Shannon Phillips

So, when we first brought Robin home from the hospital, he was not a fan of bathtime. But Nanita managed to bring him around by making sure the water was warm enough and providing him with plenty of bath toys, and for a while there, he had a good time in the tub.

I don’t know what happened, but lately, he’s decided that being bathed is like baby torture. As soon as the heel of his foot touches the water he starts screaming, and when his butt sits down in the tub he arches his back and flings himself from side to side, still screaming. This happens no matter how tepid or warm the water is. I’ve no idea what the problem is because he still really likes splashing his feet in fountains, and whenever Sam or I am taking a shower he’ll crawl in the bathroom and pull himself up on the side of the tub so that he can peer in.

So we decided to go with that, and instead of trying to bathe him we simply brought him in the shower with us. Cleaning Robin this way is a two-person job: one person holds the slippery-wet baby while the other soaps him up. But it worked! He didn’t protest at all except when he got a little bit of shampoo in his eyes, and even then he was quickly soothed.

And afterwards we wrapped him in this adorable bumble-bee towel that Pappy and Nonna gave us, and it was so cute I had to take a picture.

• He’s learned how to wave, and now it’s something he does dozens of times every day.  It just tickles him pink when he waves at people and they wave back.  He points at things too.
• He’s eating more and more solid food.  I try to feed him three regular meals a day.  Breakfast is always fresh fruit with iron-fortified cereal, but lunch and dinner are generally just small portions of whatever we’re eating.  He’s very enthusiastic about most foods; the only thing I can remember that wasn’t a hit was a tomato salad dressed with fresh rosemary and red onions.  Too strongly flavored I think.  But he loves plain tomatoes!
• He had another modeling gig, but he was just the back-up model so they didn’t take any pictures.  He got paid anyway though.
• I’m eighty percent certain that he’s right-handed.
• He will take steps as long as he’s holding onto something, but he’s yet to balance upright on his own.  He can crawl up stairs but his method of getting back down involves a headfirst sort of dive that—if I ever let him go through with it—would probably result in a nasty tumble.  Nevertheless he really likes the stairs.
• He especially likes this one game where he throws his ball down a flight of stairs, and then I go get it for him.  We have played many, many iterations of this game.
• Yesterday he chased a little girl around the park, crawling after her while she scampered away laughing.
• Somewhere along the way he’s changed from a helpless baby into a spirited little boy, communicative and social, full of curiosity and affection.  I sure do love my little buddy.

We patted a goat!

We saw a donkey!

We played in the sandbox!

And swung on the swings!

All pictures by Sam!

Sam and Robin are going to a picnic today! (I’m enjoying a day off from mommy duties.) It will help distract Robin from the departure of his Pappy and Nonna, who came up to visit for a couple days. It was wonderful to see them as always.

I took all these videos on the same day, which is why Robin is wearing the same clothes in all of them. It’s not that he goes a week without changing his pants. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.