Cognosco

My mother and I haven’t always gotten along.

But we have gotten along more often than not.

We haven’t always agreed with each others’ life choices.

For a long time, I resented her for staying with my father for so long, and only finally leaving him when my brother and I were out of the house.

In the last few years, I have forgiven this. I have forgiven my father for his abuse as well.

In spite of all of our disagreements, my mother has always been there for me when it really came down to it.

When I was 17 years old, I dropped out of college and left the state with a weasel-boy. We headed for "utopia" in Northern California. Never mind that I had scholarships. Never mind that I left other members of my performance ensemble one player short. Never mind that it broke my mother’s heart. Never mind that I was too much of a coward to even tell her I was leaving. My best friend had to tell my mother I was gone. She didn’t speak to me for about a year, but after all these years, she’s still my best friend. I am grateful for her–my soul sister of 18 years–for loving me whether I deserved it or not.

Dropping out of school, leaving everything behind, and heading to an area I’d never seen to live with people I didn’t know in Northern California seemed like a good idea at the time.

I needed to "find myself".

Did I mention that I had been doing A LOT of psychedelic drugs?

I had been in California for about 2 months, when I found out I was pregnant.

My first thought was to put the baby up for adoption, because I was afraid that everyone would hate me if I had an abortion. I, personally, didn’t have a problem with having the abortion, but I was terrified of the judgment, and I was in a situation that would have required the knowledge and help of several others in order to obtain one.

The woman we were living with said that I might want to reconsider. She said, "look at this puppy you’ve had for 8 weeks, and how attached you are to him. Do you really think you could give up your baby?"

She had a point. She also made it clear that there was a place for me there if I carried the pregnancy to term and kept the baby, and that she had no qualms with banning weasel-boy from the property.

But I. did. not. want. a. child. Couldn’t even fathom it. I realized that I had made a huge mistake with my life, and all I wanted was to terminate the pregnancy and go back to school.

I told weasel-boy I was thinking of terminating the pregnancy. He called me a selfish whore.

And I realized that I definitely wanted no ties to that man for the rest of my life.

The next time I was able to get to a pay phone (this was a very rural area), I called my mom, and at the same time asked weasel-boy to get me a snack from the store. 

While he was gone, I whispered to my mom, "I am pregnant. I don’t want this baby. I want an abortion. I need help".

My mother an I had barely spoken for several months, and all she said was that she would be there soon.

She lived in Mayer, AZ at the time. I was just south of Eureka, CA. It’s a 1,000 mile trip.

She was there the next morning. And as we drove home, she told me the story of her abortion, back when you had to sit before a panel of male doctors and justify your choice. She said it was humiliating.

The next few months were rough, but I survived. There were many more times that my mother came to my rescue, and she is doing it again this week.

When the panic attacks and crying jags started. When I couldn’t open my computer without my hands shaking. When I started waking up at 3 in the morning, suddenly, with racing heart, racing mind, and a feeling of doom. When my two-year-old son was up for two hours by himself last week and I didn’t hear him because I was beyond the point of absolute exhaustion (the house was a disaster, but he had only gotten into his toys). When one particular dissertation committee member pushed me over an edge that I have avoided for 32 years. After two years of asking for her help, and not getting it, she finally gave her input, had asked the impossible given the time constraints, but I DID IT. I DID IT! And then, she asked for something else. Something else that meant I had to start the impossible all over again. Because she hadn’t bothered to read my documents. Any of them.

When all of these things happened, my mother said she was coming here as soon as she could.

That same committee member also contributed to the end of one of the friendships I made in graduate school that really mattered to me.

I have survived an abusive upbringing, 26 years of multiple school stressors, two abusive boyfriends, a manipulative ex-husband, a first year of graduate school that involved a divorce, moving 5 times during that first year, and being banned from seeing my stepson of 5 years. I also survived caring for a crippled friend for a year, sitting by the bedside of my father for 6 weeks after a motorcycle accident that we thought had taken away his mind (he was convinced his bed was an airplane), and I even the postpartum period after the birth of my son (I did struggle with anxiety, but it didn’t exceed my coping resources–and my husband encouraged me go stay in a hotel room now and then just to sleep uninterrupted). All of these things I survived, and though I was sometimes emotional, I knew it would get better and I could always get through whatever I needed to do. And yet, this committee member pushed me so far over the edge that I stumbled into campus health crying and asking for help and have now been given a prescription for anti-anxiety medication. It makes me sleepy, but I can actually open my statistics program without feeling like my throat is closing off.

And I can sleep.

And my mother will be here on Sunday. It’s not a 24 hour turn-around like when I was 18, but it is impressive nonetheless. She is coming because she has never seen me like this, and she knows what’s it’s like to totally lose your shit. And when she lost hers, no one was there for her.

I am not embarrassed to say that right now, all I want is my mommy.

I am grateful for my mother.

I am also grateful for the psychologist at the counseling center, who recognized the immediacy of the situation, assured me that I can do this, and said that the problem wasn’t me–that I was having a completely normal reaction to an abnormal situation.

I am grateful for my primary adviser, who has referred to my condition as "Academic PTSD" and who has done nothing but stand up for me and call to check on me and give me permission to just walk away for a day. And who has repeatedly assured me that I am not crazy.

I am grateful to my son, whose response to me bursting into tears was to climb onto my lap, take my face in his hands, ask "boo boo?", and give me a big kiss and hug.

I am grateful to the universe for giving me this son. 

I am grateful that today has been a good day.

I am grateful that I will survive. I know I will survive because my mama will be here, and then it will be okay.

Dear Albie,

I know it’s been a few months since your last update, and for that I apologize. It’s been crazy busy in our household, what with you mama applying for jobs and finishing a dissertation and trying not to explode on you in the mean time.

You are now two years old, and like every other mama whose baby has just turned two, I can’t believe it. You are so tall, and so active, and so charming when you want to be. I find it unbelievable that you were once a baby who could not be put down. Now, I count myself lucky when I get to cuddle with you.

I want you to know that I like you. I really enjoy your company. I’m not sure when caring for you became less work and more relationship, but I like it. We still have rough days, and both of us are prone to temper tantrums. I have resigned myself to the fact that you will grow up knowing that yes, mom blows up, but it’s over soon, and really, she is all bark and no bite. That’s just me, and while I am trying to cultivate patience, I’m trying not to beat myself up for not being the mother I think I should be. Because I’m just me. And you’re who you are. And we are both kind of explosive, but I like us that way.

Your latest obsession is TRAINS! We bought an Ikea train set and some accessories back in November, and there are days when you will run your trains around the track for hours. It took some practice and patience for you to learn that you must be gentle or the trains will not obey.  You recently acquired a few trains from the actual Thomas Wooden Railway, and you cherish them. They are special to you and you manage to keep track of them very well. You are obsessed with books about trains, stories about trains, and you even take trains with you to bed. You have been known to call out and sign “train” in your sleep. Obsess much? I have no idea where that trait came from.

You are very good at feeding yourself and often use a non-sippy cup at the table. You like help us unload the dishwasher and fill the dog food. You (sometimes) help pick up your toys and are willing to help put laundry away. You are a total monkey on the playground even Teacher Jan was impressed and also pretty freaked out that you were able to scale the curved ladder thing on the big kid equipment. Not just scale it, but scale it fast and with great aplomb. You are a very physically present little dude. I’m thinking you should have a lot of sports options as you grow because you need an outlet. You even run everywhere. Although you can focus on a single task for a long period of time, when you move from task to task, there is no walking. You run. All the time. Guess you and I will both need to work on that whole enjoying the journey thing…

You are finally saying words, and will say yes (“yeth!”), hi, mama, cat, uh-oh, oops, zipper ("zippa-zippa-zippa"), ball, Bob (the builder), Wally (the robot) and “chow” as in “ka-chow” like Lightning McQueen says. That last one is accompanied by a little jump. Obviously, you have never been shown any TV or movies (oops!). You say baby very clearly (“bay-bee”) and now will say bubble and binky as well. You say your name as either “Alb” or “Abbee” but haven’t quite fused the two together yet. You will also make animal sounds, including a funny, stilted laugh for goat, “oof oof” for dog, “mow” for cat, and you even have a "la-la" sound for Elmo and a funny trumpet sound for elephants. There are other words that you have mastered the first syllable of, and you continue to learn new signs. You know at least 150-200 signs, and now that you are actually getting around to talking with your mouth, I am far less worried about your speech development. For a long time, I would hear you practice words by yourself, but you wouldn’t repeat words to your father or I. A few days ago, you pointed to your lunch and I said, “hot dog”. You repeated, “ottog”. Yesterday, I realized you were saying outside and today you said inside. You point to things and say “that?” if you want to know the name and will try to repeat the word about half of the time. You seem excited and confident about repeating the words you hear. It’s exciting for me to watch too.

You love playing outside with the dogs, and when they run and wrestle with each other, you squeal and giggle with glee and make the sign for silly. Recently, you’ve added the word “slee” to the sign. I think it’s awesome that you took a term like silly and applied it to something that I never have. You actually get the abstract concept. The whole language thing just fascinates me…

A few days ago while we were playing outside I was chasing you and pretending to be a big monster. I have chased you with these same noises ("raaaaawr!") and Great. Big. Slow. Giant. Steps since you were able to walk. A timer in the kitchen went off, and I turned to go back inside. You protested and signed “more, more” and then you signed “elephant”. I was momentarily perplexed. Elephant? I looked around. There were no elephants. It slowly dawned on me that maybe I was the elephant. I pointed to myself and said “mama’s an elephant?” and you jumped up and said “yeth” (yes). I continued to raaaaaawr! and take big steps and you squealed with glee and signed elephant over and over as you ran away. It was the first time that it was obvious to me that you had used your imagination to create something. I had never played that monster with an elephant in mind—but you superimposed an animal onto me. It. Was. Awesome. I got so into playing an elephant that I forgot about the kitchen timer. It was soon followed by the smoke alarm.

You have FINALLY started sleeping later, and it wasn’t a later bedtime that helped. It was moving your nap to later in the day. By shifting that along with your bed time, your whole day shifted. Now you sleep until anywhere from 7 to 9, usually between 7:30 and 8:00. This has been the norm for the last two months. Thank God. Seriously. You have no idea how much happiness this little change has brought your poor night owl mother. However, you have been up by 6:30 a few times in the last week or so, and I fear that this may be a sign of things to come. Please, let this be a fluke. I beg you. If you start waking up super early again, I will seek revenge during your teenage years. Mark my words.

Speaking of sleep, you transitioned to a toddler bed about three weeks ago. The transition has been quite smooth, but keep in mind that your bed is still in our room where your crib used to be. I don’t know if you are ready to be in another room, and more honestly, if I am ready for you to be in another room. Our house is so small that it actually makes more sense this way so it’s sort of a moot point.

You started showing interest in an actual bed when you saw characters in books lying in beds, and then you couldn’t resist laying on the beds at Ikea and signing “sleep” accompanied by snoring sounds. So, I jumped on the chance to make the change while you seemed like you were interested. For the most part, you still go to bed easily at night and stay in bed through the night. Even when you do wake and need some reassurance, you almost always ask to get back into your bed rather than fall asleep next to us. You like your space. So long as you are put to bed with enough light to look at pictures in a book, along with a few cars or trains, your Tiggy, a handful of binkies, and a sippy cup with water in it, you are easy to deal with. I know, it seems like a lot of stuff, but I think it’s great that you have your routine. You usually stay awake for 20 minutes or so, looking at books, playing with your trains, and then you decide to just lay down and sleep. I love that you can do this.

You have also turned into a morning cuddler, and now climb from your bed into our bed to snuggle. I love those early cuddles. I have never been a morning person, but getting a huge hug from you and asking you about your dreams sure makes it easier to get up. Note that it is particularly helpful when it occurs after 7:30…

We recently got you a little Elmo potty to keep in the living room because it was becoming apparent that you had gained more control, but didn’t want to have to get help from us to get on the big potty. We let you run around without a diaper, and for the most part you use the potty. When you have a miss, you let me know right away, and even try to help clean it up. I am trying hard to not pressure you, and so far we are making little steps every day. In the last few days, though, you don’t seem to like the Elmo potty, and want to go back to the big potty. The problem is, you want to get up there yourself, and you just can’t quite do it yet, even with a step stool. So, when we let you at least try to get up yourself, with just our help as opposed to being lifted onto the potty, you are happy to go there. No one can accuse you of not wanting to be independent.

You now recognize pictures of friends you haven’t seen for some time, and will even indicate that you remember where you last saw them. When you saw a picture of your friend Preston, with whom you had ridden the light rail, you signed train. When I dropped you off at Nanna’s house last week, you saw a picture of your cousin Hanna (who moved to another state about 6 weeks ago) and you signed “cousin”. I didn’t know that you had even learned that sign, or that you could apply it to her. You are also able to communicate things about your day, like the day I asked you if you had chicken for dinner, and you said yes and then signed “apple”. Turns out, you’d had an apple too. As a psychologist, this kind of memory development is ridiculously exciting for me.

You still go to the parent-toddler class once a week at the Child Study Lab preschool on campus. It has been such a joy to watch all of the kids change over the last few months, but of course, I love watching you the most. Last week, I was chatting with some other moms across the room from where you were. I looked over, and you and another little boy were playing with one of the toys where you send a ball down a track and it keeps falling to the next track and eventually rings a little bell at the bottom. There are many variations of this toy and so I’m sure you get the idea. It was noteworthy that you and the other boy weren’t fighting over the toy. Then I looked closer and realized you were taking turns. You were taking turns placing balls on the track and picking them up at the end. No adults were standing near you and so the two of you had worked this out on your own. I was so proud of both of you. You and this little boy have played together quite often in the last few weeks and it’s awesome to see that you have a new friend.

You still love your binkies, and now that you are actively trying to speak, I don’t really care how long you love them. Some days, you don’t use it at all. Other days, I can’t get it away from you. And if I hide them from you, you just end up shoving your fist or random toys into your mouth. I think the binky is the lesser of many evils, especially since I am almost totally confident that there is no lead paint on your binky.

You still have long hair in the back, and are regularly called a girl, no matter how masculine your clothes are. I have suggested to your daddy that when we do finally cut it, we should dress you in pink and see what happens. I have a theory that you will still be called a girl. This would indicate that a child is automatically a girl unless s/he is masculine ENOUGH, which requires appropriate clothing and hair. I will spare you my feminist diatribe on the subject, because I guarantee that by the time you are old enough to read these updates, you will have already heard similar diatribes. Frequently. It’s part of my charm.

I used to be really diligent about tooth updates for you, and have totally slacked on that in the last 9 months. So, for the sake of some sort of consistency, you now have your first set of molars, and your four canines came in about two weeks ago. The molars came in last fall.

I feel so lucky to have you as my son. It has been a rough adjustment, and I was completely unprepared for how having a child would rock my world. It got so much easier once I stopped thinking things would get back to “normal”. This is the new “normal”, and it is constantly shape-shifting. Every time I have a handle on your behaviors and routines, you change. It’s your job, this growing up thing. Now that I realize this IS our life and it is what it is, I kind of like it. And like I said, I like you. You have never been an easy child, but this passion of yours has become one of the things I love most. Happy birthday, sweet boy. Despite all of the challenges, you have been the best two years of my life.

Love,

Mama

Dear Albie,

Wow, did I drop the update ball or what? Here I was, all obsessive and reliable about posting a monthly update, and then I went and skipped FOUR MONTHS. Because that’s how I roll. It’s all or nothing. Someday, when you read these posts, you will probably sympathize with that sentiment, because you are the same way. The mother’s curse has come true—my child is just like me.

So many things have happened since your last update. In June, we went on a road trip that lasted 18 days and spanned over 5,000 miles. We drove through up through California, and you got to see Redwoods. We continued up through Portland and Seattle, and then stayed a few days in Bellingham with MB and her lovely daughters. You had a great time with them. You got to cross the border into Canada, and so you have officially been to another country. I couldn’t claim that until my teens.

Your Daddy met us in Bellingham, and we continued east through Idaho into Montana. It was during this phase of the trip that you caught herpes from my cold sore. Turns out that herpes is a real bitch for little guys. You had a “real” fever that got high enough for me to watch closely, and your mouth was so swollen that some of your hard-earned teeth threatened to disappear beneath your gums. You also happened to be cutting your 7th tooth (3rd bottom tooth) during this time, and had a huge cold sore thing where the tooth was coming in. What was particularly sucky is that you were stuck in a CAR in a CAR SEAT for a large portion of this time period, and you couldn’t even have snacks to distract you because your mouth hurt. There was much heartbreaking screaming and crankiness and overall tension. We still made it to Glacier National Park, and because it was a freak year with snowstorms in June (we even drove THROUGH a snowstorm when we were travelling from Washington to Montana), the park had snow on the ground and it was simply beautiful set against all of the spring growth.

The original plan had been for you and your Daddy to fly home from Missoula, and then Ozo and I were going to take our time driving home, and I was going to get extra work done while I stayed in hotel rooms along the way. By myself. Then you got sick. And I couldn’t’ bear the thought of being away from you because I was kind of freaked out about you being sick . And I didn’t want your poor Daddy to fly home with you because you were prone to screaming. A lot. So, we ate the plane ticket, and I forfeited four days TO MYSELF to instead drive home with a cranky toddler. THAT was when I really realized that I was a mother.

Overall, the whole road trip was amazing. I got to know you out of our normal context. It’s one thing to know how you react to events in your normal routine. It was quite another thing to find out how you react to unpredictable events. We had a good time.

After we got home, my best friend Dani visited for a few days, and you two had a great time together. Someday, when you ask about the tattoos on my ankles, I will tell you that “anam cara” means soul friend, and that my soul friend, known as your “auntie Buddon”, got the same phrase tattooed on her back, and that we got those tattoos during this particular visit.

You are what so many of the celebrity pediatricians (Dr. Karp, Dr. Sears, Dr. Greene) call “spirited”. That means that you FEEL things. You don’t just get a little happy. You absolutely shine and radiate love and generosity. You have a HUGE heart. It also means that when you are pissed, it is a mess. Your Nanna (your Daddy’s mom), who birthed and raised eleven children and now works as a nanny, has commented on the intensity of your resistance and protest. My mother, after watching you for a week, said you were indeed, “not an easy child”. Here, all this time, she had thought I was exaggerating. She was amazed by your passion and your tenacity. It’s one thing to have a temper (like your mama). It’s quite another to be so damn tenacious with your tantrums (like your father). I hope it serves you well later in life. The challenge for me is to try to teach you coping skills and emotional management skills that I myself have never mastered. I will try my best for you. I am not always calm. I am not always kind. I yell more than I like and other times I just completely shut down. But I am trying to be something else, something more, because I love you, and I know that the most powerful way we learn is through example. I am learning about deep breaths and just LETTING. IT. GO. I am trying to teach you to do the same.

My mother also told me I was good mother, as evidenced by the fact that I am convinced I am a bad mother. She explained that truly “bad” mothers aren’t worried about their mothering skills. That’s the problem. They don’t care. Good parents agonize and ruminate and struggle to be the parent they want to be. If rumination is really a key component of parenting, then maybe I’m in the top percentile after all.

At the end of June, we all traveled to Washington, DC so that I could go to a conference. It was your first flight experience. You are, for the most part, what I would consider a good sleeper. You go down without a struggle, and love your crib. In fact, you won’t sleep anywhere but a crib, unless it’s perhaps a pack-n-play or car seat. You like your own space. The down side of you being a good sleeper is that you won’t fall asleep, or stay asleep, in arms. When I initially booked the flight, you were at an age where you could still be fairly entertained on my lap. Not so by 16 months of age. You wouldn’t sleep, and you were pissed about being confined. It would have been ABSOLUTELY worth it to have purchased a ticket for you, because you actually like the car seat. And you probably would have slept. The irony is that on 3 out of 4 of our flights, there were empty seats. I should have taken Leigh’s advice and schlepped the car seat along. In any event, for all of the struggle, you at least got some plastic wings. And you met some very nice older grandma types who offered to try to entertain you. I let them take you. And thanked them enthusiastically.

During July, you spent a lot of time with your uncle Matt because I had a teaching job that required me to be gone for about 6 hours every day, and your Daddy was working a lot too. You two had a lovely time together. In August, your Daddy and I travelled to Boston for six days, and your Mamma (my mom) came to stay with you. She simply adored you, in spite of your tantrums. Although I missed you, it was nice for your Daddy and I to have some time together to rediscover ourselves aside from being parents. There have been considerably less arguments since we returned, and I think that’s probably a good thing for you too. You were so excited when you and Mamma picked us up at the airport, you just giggled nonstop and kept giving me big noisy “mwah!” kisses all over. I didn’t realize how much I missed you until I saw you that day. I’m smiling now just thinking about it.

In terms of random developmental stuff, you cut your 7th tooth during the road trip and your 8th tooth followed the next week. You cut your first four molars AT THE SAME TIME right after the Boston trip. You are now cutting two more.

You are very sweet when you want to be, giving great big hugs and loud sloppy kisses. You also have a bad temper (I cannot emphasize this enough) and are prone to lashing out by hitting or throwing things. The “Happiest Toddler on the Block” book and DVD by Dr. Karp have helped considerably, but when you are upset, you often get completely out of control and don’t know how to stop. Sometimes, giving you some time alone helps. Sometimes, you just need space, and will calm down if put in your crib. Maybe it helps you save face in front of me. Other times, I don’t know what you need, but we’re working on it.

You used to use the potty pretty consistently, but around the same time the tantrums escalated, the pottying stopped. We’ve backed off of the whole thing for awhile, but in the last few days, you’ve actually signed “potty” and wanted to go to the toilet. We are careful not to praise you too much, lest you feel pressured or decide to not go just to spite us. I think it’s amazing that you use the toilet at all.

You stopped nursing in May, but even now you occasionally pretend to nurse. You have totally lost your latch, so you don’t actually get very far with that (even though I do still have milk). You mastered a spoon and then a fork, before you decided to just start using your hands. Sunflower butter hair gel, anyone? You are pickier about food lately, but overall still a good eater. You do not seem to care for milk. You love berries, bananas, cheese, crackers, and peaches.

You love the dogs, cats, babies, and books about animals or babies. You love your blocks, and are fascinated by things that go (trains, planes, automobiles, bicycles, buses, etc.). You want to fill things, empty things, push and pull things. Anything. You still love water, and love to blow bubbles in the water. Now you’ve developed a fondness for bubble baths. You love your sleep sacks, and won’t let me take them completely off in the morning, so I unzip them, turn the bottom inside-out, and make them into “capes”. You love hats, necklaces, scarves, and anything that you can easily put on your body as a fashion accessory. You were obsessed with washing your hands, and love your toothbrush (though you suck on it more than brush with it). You love music. You love the movie Monsters, Inc. You will watch the entire thing in one sitting. It’s kind of creepy. You love turning light switches on and off and pressing buttons of any kind. You are fascinated with electronic devices, and are especially enamored with the espresso maker.

You can run. You try to climb everything. You can use the big boy slide at the playground. You are trying to jump. You have great balance. You are very physically engaged with your world. You sometimes resist your naps lately, and September 8th was the first time in your short life that you went the entire day without a nap of any kind. The end of the day was a disaster. You still need naps, even if you don’t know it yet. We went to a toddler “yoga” class, which was kind of like herding kittens, but since then, you love to at least lay on a yoga mat. With your Tiggy. Because Tiggy still goes everywhere with you. You aren’t always willing to point to your own body parts, but you will point to them on Tiggy. You know how to point to your nose, ears, eyes, mouth, belly, hands, and feet. You will give high fives, or “footie fives” that are just high fives with your foot. You can stack five blocks. You enjoy chasing birds and hugging other children. Sometimes you knock them over with the force of your love, but that’s okay.

We started a once-a-week parent-toddler class at the university, and on the first day of class, you managed to climb into a bin of tiny pom-poms. The bin was designed for filling cups with the fluffy things and dumping them out and just playing with them. Nope. Not good enough for you. You climbed right in without any warning. The teacher said, “now there’s something no one else has thought of”. And that is how you roll. You do things just a little differently than many other children. The second time we went, I was glad that I brought a change of clothes, because you climbed into a water bin and lay down. This was after you had been intermittently obsessed with playing in the sinks. The teacher now calls you “our water boy”. How appropriate for an Aquarius child. You really are the poster child for that astrological sign–science be damned. You also refused the little shakable bells that everyone used for the good-bye song, seeking out a drum instead. People remarked on your sense of rhythm. You rock.

My favorite time of day with you is bedtime. You have a bath and then we read books and it’s one of the few times of day that you are consistently snuggly. Many other kids your age will still sit on their mama’s laps and want to be held, but you want to go, go, go, on your own unless something frightens you. Then you turn into Velcro. Briefly. Before you run off to do more of your experiments.

You know about 50 signs, but only say a handful of words. I have been kind of worried about that lately, but since you don’t show a lack of communication skills, I am less worried than if you were showing warning signs of autism. I think you are just working on other things and signs are easier than words, so that’s what you choose. You will say cat, dog, mama, dada, bath, car, and binky. Mostly you just say the first syllable. When you say cat, you sort of squeal it in a high-pitched voice, as if the tone and the syllables are inseparable. It makes me laugh every time.

We had a well-baby visit this week, and after hearing about your tantrums and tenacity, our lovely naturopath asked a few other questions about your physical health and suggested a homeopathic supplement for you to try. We’ll see how that goes.

I have made it a habit over the last few months to take time after you have gone to sleep to just go and look at while you sleep. I do this because it reminds me that you were once so very tiny, and now you have tripled in size (27 and a half pounds, 34 and a half inches as of yesterday). It reminds me of how quickly the time passes, and that I will long for THIS time the same way that I long for the times when you were younger. It also reminds me that even now, you are still just a baby. It’s easy to forget how fragile you are when we are moving through the day and I am putting out emotional fires. But when I watch you sleep, it is so clear to me that you are still so very small, and that I am so very lucky. I work to carry that feeling with me into each and every new day. I strive to just live each day as it unfolds, rather than struggle to make it conform to my plans. I want to ENJOY you, rather than just parent you. Because there is so much to enjoy, when I just let us be.

I also recently revisited my pregnancy journal. It was filled with so much hope and anxiety, and it’s surreal to revisit it now that you’re actually HERE and have been for some time. At one point, I remarked that I hoped you would be filled with curiosity and love to laugh. Both of these things are definitely a part of who you are. So I try to remember that I WANTED you to be curious, even if it means that I have to comb strange things out of your hair, worry about whether fruit pits will work their way out, and rescue socks from the VCR. I asked for it. As for your laughter–hearing you laugh is the highlight of any day. I hope that as you grow and look back on your childhood, the ratio of laughter to tears will be ridiculously disproportionate. I would consider that a huge success, considering our temperaments.

I love you Albiegondas.

Love, Mama

I’m just going to skip the part where I apologize for being late on your update…

You’ve been through a lot of changes since your last update. First of all, you weaned yourself. There are many who would say that it wasn’t “true” child-led weaning because you use binkies and sippy cups. I think babies are not so easily fooled and I am just prone to guilt-tripping myself. If the average age of weaning worldwide is between 2 and 3, then for every child who nurses to the age of 4, there should be one who weans at 1. That’s how averages usually work.

I wasn’t sure at first if it was a nursing strike, or a real weaning, but since the days kept rolling by without you nursing and I wasn’t engorged, I figured it wasn’t really all that sudden. It just seemed like it to me. You’d really only been nursing once a day, if that. Of course, I was devastated. But I’ll get over it.

On the plus side, you actually hug me more and cuddle more than you did when you were still nursing. I am more than happy to provide that comfort for you.

My favorite story from the last month is a Tale of Two Tiggers. You have had a stuffed Tigger that you absolutely adore since last September. The problem is that it’s not really washable (though we washed it anyway) and we could not find a spare. I finally found them at Target and bought about 6 of them. Just to be safe.

We presented you with a “new” Tiggy while you were holding “old” (now stashed in a sentimental box) Tiggy. You picked up one and then the other. You squeezed the paw on one, and then the other. You squeezed the beanie butt of one, and then the other. You picked each one up and tasted it. Then you cast the new Tiggy aside, rejected. I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. Toddlers are natural scientists. Luckily, we snuck the newbie into your crib while you were asleep, and without having the old one as a comparison, you were fooled.

Sometime in the last month, my sweet boy was replaced with a tantrum spewing pod person. The onset of tantrums coincided with two other events that I think are significant (recall that I am a psychology grad student). First of all, you were no longer fooled by the baby in the mirror. You know it’s you. Second, you started pointing to yourself when you wanted something. In other words, you now know that you exist. And by god, you have opinions and you will not be swayed. When I tell you no and remove you from a situation, I just go ahead and gently lay you on the floor, because if I don’t, you will fling yourself on the floor and bonk your head. So I just go ahead and help you out with that.

Other random stuff:

You love to climb. Everything. You love to dance, and have your own sign for music that looks kind of like you are conducting the song. You are pickier about your food, but still a great eater. Your favorite food is whatever is on my plate. Or peaches. You love playing hide and seek or chasing games. You love car rides. You love pushing a stroller around. You have no new teeth (still 4 on top and 2 on bottom). You love the Cosby show more than Sesame Street. All these years later, I can say that it is really a great show, but good lord, the clothes are awful. You still want to wake up at 5:30, but it’s easy to get you to lay back down until after 6. You scream when initially put down for a nap (you’re down to one per day), but then will sleep for 2 to 3 hours straight. You don’t scream when put down at night. You love your bedtime routine. You love water. You love books—all books, my books, your books, magazines, whatever. You can stack 3, sometimes 4, blocks. You are running now. You try to jump but can’t quite do it yet. You like to brush your own teeth and are fascinated by shoes. You covet electronic devices of all kinds. You reliably say Dada, Dog, and Bath. You squeal with delight when I let the dogs into the house, when your Dada gets home, and when you see a cat. You love stacking things, emptying things, and scribbling.

What don’t you love? Limits. The word “no”. Having your face wiped. That’s pretty much it. It’s the “no” thing that really pisses you off. Even your Nanna, who had eleven children and is a nanny, commented on your temper. I have no idea where you got it…

You don’t have much interest in speaking, but know soooo many signs:

More, book, ball, and shoes are all pretty much signed the same, but in different contexts. Dad and phone also really close, but one involves your thumb to your ear, and the other is your forefinger. You will also sign finished, Tiggy (which is awfully close to “sleep”), Mama, eat, drink, bath, sleep, brush teeth, cereal, milk (which you now use for anything you want really badly—I take it as a compliment), water, car, bus, music, diaper, dog, bird, bye-bye, train, baby, cat, help, wash hands, binky (your own sign—you put the back of your hand to your mouth), cracker. Some of these signs you use more reliably than others, but you have successfully used them all at some point. You will also shake your head “no” and blow kisses.

Things I have learned:

• Every day is a new adventure.
• There is no "catching up" on housework–just learn to roll with it.
• My mother told me that there are times your child will be replaced with someone you do not know, and don’t really like. She was right.
• Just like I have never gotten used to the summers in Phoenix, I will never get used to waking up before 6 a.m.
• In the dictionary, next to the definition of "toddler", there should be a picture of a tornado.
• That happiness I felt when you could start entertaining yourself? It’s been replaced with horror by the level of destruction you can accomplish in five minutes.
• You know that one tone of whining that makes you want to bang your head into the floor? Your toddler will find it. And use it. Liberally. With glee.
• If all else fails, crank the music.
• If that fails, just leave the house.

Some days, I feel like I am absolutely the wrong mother for you, and others I feel like I am THE champion at toddler motherhood. There seems to be no in between. We either have good days, or horrible ones. We’re either in the groove, or NOT. But I feel blessed to have all these days with you.

Thank you, Albie, for being YOU. I don’t always like you, but I always love you. And you have made me into a better person that I would have ever been without you.

Love,

Mama

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a snapshot from a few days ago…

when you woke up this morning (at 5:15), the first thing I did (after swearing) was change your diaper. While I was changing it, you repeatedly signed "diaper". Then you signed "milk" and so I nursed you. We came out to the kitchen, and as I was getting your cereal ready, you signed "eat". Once I was done mixing up some fruity slop, I said, "okay, let’s go get you into your high chair" and so you walked towards your high chair and waited for me to lift you up. When you looked sleepy this afternoon, I asked if you wanted to go to your crib and take a nap. You started walking towards the bedroom and when I put you into your crib with your Tiggy and binky, you went to sleep with no problems (which is certainly not always the case). When you woke up, you looked up at the shelves in the bedroom and signed "book" to let me know that you wanted to look at your favorite book.

You are communicating and it’s wonderful. To be fair, you have always communicated, but I just didn’t know how to translate a lot of your language. Now, I don’t know how we would survive around here without sign language. In the last month, you have had a signing explosion, and now you sign words unprompted rather than only producing a sign when I say the word first. You’ll come up to me in a tizzy and I’ll ask what you want, and if you are able, you tell me.

That’s the good stuff.

The bad stuff is that you are once again waking at 5:30 in the morning. Regardless of when you go to bed. Regardless of how sleep deprived you may be, you will not agree to staying in your crib past 6 a.m. at the latest. I am soooooo getting revenge when you are a teenager. You had a few bad nights of repeated wakings a few weeks ago, after which you started signing about 10 new words. And then you started sleeping through again. You’ve gone back to mostly napping twice a day, except for the days that I have made plans around that schedule. On those days, you’ll lay down in the morning and really, you try to sleep, but after about a half an hour you demand to be let out of your bed cage.

Other random stuff…

Your favorite toys are your stacking cups, your blocks, and a small broom. Your favorite activity is putting things into containers and taking things out of containers. That keeps you busy most of the day. You also love pushing buttons–VCR, remote control, air purifier, etc. You also have a couple of books that have little squeaky animals in them, and when you couldn’t figure out how to make it squeak with your hand, you improvised–you put the books on the ground and step on them. I thought that was pretty brilliant.

Your favorite food was pears, until one day you started throwing them on the floor after only one bite. You like bananas most of the time and your breakfast is usually a mashed banana with rice cereal (either made with goat milk or goat milk yogurt). You like beans and peas and pasta and grapes and raisins–most of the time. In fact, you pretty much like everything on some days and I can always find something you are excited to eat. You’ll be crazy about something for a few days, and then won’t touch it. I can’t blame you. I’m the same way.

We finally turned your car seat around so that it’s forward facing and you were so amazed at the new view. I would have left you rear-facing longer (it’s safer) but your feet had to bend at the knees for you to fit in the seat.

I dropped your dream feed when you started nursing a little more in the day. I had agonized about "phasing it out" but just stopped one day and you never noticed. You will now usually get a 5 to 10 minute feed in once a day, either first thing in the morning or after one of your naps, with maybe a few little nursings throughout the day.  

I have been doing Dance Dance Revolution as a cardio workout, and you just love to "dance" like mama. We have an extra pad, so sometimes we’ll put "your" pad next to mine and you will just go to town. More and more you’ll dance to pretty much anything and I so love that about you.

I’m so glad we get to spend a lot of time together. It is so fascinating to watch you morph back and forth between monkey and baby human. You love to climb things, and it’s not like this is a behavior that has been modeled to you. Your dad and I don’t go around climbing things all day. But you just have this drive to do it. Apparently, so do most kids–go look at the toys on a playground. They’re built for monkeys.

I would like to write more to you, but honestly little dude, I’m tired, and if I keep putting off posting this, we’re going to miss a monthly update and I am too obsessive to let that happen.

I love you and am so glad that you are my little boy. You bring me so much joy every day.

Love,

Mama 

Dear Albie,

This update will probably not be eloquent or funny, but by golly, I’m going to get it done. At least I will someday be able to point to your monthly updates as evidence of some sort of consistency in your life.

You started walking last month, and have now developed great balance. We live in an old house with some uneven flooring and bizarrely placed steps (that I had not realized were "steps" until I watched a toddler repeatedly trip over them). It didn’t take long for you to catch on and grab a nearby wall or door when you reached those points. Now, you don’t even need to do that. You are like a 4 wheel drive machine. Your favorite toy right now is one of those pushable poppers. You’ve been fascinated with it for quite some time, but now you really enjoy it because you can walk while pushing it. In the last few days, it’s obvious you’re trying to learn how to run. I do hope that it takes some time for you to figure that out. I’m not ready for you to run away from me! In the last week, you’ve now started standing up by yourself without need of something steady yourself with. You are also thinking vertically, and I will often look over to see that you are now standing on something so that you are up off of the ground. It freaks me out. But through a fuzzy lens, it becomes so obvious that you are, after all, a little monkey. And by god, you want to climb like one. It’s too bad you don’t have a prehensile tail. I have been lamenting my lack of one for several years now.

We made a purchase in the last month that has been one of the best baby-oriented investements thus far. We bought a couple of “Signing times” DVDs. You had seen some signs on the Baby Einstein DVDs, but I sometimes get the feeling that those DVDs were really created by people who just wanted their kids out of their hair. I feel like the Signing Times DVDs were created by people who really love children. You are fascinated by them. The songs are catchy and fun. And, the best part is that because they show several kids your age signing, I better understand the range of forms a baby sign can take. I think you may have been signing at least a little bit for awhile now, and I was missing it. Your most common sign is “finished”, and you have also signed more, milk, and horse. I don’t think you actually understand the horse sign, but that you were just copying what the other kids were doing. I could be wrong. You also wave “bye-bye” now, will give high-fives, will head-butt one of your parents on command, and will play along (when you feel like it) to pat-a-cake.

In terms of spoken language, other than attempts at “dog”, I don’t think you have much interest. Which doesn’t mean you are quiet. It just means that you prefer a wide range of goofy sounds. I’m okay with that. I often prefer them myself.

You try to brush your hair. You try to brush your teeth. You will babble on a phone or anything resembling a phone. You help with getting dressed by pushing your arms and legs into the appropriate holes. You help with getting undressed by lifting your arms over your head. You can grab your foot when I ask “where is your footie?”, and will pat your belly when I ask where your belly is. You know where my nose is, but seem perplexed about the whereabouts of your own. You know the names of many objects and will grab them and bring them to me when I ask (if you feel like it).

You still have four top teeth and two bottom teeth and you are cutting your first upper molars. You are in the 90th percentile of height, and 75th for weight. Which is funny, because the exact opposite was true at 6 months.

You are self-feeding now, and are really pretty good at it. You still have a great appetite and wide palette, and I feel very fortunate in that respect. In general, you have great table manners. I’m sure this will not always be the case, but I can dream. You have really decreased your nursing, and the only big session you get in each day is the dream feed. At this point, I could let it go and it probably wouldn’t affect your sleep, but I like knowing that you are getting a big dose of mama goodness during that time. You will randomly take very short little nips during the day, but I’m not really sure if you consume much milk then or just like to know it’s still available. You’ve even shortened your first-thing-in-the-morning-feed to almost nothing, but will not tolerate actually skipping it. In truth, I probably hold onto the dream feed because it is the only time you are really settled down and nursing, and I’m not willing to let it go yet.

You sleep 10 to 11 hours each night with a solid 6 to 8 hour stretch most nights. Sure, you wake, and may even grumble, but then put yourself back to sleep. You went through a short period of screaming some time within the first 2 hours of sleep and needing to be momentarily consoled. I don’t know what was going on, but it didn’t last long. Every once in awhile you’ll have a bad night with repeated waking. I figure it’s some kind of developmental spurt and try not to get too upset about it. And suddenly, inexplicably, you started sleeping in later. I almost don’t want to mention it, for fear of jinxing this new development. Once upon a time, you used to sleep until about 7:30, and around the time of your surgery, it moved back to about 5:30. It was infuriating. I don’t know if you were traumatized, or if that time period also corresponded to trying to learn mobility skills. Now, after learning to walk, you wake between 6:30 and 7:30. Maybe you just wear yourself out during the day I never thought I would rejoice at sleeping until 7:30. That, my little friend, is the power of a baby. The power of you. And I don’t even hold it against you. Much.

You are also slowly starting the transition to one nap a day. About once a week, you just take one nap a day. The other days, you still take two, but there’s more variation in how long they last than there had been previously. As you are getting older, you can handle longer stretches of wake time without complete melt-downs.

With regards to elimination communication/potty training….well, you don’t want to poop on the toilet. You used to do it, but now just don’t. I can’t blame you. I think it must be a lot easier to stand up and squat a little than to sit on the toilet, especially when your feet don’t even touch the ground. If I realize you’re pooping, I’ll try to get you there for at least part of the experience, but I miss it most of the time. You pee on the toilet a lot, and it’s easiest after a nap. So, at this point, I figure if you’re not afraid of the toilet, we’re on the right track.

You still love your Tiggy more than just about anything. You love your binkies and love your fuzzy blanket. You love spending time in your crib to just hang out. You love car rides, and I will often think you are asleep, but no…you’re just checking it all out, taking it all in, grooving to some tunes. You love food, especially your greens. I’m not kidding. You love to laugh. You love hitting inanimate objects. You love it when we sniff or blow on your footies. And you have recently grown to love dolls—any kind of doll with a human face. You love bath time and books, especially your Chirpy Chick book with the fun tractor sounds. You love mangos with sticky rice and garlic noodles (gotta start the Thai food early). You love garlic, period. And water. And pears. You really love pears. You love visiting Dada at work. Everyone he works with lights up when I bring you in. Even the assholes. You love seeing what kinds of objects will fit into other objects. You love carrying shoes around the house. Your Dada just told me that he got up early to go to work the other morning, and as he was putting on his shoes he found one of your stacking cups inside. As if you had left him a present. You also love to carry all sorts of other random things, like the slide-in cover of the dog door. You adore the dogs and have a very particular squeal that only emerges in their presence. You love Signing Time, Sesame Street, and Dan Zanes. You have recently started dancing. I cannot possibly convey to you the emotion that flows through me when you dance. I hope you are never afraid to just boogie on down. And oh yeah. You still love Radiohead and Thom Yorke. I love that about you.

You hate being told no. You hate people in your space when you need your Albie-time. You hate diaper changes, except when you don’t hate them. You hate someone else feeding you or even attempting to feed you. You hate having your face wiped off. Perhaps some will think hate is a strong word, but I assure you, it is accurate. You are a passionate kid, and you have strong preferences about many things. You also hate having to stay in a shopping cart. Thus, you are back in the baby carrier for excursions. I don’t really mind, as I know that I have precious few months left of you wanting to be carried.

I’ve really enjoyed your company in the last month. You have been a complete joy. I hope I can remember that when you are…not.

Love,

Mama

Dear Albie,

 

I’m not sure when it happened. It seemed like I looked up one moment, and there you were. A little person. A little boy. With needs and preferences and tantrums and opinions and a one-track mind when it suits you. Oh, sure, I know in so many ways you are still a baby. But you are also, now, something else. And it startled me.

 

 

This was a big month for you. For starters, you finally figured out how to use a sippy cup. But it had to be the old-school Tupperware kind. All of that leak-proof valve stuff just baffles you. But you finally figured it out and you tip it straight up in the air, chugging your beverage, as if you were some melodramatic drunkard consuming a bottle of bourbon.

 

You have started eating with a spoon. And you do a pretty good job. You still have a hard time scooping food up, but no problem getting it into your mouth (and up your nose). We walk a fine line between me letting you figure it out and watching in horror as all of the furniture and curtains are covered in apple sauce. I don’t have the patience for that. If you want to use food as body paints, I’m okay with that. But please spare the curtains. What have they ever done to you?

 

We introduced raw goat milk into your diet in the last few weeks. I have had more and more trouble pumping, and so it’s really nice to have an alternative when I’m not around. You seem to be doing well with it, which is a relief. I tried to cut out your dream feed, but you weren’t having it. You’re down to two really big nursing sessions a day (first thing in the morning and the dream feed), and a few little nips throughout the day.

 

Speaking of milk, there is a certain sound that you make when you are about to nurse that is something like a chipmunk making a Butthead (as in, Beavis and Butthead) laugh. It’s really cute, and in the last month, you have started to use it for other things you are really excited about. Sometimes this is a food item, but it is often also a new toy, or one of your stuffed Tiggers (we bought several online, none of which turned out to actually be the same as your FAVORITE Tigger). It is that sound that I will probably miss the most as you develop more language skills to express your desires.

 

You have yet to sprout any new teeth. You’ve got four on top, and still just two on the bottom. It seems as if you are starting to cut your upper molars. I have no idea where the rest of your bottom teeth are or when they will make an appearance.

 

You also had your first haircut this month, just a few days before your birthday party. The very top patch of your hair never fell out and regrew like the rest of your hair. So, technically it was still the same hair you had at birth, which is why it took me so long to cut it even though it reached your nose and was always in your eyes. Cutting your hair changed your entire countenance. You look like a radically different person. You look like a little boy. That might be part of the reason I was so startled to look at you and see suddenly see someone else.

 

You have developed a real fondness for Dan Zanes. Watching a video of a Dan Zanes song elicits about the same response from you as watching Muppets perform. It must be the hair. You are still a big fan of all things Thom Yorke, and seem to also really like The Flaming Lips. I am quite impressed with your impeccable taste for music. Lately, you will sometimes bounce or sway when you hear music, and it seems you are trying to dance. Once you are a little more steady on your newly walking feet, I’m gonna encourage that as much as I can.

 

Oh yeah, you started walking in the last 10 days or so, and also trying to scale the furniture. It had been a long time since you had taken your first steps, and then you really didn’t seem to be interested in going any further. Then BAM, you took, like, twelve steps. I don’t know where that came from, but you just put it all together and took off. And are now setting your sights on vertical challenges. I find myself on the verge of a panic attack just thinking about how many things there are to climb in this house.

 

You had your first sugar overdose at your birthday party—orange cupcakes with lemon buttercream frosting (made with goat milk and goat butter—so, so, sooooo good). You love citrus, but are still too young to have much of it, so I made you a tangy cake. You loved it and so did I. You exhibited far more self-control than I did with the leftovers. That’s probably just because you can’t reach the counter yet. You could also call your birthday party, technically, your first kegger. Because there was keg there for all of your adult friends, of which there were many. I think you have more friends than I do. Must be your great conversation skills…

 

Speaking of keggers, you also puked for the first time this month. We were at one of your daddy’s coworker’s birthday parties. It was Kelly’s birthday—she loves you to death and buys you lots of stuff and we were really only invited to come along as your chaperones. I don’t know if it was the introduction to goat milk, too many unpureed greens, cilantro in the rice, or just the fact that I was turning you upside down and jiggling you. But you puked. Now I know exactly how different vomit and spit-up really are. And for a moment, I thought to myself, ‘oh man, someone has to deal with this‘. And then I realized,’oh shit, it’s me‘. I had to deal with it. I was covered in vomit. And in that moment I felt so much like a mother.

 

On the actual day of your birthday (also known as Valentine’s Day), I had to go to school for the afternoon. I was walking back from lunch around the actual time you were born. I looked down at the time on my cell phone, and it was 3:21, and I thought to myself, wow, this is about the time that we realized he was stuck. And as I walked, I realized just how long 3 minutes is. You can cover quite a distance on foot in three minutes. And I was thinking about your birth and the events leading up to your birth in a very cerebral, detached sort of way. But when the clock changed to 3:24, I had luckily just stepped inside my office, because I spontaneously burst into tears. I was acutely aware of how easily we could have lost you that day, and what a miracle the beginning of a life truly is. I was so happy you were born exactly a year ago, and I could remember what you smelled like and what you felt like and I was overwhelmed with joy. I am so lucky to know you and to have the privilege to hang out with you and watch you grow.

 

And as I watched you play a few days ago, it suddenly occurred to me that you will, hopefully, live beyond me, and that I won’t get to see you as an old man as your life comes to an end. I was filled with a great sense of sadness because I realized that we usually only get to see a life begin, or watch it end, but not usually both. And when we do see both, it is an even greater tragedy. I can’t explain exactly how this realization made me feel, but it is a feeling I haven’t been able to shake. A feeling of being cheated because I won’t get to see how it all turns out. A feeling of being swallowed by things much greater than I. A feeling of powerlessness. A feeling of sorrow. A feeling of appreciation for all things precious. A feeling of restlessness. A feeling of peace. The feeling I have is all of these things. And I realize that these same feeling sum up my feelings as a mother. It is these feelings that I have stumbled through and grappled with in the last year, which are slowly being replaced with more and more moments of joy and laughter and fun without concern for what “else” I should be doing. I may not get to see how it all turns out, but what I get to see now is simply amazing.

 

Things that make you giggle wildly:

• Belly kisses
• Blowing on your toes or feet (he-he)
• Making fake sneeze noises (“ah-choo”)
• Making random animal noises (dog, chicken, turkey–the goofier the better)
• Chasing you around the house
• Just about anything if you’re tired enough…

Things that piss you off:

• Sometimes, the belly kisses
• Pretty much anything involving boundaries or the word ‘no’
• Having your face wiped off
• Diaper changes
• Just about anything if you’re tired enough…

Things I have learned:

• Life is short. Period.
• A year takes on a completely different meaning when it is a year of your child’s life.
• And yet, three minutes is a really long time.
• It is much easier to give your child a few drawers of stuff in the kitchen to play with rather than keep him out of the kitchen entirely.

• Thinking about what you "should" be doing all the time is a great big waste of time. If you have one "should" to pick, it "should" be playing with the baby.
• The housework really can wait.
• Out of sight out of mind is perfectly acceptable as a cleaning strategy.
• The number one advantage of exclsive breastfeeding–virtually smell-free poop for the first 6 months.
• It really is a whole new ballgame once your child is mobile.
• There is little or no correlation between your older baby’s favorite food today, and the favorite food tomorrow.
• Made-from-scratch cupcakes are actually more expensive than mixes or bakery purchases. Oh, wait, they also have way less crap in them (unless you consider butter and sugar crap–I consider them indulgences). And even though they are more expensive, they are so freaking worth it. I wanted to take a flipping bath in the buttercream frosting.
• I really should remember what my mom taught me and always add an extra egg to baked goods. She claims it makes them more moist. I’m pretty sure she’s right.
• When making potato salad, DON’T FORGET ABOUT YOUR BOILING POTATOES. We know have a freezer bag full of essentially, mashed potatoes and carrots. We call it "potato soup base", also known as "way overboiled potatoes". Damn potatoes.
• It’s okay to ask for help.
• It’s more than okay to ask for help–it’s downright admirable.
• Things are much easier once you stop trying to impose your before-baby schedule, habits, routines, and standards on your post-baby life.
• Take your vitamins. Really. Just do it.
• Some days, you just have to say fuck it. About everything. Except keeping the baby fed, changed, and alive.
• Sleep deprivation really makes people crazy. C-R-A-Z-Y Crazy.
• All the crazy is worth it.

 If you had some choice in the matter, thank you so much for picking me as your mama.

I love you so much, little Gondas.

Happy, happy birthday! 

Love,

Mama 

 

 

 

Dear Albie,

It’s been really hard for me to sit down and write this update, because I feel like so much has happened in the last month. I was off from school for holiday break, so I got to spend every day with you from about mid-December to mid-January. I’ll admit, I got a little stir crazy, but then we found a really nice groove. Which is when I had to return to school, of course. The plus side of that month together is that you really have a routine that suits you now. Your sleep and naps are pretty much like clockwork, except when you’re sick. Which you have been off and on (more on than off) since Christmas. It’s the first time you’ve been sick enough to actually have a real fever that I monitored. This makes me realize that I have been so lucky in that your first year has been surprisingly uneventful in the health department. Except for the jaundice. And your penis. The way I see it, the whole penis thing was like a voucher from the universe for you to skip at least a few colds. That’s only fair.

You experienced your first Christmas this year. It was awesome. All of your cousins were here, and so there were fourteen little people under the age of ten at the Christmas eve and Christmas. You were the youngest—but that won’t last. You already have two cousins on the way for next year. All of the kids put on a little Christmas story pageant for Christmas eve. It was total mayhem with towels for gowns and such, but very fun. Since you are the youngest, you were baby Jesus. I’m not religious. I’m not Christian. But I will say that I much enjoyed your acting debut as baby Jesus. Especially when you kept crawling away from your cousins Joseph and Mary.

We went through a REALLY fussy phase about two weeks ago. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what the heck was wrong. I’d feed you, you’d eat, you’d seem to be done, I’d let you out of your chair. You’d be happy, and a half an hour later turn into a nightmare. Turns out, you were hungry. I had mistaken your “being done” for “being bored”. So, if I went ahead and just fed you every half an hour, you were happy. I think it’s called a growth spurt. I was feeding you about half of what you were capable of eating. Sorry about that.

A few quick notes about the last month: you’ve almost mastered a sippy cup, your second set of top teeth are poking through, you’ve started pointing to things, you say “ma” and “da” and it’s obvious who you mean, I think you’re trying to say “dog” as well, you are showing signs of wanting to feed yourself (be afraid…), you very often find your binky and pop it back in yourself to go back to sleep.

I could go on and on about different things that have happened, but I’m going to steal a little formatting from my friend Leigh, and just sum up your likes and dislikes (and such)…

You like:

Cherries, pasta, green veggies, yogurt, most food, opening drawers and cabinets, emptying drawers and cabinets, playing in your crib (except when you don’t), power cords, your Tiggy, Radiohead, jazz, Prince (post- Darling Nikki), banging things together, throwing things, playing with my Tibetan singing bowl, baths and showers, sitting on the toilet, Sesame Street, books

You are fascinated by:

My saxophone (you sing or scream along), animals, other children, computers, cell phones

You dislike:

apples and blueberries if mixed together (though they are okay when separated), peaches, strange textures, being bored, having your nose wiped, diaper changes, being bored, being told no, being hungry, being bored

You are frustrated by:

not being taller, not being able to communicate your desires more effectively, boundaries 

I love you, little Dude,

Love,
Mama

 

 

Dear Albie,

This month has been just one big fun month for us. I’m not really sure where to start. For the sake of documentation, I’ll talk about your teeth. As you’ll recall from your last update, your first tooth poked through in early November. Then, there was about a three week pause with no more teeth. On November 25th, you sprouted your top right tooth, followed the next day by your top left tooth. Your second bottom tooth didn’t push through until about a week ago. I’m not exactly sure on the date there, but we’ll just say Dec 13th because it sounds about right. Your top teeth are big teeth with a large gap between them, and it has changed your whole smile. It’s damn cute, but I kind of miss the gummies.

Your main focus this month seems to be on mobility. Early in the month, you spent a lot of time on just getting the hang of standing without holding on to anything. It is amazing that you little baby creatures just have this drive to push yourselves and challenge yourselves to the next step. You would stand at the gate between the dining room and kitchen while I cooked and let go, balance, grab the gate to steady, and repeat. Over and over. Now, you are steady enough on your feet that when I put you down, I put you down standing. Sometimes you just let yourself drop, and sometimes you squat down quite gracefully. More gracefully than I can, actually.

We have an industrial size mop bucket that’s on wheels (though it’s really overkill for this tiny house), and you decided to start playing with it one day. Never fear, I only use vinegar on the floors, so I wasn’t concerned about the chemical hazards of your new toy. I was more worried that when you try to pull up on it, it moves, and that it would surely result in a couple of head bonks. But you were actually quite cautious with it, and so enthralled that I just let it go. A few days into this new obsession, your daddy and I were in the kitchen, and you had pulled up on the mop bucket and were just standing there. Your dad was impressed, and I told him you’d been doing that all the time lately. But then, you took off, using it as a walker, squealing with glee. That thing doesn’t even naturally go in a straight line, so it took some major talent on your part to use it as such. But you did. For the next half an hour, you’d use it to walk until you ran into something, then you’d scream for us to turn you around and you’d take off again. We grabbed the video camera, and I’m so glad we did. You are giggling hysterically and squealing like crazy and it is by far the best footage of you so far. Since then, you’ll use pretty much anything that will roll or that you can push (there have been some really torturous scraping sounds in this house lately) as a walker.

On Dec 9th, you took your first steps—three in a row, even! Since then, you seem to have lost the drive to walk, knowing that crawling gets you where you want to go without falling down. I am fine with this, because it means that there will be less head bonks in the immediate future until you decide you MUST work on walking again.

Let’s talk about food. Because I love food and you love food and I find the whole process of introducing foods and avoiding allergies fascinating. We switched doctors this month, and I started taking you to a naturopath. After speaking with him about diet and allergies and all manner of food things, we’ve really been trying to avoid giving you meat and wheat, both of which you were getting quite a bit of. We’re basically avoiding the “big seven” common allergens (cow dairy, soy, corn, egg whites, wheat, nuts, and fish) in addition to meat and citrus. I asked him what kind of protein to give you, and he suggested goat milk cheese and yogurt. Wow. You love it. You’ll even eat plain yogurt, which is pretty bold for a little dude. And you love lentils and split peas, which is great because I make soup for all of us, and then just puree yours a little bit to make it a little easier on your tummy. You love it. We tried giving you a little citrus, and although you loved it (we can’t peel an orange anywhere near you without you going nuts), it gave you a really red bottom. So, we’ll wait on that a little longer. You like pretty much everything you try (you even love greens!), so there’s no shortage of other foods to feed you.

You’re still nursing, and there’s five predictable sessions per day, with an occasional little sip in between. You nurse when you first wake up, you nurse before your two naps, you nurse before bed (now before your bath so that you go to sleep on your own at night), and then I dream feed you around 10 p.m. I don’t intend to wean you anytime soon, so I expect these sessions will remain pretty predictable for quite some time.

You, as always, have a new range of bizarre sounds this month. Many of them are derivations on gagging or hissing sounds, broken up with a liberal seasoning of inventive squeaks and squeals and screeches. You babble all sorts of things, and I think you might be saying mama and dada, but it’s really hard to tell. You know many signs for things when I use them (milk, more, food, finished), but don’t yet use them yourself. You recently discovered the fun in patting your mouth (or letting me pat it) and making a “wah” sound, like the “Indian” sounds I used to make when I was a kid. You are a joy to listen to, and even when you scream or babble in protest tosome injustice (like getting dressed), I can’t help but laugh.

Your favorite toys right now are your tigger that you sleep with, the rolling popper toy, the rolling chime toy (vintage–$3 at Goodwill), your blocks (the better to throw with), and any kitchen related tools I give you. You also fell in love with the “Bobby” doll that was mine, then my brother’s, then given to you by Mamma. It’s a cloth washable doll with a plastic face and plastic hands and is surprisingly not creepy. It’s now your car traveling buddy.

Your favorite games are peek-a-boo games with cloth, knocking down block structures I’ve built, and falling games on the bed. You will sit yourself up really straight or we’ll stand you up, and you will fling yourself forward onto the bed in face down in what we call an “Albie slam”. Then you giggle hysterically. You especially like to do these after a bath. I know some kids cry to wind down to go to sleep. I think you fling yourself around and giggle hysterically to wind down. As long as it works for you, it works for me. You are also catching on to mimicry games, and I have so much fun playing with you.

We have entered the phase of separation anxiety and stranger anxiety. The separation anxiety was really bad for about a week, but seems to have toned down somewhat. The stranger anxiety is really cute and funny. You are so gregarious, that you can’t help but smile at people…and then you have to quickly bury your head in my shoulder. It is the prototypical “shy baby” routine, and I find it simply darling. Your aunt Amanda and I went shopping last weekend for a gift for your Nanna and Grandpa, and she was holding you. You would smile at her, and when she would smile back, you would bury your head in her shoulder. Which was really cute because she was the one holding you. You have a newfound cuddly streak, and so once you get used to someone, you are more than happy to let them hold you and hug them back. Just ask Leigh.
 

In short, I really enjoy your company, Little Dude. You are, for the most part, a total hoot. And when you’re not, you’re still  awesome.

Things I have learned this month:

• There is no need to buy special toys to assist in mobility development.
• Babies are resourceful little creatures.
• Just when you get used to any phase, it will change.
• Even the most gregarious baby will experience stranger anxiety. He’ll just be damn cute about it.
• Breastfeeding is so much easier and so much more fun with an older baby.
• Pumping is not. My boobs are no longer fooled by that device.
• Babies all develop so differently. Even their tooth order is only moderately predictable.
• There is a world of difference between cow milk and goat milk. Just ask Albie’s tummy.
• Just because your child  was willing to poop on the toilet doesn’t mean it will last (though he’ll still pee there)
• Breastmilk poop = not so smelly; food poop = disgustingly smelly (which leads us to…)
• My next child will be breastfed until s/he is potty trained. I swear it.
• Although having a child is much more challenging than I anticipated, it is also way more fun. 

I love you so much, Albert. I hope you always know.

Love, Mama

Dear Mr. Scientist,

You are becoming quite the little experimenter around the house. You have learned to turn toys (or whatever) in your hands so that you can inspect a given object from all angles, as well as make sure to taste all of its surfaces. You have been conducting all sorts of experiments with any object you can get your hands on.

If I bang it on this surface, will it make noise?

If I bang it together with this other thing, is the noise different?

If I drop it, what happens?

What happens if I throw it?

What happens if I smash it?

Does it roll or slide?

Will it fit through the bars of my crib?

Will it fit through the bars of the gate?

Will it fit inside this other thing?

     And most importantly…

Can I eat it?

 

On day, you were playing with your tigger, and you were particularly fascinated with his tag. This is nothing new—you’ve been fascinated with tags for about 6 weeks. You were sitting on the bed while I was getting dressed from a shower. I put the towel on the bed, and the tag happened to be near you. You picked up the towel by the tag, and holding that tag in your left hand and the tiggy tag in the right hand, you inspected an compared them simultaneously for quite some time. You seemed perplexed that the tags were the same, but what they were connected to was so different. It was a really fantastic moment for me to witness. It just highlighted how amazing the human brain really is.

It has really been a joy to watch you over the last few weeks since your last developmental leap, so accurately predicted by the Wonder Weeks. Gearing up for that leap, you were kind of a pain. You wanted to be picked up, no not picked up. Carried. No, not carried. Inside. No, outside. In short, nothing made you happy for about 10 days. You were fussy about everything and so clingy. No, not clingy.

And then, just like with the other leaps, it seemed like overnight, you were a whole new baby. You’ve been content to play by yourself for longer stretches of time as you try to figure out the what and how of pretty much everything. This includes playing by yourself in your crib in the middle of the night, which is a new thing completely. One day, when you didn’t know I was watching you (I was pretending to be asleep), I watched you fit every toy from your crib through the slats, wave it up and down, and pull it back through. Then you dropped every toy over the top bar and watched it fall. Of course, once they were all out, you cried. But I was proud of your experimentation and didn’t mind getting them all together for you again.

A few days ago, you were sitting on your little toilet seat naked. You discovered your penis. You had started to discover it right before the surgery, and then stopped touching it altogether afterwards. I had begun to be afraid that we had totally scarred you for life. Apparently, it doesn’t hurt at all anymore, because you discovered it for quite some time that day. We were elated.  Then you touched your bellybutton hernia, and then your penis, and then your hernia. You realized that the hernia wasn’t as entertaining fairly quickly. A very productive experiment.

You also recently disovered that you can put your foot in your mouth, and for about two days, this is all you wanted to do in your car seat. Which is quite the feat since you can’t lean forward to meet it. You would bring your foot to your mouth with two hands and put it in your mouth as if it were a footie hamburger. Your daddy and I laughed hysterically at that.

With regards to your musical and auditory world, you have been fascinated with our Tibetan singing bowls. You don’t have the dexterity to actually use them as they are intended, but enjoy banging them or hearing me bang them. The harmonics that result from just hitting the bowl are pretty cool, so I don’t mind. You are also fascinated by the sounds the wooden blocks you were recently gifted make when banged together. Or banged on the Tibetan bowl. And you will sit, riveted, through a “Wheels on the Bus” song on the Baby Einstein On the Go DVD, while it plays over and over. It’s actually quite cute, because it’s a little segment where all the puppets are grooving on a cartoon bus, and I was riveted myself. I can set the DVD on loop, and you will watch and listen to that for about 10 times before you tire of it. The rest of the DVD hasn’t particularly captured your interest (fine by me), but that particular segment has proved useful for the times that I really need to get a shower and get dressed so we can get out of the house.

Oh, and your first tooth FINALLY started to poke through on November 6. I had really started to think that you just didn’t have any teeth in there, and then pop! there it was. You have started to actually chew (or rather, gum) your food in the last few weeks rather than just swallowing it whole. I’m pretty excited about this because it opens up your food options considerably.

You got to play with your first balloon this month when Mamma came through town. We tied a helium balloon to your wrist while we were at a restaurant. That was a really awesome to watch. You also discovered bubbles, which didn’t impress you the first time, but totally captured your attention the second time.

  

You also finally met your Grandma-Great Klein at the end of last month. I forgot to mention that in your last update. You are named after her husband, Albert, who passed away a few years ago (as well as your Uncle Frank, whose middle name was Albert, because he was named after his grandpa…).

I got a little lazy about our morning walks, but then I discovered a few really great parks that have water and a lot of birds. You love birds and I love water, and so we’ve gone walking every morning 8 out of the last 10 days. It’s a really nice, calming part of our day now. 

We started sleep training a week ago, and it has really gone well. You now go to sleep within about 10 minutes with no crying. You are waking less at night, and the few times that you have been awake for long periods of time in the middle of the night, you have been reasonably content to play in your crib until you settle back down to sleep. You will occasionally fuss, and I will get up and lay you down and tell you it’s not time to get up yet, but you don’t throw a fit and it’s fun to listen to you play while I’m half asleep. You are also sleeping later. We have decided that you may not get up before 6, but we won’t let you sleep past 7. So if you wake up at 5:20, we tell you it’s time to go back to sleep. This presents a challenge, because if you are still awake at 6, and now it’s suddenly time to get up, this could be confusing. So, when that time comes, we say cheerfully “it’s time to get up” and turn on the light. The light is what’s known as a discriminative stimulus. If the light is off, you can’t get up yet. If the light is on, you can. Other people use alarm clocks for the same purpose, but I hate alarm clocks so that’s not happening. If you fall back to sleep before 6 rolls around, we let you sleep until the next time you wake, or 7 a.m. Whichever comes first. It’s a little harder to get you down for naps, but still fairly easy compared to our prior "system" (or lack thereof). In short, we have had success thus far. 

You are incredibly communicative, and play with the whole range of consonants and syllables. I expect you to just bust out with words at any time. There have been several times when you have crawled towards me and said something resembling “mama”, but I’m really not sure if it’s a coincidence. I love to hear you babble, and you still smile and laugh easily, even on your cranky days. 

You are cruising a lot now, and took one or two stumbling steps today between your Nanna and Daddy. You are now able to stand for seconds at a time before you fall over. I can’t believe it.

So, my little magical child, today marks 9 months since you were born. You have now been on the outside of me for as long as you were on the inside of me. This is another one of those math and time things that kind of freaks me out. You are growing so fast…

Things I have learned this month:

• Time is relentless.
• Everyone has boundaries and limits. You may not know where they are, but you will know when they have been crossed.
• Being a good mother is dependent on acknowledging these limits.
• Behaviorism principles really work. I already knew this, but it’s always nice to learn again.
• Sometimes it’s hard to do the right thing. But it is still worth it.
• Any "method" used for anything with your child can (and should) be tweaked to suit your child.
• Piaget was right. Humans are driven to learn and explore.
• Sleep is a priority. Period.
• If teething drool could be harnessed as an energy source, the oil companies would be bankrupt.
• Chewing does not require teeth.
• There is a significant difference between the pain level associated with toothless gums chomping down on your nipple and a new tooth chomping down your nipple.
• Without motherhood amnesia, we would have never survived as a species.
• It’s all worth it. Really.

Love, 

Mama 

 

 

 

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

My dearest smunchie face,

 I’m just going to go ahead and start this update by talking about your surgery because it was by far the most traumatic notable thing that has happened thus far in your lifetime. You had surgery on August 31^st, and the surgery itself went just fine. It was actually sweet to take you home afterwards, because when I carried you out you were passed out on my shoulder, which is something you haven’t done since you were about 14 weeks old. I remarked to your daddy that it might be the last time you ever sleep on my shoulder. He said no, that it would probably happen at least once more when you’re like four years old and have spent the day at Disneyland. I think he may underestimate your true ability to resist sleep. It is a gift that I have passed down to you, and now I realize how truly annoying it can be.

 The week following surgery was hell. Absolute hell. There is really no other way to put it. Your Mam-ma (my mom) came to stay with us, and thank god she did, because there was an awful lot of “pass-the-baby” going on. Which was not your fault. You were actually such a trooper that it brings tears to my eyes to think about what a special, beautiful, being you are. You are so full of happiness and light and tenacity that I feel humbled to be your mother. You weren’t even all that cranky. But they had to leave a catheter in for a few days, and so you had some bladder spasms that made you scream in a way I have never heard you scream. It was gut-wrenching. They gave us medication for it, but it interacted with the codeine in such a way that there was NO WAY I was giving it to you again. You only had one or two spasms a day, but when they happened, I was absolutely convinced that you would never be the same and I had ruined your disposition forever.

 The surgery also completely screwed up your already wacky sleep schedule. I had not realized you really had a schedule until it totally disappeared. I swear you were saying to yourself, “I fell asleep once, and woke up in pain, and I shall not make that mistake again.” Not to mention that I have no idea how aware you were during the surgery because general anesthesia is a funny thing. For all I know, you were half awake and aware that you were surrounded by strangers. So, for the first time since you were 2 weeks old, there were a few nights where over an hour of screaming preceded you actually going to sleep. None of the usual tricks worked. And it was a fight to get you to sleep EVERY single time, night or day. This lasted for just over a week, and has since passed. Now you are back to your baseline level of sleep resistance. Thank god. At the time, it was only further proof that I had completely fucked you up for life.

The other thing that was an unfortunate side effect of this whole surgery thing is that due to the quantity of different medications I had to squirt down your throat, you are now suspicious of any sort of tool or utensil coming towards your face. And I especially think the antibiotic did not agree with you, so you’re probably suspicious of all substances you are asked to swallow. Which has made introducing solid food quite the challenge. I’ve just given up on spoons, and give you everything in the self-feeder mesh thing or on the end of my finger. You don’t care for rice cereal, but love rice, so I’ve just started giving you little chunks of it. I can’t think of a downside to this, so I’m going to just keep doing it.

On the plus side, you seem to be healing nicely and are back to your old goofy self now. You had a lot of bruising, but my mom said it wasn’t much more bruising that what you see with just a circumcision. This just further affirms that I would never circumcise a boy unless there was a medical reason for doing so. At least you had pain medication! A midwife I know recommended arnica for the bruising, and in one day, it was an amazing difference. I don’t know why doctors don’t recommend it more often. It’s still hard to tell what it will actually look like completely healed, so I have no idea what you’ll be looking at in 10 years or so.

I still don’t know if we made the right decision. I had sort of hoped that this whole thing would be like making the decision to terminate a pregnancy, and once it was over, I would just feel relieved. But instead, I am constantly plagued with doubt. Given that there is a tiny risk of complications all the way up into adulthood, I will probably suffer from these feelings once in awhile, forever. But I will tell you that the surgery was more complicated than they had expected, and that it seems you did have some chordee (twisting of the penis) that could have been potentially painful later in life. So, for that reason, I’m kind of glad we did something. And I’m sure there are plenty of other decisions I will make on your behalf that I will also question, so I should just get used to it now.

 

On to happier things.

Your Mam-ma was here for two weeks, and I’m so glad she was. You hadn’t seen her since you were three weeks old, and it was such a delight to watch the two of you interact. You are lucky to have her as your grandmother. Your uncle Matt also came over a lot while she was here, and you simply adore him. So, he’s going to start coming over sometimes to keep an eye on you so I can get some work done, and so that he and I can spend some time together as well. Your uncle Matt is a good guy—he’s just made some poor decisions.

Mam-ma also brought a lot of pictures of me when I was a baby and we could almost be twins. The resemblance is truly amazing. I know that you’re all masculine and stuff, but son, you are a beautiful baby.

Mam-ma also got to witness so many milestones while she was here. Let’s talk about those, because that’s the good stuff.

First of all, she got to be around for your (re)introduction to solid foods. She got to feed you, and watch you learn about a sippy cup. Or shall I say, drippy cup.

She was also here for your transition from the cosleeper to a real crib. You have so much space now–you love it. You still spend about half the night in my bed, and that’s just fine with me. I like having the crib set up because I know that if I am really exasperated it is a safe place to put you so I can walk away for a few minutes. And the mere thought of that gives me so much more patience with you. Because son, you have a temper. Seriously, I don’t know where it came from (wink, wink). You really are such a happy little guy…until you’re not. It’s that simple.

 But that stuff is nothing compared to the other leaps you’ve made in the last two weeks. You had been struggling to crawl for quite some time. You’d make a step or two, and then fall sprawled on your face. Somewhere between the time of your surgery and one week later, you had totally mastered it. It was such a slow transition, that I can’t even say “this is when you crawled”. But one day, you were just doing it. I do, however, have specific dates for the other stuff you’ve done.

 Such as, figuring out how to sit from a crawling position. That happened on Saturday the 8^th. You still can’t just sit up from laying down—you have to sort of roll to your side first. Which reminds me of when I was pregnant with you, so it makes me smile.

 Then, on Tuesday the 11^th, you just up and decided to pull yourself up to a stand. Just like that. You’d been working on it for awhile, but that was the day that you did it and subsequently became obsessed with pulling up on everything. Even walls. And I’m not even sure how you do that. And I’m pretty sure it’s not safe.

 By yesterday, the 14^th, you’d figured out how to sit yourself back down again. And now, you’ll pull up, let go, and try to balance. You last about 3 seconds, which is still impressive.

 All of this developmental leapage has left me saying, “oh, fuck, I need to childproof”. The baby cage is now really only useful as a place to put you when I just need a confined area for a few minutes, but you won’t tolerate it for long. We haven’t been able to use the neglect-a-tron (exersaucer) for two weeks, and have to wait another two weeks to use it again, because you aren’t allowed to really straddle anything. You still enjoy playing with the toys from the outside. But that really doesn’t help me get a shower.

 Now Albert, I know that you are in a hurry. For what, I don’t know. Just in a hurry. Just like your grandpa. Just like your mother. But seriously, it would be okay if you decided to spread out the milestones a little more. Because learning to crawl, sit, pull up, and sit back down within a two week span of time is a little dizzying for your mama. God help me if you are walking by the end of this month.

 The dogs are also a little concerned about all this mobility of yours. Especially Ozo. He was already mad that I brought two other dogs into the family. Then you showed up, and he’s still not sure where you came from, but it was okay because you just stayed in a bed or in your cage or in my arms. But now, NOW, you’re EVERYWHERE. And dammit, he just didn’t sign on for this shit when he joined this family.

 Mam-ma discovered that we can keep you busy for long periods of time by putting you in your high chair with a pile of stuff to drop. When you’ve dropped it all, we gather it up, and you start again. Seriously, you can do this for an hour or so before it gets old. So, I’d have to say that this month, your new favorite toy is pretty much anything that makes noise when you drop it. This is nice, because I can bring your high chair to the doorway of the bathroom, and keep you busy enough that I can get a shower. You also love the Tigger that Mam-ma bought you to sleep with since you’d gotten poop all over your Froggy. Tigger is so soft that I almost want to fight you for him.

 Your fine motor skills are also advancing. You are now working on your pincer grasp. I am excited about this, as it means I can give you those little rice puff things that every baby I know seems to adore. I’m trying to find an organic, non-Gerber version, but have yet to find one. Rest assured, I am still looking. I’d prefer to avoid Gerber, because they’re now owned by Nestle, and I will explain to you my hatred of Nestle someday when you can understand the politics of breastfeeding.

 Earlier this week, you went to sleep one night, and woke up with a whole new vocabulary, involving many sounds that resemble wild animals. Seriously, I was lying in bed while Mam-ma was playing with you in the living room, and it sounded like there was a coyote loose. You also make a “who” sound like an owl instead of crying when you need something. Such as a new pile of toys to drop. It’s nice, because now you have other sounds besides “fussing” to communicate with. And the coyote noises just crack me up.

 Oh, and before I forget to mention it, you also had you’re first overnight stay at Nanna’s house (your daddy’s mom). It was on August 17^th, so that daddy and I could go to Zappa plays Zappa. I figure we can start taking you to that annual concert when you’re about two. Because I want you raised on a steady diet of Thom Yorke, the Flaming Lips, jazz of all flavors, Mozart, Ani Difranco, and Frank Zappa. It’s a moral imperative.

 Things I have learned:
 

• My mother is not only an awesome grandmother, but also a great mother.

• Grandmothers have all sorts of tricks up their sleeve for getting babies to sleep.

• There is no such thing as a simple surgery.

• There is a huge difference between a cranky “is he in pain” cry and a true pain cry.

• You may not think your baby has a sleep schedule. But you’ll know what it is once it gets fucked up.

• Stress really will affect your milk supply. Especially if you need to pump to replace meals. But the nice folks at the Chakra herb store can make you some tea that will make you start leaking everywhere just like a new mama.

• Arnica is a miracle herb. I already knew this, but it’s nice to be reminded.

• Estimated timelines for milestones are pretty much meaningless.

• Teething pain is apparently uncorrelated with how close a tooth is to actually coming in.

• A simple, silly tune, when repeated enough times, becomes a mindful, soothing, mantra. A phrase such as “little baby Albie with the jiggle in his head, he needs to go to sleep when it’s time for bed” will provoke deep thoughts about the universe right around the 74^th time you sing it.

• This too shall pass (I have to keep relearning this over an over).

I love you so much, little Dude. I hope you know.

 

~Mama

 

 

Dear Albie,

So, I was going to skip your monthly update since I already wished you a happy half-birthday, but I feel that thee are just a few things worth mentioning that may not still be relevant a month from now. Keep in mind that even though I tend to be about a week late in writing these things, I only write about things that apply to the time period up to the 14th of each month. Because I am obsessive that way. You should know these sorts of things up front because you’re going to have to deal with it for a long time.

 

Remember how I said you were a great sleeper and we were lucky? Remember that? It got even better! You started to self-soothe and everything. And you actually had a nap schedule!

 

And then it all went to shit. Right about the time that you became fluent in rolling over and started to really try to crawl (you’re almost there!) you became almost impossible to put to bed. As soon as you were in the bed, you were on your belly and trying to crawl. And once you finally passed out from exhaustion, you would try to crawl in your sleep. I had read about this sort of thing on the Ask Moxie blog. Thank God I had so I knew it was just some sort of developmental spurt. And really, you would be totally asleep, eyes closed, on your hands and knees, and then wake yourself up. You’d be so pissed about it too. As if, you were crawling just fine in your dreams and had it all worked out and woke up to find out that you still hadn’t mastered it. I was so sad while at the same time, infuriating. I can sympathize. I feel this way about flying. I am always pissed to wake up and find out that I can’t really fly. Not like Superman, more like a grasshopper, in that I sort of bounce and stay in the air for a reeeeaaalllly looooonnnnggg tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimme. But enough about my flying. You still can’t crawl, and you’re still pissed about it. Although, you do manage to get from point A to point B eventually.

The learning to crawl stuff was just one facet of this sleep boycott. The other part, I guess, was just developmental fussiness. You essentially regressed to a newborn for a few weeks in a lot of ways. The only way I could get you to stop screaming at the top of your lungs and settle down to sleep was to swaddle you (no small feat with a near twenty-pounder!) and jiggle you like I used to when you were considerably lighter. And more jiggly. The problem with that is that you can get out of it so easily, and then eventually learned to roll over while swaddled. Which was just way to dangerous because you couldn’t roll back. You also refused to play by yourself and wanted to be carried everywhere again. So I broke out all of the various baby carriers I have acquired and just started wearing you as much as possible again.

And it’s funny, because I talked to a woman with a baby three weeks older than you and she had said that her baby had just “stopped sleeping”. And about a week later, you did the same thing. And then I talked to a woman with a baby a few weeks younger than you, and after you had been doing this anti-sleep campaign for a few weeks, her baby did the same thing. This is further evidence that the Wonder Weeks people are really onto something. So I just kept telling myself that it was a phase and it would get better. But seriously, it was so out of character for you. And it has been getting better in the last few days, which is good, because I am not a good person when I get past a certain threshold of sleep deprivation. I have no patience, and then we all suffer. So, I apologize for the few times I yelled at you in desperation. I am not proud of those moments.

Around the time of your last update, we had just introduced solids. That was a failed experiment. After a few more days, your digestive system went crazy, warranting a doctor visit, and your doctor (to his credit) advised me to just go back to breastfeeding until you were at least 6 months old. So, at this point, you’re not getting solids until after you’ve healed from surgery. And now that you know that food tastes good, you are not amused that it’s not being put into your mouth. Sorry about that.

We got a little clear baby potty to try out some elimination communication with you. It’s actually easier than I thought. We’re not really trying in earnest until after the whole catheter thing is over, but you are at least comfortable enough on the potty to pee into it, which is a great step to start with.

In terms of language development, you have progressed from bbbb’s to ttthhhh’s and even some fffff’s. You will also zerbert any piece of flesh that comes close enough for you to attack it. You clearly and consistently understand two sentences. The first is “give me your hands” so you can be helped up, and the second is, “do you want some milk?” Guess which one elicits a look of glee and sometimes a squeal?

 

We recently packed away the pack-n-play and purchased a “play yard” which is really just a “baby cage” with a politically correct name. You love it for the most part. As much as you love anything for 15 minutes straight. And you love standing and hanging on to it. You can’t pull up by yourself yet (although you try to in the tub and make it onto your knees) and can’t quite sit up from laying down yet. But if we sit you up you can stay steady for quite awhile and can now break your own fall when you finally topple. You have also recently started to do this little side “pose” that’s incredibly cute. Your head is almost propped on your hand as if you are lounging by the pool. It’s adorable.

You adore car rides if they are not too long. And you also love the shower, including water splashing onto your face. Your two favorite toys right now are a set of plastic keys and a little toy piano with four keys. It makes me so happy to hear you bang away on it.

Things I have learned:

•    This too shall pass (didn’t I learn that once before?)
•    I do not function well when sleep deprived
•    Two steps forward is strongly correlated with one step back
•    A child’s development is far from linear
•    A good sleeper is a good sleeper until s/he just isn’t anymore
•    Once a child becomes an active participant in breastfeeding, s/he also becomes an active acrobat during breastfeeding
•    Making a baby giggle hysterically is what life is all about

I love you, little Dude.

 

~Mama

My Dearest Little Albie,

Okay, so six days late on your update…not so bad…

This last month has been a blast and you have made so many leaps forward. We went to the Four Corners area and visited Monument Valley, Valley of the Gods, Goosenecks Park, the actual “Four Corners” and stayed in Mexican Hat. I am a total junkie for road trips and long car rides. We drove a total of 1300 miles in 3 days. You were a total trooper.

I really hope that you love road trips as you continue to grow. Otherwise, we will have to drug you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While we were away on vacation, you and I actually got to take a bath together. We don’t have an actual bath tub in our home, so this was a first. It was a lot of fun, and you seemed to really enjoy the buoyancy of the water. Once we got home, I found a baby bath tub at Ikea for $7 that is actually big enough for you to get some serious splashing done. I can sit you in it width-wise, with your back propped on one side and your feet up against the other and you are relatively stable. We’ve also taken you in the shower, which was intimidating to you at first, but then you loved it. You also had your first swimming pool experiences this month—first with your daddy just holding you in the water, and then the next time in a little floatie ring that has a chair contraption inside of it that your legs fit through. It was totally stable and you absolutely loved it. You are living up to your water bearer sun sign indeed.

 

With regards to your vocal skills, when we last left off in the saga that is you, you were fascinated with “bbbbb” sounds. They were rather tight-lipped “b” sounds. Then you had a two week squealing and screeching period where it was like living with a teeny tiny banshee. On crack. Everything you responded to deserved a high-pitched response. Whether you were happy or sad about it was only a secondary consideration. I will say, however, that when those squeals take on a peculiar cat-like quality to them, it means that you are tired. And by god, we had better get you settled in for a nap soon, or all hell will break loose. Since you have completely outgrown your makeshift swaddler, the only solution at that point is to hold you really tight while you literally fight sleep until you exhaust yourself and pass out. Now, you’re really getting too big for that too. Which means we are doomed. But back to the vocal stuff…so, you went to sleep one night, woke up the next morning, and returned to the “b” sounds, this time with looser lips. This progressed to actual raspberry sounds with your tongue out. Which results in A LOT of drool. I dare say that in the past month you’ve pretty much become the poster child for what I used to find disgusting about babies. But you’re mine, and so it’s adorable.

 

The first time you really rolled over on your own was on Father’s Day at your grandparents’ house. However, it was still quite the struggle for you. I recently got my hands on a copy of The Wonder Weeks, an amazing book about the sudden leaps that little minds make. Basically, there’s a big fussy period, and then a sudden leap resulting in tons of new skills. The weeks are fairly predictable, and one of them is at 19, and one at 26. One of the suggestions in the book was to let you roll around naked to get the hang of how your body works and make it easier for you to master skills. Boy, did that ever work. From one session, you suddenly mastered rolling over. This was just about a week ago. Now, there’s no stopping you. Since then, you have also finally gotten the hang of grabbing your feet, like the “happy baby” yoga pose. In fact, you try to do it while nursing, which is terribly amusing. And you can sit up pretty well on your own, with still an occasional topple. Now that you can decide these things for yourself, you prefer to sleep in a side/stomach pose, similar to the one recommended for pregnancy. And you now roll so quickly that there is no way we can leave you on the bed for more than a few seconds now. You, the boy who hated tummy time, now love it when you roll there yourself. You are such an independent little beast. I am terrified of the time when you actually become mobile. Although, you could probably just roll everywhere now…

You are still enthralled with your blue bear blankie thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is by far your most favorite toy, and now that you can pull stuff off of your face (!) and can roll easily, I let you sleep with it. It has worked wonders to soothe you. You are now also fascinated with many other toys, having figured out that the plastic things on some toys are for chewing (hooray!) and that many other toys make delightful noises when you bang them. Repeatedly. The general protocol for any new object is to grab it, study it, try to eat it, bang it. If you haven’t dropped it by then. We got you an exersaucer and you are usually enthralled with it for a good 20 minutes or so. Just long enough for a quick shower and a frozen waffle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, you have been lately frustrated that many of the toys can not be extended far enough to reach your mouth. Because everything should reach your mouth, by god. You also finally took my word for it that the very cold squishy teething ring was not scary and would actually make you feel better. At first, you would chomp into it, and then withdraw your head quickly and do a little shiver. Now you just chomp away. God bless the 97 cent teething ring that was made in China and will probably make you sprout a tail later in life. Also god bless Humphreys teething tablets with their chamomile goodness. In fact, god bless chamomile, period.
 

It is truly amazing to watch your mind in action and to live on such a small scale. You immediately recognize “Goodnight Moon” within the first few lines every night. You have finally really grown to understand what being put sideways across my lap means (MILK!!!) and proceed to make a long series of funny (ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh) sounds until your mouth is happily stuffed with titty. You sound sort of like a zombie. A milk zombie. You also do this in the morning when I pull you into bed for your first feeding of the day. It totally makes me giggle. You have already grown to notice when I walk out of the room and protest loudly. If I sneak away without you noticing, you still momentarily forget I exist so long as you are otherwise occupied.

In addition to wanting to put everything in your mouth (including my hands) you are also fascinated with other people’s mouths and touching them and putting your hands inside of their mouths. My friend Heathyr came to visit, and she has braces. You’d never seen those before so you took your time running your fingers over them to figure out what they were.

In the past month, singing and music has really become a way to soothe you. You are still a big Thom Yorke fan, and his solo album will reliably soothe you in the car unless you are seriously pissed off. I can often distract you from a tantrum with some really goofy song. Your favorites are those that sound like really cheesy Italian songs that are bellowed at the top of my lungs, or those sung as blues songs. I can’t blame you. I don’t trust people who don’t like the blues and old, breathy jazz songs.

As far as sleep goes, we are lucky. There have only been a few truly rough patches. When you were gearing up for your 19 week leap, you had previously been sleeping pretty reliably from 8ish to 5ish each night. Occasionally, you would fuss and I’d just give you your pacifier or pat your back and you’d go right back to sleep. Out of nowhere, you started waking again at 1 or 2 in the morning for a night feeding. Which was fine with me, I was just sort of shocked. And then it passed, and now you sleep past 6 pretty much every morning (knock on wood—quick!). Sometimes after I feed you you’ll go back to sleep for half an hour. Sometimes you’ll got back to sleep for 2 hours. I’m not big on forcing a rigid schedule, so we just go with the flow. You have a rough nap schedule—you go down two hours after you get up (which varies from 6:30 to 9) for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half, and then go down somewhere between 1 and 2 for a good two hour stretch. That took awhile to develop. I did, however, learn not to let you sleep past 8 though, or it messes everything up and there’s hell to pay. Occasionally, you’ll take a really short nap around 6 p.m. We were putting you down at 7 or so every night, but shifted back to 8 because it really seemed to work out better for you.

You now weigh 18 pounds, 11 ounces. Or so the scale on Wednesday said. You were 18 pounds, 3 ounces at your 4 month checkup. So your weight gain appears to be (finally) slowing. You are still a picturesque fat and happy baby. You smile with ease and can be made to giggle hysterically, laughing so hard that you spit up. Is that mean? I find it hilarious. My friend KC calls you hammy because you are so chubby. Then my friend Heathyr called you hammy because of your personality. I thought it was great that they both used the term to describe you, but that for one it was a physical description and for another it was a personality description. Either way, it fits. The only remnant of your newborn-ness other than your uber-rolls that remains is a shock of hair on the top of your head. All of your other hair has fallen out and regrown except for that little faux-hawk. I will be so sad when it goes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We bought you a little booster seat that you can strap to a real chair rather than a high chair. For awhile, we just had you sit in it and gave you toys while we ate. And then you became fascinated with what we ate. I was trying to delay solids until you were 6 months old, but on a lark, we gave you some avocado last Sunday. You went nuts for it. So, we went ahead and properly “introduced solids” this week. You’ve had avocado (mashed with breast milk) and apricot. We skipped cereal all together. We gave you a big chunk of apricot and you sucked on it like a pacifier. It was adorable. Then we bought one of those mesh safe feeder devices, and you were happy to work on your apricot through the mesh. And I was less panicked you would choke. We’ve had no problems spoon feeding you avocado, and you just keep opening up for more. I have to stop before you quit so that I make sure you still get plenty of breast milk in your diet. As much as I wanted to wait a little longer, you really seemed to be ready. That seems to be the story of your life thus far. From the time labor began, you have been in a hurry. My wise midwives were so right about that. In this way, you are like your grandpa Barry.

Oh, and I feel that I have to mention that I injured you twice in the last month. The first time was when I forcefully lifted you up into the air, forcing your head to run into a spiky thing that’s part of the light fixture in the dining room. Scared the shit out of me. Then, I dropped you. I was trying to put you on my back using an Ergo baby carrier. I was even sitting on the bed to be safe. I was not prepared for you to launch over my shoulder. I tried to catch you, and only made you fall feet over head (so you landed on your back). You landed in the cosleeper next to the bed, but not before getting a black eye on the plastic corner. So, you were actually dropped on your head (or your face) as a baby. Sorry about that.

Things I have learned in the past month:

• Nursing is way more fun when the baby is an active participant. And just because you no longer feel a (mildly painful) letdown accompanied by gagging sounds by the baby due to your (previous) oversupply doesn’t mean that the baby is no longer getting enough to eat. Remember the wet diaper rule. Or squeeze your nipple to see if milk still sprays across the room.

• Breastfed babies can go several days between poops because breast milk is A PERFECT FOOD. But this may initially scare the hell out of you. 

• Baby toots are still funny

• It is not necessary to reserve a favorite toy to use as a distraction when “necessary”. It doesn’t work that way. Apparently, babies don’t tire of their special cuddly toys. I can relate. I do not tire of my ipod.

• Every baby develops differently.

• Every baby focuses on different aspects of development at different times.

• It really is important to get not only yourself, but also the baby, out of the house every day. It helps everyone’s mood.

• Phoenix sucks. Period. The prime time for a walk in the life of a 5 month old (at least this one) is at noon. Which is not an option in July. Unless you want to deal with the car and go to the mall. Because really, the mall is just as good as the park, right?

• It is Murphy’s Law that the baby will fall asleep in the car seat as you are pulling onto your street. No matter how fast or slow you drive. Only to wake once inside. Then not want to go back to sleep. Then start to make cat noises…

• It’s Murphy’s Law that the baby will wait to spit up until you have put on clean clothes and have yet to grab a bib.

• It’s Murphy’s Law that the buttsplosion you have been waiting for over a period of several days that cannot help but explode out of the diaper will occur when the baby is just far enough away from you so that you don’t hear it. And thus, you spend the next 20 minutes wondering why the baby is fussy. And then, you find out…

• It is so easy to say to your mother, “really, that’s so interesting” even if it’s something you already know. And it will make her feel good.

• “Baby food” that comes in jars is so not necessary.

• Every day is an adventure.

• I am so lucky to have the husband that I do. And Albie, you are so lucky to have him as a father.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love, Mama

Dear Little Dude,

Time is flying. It freaks me out. It seems like I just wrote month three, and then I think about that fact that it’s been FOUR MONTHS since we had our little birth journey and I am astounded. I want to slow time down and savor it just a little, tiny bit. Especially now that being your mama has become so much fun.

I feel that I have to talk about sleep, because in general, I am ridiculously lucky. We started a sleep ritual with you at about 8 weeks that has grown into the following rock-solid pattern for us. First, you have a little bath. Then I feed you (or your daddy feeds you if I’ve had wine with dinner) while you’re still in just a towel. I love that part. There is nothing more divine than holding a naked baby. Plus, we get to make fun of your chub rolls…Then we diaper you and put on your PJs (actually a onesie–it is Phoenix). We give you your pacifier (you don’t wake when it falls out of your mouth–thank god) and swaddle you and put you into the cosleeper. We (or just one of us if the other is working) read you a story and then turn on your rain sounds. Then, we leave the room. And I’ll be damned if you don’t go to sleep on your own. Somewhere between last month and this month, we tried putting you down drowsy. And you fell asleep. And you’ve done it every night. In fact, if I stay in the room, you will resist sleep, thinking that really, the party must just be getting started. The bedtime story just started in the last two weeks, and you giggle and smile the whole time. It breaks my heart, it’s so damn cute.

And then there was another big change in the last week or so. I tried swaddling you with one arm out, and although you grunted a little more, you continued to sleep. Then we tried both arms out, so it’s really just a faux-swaddle where I wrap the sheet around your torso and tuck it nice and snug. The first two nights, you flailed a lot, but remained asleep. Now, you sleep through the night with no major drama. You no longer have a moro reflex and no longer startle yourself awake. Of all your developmental milestones, this one makes me proudest and saddens me the most. Because it was the last pillar of newborn-ness, and now it’s gone. You’re now a little baby dude, not a little newborn dude.

In the last two weeks you’ve determined that by god, your bedtime is between 8 and 8:30. At first I tried to fight it thinking you’d sleep later if you went to bed later. It just doesn’t work that way, does it? And now, I actually relish that time after you’re asleep. And you are pretty consistently waking between 5 and 5:30 to eat and then going back down within the hour for two more hours. So all of this is the good news. The not so good news is that your nap life is making me crazy. You’re a power napper through and through. But now, you are fighting even those. So, we’re in the process of developing a nap routine, made difficult by the fact that each day has a different schedule and you’re caregivers vary a little. Oh well. We’ll get it.

I’ve gone "back to work", meaning I have a teaching assistant position that involves teaching and I actually have to show up at assigned times and stuff. So, either your daddy or your nanna watch you for a few hours five days of the week. I’m glad for it, because I like that they get special time with you. It’s kind of nice to get away, but I miss you like crazy. It’s hard to be away from you, but good for me at the same time. And pumping sucks. Period. But it’s still worth it to know that I’m giving you the best food possible at this time in your life.

You’ve started to grasp and hold on to things and have developed a preference for certain toys. You have a blue bear blanket textured thing that you simply adore. I save it for fussy times and car rides and your eyes light up when you see it coming. I also give you a little frog that has a 4 inch x 4 inch little blankie thing sewed to his hand when you go to bed. You’re very texture oriented, and it’s small enough that I don’t worry about it suffocating you. I also bought you a Lamaze brand gawdy toy peacock that you adore.

 

 

 

When I showed it to you in the store (trying to get some feedback…) it prompted you to babble for the next half an hour. So I figured we had a winner. Oh, and you’ve decided that everything you hold must be immediately inspected by your mouth. Your mouth that drools constantly. And no matter how disgusting I have always found baby drool to be, it’s true that I actually find it cute on you. But the spit-up…not so cute.

You usually love tummy time…for about 5 minutes. Which is something. I am admittedly lazy about enforcing it, and as a result, you do indeed have some head flatness. So I bought one of those cute infant seats that helps you sit up. It’s supposed to be for babies up to 14 months. Yeah right. We could barely fit your thighs into it! I have to take it back. Which is a shame because you seemed to love it, but I was concerned that if one of your feedings made its way to your thighs while you were in it, we wouldn’t be able to get you out. So, I’m considering one of those exersaucer things instead. For the most part, you prefer to stand rather than sit anyway, so I figure you’d prefer one of those any way. The doctor asked if you were bearing weight yet, and I laughed, because you bear ALL of your weight (and there’s a lot to bear–over 17 pounds–you’ve almost doubled your birth weight already). I just keep you from falling over.

With regards to your talkativeness…you are still quite the talker. You have recently discovered "bbbbb" sounds, like a motor boat, punctuated by the occasional "bah". You are also discovering a wide range of giggles and squeals and squeaks and shrieks. Often, I can’t tell if a noise you make is happy or upset unless I look at your face or wait to see where the noises are headed. Sometimes, I don’t think you know either.

Oh, and on the breastfeeding front–in the last few days, you have finally advanced to needing no head direction from me to latch on to the nipple. This has brought you great joy, as you will unlatch, smile, and re-latch. It has brought me great joy as well. As my father’s girlfriend said when she found out I intended to breastfeed, "there is nothing in the world like the feeling you get when your baby looks up at you and smiles with a mouthful of titty."

Things I have learned:

• Eventually, the baby really will sleep without being swaddled.
• Time really does speed up exponentially once you have a child.
• The best way to be well-rested is to rethink sleep. 6 hours of sleep with a 2 hour nap still equals 8 hours. If you’re that lucky.
• Pumping really is a pain in the ass when you have to do it to replace feedings. 
• Oversupply issues don’t last forever.
• Minivans really are great vehicles for motherhood. The baby has its own air vent. You can change diapers in the back. You can feed or pump in the middle seats and no one ever notices.
• You will always wish you had gotten more pictures of any given age or stage. Especially professional pictures (which we have yet to do)
• No matter what you think prior to having a baby, you will leap on any chance to show someone pictures of your darling.
• Motherhood really is "all that". And more.

Dear Albie,

I am a few days late in writing your monthly update, but given that you can’t read the calendar yet, I think we’re okay.

You have changed in so many ways in the last month that it simply blows my mind.

 

First of all, you have started to like the car…most of the time. And I don’t even have to play the hair dryer sounds. I occasionally have to reach back and pop the pacifier back in your mouth, but there are also lots of time that you will just chill without your pacifier, talking to yourself (or things I can’t see) and being a generally happy baby. My SIL gave me a great tip to clip the pacifier to your car seat, so that when you do demand it, I can find the clip, follow the ribbon, and pop it back in your mouth (I promise I only do this at stop lights). It was a great tip, because trying to find the pacifier was a nightmare.

Sometimes when you get fussy, I can actually play music and it will soothe you. The first thing that seemed to speak to you was Thom Yorke’s “The Eraser”. He’s the guy from Radiohead, and your fondness for him makes your mommy proud of your stellar taste in music. You may tolerate other things, but you seem to genuinely like his music. So, I tried some Radiohead. You liked that too. And most recently, you seem to dig the Flaming Lips. My friend KC says that at this stage, some songs just make a baby go “What the fuck?” long enough to stop fussing. I think she’s right. For a long time, you seemed to have no interest in “what-fucking” and really just wanted droney things to drown out ANY possibility of thought. I have to tell you, that hair dryer sound was getting old…

I still swaddle you to go to sleep, but you sleep for regular 6-7 hour stretches. I am so lucky. Then after I feed you, sometimes you want to be awake for an hour or two, and that’s okay. I take you back to bed with me, and we just cuddle through the early morning and I feel like I really have the best of both worlds. You sleep in your own bed to start, but I still get baby cuddles. And since your reflux has gotten better (or my oversupply has chilled out?) I can actually lay in bed and nurse you occasionally in the morning and we just snooze on and off for awhile. It rocks.

While we’re on the topic of sleep, you appear to be a power napper. It’s really rare for you to sleep during the day for more than 45 minutes to an hour, but you sleep fairly frequently. Sometimes I force encouragee you to have a longer nap just so I can lay down longer. Because really, when you wake up right after I’ve fallen asleep, I really just feel sort of sick…

You have made great leaps in terms of your level of neediness. I can put you in your swing unswaddled (!) and you will even sleep there, unswaddled (!). I can even put you in your little infant chair/rocker thing, and you are content for stretches varying from 5 minutes to an hour. In fact, there are now times that you will fuss when held, and then be happy to be put down in your chair (!). It kind of freaks me out. It kind of made your dad and I sad…for about 12 seconds. Now, when you do want to be held, you pretty much insist on facing outward. You love to smile and babble at the hot pink pig rattle that hangs across the archway on your chair, and sometimes you hold great conversations with the cow as well. You have also been known to smile and laugh at pretty much every light fixture in the wall. It cracks me up.

Speaking of babbling, you have always been a rather chatty little dude, but in the last 4 weeks, your range of sounds has exploded so that it is no longer all grunts, but rather a wide range of babble-speak. You tend to be consistently chatty early in the morning and pretty much any time you are on the changing table. Since you have always been vocal, this is not surprising. What is surprising is when you have long stretches of silence. This usually occurs in new situations where there are a lot of new people or a lot of new things to see. I went shopping at Trader Joe’s one day, and you were completely awake and silent for the entire hour (it takes me a long time to exert self-control at Trader Joe’s), facing forward in the sling and staring at all of the people and colors with great interest. It was awesome.

You no longer have a jiggly head, which is kind of sad, because now I can’t sing you your Jiggly Head song. I also can’t jiggle it to soothe you, but now rocking kind of works. You have great head and neck control. The doctor was actually kind of shocked at how much control you had, and that was almost a month ago. You aren’t really rolling over yet. Not reliably anyway. You can of course go side to back, but back to side is still difficult (it’s hard to haul all of that fat around). You have, on occasion, rolled from tummy to back. But it was one fluid, quick motion that scared the bejeezus out of you. So I’m not sure if that counts.

You like to stand up. A lot. Most of the time when I’m holding you now, you want to be standing, which is fine by me.

You have lately taken to eating your hands. I think you are trying to find something to suck, but haven’t quite figured it out yet. Sometimes you will insert your two middle fingers into your mouth, but it usually makes you gag. Then spit up. Then get upset. At which point you repeat the whole process…

We have had no more green poop. Instead, you have what daddy and I call “Buttsplosions”. It is just what it sounds like. Your butt explodes. And whether you’re wearing a cloth diaper or disposable diaper, there is hell to pay if not promptly attended to. The cloth diapers tend to leak out the legs. The disposable diapers result in shit climbing up your back. Oh, the joys of motherhood.

While on the topic of bodily functions, you spit up a lot. But you no longer seem upset about it and are what the doctors call a “happy spitter”. Supposedly, this peaks at four months. God, I hope so.

You did, indeed, have a growth spurt around 12 weeks. You went through a few days of marathon nursing that made even me question if something was wrong with my supply. And then I realized how old you were and went ‘Oh, it’s that growth spurt. Duh.’ And felt much better. I have also figured out that your extremely fussy periods actually do correspond to something called “the Wonder Weeks” which are developmentally challenging weeks where there’s a lot of stuff going on. So far, week 3, week 8, and week 12 have been hell, and these are exactly the weeks that are mentioned.

My favorite change in the last month is that you have decided to like the stroller. Initially, you hated it. Then daddy tried to take you out in it on a lark a few weeks ago, and you loved it. Don’t get me wrong, I love wearing you, but you’re kind of heavy dude. Especially for long stretches.

You also really love your bath time now, as well as diaper changes. I’m not sure what it is about diaper changing time, but 90% of the time you smile and talk and laugh. In fact, there have been times when you haven’t even needed changed that I will go through the ritual just to reset your fuss buttons.

This last month, in short, has been fantastic. You are finally starting to turn from a confused fetus into a baby. It has been an absolute joy. I am so looking forward to all of your forthcoming stages, even as I already lament the ones in the past.

Things I have learned:

• Just because your baby hates something the first time you try it doesn’t mean s/he will always hate it (e.g. baths, strollers, car rides, infant seats, being tossed in the air, zerberts, etc.)

• Fussy days always pass, even if there are several of them in a row

• No matter how crappy any given phase is, I will long for it in retrospect

• Amnesia (birth amnesia, sleep deprivation amnesia, fussy baby amnesia) sets in ridiculously fast

• I, apparently, produce straight cream

• A dry diaper = a baby waiting to whiz in your face

• Well-rested is a relative term

• Oxytocin from breastfeeding is apparently much stronger than many chemicals released from recreational drugs. I know this because I have not been willing to skip breastfeeding for a few days (despite the freezer full of milk) in order to do a little partying. My husband was stunned. So was I.

• Babies really are tons of fun

Dear Albie,

Someday, I will look back on the last month and laugh.

It has been very hard. Much harder than I had imagined.

When I last left off on your one month birthday, you had a rash, and had just gotten to where you would tolerate being put down to nap. Neither one of these things lasted past the next two days.

Somewhere around St. Patrick’s Day, you became a fussy/high-need/”colicky”/pain-in-the-ass baby. You were screaming constantly. And, the day after St. Patty’s Day, you projectile vomited spit-up all over the bed. I called the doctor, who said it was probably just a little reflux, and to feed you upright and keep you upright after feedings. So much for that whole side-lying nursing thing.

Being skeptical of the ridiculously high rate of “reflux” in babies, I looked into food allergies, etc. and of course stopped eating milk, soy, and tree nuts, since all of these were somehow correlated with the reflux, and the fact that you subsequently developed green poop. In the last two weeks, I have reintroduced these foods, and none of them seemed to have an effect. Until the last 5 days or so, when I overdid it on dairy, and sure as shit, you started spitting up everywhere. And your poop was green for a day. How much dairy is too much? I have no idea.

And then there’s the whole oversupply thing that I now realize was surely feeding into the reflux as well. I could feed the neighborhood. I’m like a creamery. Seriously. It has at least slowed down a bit in the last week, but the initial let-down is still just ridiculous. I have to pump until basically empty before your middle of the night feeding, lest I gag and choke you and generally piss you off. I tried not to pump too much, on the advice of all the internet sites, until the midwives said to just ignore that advice and pump and it wasn’t going to make much difference at this level of supply. She was right. There must be a ceiling effect. My mother apparently had super-supply, something she finally told me long after I’d tried all sorts of diet modification and general freaking out.

Then, we seemed to have developed a yeast/thrush problem, which I thought we had solved until your yeast diaper rash reappeared in the last three days. The doctors did not seem to believe me when I said we should be treated internally, so we’ll see if it all re-emerges and if so, start all over again. I have increased acidophilus in my diet, and use vinegar wipes on your bottom. I am not comfortable with the prospect of permanently putting nystatin on your baby tush, so there must be an alternative…

You also have an umbilical hernia, which looks really horrible, but I have been assured by the doctor is “no big deal”. I, of course, religiously push on it once a day to make sure it still is squishy and receded into your belly, and I hate, hate, hate the way it looks because I am just convinced that your diaper waist band will somehow turn it into a medical emergency. Or that it will suddenly pop. Because it looks like it could pop.
 

And then, the neediness. Holy fuck, the neediness. We rented Happiest Baby on the Block because you wouldn’t stop screaming. Admittedly, it did help, and we at least know now that if you are already calm, we can swaddle you and put you in the swing and you will actually tolerate it for varying time periods ranging from 5 minutes to 2 hours. But it is surprisingly hard to find a lightweight swaddle blanket large enough to actually swaddle a baby. We bought one of those “swaddlers” with the Velcro and such, and it’s just a joke how quickly you get out of it. Receiving blankets were useless. The blankets mom made were big enough, but way too hot. So, I got a big piece of jersey fabric from Joanne’s and it is perfect. I didn’t even have to sew the edges. In fact, my 6 yard piece of jersey fabric yielded two wraps and a swaddle blanket. However, I hadn’t factored in the shrinkage factor on the wraps, and so they are only useful for a short cross wrap, not the full front cross wrap with the cummerbund and such. Oops, I’ve wandered off topic again…

 

 

 

So, although you stopped screaming, I literally COULD NOT PUT YOU DOWN. Not even for 30 seconds. Except occasionally in the swing. But that was hit and miss. So, you took naps in the wrap. Sometimes, I would lie down on my back with you still in the wrap so that you would just sleep on my chest and I could get a few minutes rest. Because taking you out of the wrap would just wake you. And in order to sleep at night, you had to fall asleep on my shoulder, and I would do everything with one hand (including brushing teeth and peeing—which now makes me a level 4 ninja or something). Then I had to ever-so-gently lay down on my side, with you never losing contact with me, or you would wake and we would start all over. You would sleep on my arm, and sometimes, if I was very careful, I could actually reclaim my arm and slowly move onto my back, but the whole process could take no less than 7 minutes or you would, of course, wake up. I couldn’t swaddle you, because you would get too hot, so you were prone to waking yourself up frequently, but at least you slept SOMETIMES. And at least the swaddling helped with the screaming while you were awake.

At one point during this time period, I was gone for the day and your daddy took care of you all day. When I got home, he said, “I don’t see how you get anything done”. Well, it’s because I am a goddess, of course. I think he understood then why it was that the first thing I did when he would get home is shower. Because I hadn’t been able to at any earlier point in the day.

And then, magically, it got better. We had you swaddled about 10 days ago, and set you down, and you just kept sleeping. No shit. So, we put you in your cosleeper. And you kept sleeping. No shit. This was at 9:00. You didn’t wake up until 2 a.m. I almost peed myself I was so overjoyed. Instead, I just leaked milk everywhere. Since then, you will sleep for a 4 and a half to 5 and a half stretch as your first stretch in the cosleeper every night. You go down somewhere between 7 and 9, and wake up somewhere between 12:30 and 2:30. The next stretch is never as long, and usually consists of a lot of grunting and fussing in your sleep, which you sleep through, but keeps me awake, and of course pisses me off. But, I know that I have no cause to bitch, because lots of moms would kill for that first stretch. Now, if I could only be the kind of person who can fall asleep at 8:00 instead of 10 or later, we’d be soooo compatible right now.

At the same time, I can just set you down sometimes now for a few minutes and you don’t go completely ape shit. Not at first, anyway. So I can at least set you down long enough to get a wrap on. Or transfer clothes from washer to dryer. Because that is actually quite difficult while wearing you. And I can usually get up, feed you, feed me, wear you, swaddle you, and when you drift off put you in the swing for a few minutes, just long enough to get a shower. And because I can get a shower, we now actually leave the house. And I have even taken you out and about to campus to run errands or pick things up and I feel I have the tools to soothe you if you freak out. Being exposed to new things actually seems to brighten your mood considerably. You love the cacophony of a noisy restaurant.

All of this being said, I want you to know how much I love you. I love you so much more than I ever thought possible to love something. Enough so that yes, when your daddy watches you, I am guilty of calling every other hour just to see how you’re doing. And I still stare at you in your sleep. And you do have stretches of time now where you are awake and calm and happy and cute and it is wonderful. You are still very vocal, and have developed all sorts of new squeaks and squeals that melt my heart. The midwife thinks that you are just “in a hurry” and so your synapses are going crazy and you’re going to be a handful until mobile—and then a totally new kind of handful.

And you have started smiling. Real smiling. The first one was on April 6th. You bet I recorded that date. And you giggle too, which is supposed to follow the smiling somewhat later, but you started them both at the same time. Now you even smile several times in a day. It’s so cute, it almost breaks my heart.

 

 

 

Mom sent me my baby book, and you look just like me. It’s freakish–the power of genetics. My grandma had my birth announcement, and I saw it on Easter. Your first pictures look just like mine. It’s amazing. It seems the only thing you inherited from your daddy was your big head. My vagina can attest to that.

You went through a period where you kept waking yourself up with kicks, which swaddling won’t help with. It only lasted a few nights. After that, you started keeping your legs straight a lot and lifting your hips and standing on my lap when you’re in the sling. One of those little developmental things.

You still have the Moro reflex every once in awhile, but it is fading fast. Your grasping reflex is almost gone. Sure, you’re grabbing at things, but it’s not that automatic, guaranteed, grasping-on-the-finger thing you were born with. Your daddy said it makes him kind of sad. It makes me kind of sad too. Your little feet still try to grasp when touched, which I find simply adorable. It’s interesting that the reflex sticks around a little longer in your feet than in your hands. I am also sad that your milia (white nose bumps) are finally gone. I had nicknamed them "dinosaur bumps" because they reminded me of pictures of cartoon dinosaurs. I made sure to get pictures before they were gone, and they just disappeared about a week ago, after being there since your birth. Your nose looks ridiculously smooth now.

 

 

 

A few days ago, I was in the kitchen, and accidentally burned your leg on the toaster oven while you were in the wrap. Although you only cried for 15 minutes or so, I cried off and on all day about it. I felt like a heel. I put lavender on it, and it looks much better than it should given the way it blistered. I mention this only because I will probably still feel guilty about it when you are an adult.

You have decided to like baths, after all.

 

 

 

 

You have decided that the car seat is tolerable, so long as the car keeps moving, and you have a pacifier. And occasionally, white noise is also necessary. I got the Happiest Baby CD, which features 3 versions of womb sound mixes, a hair dryer track, and a “rain on the roof” track. The hair dryer sound is most useful in the car. And you still love it when I use the real hair dryer during diaper changes. I play the “Rain on the Roof” track to sleep. I don’t know if it makes a difference in how you sleep, but it sure helps me drift off.

 

 

 

 

A few things I have learned:

• Parenthood is much harder than I thought. Not that I thought it would be easy. I mean, I waited until almost 30 to have a child because I knew it would be hard. But I had no idea.

• There is apparently a large underground of full-grown adults who never learned to sleep in their own bed. I know this, because many people have informed me that by allowing you to sleep with me sometimes, you will never sleep in your own bed. Never. I assume this must be based on some sort of real data.

• Sleep deprivation sneaks up on you and makes you do really stupid things, like forget which class you are the TA for and thinking that Testing Services mislabeled your exams. Or forgetting to put a diaper cover on the cloth diaper, and then wondering why your lap is wet.

• Pacifier = sanity. This is especially true when “comfort nursing” is not possible because you just can’t seem to stop spewing milk.

• Fleece diaper liners are amazing. Seriously. They pull away more wetness than the disposable diapers did.

• Nursing challenges don’t just happen in the first few weeks.

 

 

• Even if 217+ people have children who loved a certain product, this is no guarantee your child won’t despise it.

• Parenthood brings moments of joy far more intense than I had ever imagined.

• Your mother just might become your best friend. No matter how unlikely this seemed prior to giving birth.

• One smile can make up for hours, even days, of screaming, crying, and sleep deprivation.

All my love,

Mama 

Happy One Month birthday, Little Dude!

I can’t believe that it has been a month since you made your entrance into this world. Already, you have changed so much. You have stopped twitching so much, and you wake yourself up a lot less often (thank god). You made noises in your sleep the first few days of your life that sounded just like Tweek in South Park that were accompanied by your startle (Moro) reflex. The sound was a highly charged, gutteral “Ah!” that has already become a distant memory. I didn’t know that the Moro reflex was a common newborn thing until recently, so I just thought it was funny as hell. I am fascinated by all of your primate reflexes—the way your little toes try to curl around things and your hands curl around my fingers and I find the Moro reflex fascinating, although annoying, when it is the culprit of frequent waking. Already, these reflexes are fading a little.

You made all sorts of noises when you were first born, and the midwife dubbed you a “talker”. I would have to agree. You mutter and mumble and make all sorts of noise all the time, even in your sleep. This makes you officially a Terrell. I think of you as my little cranky old man, because your astrological chart is stuffed full of Pisces and Capricorn. You were born with an Aquarius Sun, a Cancer ascendant, and a Capricorn moon. It’s a pretty heavy natal chart, and vastly different than you daddy’s or mine. You have lots of karmic old soul stuff going on, and it shows. Once I began thinking of you as a crabby old man, so much of your behavior made sense and became endearing rather than annoying.

You love to be held, and in fact, there was a rough patch where you would only fall asleep being held, and promptly wake (no matter how deeply asleep) as soon as you were put down. I thought I would lose my mind. Were it not for your daddy, I probably would have. But in the last few days, you have actually slept in your own cosleeper or the pack-n-play several times for varying lengths. You may fuss when initially put down, but usually go back to sleep. You like to be put down on your side, although you often eventually roll to your back.

Other quirky things—you love to have the balls of your feet petted, a fact discovered by the woman who took your blood for the newborn screen. I love to touch your little feet, as I fondly remember the feel of them kicking and sliding around inside of me. You also love the hair dryer. I discovered this due to your nasty diaper rash, when I began using the hair dryer to dry your bottom effectively. At first, I thought it was just the sound. Oh no. It’s the feel of the warm air on your feet and nether-regions. I can let it run after the diaper is on and actually have a chance to wash my hands before you demand to be taken off of the changing table. Of course, you love the vacuum cleaner sounds too, so my floors have never been cleaner. Surprisingly, you are not particularly soothed by car rides and spend much of your time in the car screaming instead of sleeping.

You discovered your tongue about a week ago, which was ever so amusing. That’s about the same time you discovered you could suck  on your hands. You try to fit the whole hand in your mouth. If you keep it up, there may someday be a slot for you on David Letterman. 

We set up your swing a few days ago, and much like swaddling, you protest loudly at first, but then are slowly overtaken by its soothing effects. Speaking of protesting loudly—YOU HAVE A TEMPER. Like, a serious flash temper that is amazingly powerful and passes in an instant. It is in this respect that you remind me most of myself. Your daddy says you look like me and nothing like him, but I say you have his ears and his lips and you make several expressions that remind me so much of him it is startling. Ah, the joy of genetics.

You have already been sick twice (not counting the Jaundice). You and I shared a cold, which may have contributed to your resistance to sleep last week. Now you have a weird rash, that I thought was baby acne until it took over your body. It is not accompanied by any other symtoms, and is likely a weird virus or the aftermath of the cold. Maybe that doesn’t count as "sick", but I wanted to document it anyway. 

There are a few things I have learned in the last month already:

• Fitted diapers kick ass, and I love my SIL for sending them to me.
• Bumkins diaper covers kind of suck. Yes, they are cute. Yes, they are breathable. But they have a lot of badly placed Velcro that will either scratch the hell out of the baby, or scratch the hell out of you if there aren’t clothes on top of the cover.
• Medela pumps are fascinating and worth every penny.
• Babies are hard to take care of.
• I really should have slept when the baby slept those first few weeks.
• Diaper rash is a nasty beast, and babies (maybe particularly boy babies?) have all sorts of folds all over their bodies I didn’t know about that hide all sorts of weird funk..
• Not all babies like water. The fact that we didn’t have the water birth we anticipated was apparently a foreshadowing of your disdain for the substance. However, we managed to bathe you in the last two nights without you screaming bloody murder, so maybe you are warming to the idea.
• Baby toots are funny.
• I have a lot more patience during the daylight hours.
• Cosleeping is not as scary as I thought, but is not particularly comfortable (for me, anyway). It is, at times, absolutely necessary.
• Breastfeeding while lying down is awesome once you’ve got it figured out (if you have large boobs, it helps to put something under them).
• A simple piece of cloth can be made into a baby carrier that is much more comfortable than a sling, but you can get a sling on and the baby calmed down much faster.
• Swaddling really does help.
• Bouncing on a birth ball really does soothe a fussy baby. Which is cool, because I only used mine for about 5 minutes while in labor.
• Motherhood is so much more than I expected. So much more work. So much more fun. So much more, period.
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Pictures soon to follow…