June 2015 (aka month 1)

Ro & Bro 

The "& Co" part of Ro & Co has expanded!  On June 6th we welcomed Orion to the fold.  The jury is out on whether this blog should become Ro & Ri, Ro & O, or Ro & Bro.   

June photos: week 1 & the rest of month 1

I make being a baby look easy...

Orion is so new we don't know much about him yet.  He's cute, and likes to gaze into your eyes during the few minutes he's awake during the day. He's also huge (>98th percentile for length, and all cheeks).  When he was coming out the first thing I thought of was the opening scene of Star Wars where the panning view of the ship just keeps going and going and you wonder when it will stop (we watched it recently with Ronan).  Amusingly, he has two behaviors consistent with before he was born: he is very strong (he kicked dramatically in utero), and he gets hiccups a lot (he hiccuped almost every day in my third trimester).  He's already working on holding up his head, and if you spend a lot of time sticking your tongue out at him, he'll stick his tongue out at you. Behold the power of a baby to turn adults into weirdos!  (OK, we already were).

...but this is what my parents look like

Orion is a spit-up machine, and he's growing like crazy.  He really wants to figure out how to get his fingers in his mouth, but mostly rejects pacifiers.  This makes him less calm than Ronan as a baby, but only slightly.  Actually, that could be totally wrong.  I only think I have memories of the time after Ronan was born because there are pictures (so we must have been there).   

He's now had a month of firsts -- first sort-of smiles, first spit up through his nose, first bath, first peeing during a bath, first spitting up through his nose during a bath... I think I'll stop there.  Our life is mostly about taking care of inputs and outputs with a little funny-face making in between.  I expect next month may come with more of the funny-face making (and also the other parts).  

DS: Dependent: Noun.  A being that emits fluids that are your responsibility to clean up.

(Our cat was joining in the fun of dependency this week).

First bath in a tub.  Do you like my fig leaf?

First all-family photo (including cat)

Ronan

Ro is taking the big brother thing in stride, mostly by doing his own thing as usual, although he is very gentle with Orion.  All the kids at school are currently obsessed with Star Wars, and Ro has been making light sabers in addition to his scores of paper airplanes.  Strangely, he insists that they are called "light savers" and that all adults have it wrong.  He and his gang at school (they call themselves that)  have all the lore down, so that even though Ro hasn't seen much of the series he knows about all the characters.  We decided after the first Star Wars that it was a little advanced for him (and too violent) so we are waiting indefinitely on the rest of the movies, but we may yet look at some picture books so he doesn't feel left out.  Back to Wild Kratts and Octonauts for the time being.  This month Ro got to see the makers of Wild Kratts in person (which he talks about all the time), we took in our first Tanglewood kids concert where he enjoyed trying out the french horn, and we had a few great weeks of grandparent time with Nana and Papa.  Ro also learned to pump his legs to swing recently, which he has been enjoying greatly.

In a recent house cleaning we purged some of the paper airplanes Ro has been making (by testing them all in flight, of course), and there were probably more than 50 of them in the house.  He's gotten into folding several of his own designs, and one morning he decided he wanted to make a wing suit so HE could fly.  He made two different versions.  When the first, single-wing variety didn't work he tried a split wing.  He was genuinely disappointed when neither worked.  Another morning he woke me up saying he wanted to design a cardboard C-5, and could I help him make it?  It's hard to resist an earnest plea for an art project!

Cardboard and duct tape C-5

Early flight attempts before school

June 2015 Quotes:

R: Mom, look.  Orion is counting in binary.  See his fingers?

R: Dad, do we have a billion dollar bill in the bank?
D: No.  Only a few people in the world have a billion dollars, and they’re called billionaires.
R: Do we have a million dollar bill in the bank?
D: No.  More people have a million dollars, but still not that many people.
R: Dad, do we at least have a few thousand dollars?   [spoken with some concern]
D: Yes sweetie.  We’re doing okay.

R [After hearing that M did something nice]: We should give M a bottle of wine or something!

R: I agree with myself...

[Ronan is rifling through silverware drawer at a non-mealtime]
A: What are you looking for, Ro?
R: Nothing you really want to know about.

R&T: You don’t know us.  We’re explorers.  You don’t know our names.
A: I see.  Have you known each other long?
T: Um, I think since high school.
A: Oh, so a long time.
R: Yeah, and we’re married
T: No we’re not!
R: We’re not?
T: No!
R: Oh.  Well I’ve been getting a little confused lately.