Cognosco

Oh, Mr. Dude,

You are so much fun to hang out with. Even on your cranky days. I really was not prepared for how much fun having a baby could be, or how much I would grow to enjoy your company.

When you are interested in something, you are completely absorbed. You pat it, grab it, taste it, try to pull up on it, bang it, and throw it. You want to know all about it. You will not be persuaded to forget about something because it’s out of sight. You want to know, know, know, know.

And Go, go, go, go.

You are mobile. Crazy mobile. Seriously, you worked on crawling for over 5 weeks. You were on the verge and rocking and almost there for a month.

And then you just did it and you are ridiculously fast and agile and bop up and down up and down all day. You especially love to pull up on your crib bars and let yourself free fall onto the mattress. You have also managed to find more graceful ways of returning to your bottom when you are not in your crib besides free fall. This makes me happy, because all of that free falling onto your bottom made my tailbone hurt.

About sleep. On the plus side, your naps are reliable. After the two weeks following your surgery when you sleep was completely fucked, you fell into a schedule that has been working for us after painful adjustments on both of our parts. Out of nowhere, you went from sleeping 8:00 p.m. to 8 a.m. to sleeping 7 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Ahhhh! This was not acceptable. Getting out of bed before six a.m. is NOT an option in this household.

So, that has been a struggle. Because truth be told, I am a monster before 8 a.m. It takes an exorbitant amount of effort on my part not to be a complete and total doucehbag if I get up before that time. So, we have compromised with a 6 a.m. rising time. If you wake before that, I pretty much force you to either stay in bed with me and pretend to sleep or play in your crib. It’s still earlier than I would like, but I have learned to deal with it.

I have changed. I have forced myself to change for you.

And you’ve made it almost easy. Almost. You usually spend the last few hours of the night in my bed, and when you decide you are definitely up for the day, you are a total ham about it. You are so cute, that just thinking about it almost makes me gag on the sweetness. You will crawl over and zerbert random spots on my body. What’s a zerbert, you ask? It’s sort of like an open mouthed kiss, but you blow. You know…it’s what adults can’t resist doing to baby bellies. So I have certainly asked for your zerbert vengeance. When you first wake up, you smile and giggle and look mischievous. And despite my morning crankypants ways, I can’t help but smile in return. You then pull up on me or pull up on your daddy or try to crawl over me or try to crawl over pillows. You can’t quite crawl over me or the pillows, but we refer to it as “off-road Albie” because you remind us of a 4-wheeler trying to conquer hills. There are mornings when you and your daddy and I will hang out in bed playing for at least a half an hour before anyone becomes vertical. I love those times. Even though they happen before 8 a.m.

You finally take two pretty reliable naps each day. You go down easily and are easy to put back to sleep in the night. Which is good, because you have taken to waking up every 2 hours most of the time. I have tried cosleeping with you to minimize the number of times I get out of bed, but neither one of us sleeps well that way. You really want to be able to roll around a lot and our bed is too fluffy to let that happen. I think I’ve realized that even when you were “sleeping through the night” you were sort of waking every few hours. But you were right next to me in your cosleeper, so I’d pop a binky in your mouth and roll back over and you never really achieved consciousness. But with the crib across the room, it’s a little more challenging. I have finally just started napping at the same time as you again to maintain sanity. This means I am less “productive” on non-Albie things. But it means that I am a nicer mommy.

The weather has also gotten cooler in the mornings. Thank god. You and I have started taking long walks in the morning. Long, to me because I am lazy and I hate walking and there is no rational explanation for it but I just DO NOT CARE FOR IT. I like riding my bike, but you are too little to be a passenger either on the bike or in a trailer pulled by the bike.

So I have started walking because I am tired of being fat. And you are hard to entertain all day and love your stroller. A long walk means an hour or two of you being easily entertained. And I am already thinking ahead to wanting to get knocked up to give you a brother or sister in about a year and a half. So I’m getting started walking now. And I do love the feeling after the walk when I lay down to nurse you down for your morning nap. I usually end up falling asleep with you, and it’s that kind of limbs-akimbo sleep that is sooooo satisfying. The kind of sleep where you don’t even need to “get comfortable”. The kind of sleep that happens when you don’t even try to fall asleep—it just overtakes you. And we both wake up smiling.

I’ve also been doing squats every time I take you to the toilet. We’ve been EC’ing with you and so I spend a lot of time squatting in front of the toilet. We only go through three or four diapers a day now. I’m not really sure what your signs of having to “go” are. I just started approaching it like housetraining a puppy. I take you to the toilet about once an hour and if you have to go, you go. If you don’t, you don’t. And if I hear you fart, I go ahead and take you, because there’s a good chance that there’s a poop to follow. And sometimes, you yell while you poop on the toilet, as if to say, “Out, demon poopie!” Or something like that. That’s what I imagine you are saying. I don’t know what you’re saying, really, but your combative attitude towards the poopie seriously cracks your daddy and I up. The main times we have misses are when we are out of the house or when you are playing alone and I am doing something else and I just forget that an hour has passed.
 
You babble excitedly and animatedly. You waver back and forth between long bouts of complete silence and intense observation to incredibly animated and lengthy narratives. You have a particular “ahhhh!” sound that you make that pretty much means, “hey I want that!” or “hey, did you see that?” You are fascinated with public restrooms, and make a whole range out ahhh-shouting sounds as soon as you enter one. I think you figured out that there’s a weird echo thing that happens and you dig it. You are most prone to stringing together a lot of different syllables when you are annoyed. I try to be empathetic to your mood rather than laughing. I don’t usually succeed.

I have admittedly made use of the television in order to get a shower or make breakfast. This was not possible about a month ago, as you suddenly realized I could walk away and it freaked you out. So I had to shower with you in the crib so I could poke my head out every few seconds and say hello. Although you love water and love coming into the shower, it’s hard to shower you with. You try to stand up in your baby tub, which is totally not safe. And I can’t just put you on the shower floor because you try to pull up on the walls, which is also not safe. Especially because they are tile and they are wet! Lucky for me, this phase passed fairly quickly, and you returned to your independent self. You love the Baby Einstein videos, of course. Those things are formulated to basically function as baby crack. You specifically like the puppets, and talk, yell, or scream at the TV when puppets come on. You also love Bob the Builder, which I admit is kind of a fun show and I may occasionally sit and watch it with you even though I should be using TV time to do other things.

You have mastered the pincer grasp and so you get lots of stuff to self feed. You love wheat bread, the little Gerber puffy things, chicken, and pasta. In fact, the other morning you used this pincer grasp to try to pluck my nipple off of my breast. You looked perplexed, as if to say, “It’s food. I can eat from it. I can pinch it. Why can’t I take it with me?” You still love carrots, and won’t take pureed food from me, but will take it from anyone else. You seem to like leafy greens, and I gave you some roasted garlic last night and you smiled in response. You have no idea how happy that makes me.

Your favorite music is pretty much anything with a dominant piano line. Have I told you lately how much I love you? Please tell me your love of piano will continue so that when you have lessons later in life, you’ll think it was your idea.

I still don’t know where your teeth are or when they will arrive, but you have a drool rash that indicates they are coming some day. I love your toothless smile and will be sort of sad to see it go.

Things I have learned:

• Be careful what you wish for. You may get the nap schedule you’d hoped for, in exchange for being up every two hours at night.
• Babies are fun.
• Babies are funny.
• Babies really are just as cuddly as puppies. In fact, they are even more cuddly than puppies. Even though they don’t have fur.
• If you love to teach, there is no greater joy than having a child.
• If you love psychology, there is no thing more fascinating than a baby.
• If you are me, a person who loves both, you probably should have started breeding much earlier, had you been able to pull your head out of your ass and find a decent man.
• Downshifting into survival mode is sometimes necessary even after the newborn phase has passed.
• This too shall pass. But today, I hope it passes slowly. I want to cherish every moment.

All my love, Mama