Happy Four-Month Birthday!

(A little late, granted, but it is the end of the semester.) On April 27, we had Tor's 16-week well-child checkup. Here are his vitals:

• Height: 24.25" (8 weeks: 22.5"; one week: 20.5")
• Weight:  13lbs. even (8 weeks: 10 lb. 4.5 oz.; one week: 7 lb. 3 oz.)
• Head circumference: 40.8 cm. (8 weeks: 37.8 cm.; one week: 34.9 cm.)
• Vaccines received:
• Polio
• Diptheria, tetanus, & pertussis (whooping cough)
• Rotavirus
• HIB (Haemophilus influenzae type B)

We continued our spate of visitors this week with Oma Karplus! She watched Tor while his folks went to work, gamely came out to the bar with us, joined Tor and me on our walks, stocked our freezer, and generally made life easier.

Playing pat-a-cake

Model: Tor. Styling by Oma, hat by Grandma. Photo credit: Mommy. See pg. 352 for where to shop.

Although Tor isn't big on sitting on laps, he's super into reading, so we usually lie down with him to look at books. I maintain the fiction that he's turning the pages (read: wild batting + the invisible hand of the mother).

My Easter Basket

The Gingerbread Baby

He's very busy these days--we're shifting gears every two minutes to keep him entertained. How can something that eats only milk have so much energy??

"Hands" Hansen

Fact: All infant elephant toys are blue.

A four-month milestone: rolling from lying on his back to lying on his side.

"HELP, these are my parents"

Oh, he'll be a climber all right.

Since our sitter decided Tor was too much of a handful for her to watch along with her one-year-old daughter, we've been trading off caring for him and working. While I'm teaching, Lars usually stays home with Tor, but occasionally I have a meeting on campus for an hour and then I'll bring the chubster in with me. Lars's lab finds him a pleasant distraction (we do try not to do it too often!).

Performing cutting-edge research on the soporific properties of olivine