Eight Weeks old

Sam was eight weeks old Saturday.
A lot of things have happened in the last eight weeks.
For one thing, I can now play Lay Lady Lay on the guitar.
Sort of.
It's not exactly a song that I would have planned on playing for Sam, but it's a good song for working on bar chords.  It sort of sounds like a 45 played at 33 right now, but that will change.
(Sam, a 45 is a small recording of single songs.  Sort of a precursor to iTunes.  The number 45 refers to the number of revolutions per minute the vinyl platter would make on the turntable.  A 33 was an entire album of songs.  It revolved at 33 rpm.  If you played a 45 without resetting the turntable from 33 the song played really slowly.)
Sam can almost turn over.
He can lift his head up, and hold it there for a while.  He's starting to look at things, he likes to look out the window, and also to look at his mobile.  He also likes to pet Spenser. Interestingly, he doesn't like to pet the cats much.  If I put his hand on Spenser he'll leave it there and move it around, but he won't do that with Fred or Janey.
He's between diaper sizes again.  As far as we can tell he weighs around 14 pounds, which puts him at the top end of the size 1s, and the bottom end the size 2s.  So far the 2s are less likely to blow out.
We took him on his first overnight trip to Grandma and Grandpa's (Kate's parents in this case).  He did great on the drive.  His grandparents threw a big party there to introduce him to their friends.   He did great with that as well.  He got passed around some, and didn't cry much, and raked in a bunch of good toys and books, and no additional clothes, which is perfect, because he's got a lot of clothes, but not too many toys.
It's Kate's first mother's day Sunday.  Sam and I got Kate a new camera, so hopefully we'll have some better pictures soon.  Kate's a great photographer, but she's been using a ten year old little digital point and shoot that's ready to be put out to pasture.  I got her an Olympus Micro 4/3 camera.  It's a new format that is small like a point and shoot, but has replaceable lenses like a full size SLR, so Kate will have way more flexibility with her photography, but not have to lug around a big bulky SLR.
The really good news is that after the party Sam slept for five hours in a row.  He's never done that before.  Normally, if we're lucky, we can get a three hour stretch out of him.  Usually it's more like ninety minutes to two hours.  It was actually a little creepy, both Kate and I woke up after about three hours wondering if everything was okay with him.  After the five hours Kate actually couldn't go back to sleep because she hasn't gotten five hours in a row in the last ten months.
So, he's still being a butthead at night.  He's starting to learn how to be manipulative with his crying, I'll bounce him and rock him and dance around with him for an hour with him being fussy, if he decides that he wants Kate he won't go to sleep until Kate gets him.  Once Kate takes him he'll go down in a couple of minutes.  That'll happen if she takes him after five minutes or ninety minutes.  Eventually we're going to have to put a stop to that and let him just cry it out, we're just not sure when he's old enough for that.

He smiles a lot now.  We're not certain what he's smiling at, but he's smiling.
Sometimes it's at Kate or I.
Sometimes it's the wall.

He no longer fits in the 0-3 month sized clothes, for the most part.  Mostly he fits in the 3- 6 month size stuff.  I'm not certain if that's a comment on his size, or on the system of sizing clothes for infants.  Or both.

Last night, I'm pretty certain that he actually spat up more than he ate.
I think he's reserving spitup.
Is spitup a noun?
Oh well, it is now.  And Sam is saving it up.
What's interesting about it is that it's rarely the dramatic sort of projectile spitup that you see in sitcoms.  Usually he just opens his mouth and it sort of drains anticlimactically out of him.  He doesn't even seem to notice it.
Nevertheless, it's pretty nasty, and if we're not diligent about tracking it down right away we end up with this sort of vague and barely traceable odor of sour milk.

He likes to dance a lot.
More accurately, he likes us to dance around with him.  He doesn't seem to have a lot of a preference for what we're dancing to (Science Fiction Double Feature is still his favorite song).

We watched the Blackhawks absolutely tank game five of their series with Vancouver Sunday night.  He wasn't nearly upset enough about that.

So, things are moving along.  I'll try to update sooner next time.