• can fit four fingers in my mouth at once
• now make ‘grrrrr’ noises and grunt a lot
• can successfully grab the pull toys on my yellow boucey seat. Have decided that pulling the strings to make the bird spin is for wimps, I just hit the bird to make it spin instead.

Before settling on a name for our daughter, I embarked on what I considered a necessary exercise. I searched for songs that mention her name. It turns out that there are some great songs written about girls named Josie and Josephine. This first song is Josie by Blink-182. When Jen and I started dating (over 10 years ago!), I made her a mix CD and this was one of the songs on it. Prophetic indeed.

More songs to come…

This past week we went twice to the ‘old res’ in Lexington to take Josie swimming. She’s getting to like the experience more each time, likely because the water keeps getting warmer as the summer goes on! After her brief ‘swim’ she took a nice nap on the beach in her sun-protection tent. We neglected to bring our camera but perhaps grandpa took some pictures that I’ll be able to post later. For now, he’s a photo we took right before going swimming!

Here are a couple of shots that we took in the last few months that never made it to the blog that I wanted to share. The first is Fred wearing Josie’s Red Sox T-shirt, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Secondly, I also use the high chair to hold Josie while I cook or sometimes while we eat dinner since it reclines appropriately for her.

If you’ve taken a baby out in public, or been out with us, you’ve probably experienced plenty of unsolicited advice regarding the baby. Here is your chance to dole out some of your own advice onto attentive ears! I’m looking around at strollers for Josie. New York City made me want a bugaboo, but I don’t think I want to shell out such a big percentage of our monthly income for a stroller. I do think Josie would love the bassinet feature, but she’s going to outgrow it so soon anyway. Neighbors have recommended getting a jogging stroller because we live on a street with horrendously bumpy sidewalks and the big wheels do better. My mom got a Baby Jogger City-mini which is easy to steer, has a good sun shade, and has the best fold on the market, but the seat itself isn’t terribly supportive. The uppa baby stroller at Isis was attractive as well and not quite the punch to the wallet as the bugaboo.

What do you have? how do you like it?

Yesterday Josie turned 10 weeks old. She’s been practicing her skills a lot lately and here’s some of the new things she can do/has improved:

1. bend her knees and adjust when she’s standing up rather than just lock her legs
2. laughs vigorously
3. grabs hair
4. picks head entirely up and looks around while on tummy time
5. drools ferociously
6. pushes herself forward slightly with her feet while on tummy time
7. puts toys in mouth with occasional success
8. starting to screech
9. will be entertained by cats chasing their toys in front of her, she has previously not paid too much attention to them
10. smiles back when I smile at her
11. drink from a bottle – she started off well, then decided she hated it, and with more practice she’s back on track

One odd thing she’s started doing at night is shaking her head back and forth while still asleep as if she’s saying ‘no’ extremely enthusiastically. Word on the playground is that other kids did this too and it’s nothing to worry about.

This 4th of July we went to a lovely BBQ at our friends Lee and Lynn’s house. We had a great time although somehow we didn’t take too many pictures, maybe some others did and will send them to us (hint, hint). Our friend Jen enjoyed spending a lot of time holding the babies over the day though.

Mio has been very needy these few days. Poor little guy doesn’t understand why our arms are always so full!

Last weekend we went to New York City with Josie to see the sights and visit with our friend Larry and cousin Will. We went to the Met, Central Park, FAO Schwarz, Chinatown, Financial district and some other places I probably forgot. Josie loved the bright lights of Chinatown at night walking around. She refused to sit in her car seat if she was awake and had to be carried by hand or in the wrap to look at everything.

We didn’t buy anything for Josie at FAO (although we did buy something for another friend) but we had a good time there. They had a nice place to change her diaper (unlike most of the restaurants). The salespeople were surprisingly staunchly pro-breastfeeding. I was looking around for a chair to nurse her in and the sales lady offered to get me a chair and put it anywhere I’d like. I told her wherever the chair already was placed was fine for me. She then told me that in NY mothers have the right to breastfeed their child anywhere it is convenient for them and again asked where I wanted the chair. I followed her to where the chairs were (in a back office) and nursed Josie there because it was nicely quiet and a non-distracting environment. Afterwards back on the sales floor another set of employees came up to me and asked if she was breastfed, I confirmed she was, and then they said ooh’d and ahh’d over her and said how smart she would be because of it.

Josie did relatively well on the road trip part of the journey, although the evening travel on the way back where we ran into traffic first from an accident and then night paving was unfortunate. The drive took a long time and went through Josie’s fussy time in the evening, but we all persevered and made it home in one piece. On the way home Josie got to see part of the gay pride parade in Greenwich Village because I was on the hunt for Magnolia’s cupcakes. Turned out the line was around the block for the bakery and so we decided not to stop after all.