Rainy days and Mondays

Oh my, a week with no posts! I'd like to say this situation occurred because we were just too busy living fabulously interesting lives to blog...but that would be a lie. Indeed, there are weeks like this one in which I can't tell one day from the next because they are all wrapped up in a cloth of sameness.

Which is not to say things didn't happen this week, because of course they did, but these things weren't all that noteworthy. But let's just pretend they were, shall we, and spend some time talking about J's latest developments.



J has become a climbing fiend! Here he is (blurrily) climbing on the kitchen he has turned into a jungle gym. He has also mastered climbing up onto all our couches and is working his way up our shelves. He powers up and down stairs now at breakneck speeds. Today at church, his little friend who is two months older came down some stairs they had climbed backwards in an army crawl, and J just stood at the top and stared at him, wondering what the heck he was doing, then calmly descended the stairs facing front, using the handrail. Of course! In fact, J is quite advanced in terms of physical development. Sadly, however, his verbal development still lags behind. Besides the perpetual "daddy" and the occasional "nana" for banana, we've had no other distinguishable words. Lots of chatter, lots of animated "discussions," but nothing else we can definitively declare words. He's a social, communicative little boy who feels no compulsion whatsoever to talk when grunting and babbling and pointing seem to be doing the trick just fine!

He has, however, increased his vocabulary. All on his own, with zero coaching from us, he's begun to identify body parts when asked, shocking me, his totally unhelpful mother. He gets hung up on his nose if you ask about that one too early, so you have to be strategic to get any kind of results. And he is showing an amazing aptitude for distinguishing between various types of construction vehicles, his favorite being the crane they are using to repair a bridge near our house. One of these when he's ready, he will launch into a discussion of the relative merits of painting cranes orange versus red, but for now he's happy just to squeal and point.

Another day older

Happy Birthday to me! (Subtlety, thy name is...)

In honor of my birthday, I decided to get food poisoning last night. I thought that might be really festive, you know, what with all the cramping-violent-sickness-throughout-the-nightness of it all. It was bad rotisserie chicken, ya'll, and may have been the straw that compels my camel to buy its own rotisserie oven.

Then, this morning, just after the husband went to work, the power went out in a spectacular display of sparks. Luckily, it came back on in an hour or so, since we are having a serious cold snap here in the South, but not before I had jumped in the shower after belting J into a much too small baby papasan so he wouldn't wander away and hurt himself. I had to shower, you see, in case we had to leave the house and camp out somewhere else if the outage dragged on, since we couldn't very well stay here in the rapidly cooling house for too long.

We did go to Charlestowne Landing with the Mommy and Me's and the older kids on spring break, where we saw various egrets, a lazy puma, and an even lazier alligator, among other things. J tried to jump off the replica ship into the marsh/ocean, which was more exciting than it needed to be, and he decided that all the items I had brought for lunch weren't nearly as tasty as everyone else's choices, turning himself into a nuisance as he begged for food from the other little girls. All in all, however, it was a nice visit, particularly once it warmed up.

In other, less horrible news, I got the best, most frivolous, most exciting birthday present ever from the husband. After just a few wistful comments on my part, he got me this lovely item:Isn't it beautiful?? In person, it's a darker green than it appears here, more mossy than yellow, which is perfect for our decor. And it's surprisingly comfortable, given its armless nature. I love, love, LOVE it!

Best kid in the neighborhood

I'm on another quest that is taking far longer than I anticipated. Luckily, I have started very early, many months early in fact, so I shouldn't lose my mind...much.

You see, I'm starting to think about transitioning J from the crib to a Big Boy Bed. Fortunately for him and his wildly acrobatic sleeping habits, "his" bed will also be our queen-sized guest bed, which will continue to double as a guest bed when guests appear. Sadly for me, queen-sized beds are not really the norm when it comes to kids' bedding, so my search has already run into a few snags. In addition, I really don't want to ditch the minimal decorating I've done in there already (ie the green curtains), nor do I want a design he'll grow out of in a short amount of time, so I have given myself other restrictions that are making searching even more fun than it already was!

Why all the earnest fuss? Because I've done my homework, and I understand that one of the keys to making a smooth transition is giving the child brand new bedding all his own. I can already see the logic of this. J loves items we make special for him, from his Big Boy cups to his J-only hiding places to his sleepy-time time teddy bear. So giving him a blanket picked out especially for him seems like a great idea.

But wouldn't you know it, the child industry has figured this fact out as well and raised the prices of such quilts and pillowcases accordingly. I mean, honestly, if anyone thinks I'm going to pay three figures for a machine-made quilt, they've got another think coming! And what is it about boys options, anyway? No, I don't want camo, or Camp Bravo, or Army adventure quilts, thank you very much! And can you explain to me the appeal of red, white, and blue designs? I can understand red, white, and blue nautical themes, but red white and blue planes, trains, and automobiles? Really? So far we've narrowed the suitable options down to sports (mainly assorted balls), some dinosaur options, and airplanes, not that J has shown any affinity for airplanes, but the designs are among the least obnoxious and often include some green in the color scheme, as do the other two.

Now, some out there might be thinking, why don't you just make a quilt with your new sewing machine? See my last post: my domestic skilz don't cover whole cloth creation, people! However, after seeing all these prices, I may change my mind! We'll see....

Only you

Things have been a little hectic lately. We've discovered that we'd inadvertently forgotten to plan a service project as part of a national day of community service our church is co-sponsoring. Whoops! So now we're rushing to come up with something that won't seem last minute and will, in fact, be meaningful. Luckily, members of our congregation turn out to be quite connected in the community, linked to many worthy causes with needs we can meet. My partner-in-arms in the women's organization was just as dismayed to find out about our lapse as I was, so she has sprung into action and figured out some potential projects for us. Now we just have to get everyone excited about them and make it all happen....Ta da!!

In the meantime, J had a rocky week. He's apparently decided he only wants to take one nap a day, but he clearly needs more than one, so we've been having skirmishes all week. He won on most days, meaning our afternoons were, well, fun is not the word I'd use. Arduous? Whine-filled? Long? Yes, those will do nicely!

In addition, though I forgot to mention it in all the hubbub, because that's just the kind of mom I am, J learned how to walk for good in February. His tentative January stepping turned into mini-galloping while we were in England. The long hallway in my parents' flat helped, as did having lots of people to chase him, his favorite activity. Now the stroller is a cage, the front steps sing a siren song, and the ditches in the front and back yards wait to swallow him whole. It's a touching time. Consequently, the floors in the bathroom and kitchen used to be our top home improvement priorities, but now we're hurriedly investigating our fencing options, mingling the joys of home ownership with parenthood.

Didn't start the fire

(Less and less of a) Baby J took off running yesterday. Well, not quite, but he moved from no more than three steps in a mostly lunging row to calmly walking around 10 or 15 steps at a time. We had some friends over to work on a project and their 2 1/2 year old girl was walking all over the place, and I swear J just realized how efficient it was to move like that and followed the leader. He's still using what the husband calls the "homeopathic finger" to hold on to furniture if he's near it but feels no compunctions about letting go and moving upright on his own if the furniture doesn't cooperate with his directional impulses.

And, because he is clearly my child, he did all this without any prompting. In fact, when asked to walk to me, he'll just jump into my lap instead or fall on the floor in a heap waiting to be picked up. His first totally solo walk happened yesterday while I was sitting at the table working with my friend. I happened to look up and saw him toddling off on his own behind her, looking for all the world as if he had been walking all the time when no one was looking. Later, while I was fixing dinner, he walked the length of the kitchen holding onto cabinets and the fridge, then turned the corner into the living room. When I peeked after him, he had left all walking aids at the doorway and was calmly out on his own in the no man's land in front of our laundry room. Of course, as soon as he noticed me watching, he collapsed in giggles. Hmm, suspicious, very suspicious!

My little grass shack

Last weekend we had a small party for Baby J's first birthday. It was a smaller affair because I wanted to have a luau, in the Hawaiian tradition, and couldn't see making enough food for more than a limited number of people. But even so, there was lots of food to make. Fortunately, everyone who came brought a food contribution in lieu of a gift, at my request, so we ended up with a great spread. We had kalua pork, shoyu chicken, potato salad, lomi lomi tomato, sweet and sour meatballs (not very luau-ish but a hit nonetheless), pineapple upside down cake, sweet potatoes with coconut and macadamia nuts, fresh fruit, loads of rice, and birthday cake. We decorated (minimally--this is me we're talking about!) with Hawaiian fabric and fake tropical plants and entertained the older kids with crayons, markers, and a dry erase board. They also made good use of J's toys, certainly more than he usually does.

The party itself was low-key, lots of eating and talking. We did play a rousing game of Hawaiian-themed Win, Lose, or Draw, which was entertaining and uneventful until J took a nose dive into a low table near the end, giving himself a slight bloody nose and setting him off into an extended crying fit. He recovered nicely, however, in time to be put in the middle of a mat with his birthday cake, which he found much less interesting than some nearby mylar baloons. Eventually he dipped a finger into the cake but couldn't seem to figure out what all the fuss was about and had very little desire to eat any of it. Even after we put him in his high chair, and he grabbed a fistful of icing, he still wasn't sure what the heck was going on, as you can see:
These two below are my favorite shots. He is so clearly tolerating his parents' apparent insanity here!

Aquarius, Aquarius

Saturday was the big day: we finally took (not for much longer) Baby J to get his hair cut.

The trip was much needed, as you can tell from the last few pictures. You see, the husband was told by some superstitious women at work that it was bad luck to cut your child's hair before he or she turned one year old and, for some reason, illogic trumped practicality, and he insisted that we wait until then. So we did and watched J's hair, particularly his "bangs" get longer and longer and attract more and more food and stick out further and further when he woke up each morning. Until at last the day arrived and, after some protest on my part, off we went. (I was concerned that my squirrelly one year old wouldn't do well at a thoroughly adult barber shop.)

Fortunately, J was cooperative, Bubbha the Barber was quick and understanding, and the whole event was painless. It did take three of us, the husband to hold Baby J, me to distract him with the water in the counter sink, and the barber to swoop in and cut when J's fascination with the water overcame his wriggling or his distraction with the doorbell. But the ordeal wasn't really much of an ordeal, and we got the requisite lock of hair, and we even left with a certificate commemorating the first haircut. As the barber pointed out, now J won't have bad associations with getting his hair cut and will be eager to come back.

And he looks so cute, if so very, very grown up. See for yourself with these before and after shots. (And yes, our barber is wearing a KISS shirt and has multiple tattoos. Your point?)

It's my birthday, too

Now, you see this face and you think "Ahh, cute...and needs a haircut." But really, this is the face of the birthday imp who has decided today that to celebrate his birth, he will

--truncate his first nap, resulting in a micro-mini, wholly unsatisfactory approximation of sleep.

--bite into an errant individual applesauce container, pierce through the foil for the first time, and suck out the contents like an efficient and giggling (and, presumably, well fed) monkey.

--demonstrate repeatedly that he can both suck off the floor if you don't get to him quickly enough AND blow bubbles and then spit them onto the floor in a puddle of frothy goodness (which he then sucked back up while I was trying to figure out what was going on).

--act like he's about to say "mama" while I'm changing his diaper, causing me to pause and encourage him to mouth the syllables, after which he looked deeply into my eyes, concentrated...and peed all over my shirt.

--follow up this display by saying "dada."

--throw up all over me and his new shirt before his second nap.

Happy Birthday!!

They say it's your birthday

Dear Baby J,

Happy Birthday! One year ago today, I was...well, let's be honest, I was completely overwhelmed, drugged and loopy, and awfully tired. But THEN, later, when I was finally myself, there you were. Small, sleeping, sucking, squirming, and so...present. And most of that hasn't changed. You are now everpresent, omnipresent, superpresent in my life. And though it's cliched, I really do struggle to remember a time before you consumed my thoughts. I wonder about you; I worry about you. I wish for you great and grand wishes I can't even articulate and small daily wishes to make your life simpler, richer, better. I've only just stopped listening for your breathing at night, but I still feel comforted when I do hear you. I celebrate your milestones, catch you when you fall, call you when you're out of sight, and control my urges to protect you too much.

In the past year, we've both grown. You have learned how to be a baby and now are learning how to be a toddler. You've developed likes (Barnyard Dance, Carol of the Bells, puppies, balloons) and dislikes (green beans, closed doors, taking naps, the changing table). You've become more independent each day, moving from rolling over to sitting up to crawling away as quickly as you can, laughing over your shoulder, but you still hope someone is there to chase you. You've learned to feed yourself and read your books and find your ball and jump and sing and laugh. You have an amazing attention span and are willing to sit alone and play by yourself for much longer than a child your age should, which makes both of us happy. You are so close to talking it feels to your daddy like one day you will just spout out full sentences. You have a deep laugh and a teasing giggle, and you do both frequently. They say all too soon I'll miss the baby you were, but I love the quirky, funny little boy you've become.

Your face is your father's, your hair and eyes are a mystery, but your hands are my hands. When you finally arrived on the scene a year ago, the nurse said "who gave him these short, stubby little fingers?" You should know I'm the guilty party. Your hands are duplicates of my own, down to the creases at the knuckles. When I nursed you and now when I give you a bottle, I often watch your hands as you intertwine your fingers with mine, a favorite pastime for us both. And when I see your hands, I know that you are mine. Your hands are evidence that you are with me, of me, now and forever, and your presence determines the rhythm of my days and the duration of my nights. One year ago today you can to live with us and changed everything. The changes you brought into my life and the changes you have wrought in me continue unabated, and I can say in all sincerity, today I am very happy indeed to celebrate your birth. And tomorrow, and the next day and the next, I will be ever happy to celebrate your life.

With all the love you have taught me to have,

Mommy

I think too much

We are busy bees here, what with all the sneezing, coughing, snoring, crying, and sighing going on. The husband appears to be mostly on the mend, and Baby J is moving toward being well, though he is still hacking up a lung, or so it seems, at times. The doctor asked me if his cough was "croupy." Umm, I've never heard a croupy cough, so how would I know. Oh, it's very distinctive, she tells me. Sure, I think, if you've heard it before. What do you expect from me, lady? So, of course, as soon as I left the doctor's office, I googled "croup audio" and wouldn't you know it? Some helpful health care site has handily included audio clips of all kinds of coughs just for worried moms like me. (Oh, and it's not croup, thank goodness, because UGH! Terrifying sounds!)

Every once in a while I have a moment like this, of pure, unadulterated love for the Internets. I know that the Internet has caused a decline in student scholarly ability (because why look anywhere besides Wikipedia?? they say), and I know there is much to be researched that is not cataloged electronically and is therefore now missed, but in these happy moments, I am grateful for the ease with which most information can now come to me. For someone like me, who doesn't make a move without doing some thorough (some would say obsessive) research, the Web is a treasure trove, a time saver, the answer to many, if not all, of my questions. And in this case, it eased my mind considerably, since the doctor's breezy "oh, I sure it's not croup" wasn't particularly reassuring, funnily enough.

When you're a stranger

My child is a lady killer.

Yesterday, he managed to charm a woman in the parking lot. Who was still in her car. Through both our window AND hers. While belted into his car seat so he could only look at her obliquely. And even with all that, I think she would have taken him home with her in a minute if I'd let her.

This is not new, of course. Baby J has always attracted the older grandma set, particularly in the mall. He responds best to women with glasses, but he is also intrigued by headbands or scarves (this works for me as well; if I have my hair up in any way, he is absolutely fascinated with me for hours at a time). But he's no respecter of persons: if you smile at him and you're a woman, he's yours. He is less interested in men but is currently the only baby not afraid of our friend Spencer, so I think he's pretty ecumenical when it comes to his affections.

As he's gotten older, his attractiveness to the older women has increased, but now we've also added little girls to the list of those who can't get enough Baby J. One practically had a seizure in another parking lot yesterday as she excitedly pointed him out to her long-suffering mother. And nurses. Baby J loves nurses, and they love him. The husband is going in for some routine surgery today, and, at one point, his nurse spirited J away to do show him off to the "girls." Apparently, he performed well, even laughing for them, and she brought him back...eventually. The husband was about to call a "code pink" for a missing baby since she was taking so long, but I knew it was only Baby J's wiles that had captivated everyone is blue scrubs.

Surely, it's an advantage to be raising a charmer. People will forgive him a multitude of sins because he's just so gosh darn adorable! Then, of course, so will I!

We've only just begun

So it's over and it's just beginning. Barack Obama won (that's President Elect Barack Obama, if you please), and all is right with the world. Well, actually, all is most decidedly not right with the world, but that's why I'm happy Obama won.

Geographically and ideologically, I'm a lone Democrat in a Republican wilderness most of the time, so it's nice to feel like I'm siding with the majority once in a while.

Philosophically, I'm a Democrat for many reasons, most having to do with social justice and care for the less fortunate and a deep belief in the importance of government as an agent for change and equity in the face of our basic human selfishness, and it's nice to have those beliefs valued overtly by others from time to time.

Politically, I'm a Democrat who is happy this election is finally over so we can all put our energies back into the much bigger problems at hand, though I'm also afraid the enormity of those problems might sink my newly elected candidate, which would be very, very sad.

Enthusiastically, I'm a Democrat on today of all days.

Huzzah!

We have heard on high

Today we exercised our right to vote. Which also meant we exercised our right to stand in line three and a half hours at a polling place that only had one working voting machine for much of that time. And our right to deal with an increasingly cranky baby who was awakened after finally going to sleep by an old woman who felt the need to peel out of the parking lot for no good reason in her pickup, the dashboard of which she could hardly see over as she careened away. And our right to make friends with the people ahead of and behind us, even as we wished the people just ahead of them would stop smoking and the people just behind them would turn down their iPhone that was apparently playing some high school talent show involving music by the Backstreet Boys sung as loudly and as badly as possible. And our right to get progressively colder outside as the morning progressed and to swelter inside the polling place, the multipurpose building at our neighborhood park. You get the idea.

We went as a family, trundling Baby J along in his stroller and then strolling him endlessly in place and around the neighborhood as time passed ever soooo slowly. Eventually, I sent the husband and J home for drinks, Ibuprofen, and a camp stool. The walk there resulted in the long delayed nap, but that was spoiled by the insane woman in the truck. Even so, J was a trooper for most of the morning, only really starting to melt down as we headed into hour four and were actually inside but still far away from voting because of triple lines snaking around a very small space. When we finally did reach the head of the line, just as I was about to step forward to vote, another old woman in a wheelchair was wheeled in front of me by her anxious son. At that point, of course, what was one more delay in the name of helping the elderly and the disabled? Sadly, J didn't see it that way. He'd been excited about the prospect of seeing something new (the ballot machine) and then was very upset when we STILL weren't on our way there.

We did get to vote, finally, and I tried not be concerned about our paperless machines. And it wasn't an awful time, even given all of the above. The line was very friendly, with people sharing pages explaining the amendments we were to vote on and a random woman showing up with coffee and candy (the husband says she has to be the wife of a candidate because otherwise "no one does that"). Everyone was very understanding about Baby J, even in the close quarters of the polling place where he was showing off his least socially desirable behavior.

Huzzah! Democracy in action! On to waiting anxiously for the results!

I would not give you shelter

We have a giant bookcase in our family room and the bottom two shelves are pretty much dedicated to Baby J. One cubby houses his books, which he loves to pull out and then sit "reading," which really means moving them from one place to the other in a circle around him. He most loves to read books about animals, though his two favorite animal books are the largest and most unwieldy in his collection, so he struggles doggedly to maneuver them around and turn the pages. Every day, he pulls out all board books from the bookcase, and every night we put them back in so he can do it all over again.

In addition, the bottom level of the bookcase holds lots of boxes he can open. One contains a collection of rubber ducks, all of which were presents for the husband that are now entertaining his progeny. Most of the boxes, however, are empty, since there are very few things we can stand to see destroyed by his enthusiastic hands. One shelf does hold a wooden mortar and pestle that Baby J absolutely loves to play with. It makes a satisfyingly loud sound when he drops it onto the shelf or the hardwood floors, and noise is J's second love, after motion.

Yesterday he got to combine his love of noise with his third love, destruction. I let him rip apart a magazine I was going to get rid of and you would have thought I had hired a clown. J laughed big belly laughs every time he got a page free, and I gasped at his prowess with the ripping. He kept that up through the entire magazine, methodically and maniacally ripping out page after page and cracking himself (and me) up with each one. Perhaps it wasn't wise to encourage the ripping of magazines, but so far he's been good about telling real books, adult books, from magazines, the former he's not to touch, the latter his to do with as he pleases. And, of course, he's not allowed in the library unsupervised or at all, really, just in case he forgets!

I want the pie in the sky

To begin, your moment of teenage Zen:

Teacher: If you had one wish for the world, what would it be?

Student: I'd wish we all had enough money for everything we need and maybe for a few wants, like a computer.

Teacher: Why not eliminate money entirely?

Student: Well, that would really discourage people who are trying to earn a lot of money.

You can't make this stuff up, people!

In other news, J had swiftly gone from tentative crawling to pulling himself up everywhere to learning to fall down more or less gracefully to standing with only one hand lightly holding onto anything to tentatively "walking" along the coffee table. It's frightening how quickly he's learning and how mobile he's become. It amuses me to no end to see his dad put him down and walk away and watch J twist himself over onto his hands and knees and take off after the husband. It seems as if he's just been waiting to say "No, I want to be WITHYOURIGHTNOW and here I come!"

We also just got back from his 9 month well baby visit (as opposed to the month and a half of sick baby visits that we've just ended). The doctor told us he is off the charts in height, 31 inches, and in the 92nd percentile for weight, 23 pounds 14 ounces. He's proportional in height and weight, and, in fact, she said, he's slim for his height and "that's what we all want, to be tall and thin." Which is exactly what I think when I look at my child, he's sooo skinny!

All through the town

OY and VEY!!!

I thought I had adjusted fairly well to motherhood, finally. I was feeling more rested, more secure, less frazzled, less crazed....And then J began crawling. And then he really got in the groove. And I spent most of today running after him or running ahead of him, pulling cords out of his mouth, rescuing the husband's guitar from enthusiastic but certain destruction, sticking outlet covers on outlets he found by the minute, extricating him from underneath chairs and between the sofa and the wall, finding new places for trash cans he dumped onto the floor, comforting him after he pulled himself up on unstable furniture and inevitably fell down, sweeping up dead bugs he uncovered in the most unexpected places....And I had a vision of my life for the next foreseeable future and realized how very, very busy I'm going to be just keeping him from killing himself.

The upside is he apparently understands the word "no" or at least the tone of voice in which I said no when he was eating the computer cord or when he had a wrapper halfway down his throat. And he always responds to his name, or at least he did when I would walk into the room where I had just left him and he would have disappeared, only to reappear with a grin from behind or under something when I called for him. He's very cute when he crawls happily along and is in a very good mood about it, even as I am taking things away from him every 30 seconds.

SIGH!

Sweetly singing all the day

I have been slacking. So many J milestones have been reached lately and I have barely even noted them in his baby book, let alone extolled them here. I repent:

Sleeping: J has now slept through the night by himself without a middle of the night feeding twice in a row. We are keeping our fingers crossed! The first time was an accident: he'd had a really bad, no nap day, so by the time the husband got here, we were both exhausted. I went to bed pretty quickly and slept like the dead. I woke up at 2 am and realized the baby monitor was off and for some reason, in my stupor, I left it off. At 5:00 I got up and turned it on (I was more conscious then) in a fit of guilt. At 5:30 am he cried out a few times, I got dressed (bible study at 6:30) and by the time I made it to his room, he was asleep again. And not a peep until 7:15 am, the longest he has ever slept in his life. So last night we repeated the process of leaving the monitor off, though this time I woke up every hour or so just to listen for him, and he made it til 6:30 am without complaint...or at least without complaint that we heard. Which is as good as the same thing. We had been in the middle of night weaning as it was, with strange results: him rejecting food at all until 4 or 5 am, which led me to believe he might just wean himself, which he did, apparently. In addition, he's a pretty good napper now who still takes three naps a day, though these last days of lots of night sleeping have changed his daytime sleeping a bit. I think we may be moving toward two naps, but we shall see. The late day naps are short, just to get him (and me) through the afternoon. Look at me, sounding all calm about J's sleeping! Could this be the same Mommy as before???

Teething: J's third tooth came in today, meaning the last two nights are even more remarkable. This one's on the top, making him, in my mom's words, dangerous. He already uses his two bottom teeth to do serious damage to a banana, taking chunks as big as his head if you let him (he doesn't want to eat little pieces of banana, no no no, he wants to eat like the big people). I shudder to think about how much he'll be able to hack off now!

Crawling: J took his first little crawling steps two days ago and is getting more sure of himself with each day. He had to fight against his general laziness to get this far and still doesn't want to practice or exert himself too much. He'll go six or seven steps and then give up until you come to him or give him what you want. He knows I'm weak. But we are well on our way to a hyper mobile child, so the childproofing must be done in earnest now. Those cords and outlets are just too tempting. And today he almost knocked over the guitar, which would have made the husband very sad. A total house reorganization is in order. It was in order months ago, but well, you know, we're slow.

Growing: Our nine month appointment is coming up, so we'll get the official stats then, but last time we checked (a few weeks ago when we went in to get the right antibiotics), J was in the 75th percentile for height and...well...he IS the 100th percentile in weight. He's off the charts! He fits comfortably into 12 month clothes and even some 18 month outfits if they've shrunk just a touch. And he really isn't that great of an eater. He drinks minimal bottles and eats only that which can be mixed successfully with sweet potatoes or cottage cheese, so you wouldn't think we would be this chubby but there he is! And it's cute, cute, CUTE!

I think that about covers the new news. Whew, I'm caught back up. And so are you!

Food, glorious food

I stepped on my first Cheerio last night.

Okay, it probably wasn't the first ever Cheerio I've crushed, but it was the first in my own house, tossed to the ground by my very own son.

We tried Cheerios last night in an effort to give J something to eat he can touch, since that's what he really wants to do. Our efforts were less than successful: he played with the few on his tray and tossed most of them and refused any that were offered him. So, I tried again at lunch today, eating one myself (and can I say, blech?! I haven't had plain Cheerios in years and now I remember why!) and then giving him one, which he took. He then proceeded to stick out his tongue and say "ack ack ACK!" as if I had just given him dirt to eat, then gag, then swallow, reluctantly, exaggeratedly to get it down. I tried another half Cheerio later, but the reaction was the same: dramatic distaste.

But, I thought, he's at least taking food from my hand, if no enjoying it, so why not try banana instead? Smoother, sweeter, better, right? Umm, not so much. He had the same reaction: hacking, gagging, swallowing with effort, and frowning throughout. BUT, he really wanted to hold the banana as I was finishing it off, so I let him gum it, and his reaction was unadulterated joy! He scraped the side with his two little baby bottom teeth and actually ate what he scraped off. So I cut tiny little slivers loose and left them on the banana for him to gum off, and he ate those without even a wince.

Which confirms for me this all too real fact: this baby not only knows what he wants, he knows how he wants it. With food, how he wants it most is just like we are having it. So now we move into trying to add more veggies to our meals that we can mash for him and trying to figure out which finger foods he will take in which forms. Because HE has to decide how he wants to eat, you see.

Where did he get this strong will, I wonder? Because I am so shy and unopinionated and the husband is so soft spoken and retiring....oh.

Take it to the limit

Holy Hanna. Or not so much. We've moved on with our lives and learned a few lessons: we need plywood for our windows, most home stores don't stock battery operated fans (seriously? no electricity means no AC, people!), and J complicates imminent disasters, even those that don't materialize, immensely. Check, check, check!

On to new topics: my brother-in-law is participating in Lotoja, a 206 mile bike race from Logan, Utah to Jackson Hole, Wyoming (get it??). In other words, it's a big, long deal. There are support teams involved, for crying out loud! I have a soft spot in my heart for this race, having at one point in my life been close to some cyclists who got me hooked on and interested in all kinds of things like the Tour d'France and insane races in the summer in the West. Not on cycling itself, mind you, because it's way too much work for me, and I don't trust car drivers enough to share the road with them, but it's fun to watch and follow nonetheless.

J is not crawling yet but gets closer daily. We are working on his laziness or impatience: he really would be farther advanced if he didn't caterwaul for one of us to flip him every time he hurled himself onto his stomach (which happens about once every 5 minutes right now.) It's getting old. Not that I'm ready for him to be more mobile or anything, she says as she stares at the tangled, tantalizing mass of computer cords under the desk at which she sits.

Seminary continues with just a short hurricane break on Friday. Today we discussed the Apostles, old and new, and found that the boys have no idea about the names of either. When asked to memorize at least the current set, one boy responded "We have lives, you know!" Umm, you're 15. Not so much. It will take 10 minutes. Deal and move on. I think that will be our biggest lesson for the boys this year: most of the time it's easier just to do what people ask and save yourself the time it takes to complain about it. We've already had the "play nice with others" talk with one of them, and I don't think the rest will be far behind. Fun fun fun!

Summer is winding down, though you wouldn't know if from the temperature. Now comes fall, with some of my favorite activities: the fall TV premieres (yes, I'm a geek; you go ahead and move on, too), the annual Charleston County Public Library book sale (literally thousands upon thousands of books for oh so cheap), the annual Whale of a Sale by the local Junior League (a HUGE garage sale featuring the stuff from little old ladies' houses--finds galore), and the best weather in the country, once it arrives. This year we'll also get to dress J up for Halloween and carve his first pumpkin (which he should love, squash addict that he is) and go to Trunk-or-Treat at the church with an actual child as opposed to just going as kids at heart. Can't wait!

Wheels keep on turning

I'm sitting in my newly clean office, waiting for the husband to arrive to help me cart off three boxes worth of stuff (mostly books and papers, of course) before I have to turn in my keys today. In preparation for getting a new infusion of stuff, I also started to clean out all the boxes of class materials and notes I have in my home office so there will be somewhere to put everything.

Going through my undergraduate and graduate notes and papers was an odd experience. On the one hand, I kept having visceral memories of certain classes as I uncovered my notebooks or assignments, which was great as far as undergrad was concerned but mildly unpleasant as far as grad school was concerned. I mean, I loved, LOVED undergrad, because I'm a nerd like that, and there were fabulous moments in grad school, but most of those took place out of class. On the other hand, it was, I don't know, disheartening? to realize how much of my grad career has turned out to be absolutely useless in the grander scheme of my life. Not that I didn't know that already, but tossing folder after folder of useless information into a huge trash pile has a way of bringing that kind of realization home starkly. And when J started trying to chew on that stack of trash after it tipped perilously close to him, I thought it was a symbolic moment on many levels!

So now I'm at my work office, doing much the same thing but with better results. Because what I have here, my assignments and grading rubrics and student papers and handouts and textbooks as well as some of my personal research and writing from the last while, has, in fact, been very relevant in my life. And it's more rewarding to review the accumulated evidence of my teaching career which, unlike grad school as a whole, has been very useful in my life thus far. All of this packing, unpacking, and tossing just reaffirms the sagacity of my decision to leave behind some parts of academia (the insular scholarship or the publish or perish rat race) while embracing others (teaching and research for research's sake). I eventually ended up doing exactly what I should have been doing.

And now I'm doing something else entirely, exactly what I should be doing now. And it requires very little of anything in any of these boxes!