching him alone on August 5 so Emily could enjoy a well-deserved night out (interestingly enough, the same night these pictures were taken), he showed me his big new open-mouthed smile for the first time.  That was the last time we saw that look for a while though... the next week he was back to just the occasional little grin.  At one point that week Grandma Kiki was in the backseat of the car with him while he was in the car seat practicing his smile, and she managed to snap the first (I think?) picture of his new expression:

Hey, this is so much easier than frowning!

And suddenly last weekend he must have finally felt confident with it, because he has started smiling a LOT.  He seems to do it the most in the early mornings after he's fully woken up, but we're starting to see it at other times of the day now as well.  It's so rewarding to get a big smile when you're talking to him or playing with him.  Now we don't need to guess when we're making him happy because he can tell us in a way that we can understand.

Pictures and videos of our beaming little boy after the jump...

Napping on the Boppy?

The other day Simon was super cranky for some reason and Emily was trying whatever she could to calm him down.  Finally she figured out that he could lie on his belly draped over the Boppy... combined with his pacifier, this seemed to make him pretty happy.

Yelling all day is so tiring

Click through to check in with him to see how much he's enjoying it two minutes later ...