California on the Amstel: Sleep, Jump, Eat

Enzo is napping in his crib so I thought I would take a moment to post an update. I'm sure I will get this started and he will decide to wake up and I will need to finish later. That is my life these days. It is a lot of start and stop. This week our house is pretty quiet as Felipe is in Oregon for work. I am no longer scared of his work trips as I've figured out how to run things pretty smoothly while he's away. It also helps that Enzo is now sleeping through the night. I smile as I type this because a baby's "sleeping through the night" and a sane adult's sleeping through the night schedules are nowhere near the same. Enzo goes to bed around 7 PM and wakes to eat anywhere from 3 to 5 AM. He then goes back to sleep until approximately 7:30 AM. So, he sleeps, usually, for a good eight hour stretch. But, since I cannot get myself to sleep until at least 9 PM, that means I only get six hours. I will not complain though since it is a far cry from the two hour stretches of the early days. Yes, Felipe is gone. We miss him but he'll be back to play with us all weekend so it is really not that bad.

This was before Felipe left. Enzo getting some undivided papa time.

I think I've mentioned in the past how much we love our walks in Vondelpark. It has been a very mild winter so we've been able to take full advantage. Right now they are doing all sorts of maintenance work to get ready for spring and when Enzo is awake I like to point out the different types of machinery to him. The problem with this scenario is that I don't know the difference from a tractor, bulldozer, or thingy that moves rocks. I know, I'm from Nebraska and I really should know these things.

Not sure what you would call this but it is blue and the man operating this piece of machinery is working to make the park pretty for spring....hopefully not too many people are eavesdropping on our conversations.

The poor guy is going to be playing with his friends and as he sees a crane, he will be like, "look at that huge tractor with a hooky thingy". It reminds me of the David Sedaris book that I read a few years ago where he talks about how his father taught him the wrong sounds for what each animal makes. At the time it made me laugh and I am reliving this with my child, only I am not intentionally teaching him the wrong names for maintenance equipment. I may also be teaching Enzo the wrong animal sounds because I know the English sounds, yet we are in the Netherlands so will his International friends think he is crazy with the sort of sounds that his rooster makes? We have a book that reads "Mr. Brown goes moo like a cow" and I always like to add, "or if you are in Amsterdam the cow says Boo".

He is such a happy little guy. Hanging out in his crib while I put clothes away.

Like I said earlier, Enzo did wake up and it's been a week since I started this post. Papa is back and we've had some firsts since I started this post. Last week we had a playdate at another baby's house and Enzo got to try out their jumperoo. He liked it and I've been pondering a new gadget for him at home so as soon as we got home, we went onto Amazon and ordered Enzo his own. It came on Friday morning and he was jumping by Saturday!

This is him trying out the friend's jumperoo.

Here is a video of Enzo trying out his new toy at home. He still has a few things to learn but so far so good.

The other big news around here is regarding Enzo's new found interest in everything we are eating. I've been reading a lot on the internet about solid food introduction. I really wanted to wait until six months but since he is so curious and showing other signs that he is getting ready, I decided to start introducing a small amount of fruits and veggies. I think I am still going to try and hold out on the rice cereal until 6 months, but we'll see how it goes. For the first food I decided to introduce pear. They are very easily digestible, low acidity, and are low on the list to cause an allergy. I also happened to have one in the fruit bowl. I steamed it a bit to soften it up and pureed it with a little breast milk so that it would still have somewhat of a familiar taste. After the first reaction of "what is this?" he seamed to really enjoy his pear. Below are some photos to document the momentous occasion. Ha ha.