Musical Babies.

My husband and I met in college, on the dorm floor. As in, we were neighbors... on the music floor. Yes, Temple University has an entire floor devoted to its music and dance students. This is an overdramatic mess. But it's sort of fun, too... if you don't mind someone playing trumpet in the common room at 1 a.m. every few days.

In any case, my husband has both a performance and education degree in music, and I have a minor (I switched to journalism after 1.5 years of voice. Opera star? Seriously?). My point in this is really that with two musical parents, Gabriel is destined to be surrounded with... surround sound.

And he loves music. He dances on demand (Literally, we say, "Dance," and off he goes). He loves every little piece we have played for him, from classical to jazz to folk to plain old radio. It's wonderful, and we look forward to fostering his love of music wherever it takes him.

One little thing my husband discovered that is a real hit? The video below. There are quite a few of these videos on youtube-- classical pieces dissected by meticulous music theory students and illustrated with pain-staking detail. But the videos are musical in presentation, AND they keeps baby quite engaged. Something that our television does not do (oh how proud I am that my baby is not interested in television)! I love that it tantalizes Gabe's ears and eyes together.

So, check it out~ it's fun for adults, too.

Teaching Gabriel to Love Animals.

I feel very responsible for how Gabriel will act toward nature as he grows. It might seem like overkill, but I am already teaching him about animals as we read books, walk outside, and play with his toys. More importantly, I am teaching him to love animals by petting them with him and explaining why each animal is special as we discover them together. Why not, right?

I tend to think simple things like telling him and showing him how to "be gentle with the dog," will go a long way because I have been showing him from an early age. I am not going to lie-- having a kid who treats animals harshly and roughly is a nightmare of mine. It would just break my heart.




Anyway, other than dogs, Gabriel particularly loves penguins. He kisses me, my husband, and his penguin quite often. (Yesterday my Mom (his MomMom) was talking to Gabe on the phone and she told him to "kiss Mommy," so he kissed the phone. So that makes four things in our home he has kissed. And I can add the word 'kiss' to the list of words he understands, while 'Mommy' is still not on it!) He particularly likes it if I make the penguin waddle across the floor to him while making honking noises.

In other news, Gabe is very into standing alone lately. Will he walk before he turns one? I can't wait to find out!!

Can someone please explain...

Why MUST Gabriel crawl into the kitchen?



I mean, really. He MUST do this. Almost as much as he MUST stick his hand in the VCR. These are apparently things he just has to do or else he will flail on the ground in perilous tears (oh, hi temper tantrums!).

But if he gets to crawl on that tile... well, he sure is happy.

I really cannot handle how much older he is starting to look.

Riding in Cars with Babies

Let's just start at the very beginning, shall we? Our trip to Shenandoah National Park commenced on Friday in the early afternoon. David, my husband, took a half day, and I picked him up from the train to get a speedy start.

Well, speedy is not the word to use for our ride to Virginia on the Friday prior to Memorial Day. We crawled our way around Baltimore to I-81 South with a screaming baby, stopping three times for him to nurse and once to eat dinner over our ten-hour (from the time Goober was strapped in to pick up his Daddy from work) excursion.

Gabe looking fresh and happy after one of his three breaks on our ride down to VA.

Honestly, things went all right, but Gabe needed serious entertainment the entire time. As in, read me a book, talk to me, play peek-a-boo, show me how to clap and make me clap, play with me, give me different toys every 5 minutes, hum and bob your head to my favorite Baby Einstein CD, no-I-will-not-take-a-nap, entertainment.

Luckily, as he started to fuss from the ear-popping changes as we hit the rise in elevation up to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Skyline Drive, I grabbed a bottle for him to suck. And it quieted him down and soothed him so that my poor husband could focus on the somewhere around two feet of visibility in front of our car at 9 p.m. Ironically, my parents pulled out of the Skyland Resort's parking lot (where they, all of my sisters and parents ate dinner because they all got there way ahead of us) as we scuttled along the Drive to the Big Meadows Lodge (where we all stayed), and my Dad was particularly impressed with Dave's driving in fog/cloud skills. My husband is unusually talented at no street lamp mountain fog driving. I'd say that's a great skill to have.

A view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from the Skyline Drive

The drive home was much, much better. I credit that to Gabe's behavior always being better earlier in the day, the fact that Gabe took two naps on the way home, and that the traffic was drastically reduced. We also were able to enjoy the complete drive and views along Shenandoah's Sklyline Drive on the way home, which we could not remotely see on the way to the lodge.

I will say that Gabe, was not always the most behaved on the way home... when he wants to be held, he does not take "We'll get to the next exit for you to nurse, honey," very well. You can see that whole picture below.


Anyway, it took us just over six and one half hours to get home, stopping just once per Gabe's feeding cues-- much better than the original ten!

My husband, Gabe, and I have all been pretty tired since we got home. Gabe went down to bed by 9 p.m. last night *gasp* and only got up once to nurse around 11:30, and then slept on until 7 a.m. I went to bed at 9:30 p.m., which is usually impossible and extremely unlike me to do. I still felt exhausted 7 a.m., and I am very tired now. My husband is in the middle of a summer semester of grad school, so add in all his driving over the past week with work stress, grad papers, and being a Dad/husband, and you can imagine how tired he is right now. So we're all headed to bed! We've got another roadtrip coming up in August when we go on vacation to Vermont so we'll see how that ride goes.

As for Shenandoah, I'll be posting so much more on the specifics of our trip. It was a beautiful weekend. **Spoiler Alert** My husband and I even got to do a 3.3 mile hike by ourselves!

To the mountains!

We're off to Virginia tomorrow afternoon for a weekend with family in Shenandoah National Park. I'm sure I'll have a myriad of posts Monday onward regarding our travels.

In any case, we are driving southbound in the Memorial Day traffic mayhem, and what I''m worried about more than traffic is how our Goober is going to handle a six hour roadtrip.

We've got books, we've got toys, we've got music, and we've got our good looks (snicker), but regardless, we're heading up, up, up in elevation. Even an amused baby boy can have a hard time adjusting to the ear-popping changes.

One way to help with changing elevation? Nurse or feed your baby as you rise. Nursing works in air travel, but obviously, that's not safe or legal in a car. If in a car, you can use a bottle. The suction should help level things out for the baby.

I'm packing a bottle with us for the trip to the mountains. I'll let you know if we need it and/or if it works in soothing Gabriel during the transition!

Bon Voyage to our little family. I'll be back Monday!