Samuel, the cats and child gates

As Samuel is becoming more and more mobile we have slowly been adapting by child proofing the apartment.  

Yesterday I installed a child gate to prevent Samuel from sneaking into the kitchen and drinking the cats water or eating their food.  Unfortunately our very spoiled cats sat on the hallway side of the gate and meowed and wailed as they were separated from their sustenance.  Samuel did =not like the gate when I was fixing my dinner as he was on his knees holding onto the bars looking at me with his big blue eyes asking why he was unable to play in the cats water.

When Julia returned home(she had dinner last night with a friend so that I could watch the Chelsea/Liverpool match in peace with my son) she felt sorry for the cats and propped the gate open with a box of tissues.

This morning while I was working in the office Samuel went on an excursion.  A minute after he left the office he started to cry.  I walked around the corner toward the kitchen and saw that he had removed the box of tissues and that the gate had closed behind him and that he was locked in the kitchen with no hope of escape.

From this day forward the cats will have to learn to jump the gate or we will have to move their food to another room.

-Dave

We are no longer the worst parents in the history of civilization...

As we have posted earlier Samuel has been refusing to take solids consistently since we first attempted in November. We have tried everything we can think of  and we have tried everything that other people could advise.

Our pediatrician has advised us that Samuel should be eating solids by now and that the only reason he was not is that we made his life easy by always offering bottles when he refused to eat solids.  He also told us that when Samuel was hungry enough he would eat solids. Following his advice many times in the last few months we have skipped bottles with Samuel in the hope that he would be hungry enough to eat solid foods.  Every time we tried this he still refused to eat his solids. Following doctor advice we went so far as to not feed Samuel for 18 hours last Friday.  He still refused to take any solids. Based on this we made an appointment to see a Pediatrician gastrointestinal specialist this morning. She re-assured us that we are doing nothing wrong, that Samuel will eat solids when he chooses to eat solids.  We should continue to feed him as we have been putting purees and rice cereal in his bottles.  Her advice was to continue to use the bottle but add other purees and meats to the bottle mix.

Samuel's vitals as of 6 April 2009.  Weight 8.9 Kg(19.6 Lbs.), Height 75.5 Cm(29.72 inches).

For height he is slightly above 50%, for weight he is at 10%. Still concerned about weight but considering the colds and gastro he has had the last few months plus the trans-atlantic flights where he slept rather than ate we are satisfied that his weight did not drop farther down the charts.

Samuel update-4 Avril

Samuel is changing every day.

He still does not have teeth.

He has learned how to sit up by himself from a lying position.

He has learned to sneak up behind us, grab onto the back of our pants and pull himself up.  He thinks this is funny as it is very difficult to pick him up a from this position without him letting go and falling down.

Samuel will pull himself up on almost anything in the apartment.  He is slowly learning how to let go and sit down but the higher up his hands are the less likely he is to attempt to sit down.

While Samuel was typing his update yesterday he turned on a voice that tells us what we are doing on the computer.  We have no idea how to turn it off.  Currently the voice is telling me that safari is open and that we have the window to post to our blog open.

Samuel is not talking much yet but we do expect him to talk later than usual as he is exposed to two languages and that must be confusing to him.  He babbles in his own language.

-Dave