Truman at 5 months

I can’t believe we have a 5 month old baby. Where did the time go? Truman is growing up so quickly. This is a snapshot of Truman’s life at 5 months. He loves his exersaucer. He spins around from toy to toy and gets very excited when we watch him play in it. He loves having an audience.

Truman smiles as he monitors the exersaucer's command console.

A quick disclaimer for Hillari: James usually writes the captions for the pictures. Sometimes I write captions too, but if it’s funny, James wrote it.

Truman loves pushing himself up high when he’s on his tummy. He gets such a proud look on his face when he does it, even though it’s really not that hard for him and he does it all the time.

Have you ever been this happy to do push-ups?

With his teeth coming in he likes chewing on things, including his bottom lip, but mostly his fingers and burp cloths. He recently started biting his food source and had to get scolded.

He loves being naked, and now that he doesn’t make shi shi every time his diaper comes off, we can indulge him a bit.

Truman agreed to appear on the blog nude only after the photographer assured him that the pictures would be "artistic."

Truman sleeps on his tummy now. Maybe every baby does after they learn to roll over. For some reason Truman likes to grab things as he falls asleep. He usually holds on to Bink, but unfortunately that leads to him pulling out Bink. Sometimes he can sleep through pulling out his Bink, but it usually wakes him up. Occasionally he grabs his sheets, and that satisfies his grab need, but sometimes we give him a teething ring to hold on to.

Truman started out his nap by holding on to Bink while it was in his mouth, but at some point he pulled it out, dragged it to the edge of his bed, dropped it, and grabbed a crib slat instead.

Holding on to his teething ring

Truman is not quite crawling or scooting yet, but he still gets around. He rolls on to his tummy, turns in his desired direction, and then rolls over a couple more times, and eventually he winds up in some funny places. One day I put him down on his blanket in the middle of the floor so I could use the computer and a minute later I felt something tapping the leg of the chair.  I looked down and guess who was there?

Another day I changed his diaper on the floor in our bedroom and left him there while I threw away the doo doo diaper and rinsed off the clothes he had dirtied. I knew he wouldn’t still be on his changing pad when I got back, but I was surprised to find him under the bed when I walked back in the room.

Truman's expression says it all. "If you don't want me to roll around everywhere, stop dressing me in athletic pants."

Being more mobile also means more trouble. I’m not sure how we’re going to keep him out of things that are off-limits. We have to keep an eye on him, because he is always faster than we think. He has his little rolling and turning routine down pretty well. We look away for a couple of minutes and turn back to find him pulling on wires and pushing buttons on the dvd player.

He looks so innocent.

Truman is one of the most content babies I have ever met. He is smiling, laughing, playing, and babbling all day long. But it’s hard to get a picture of him smiling because he is so interested in electronics. Anytime he sees a camera he immediately stops whatever he was doing to stare at it. All of our pictures of him are either blurry ones of him smiling (he gets a wee bit out of control when he is happy and thrashes around) or ones of him with a somewhat confused look on his face as he studies the camera. Here are some rare shots of him doing what he does most often.

We love this boy! Our lives were so lame before he came along.

Teeth

My mom has been asking for a picture of Truman’s teeth so here it is. This was probably the thirtieth time we tried to get a picture of his teeth. Either the pictures were blurry because he was moving so much or he tried to bite on our fingers when we held his mouth open. So this is the one and only picture of Truman’s first teeth. They’re both a little crooked…we hope they straighten out or we’re going to have a baby Billy Bob on our hands.

Poor guy...his little gums are red and swollen.

Blessing Day

On December 27 James blessed Truman in our ward here and the experience was lovely. My parents and Lexi were the only ones able to come since it’s nearly impossible for James’ family to fly during the holidays and no one can afford to fly out here just for a baby blessing, but we still enjoyed the special day.

btw, our church building is beautiful. There is a long pool in front of a huge Mosaic of Christ. Some people think the mosaic of Christ is strange, but I love it.

Baby blessing outfits are really hard to find outside of Utah, so for a couple of months we had been scouring baby clothes everywhere – Target, Babies R Us, Macy’s, Children’s Place, etc. No luck. We saw lots of white dresses that would have been darling blessing outfits for girls, but the only white baby boy outfits we saw had crosses on them. So we finally settled on a blue outfit for Truman’s blessing. I love seeing it hang on its tiny satin hanger.

Both of Truman’s grandmas have a blessing blanket tradition. James’ mom made a blanket out of her wedding dress and passes it on to each grandbaby to be blessed in and my mom crochets her grandbabies a white blessing blanket. So Truman was quite bundled up for his blessing in 2 blankets made with love by his grandmas.

I was nervous that Truman would be fussy during his blessing because it fell right at his nap time. Since Truman is both abnormally large and abnormally strong for a 3-month-old, and since the blessing circle was quite small, I worried that if he got fussy and put up a fight nobody would be able to keep a hold of him! I should have given Truman more credit – he didn’t make a single peep during the blessing. He had his Bink, which helped, but James said that when he peeked at Truman during the blessing he was just staring at his Bampa. So cute.

This is Truman's blessing outfit. It barely fit him. He's fat, if you didn't know.

The blessing itself was beautiful and very meaningful. I love reading through our notes about it with Truman. Truman is such a special boy and I will always remember his special blessing day.

The last of the holiday photos. A couple of days before Christmas we went to Laie and the Polynesian Cultural Center. We stopped at Chinaman’s Hat on our way to take pictures and find seashells. In Laie we walked around the temple grounds and searched for the statue of the woman who cared for Joseph F. Smith when he was very ill during his mission in Hawaii. Just when we were about to give up we found it back by the picnic tables. We spent all afternoon and evening at the PCC and saw just about everything there was to see. The highlight for me was Kalua pork at dinner…my fave. We saw the new night show and it was awesome. I liked the old one but this one is even better. It was such a fun day and Truman was so good. He even slept all through the night show and the entire drive home.

We spent one long day snorkeling at Hanauma Bay and had so much fun. We saw a turtle, found a really weird coral formation, and got sunburned. Everyone got a few turns going out since we took turns holding Truman. A little known fact is that my mom is not the best swimmer; that might be a tad of an understatement. Yet somehow she taught all of her kids to swim and spent every single day with us either at the community pool or in our pool in our backyard. Anyways, out of concern, my Dad rented a life jacket for her. We all laughed when we realized that the adult life jacket had one of those straps that goes between the legs and snaps in the back…I thought only kids’ life jackets had those!? She felt a little silly, but it turned out to be a wise decision.

On Sunday we went for a drive up to the Pali Lookout and to Punchbowl.

The last day my family was here we went to Ko’Olina and it was lovely. It’s probably my favorite place on the island. We swam, built a sand castle, threw the football, saw the sharks and rays being fed, and walked to the secret beach. We ended the day with Cheesecake Factory. It was so hard to say goodbye to my family when they left. We had so much fun with them and I started to miss them as soon as they were gone. Good thing they left us some chocolate covered macadamia nuts – I drowned my sorrows by binging on those and watching Santa Baby 2 on hulu.

Christmas Eve and Day

I am incapable of narrowing down pictures, so this post has a lot of them. Just a warning. On Christmas Eve we went on our traditional Christmas Eve hike. This year we hiked on the Makapu’u Lighthouse trail. We thought maybe we would see whales since we had been seeing them all week, but we didn’t even see one.

While we were at the top, a woman with a stroller and a baby with lots of hair struck up a conversation about Truman, but we knew better. She was secretly only asking about Truman so she could talk about her baby with lots of hair (“How old is your baby? Oh, mine is six months and she is just crawling EVERYWHERE these days.”) She was trying to make Truman feel bad, not like he needs another blow to his confidence. Luckily, for Christmas we gave Truman the gift of self-esteem.

We’re pretty pleased with the results, and we think Truman is too:

For sure that lady’s baby with lots of hair wasn’t as cute as this:

What would I do with my life if this picture were not in it?

That evening the girls made the traditional Christmas Eve Crook Cracks. We also made shortbread cookies, which I think I want to make a new tradition of. The more traditions the merrier, right? James isn’t convinced that our 37 Christmas Eve traditions are all going to last…

Making Crook Cracks, also known as Swedish meat dumplings

I love our Santa pinata that we always do on Christmas Eve. We cut it pretty close this year. My mom made the pinata right before dinner, we remembered some rope at the last minute, and ended up doing it in our apartment building’s “yard” after it was already dark. Truman was already asleep, so we brought him down in his carseat. Since we really didn’t want to wake him up, the pinata celebration was a lot quieter than it usually is. This year there weren’t many of us, and we had a plastic baseball bat, so we all got a few turns bashing Santa.

We didn't use a bandana to cover our eyes. Just the honor system.

We were all so tired on Christmas Eve that we didn’t do much else. We watched Fred Claus and my Mom read a kind of lame Christmas story and then we pretty much went to bed. And I’m pretty sure James and I were the only ones awake enough to remember to say “Trisha Bird” before bed (another Keel family tradition). For some reason that tradition is less fun when you’re 25 years old and not in a room with all of your siblings.

Truman and his new monkey that his Grammy made for him

It was Truman’s first Christmas and I, being the sentimental fool that I am, wanted to make it special. James being the completely unsentimental jerk that he is, convinced me that since Truman won’t remember it anyways, it didn’t need to be special at all. So this is what he got from Santa this year, and just thinking about how lame this is makes me cry: plastic spoons. That he doesn’t even need yet. Okay, we also got him a book and an ornament, but it was still the lamest first Christmas ever. I was all set to make him a cute little stocking, buy him a bumbo or maybe an exersaucer and some cute outfits and set it all out on Christmas Eve, but it never happened. And it’s all James’ fault. Just kidding. Kind of.

James had the nerve to put Truman's lame present from Santa in one of his old socks! Luckily, Truman was more interested in Cassidy's striped PJ pants than in his Christmas gifts.

Lucky for Truman, he didn’t really notice that he didn’t get anything cool from Santa or his parents, because both sets of grandparents spoiled him. Even his Tia Lexi gave him a cooler present than we did. He got lots and lots of books, stuffed animals, and toys from them, which was his own Christmas Miracle.

Testing out the new football. Also checking for rocks, which everyone kept getting injured on

After stockings we ate Swedish pancakes (tradition alert) and after all the presents were opened we put the turkey in the oven and took off for the beach. Lexi gave James a football for Christmas and my Dad taught us all how to throw correctly, so we had tons of fun. It was a little crowded for football throwing, so the pressure was really on to catch it when it came to you!

Truman had his second ocean experience, and it seemed to go over better than his first. The water at Waikiki was a little warmer and he kind of liked the sand under his feet.

When we got home from the beach we realized that the turkey had not been completely thawed when it went in the oven, and that we had forgotten to set the frozen rolls out to thaw as well. Even though we microwaved the turkey, it still looked a little pink and James may have used the “if it gobbles, don’t eat it” joke a few times too many. The only way that we could cook the rolls fast enough was to thaw them in the microwave and fry them. Our dinner ended up consisting of slightly raw poultry with a side of scones, and although it wasn’t bad, not very many of us were rushing back for seconds. Luckily my parents bought most of Walmart’s supply of chocolate covered macadamia nuts, so that was our Christmas Dinner this year. Although I am considered adding scones to our traditional Christmas Dinner from now on.

Family for Christmas

Since last year, my mom has talked about wanting to come to Hawaii for Christmas. This year her new grandbaby gave her a little extra motivation, so she, my dad, and my sister came out for Christmas. They stayed for about a week and we were able to cram a lot of fun stuff in while they were here. We took way too many pictures, so this is post number one of our Christmas this year.

We hiked Diamond Head on their first day here. It started out as an idea of how we could kill time before James got home from work, but somehow it took us about 3 hours to get out the door, so James got to come with us. I carried Truman in his sling and it killed my shoulder and made me really out of breath the whole time. James, being the sweet husband that he is, volunteered to carry him on the way down, which lasted like 5 minutes. When we got to the top we sat on a bench and saw whales off in the distance. However, the excitement from the whales was cut short when we realized that we had lost Truman’s Bink. James was practically crawling on his hands and knees, retracing our steps to spot it when my Mom finally informed me that she had been holding it the whole time.

James strategically waits until the hill has been crested before offering to help carry Truman

After our hike we cooled off at Waimanalo Beach and played in the waves. The water was very cold, but we still had fun. The waves were kind of big and the water had a mysterious, gross yellow film all over the surface, so I didn’t stay in too long.

The sun's reflection on James' white back provided enough lighting that we were able to disengage the flash on our camera for this picture

James gave Truman his first ocean experience, and at first he didn’t seem to mind the freezing cold water on his feet, but then the water came up and got his legs and shorts wet and he didn’t like it much. He spent the rest of the afternoon bundled up in his towel, being held by his Grammy.

Truman felt silly wearing his "Surf Patrol" rash guard after he realized that he dislikes ocean water.

The next day we went to the North Shore for a long beach day. We stopped by Haleiwa to see the turtles and eat shave ice. The high school kids that work at Matsumoto’s were able to get about 50% of our orders correct, which is pretty good, but leaves plenty of room for improvement. The azuki beans and ice cream seemed to go over well with my family, but I still think it’s gross so I decided to pass.

We stopped at Waimea Bay to swim and were very sad to see that the jumping rock was closed because of the large surf. I think it was our first time at Waimea in the winter, so we had never seen how big the waves can get. James went out body surfing for a while, but decided it might be better to try again on a day when he had some fins. I didn’t really get in the water because Truman was asleep under the umbrella and woke up every time I took my hand off of his tummy.

Lexi and Jolynn brave Waimea Bay's ankle-high waves

We stopped at Pipeline to see the huge waves and the sunset and we even saw some big splashes from a whale out in the distance. I made the mistake of playing airplane with Truman right after feeding him and got spit up all over me. It barely missed my mouth, but it didn’t miss my shirt, pants, and arm.

Pensive.

That night we decided to visit one of the many shrimp wagons on the North Shore, even though James and I don’t really care for shrimp. My parents like it, so we thought we’d give it a go. We stopped at the first wagon we saw because it was starting to get late. Everyone got the breaded coconut fried shrimp except for James and me, which proved to be disastrous. I don’t know what compelled us to get shrimp that was not already shelled, but we did. I thought that it would be easy to crack them open, but it wasn’t! As if removing the heads and legs was not hard enough, there was still the daunting task of cleaning all of the feces out of the digestional tract. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tried to eat.

The shrimp behind James is exactly what the ones we ate looked like, only slightly smaller and full of doo-doo.

On the way home we decided to sing some Christmas carols to get in the Christmas spirit. We also learned that when a baby has skipped two naps to stay out in the sun all day, it takes more than a couple of Christmas carols to get him back into the Christmas spirit.

Lately

A while ago we went to Chinatown with some of our friends to take some pictures. We drive through Chinatown frequently, but this is the first time we have really stopped and walked around. The produce is always cheaper in Chinatown than in stores, and in Hawaii that’s a big deal since food is so expensive. We had almost decided to start doing our produce shopping there, but two weeks after our little excursion we read an article in Honolulu’s newspaper suggesting that the food is so cheap because it doubles as the main nighttime food source for Honolulu’s rat and roach populations. So much for that idea. But we did take some fun pictures and I put them on our flickr page.

Truman loved being in his sling all morning. He got to be snuggled up nice and close to Mom all day. Being jostled in his sling as I walk around always puts him to sleep. The only problem is that he is getting so big it hurts my shoulder to carry him for very long.

We spent that afternoon at a park that felt very quiet and secluded even though it was right in the middle of the city. There was lots of grass, lots of big trees and shade, and a cool little waterfall. You would never guess that the freeway was a block away.

A shot of Truman's mullet

In other news, Truman is now 3 months old and has been practicing his new skills. He reaches for the toys above his chair and he reaches for things that we hold in front of him, which is fun because before that he mostly just sat around and got bored quickly. He is generally getting better at controlling his arms, so now when he gets his arms out of his swaddle he doesn’t hit himself in the face as much. He still sleeps best when he’s swaddled, but after a while he starts trying to break out of it in his sleep. He is also slowly increasing his “tummy time” and even rolled over once (tummy to back). He must not have thought it was anything special because he hasn’t done it again, even when we try to cheat by giving him a little nudge.

For my birthday we went to the North Shore and took Truman on his first beach trip. We watched the Gidget Pro women’s surf contest, part of the Van’s Triple Crown of Surfing. My high school self would have been obsessed. It was very crowded, but very cool to watch. Truman did pretty well. He slept while we ate Glazers from Ted’s Bakery…not as good as malasadas, but they were a yummy snack for a day at the beach. That night we went to a Mexican restaurant that our friends told us about. We’re always happy when we find good Mexican food, which doesn’t happen often here. We’ll definitely be visiting Serg and his carne asada burritos again.

Truman has found his hands and spends a lot of the day sucking on them. Sometimes James and I will be in the living room watching a movie or just talking and suddenly we’ll hear loud sucking noises coming from the bedroom. It’s always so loud that we think there’s no way it could be Truman, but then we go check and there he is, sucking away on his little hands.

His new favorite thing to stare at is the Christmas tree. At first he was a little confused by it but now he loves it. Sometimes he gets really excited by it and kicks his legs and babbles but usually he just stares at it with his mouth open.

Last night we went with some friends to a Marine Corps Toys for Tots Concert at Honolulu’s cool concert hall and it was lots of fun. The awesome Marine Corps Band played and there were musical numbers by the adorable Honolulu Boys Choir, some guy named Steve Hott (not to be confused with Steve Holt) whose “rock star” look was 15 years out of date, and the seriously talented ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro. The Marine Corps Band was extremely loud  and made Truman squirm so I sat in the lobby with him while they played. Also, since I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder (not really, but I am a huge worrywart and it sometimes gets out of hand) I periodically tested Truman’s hearing by saying his name and clapping suddenly to see if he would respond. The good news is that he can still hear and the concert really got us in the Christmas spirit.

Spooktacular Seismography

This Halloween our family decided to go on a hike in the morning to burn off some calories in anticipation of the disgusting sucrose binge that would most certainly occur later in the evening. We decided to go hiking at the Lyon Arboretum, which lies at the back of the Manoa valley. Cassidy and I had been interested in hiking at the Lyon Arboretum for quite some time because of its peaceful surroundings, but also because we had heard it was free. When we arrived we found out that the cost of admission is a suggested donation of $5 per person. Fortunately, having been raised by a mother who hid store-bought candy in the hood of my sweatshirt every time we went to the movies, I have always pronounced the words “suggested donation” as “free.”

Cassidy and Truman on the muddy arboretum trail. After being carried over three miles of muddy mountainside trails, Truman was exhausted.

However, the Lyon Arboretum obviously had experience with people like me. Large signs in the parking lot instruct visitors to register their cars at the visitor’s center at the risk of being towed. Upon entering the visitor’s center, I found a uniformed park ranger of some sort sitting in front of a registration booklet that asked me for my license plate number, the number of people in our group, and the amount of our donation. The ranger stood up and looked over my shoulder as I was filling out the booklet, anxiously eying the donation box that sat within reaching distance.

Fortunately for the Larsen family coffer, the Lyon Arboretum had underestimated my mother (see above). I happily wrote down my information, a large $0 in the donation column, asked the ranger to hand me a free map, and began my hike.

James tried very hard to become inspired at Inspiration Point, mostly because it just seemed like the right thing to do.

A quick glance at the park map revealed that the Lyon Arboretum is home to a haunted seismograph station, which we would have been crazy not to visit on a Halloween hike. The station was certainly creepy looking, but it was really more infested than haunted. There must have been a million little mosquitoes and just as many rotting passion fruits on the ground, which made for an equally odorous and uncomfortable experience. Since little Truman only had so much blood to donate to our new hiking partners, our visit was a fairly quick one.

The bugs who lived inside of the haunted seismograph station were excited when their own Halloween treat came walking right through the front door...a big white guy with no repellant.

Upon returning to the parking lot we were happy to find that the park ranger had not keyed our car while we were hiking. We decided to celebrate by ingesting enough holiday-themed calories to undo any good that our little excursion might have done. Luckily, with Thanksgiving and Christmas on the way, we have a good two months before we have to start feeling bad about repeatedly eating ourselves sick.

Size 2-6 Months

This adorable boy is all we can think or talk about these days, so here is just a short post to update anyone who wants to know about Truman as much as we want to talk about him.

We recently took him to his two month appointment and affirmed that our babe is still as chubby as ever. He weighed 14 lbs 10 oz., which is in the 97th percentile and his height is in the 93rd percentile. People who see him always ask if he is about 6 months old and are shocked when they find out he’s only 2 months. He also got three shots at his appointment and was so brave. He cried during each poke but was calmed down after a few seconds. Of course the calming down didn’t last too long since the nurse was pretty quick to give him his next poke, but we were still impressed.

He is working on keeping his head up on his own. He doesn’t like being on his tummy much, but when we hold him he usually keeps his head up the whole time. He babbles a lot, especially in the mornings. He likes staring at his mobile and smiles at it and talks to it. He smiles a lot and has kind of started to laugh. I’ve found that I’m getting obsessed with documenting his “firsts” in his baby book, and we have conversations like the following one fairly frequently:

me: Was that a laugh?

James: I’m not sure.

me: If that was an official laugh I need to write it down in his baby book.

James: Sure. Write it in his book.

me: But I don’t want to write it in if it wasn’t really a laugh.

James: Then don’t write it.

me: I kind of want to

James: Then write it

me: I’m scared

He is still a happy baby. And we can’t get enough of those cheeks! If you want to kiss his soft and fat cheeks, come visit us – I promise it’s worth the flight and you can even sleep on our living room floor.

Truman’s Faves

Now that Truman is almost 2 months old, we are starting to see his personality developing. He is a happy little guy - he smiles a lot and doesn’t cry much. Here are a few of his favorite things; the things that make him most happy (besides eating, sleeping, and pooping).

1. His Bink. This little boy loves to suck. Straight from the womb he loved sucking on his left pointer finger, but sadly he has slowly forgotten his favorite finger now that he has a friend in Bink. He would suck on Bink all day long if we let him. He loves falling asleep with Bink, and sometimes at naptime as soon as we put Bink in his mouth his eyelids get droopy. 

2. Being cuddled and rocked. His absolute favorite position is to be held up against our chests, and if he is also being rocked he is in heaven. When he is in a bad mood or gets sad, all it takes is a cuddle from Mom or Dad and he is fine again. I love that he loves cuddling so much and I hope he never stops.

3. Getting his diaper changed. He used to hate diaper changes and it took 2 people to get the job done because he kicked and squirmed so much. Now he loves to sit quietly and get all clean. He stares at the dresser while we wipe and change him and he smiles – sometimes at us, sometimes at the dresser.

4. Bath time. I think most babies love taking baths, and Truman is no different. He especially loves it when we pour water on him and let the faucet run on his skin. He likes it when Mom and Dad sing to him at bathtime. Truman has also developed a new favorite bathtime ritual: peeing. His bath is in the kitchen sink, so we always have to make sure the counter is clear of dishes because it’s amazing how far it can reach. He definitely doesn’t need Urigro.

5. Truman loves his carseat. When we buckle him in, he knows he’s in for a ride and a nap. If we take too long to get going once he is buckled he gets a little impatient. But almost immediately once we are in the car, or start walking with the stroller he is relaxed and on his way to falling asleep. Car and stroller rides mean naptime, but he has an uncanny ability to wake up the second he senses the ride is almost over.