On the move

The thing that has surprised me most about having a baby is how fast he changes. I was prepared for the "days are long, years are short" phenomenon, but not for the blink-and-miss-it pace that he learns things. In the past few days, Nico has shown an increased interest in playing on the floor. He's always been a wiggly baby, migrating around his crib during the night, but lately there seems to be more intent behind his wriggling. Just last night I was all besotted over him scooching forward about six inches on his blanket to grab a toy. And then this morning, I laid him down on his playmat with his stacking rings beside it and went to brush my teeth. When I came back, he was looking a bit guilty with a trail of destruction in his wake:

(When I left, the set of stacking rings was assembled
and standing where the red ring is in this photo.)

Then, when I picked him up from my parents' house after work, Mom said, "You know what he does with those stacking rings? He throws them across the room and then crawls after them."

I decided to test this somewhat outlandish claim for myself. After all, this baby was a sedate little swaddled bundle about five minutes ago. And guys? I think we're in deep shit:




After documenting his new skill for the internets posterity, I read him a few bedtime stories and took him into our room to nurse. He only ate for about five minutes, and then decided he needed to log a bit more crawling practice. I couldn't put him in his crib because I knew he'd scoot down to the end and bonk his head against the bars, so I kept him on my lap, my hand hooked securely at his hip to keep him from motoring off. What followed was like a weird cycle of baby Sun Salutations. He'd bury his face in my lap, poke his butt up into the air, push off with his toes, and raise his head back up. He did this for ten solid minutes -- head down, butt up, push off, head up. Head down, butt up, push off, head up.

I'm kind of excited, but also know that this is pretty much the end of life as we know it. No more skipping a day of sweeping up the dog hair, no more leaving shoes lying around in tempting locales, and no more plunking him down on a blanket long enough to make a sandwich and expecting him to be there when I get back.

Catch the moments as they fly

Friday again. Not sure how this keeps happening. We had a very nice visit to MB's family down South(ish). We stayed at his aunt and uncle's house on Saturday, and MB's grandparents and mom came over to hang out and visit with Nico. MB's papaw, who declined to hold Nico at the hospital, came straight over and scooped him off my lap. "I told you I'd hold you once you got big enough," he said. "Gimme some sugar." Once the sun was behind the house, I dressed Nico in his tiny swimming trunks and the smallest rash guard I could find (which was still too big) and took him into the above-ground pool. And oh my hell, you guys, he loved it.

I suspected he would since he enjoys splashing in the bath, but even I didn't predict how much he would like it. I had him in a hip sling that my mom made for me out of an old crib sheet because I was worried he'd wiggle out of my arms in the water. He started splashing with one hand, then turned and leaned way down so he could splash with both hands while the whole family stood in the yard laughing and cheering him on. It was a pretty great moment, I have to admit. After a while we stuck him in the float that Julia loaned me for the weekend, and he spent some time splashing and kicking around in it. MB's 18-year-old cousin hadn't met Nico yet, and she came home while we were in the pool. She threw on her bikini and jumped in with us, and we have a video of her blowing bubbles in the water to make Nico laugh. After our swim, I rinsed Nico off in the bathroom sink and put him to bed, and then MB and I stayed up and played guys-against-girls Cranium with his aunt and uncle, his cousin, and her boyfriend.

We don't see them as often as we probably should, and we had a really great visit. Time with them is always time well-spent, slower-paced and comfortable. We get loud and twangy and we eat too much and swear too much and drink too much sweet tea and I'm always a bit sad to leave. No family is perfect, but I really feel like I won the in-law lottery most of the time. In the early years of our marriage, I felt in my gut that this was a family I'd be glad and proud to bring a child into, and so far they are proving me right. From MB's papaw holding my little son in his huge farmer's hands to MB's slightly disreputable second uncle toting Nico around the kitchen on Sunday morning promising him a ride on his motorcycle (just around the yard, with a helmet on) and a pair of Harley boots from Paducah to MB's mom carrying him down to the fence so he could see the horses, the weekend was full of small, sweet moments.

And for his part, Nico was a champion of courting grandparental affection. He was mild-mannered and charming and tolerant of being passed around by people he hasn't seen since he was teeny-tiny, and slept well in two different houses in the playpen we borrowed from my parents. He is totally banking points toward getting his own pony one day.






And dude. DUDE. Look what my kid can do all of a sudden! What the heck are you playing at, child?




Reading:  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

Playing:  Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons

Photo Friday

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Water baby

Photo Friday

They're not quite fireworks, but they'll do. Wishing everyone an early Happy Fourth of July, a belated Happy Canada Day, or just a happy weekend. We're taking Nico to visit his out-of-state family for a few days, but when we get back I think I'll have another book review for you as well as another review via CSN Stores, online merchant of everything from headboards to hula hoops.


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Boychild

Suck on this

I read two very interesting posts on the eternal and mind-numbing breastfeeding debate this week. The first was from Her Bad Mother, suggesting that it may be high time we embrace the breast as a symbol of sexiness and as a source of nourishment, instead of engaging in a neverending cycle of "nursing-shaming" and retaliatory "slut-shaming." ("Ew, nursing! Boobs are gross!" / "Nursing isn't gross but your epic cleavage is, you whore.") The second was a response by Carolyn Castiglia over on Babble, in which she discusses the difficulties she had nursing and the embarrassment she felt when she needed to nurse in public. I didn't open the comments on HBM's post, but I did on the Babble post, at which point my common sense utterly deserted me and I decided to leave a comment of my own, admitting that I do feel a bit embarrassed about nursing in public and telling a very short version of Nico's nursing story.

After that, a few self-styled experts took it upon themselves to anonymously inform me that I didn't read anything about babies before I had one, to imply that I let my baby scream in his bassinet in the hospital, and to assure me that if I'd held him enough / fed him often enough / not made excuses / understood what he was really crying about (i.e. not hunger), then nursing would've been easy and natural and perfect for me. Well hot damn, anonymous commenters! It's too bad I didn't have your infinite wisdom at my disposal when my baby was wasting away. Oh, wait. The doctors were wrong about that. He wasn't wasting away, or hungry, because a mother's body not having enough milk to sustain the baby is just a myth. Clearly those commenters are right and (I quote) "people very obviously do not know their babies." I think the richest part of all is that I'm doing what they insist every mother should -- exclusively breastfeeding my baby -- but they're still ragging on me for not doing it fast enough.

All this is a long intro to me saying, look, after reading the original two posts I had planned to write a thoughtful post of my own about breastfeeding. But I'm sick of talking about it and figure I've been insulted enough by people who know more than me for one day. Instead, how about some five-minute book reviews? That sounds better, right? At least with those, no one can accuse me of not reading anything!


Visit the book blog for my quick and dirty reviews of the following books: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, Angels, Vampires, and Douche Bags by Carla Collins, The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, and The Help by Kathryn Stockett


Reading:  His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

Playing:  Drunken Lullabies by Flogging Molly

Photo Friday

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Photo Friday

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Summer of love

When the Lady Gaga episode of Glee aired, I finally succumbed to my Twitter-fueled curiosity and watched it. Even though I felt like the vocals in the big musical numbers were rather over-produced, I liked it enough that I set up a series recording for the remaining episodes. My friend bibliophile81 saw me talking about Glee on Twitter, and she put the DVDs of season one on hold for me at the library. I ripped through season one and found it sharper and much funnier than I'd expected. And so quotable! So now I'm totally that obnoxious person going around reciting lines from a show that everyone else geeked out over ages ago. (But seriously, you guys. "Cross over to my side of this black shiny thing." "That's called a piano, Sue.")

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When Jonniker started The Book Lushes a few months ago, I was ridiculously excited. I've been waiting forever to be invited to join a book club. (And anyone can join! You should!) I have to say, so far these ladies have not steered me wrong. I skipped the first book, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, because Nico was brand new and I didn't get it from the library's hold list until nearly the end of the month. The second book was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I liked so much that I immediately checked out and read the sequel and put my name on the list for the third one. I skipped The Year of Magical Thinking because I wasn't feeling up for a book dealing with the mortality of a spouse and child. Next we read Olive Kitteridge, which I expected to merely tolerate and ended up sort of loving. This month we are reading The Red Tent, another one I expected to not like much and really, really enjoyed. I'm so impressed with the Book Lush track record that I went back and got a copy of The Help and started it at work this week. And holy crap, it's soooooo good.

While everyone else was reading The Year of Magical Thinking, I finally got around to reading Watership Down (which my friend Tamsyn has been reminding me to read for years) and it was wonderful. I managed to find time to re-read American Gods for the 1 Book 1 Twitter project, though their reading / commenting schedule turned out to be way too slow for me and I gave up on the discussions after the second week when everyone else was talking about chapter five and I had already finished and moved on to something new. The bibliophile has also sent me some really excellent books, and I can wholeheartedly recommend Sarah Addison Allen's The Girl Who Chased the Moon and Brunonia Barry's The Map of True Places. So far 2010 has been a very good book year. Even though I've been crap at keeping up with reviews over on my book blog, I do keep a list of what I've read each year going back to 2006 in case anyone wants to look. I love peeking at other people's book lists. I am finding that I have plenty of time to squeeze a book or two in between each Book Lush selection, so if there's a book you think I should read, let me know!

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The baby, God, he's so cute. But also sometimes pitiful. Upon stirring from naps, he often turns and rubs his face on his blanket or my shirt before truly waking up. It's really stinking cute. Unfortunately right before he did it the other night, he spit up and I didn't know it, so when he turned his face to rub it on his blanket, he landed snout first in a pool of milkbarf. So then he was lying there crying pitifully, half awake and all spit-uppy. I managed to wipe most of it off his face, but as I was reaching for another flannel, he went for a second comforting blankie rub and found an additional splort of milk that I'd missed. Poor kid. It was so gross and yet impossibly funny. Infants...full of adorable Darwinian fail.

I did an outreach program at the library today (We made slime! It was great!) and as I was walking out through the children's room afterward I decided to browse a little and ended up checking out four books -- Nico's first library books! I'm way more excited about this than I should be, but I can't help it. When I was a kid, my mom took us to the library every week. She had a giant red and white canvas tote bag (seriously, large enough that I could sit in it when I was little), and we would fill it up with ten books per kid. Back then library books still had a card in a paper pocket glued inside the cover which the librarian would stamp with the due date. Mom collected all the due date cards and kept them in the china hutch so that when we went back the next week she knew exactly how many books we had to dig up. These days the library gives you a printed receipt listing all your checked out items, so I will tape Nico's receipt into my planner to remind me to return his books. A librarian I know tried to talk me into signing him up for the summer reading program this year, but since we usually just read the same two books every night (Bear Snores On and Guess How Much I Love You, we'd never make our goal for the summer. Plus I'd kind of like his first official summer reading year to be one in which he can participate by helping to pick out his books and such. I hope he'll love the library as much as I do.

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"I'll have you know I have my PhD." "You got it online, Sue!"

'Round Here

So, I am not dead or ill or otherwise incapacitated. Promise. I've just been busy with a baby who gets more interactive every day. Also, I've developed an unfortunate new habit of falling asleep at 8:30 PM when Nico goes to bed and not waking up until 11:00 PM, at which point I have to shower and pump and then go to bed for real. Or I do what I did last night: fall asleep at 8:30, wake up at 11:00, eat a bowl of cereal, then go nurse the baby who has decided he's hungry, only to fall asleep AGAIN and wake up at 4:30. Still in need of a shower. Sigh. I did have a lovely evening with Nico before we both fell asleep, though, so there's that.

Photo Friday

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Don't rock the boat, baby

Yesterday was my annual canoeing trip with Danger. We planned to do our usual 14 mile trip, but when I called last week to make sure they were running it, the person I talked to neglected to tell me that they close that trip at 12 on the dot. Due to some Nico-related delays, we didn't get to the canoe station until 12:14 and they wouldn't budge even though there was no way it was going to take us six hours to complete the trip and we easily would've made it to the end before the last pickup. We ended up going on a very crowded 7 mile trip, but since all the people who went into the water before us literally pulled their canoes over to the banks within twenty feet of the launch to start drinking beer, we easily left the entire group behind. The weather was stunningly perfect, and the whole trip was fantastic and relaxing even though we ran into an exhibitionist.

No lie, total flasher. There's no way the dude was just taking a pee break on what he thought was a deserted bend of the river, either, because I didn't even see him up on the bank until he made it a point to yell hello at us. So I turn to say hi back, and there's a flabby pasty white dude with his swimtrunks around his ankles and his (really unimpressive) junk hanging out in the breeze.

One summer we had a flasher who was targeting the local chain of ice cream stores that I worked for in high school, presumably because they were staffed entirely by teenage girls and were open late-ish. We'd all been warned that he was, well, on the loose, and so I spent a few weeks concocting elaborate revenge fantasies involving the hot water from the coffee machine and a moment of precision aim or of calling all the other girls together to point and laugh. But the one night he showed up at the store when I was there, I decided to just deny him the thing he wanted the most. When he knocked on the drive-through window and then dropped his pants, I rolled my eyes and kept on walking. I didn't even tell anyone else he'd showed up.

I figured that approach would work for the river flasher, too, so I just said hello, kept on paddling, and didn't turn back around when he tried to start a conversation about whether we'd been swimming in the river yet. I sincerely hope he and his rather small penis were disappointed. Seriously, though, why do hot buff dudes never feel the need to strip in public? It's always, always the pudgy pasty ones. Such a waste.

Oh, and there was one more bit of weirdness. When we got to the take-out ramp, Danger ran the canoe up into the gravel and got out to pull it ashore so I could get out. As she was doing that, this high school looking dude came over and said he'd get the boat. He didn't ask me to get out or tell me to sit tight, so I figured he was going to pull the boat up a little bit so I could get out, which is what the ramp guys have always done in the past. Now, I didn't ask or expect him to haul my heavy ass along in the boat, I would have been glad to get out, but he didn't give me any chance to before he grabbed the canoe and yanked on it, throwing me into the side of the metal boat and nearly dumping me into the river. What the hell, man? I said, "You know what, I'm happy to get out," and waded ashore. I get that being the guy that drags the giant metal canoes up the ramp is kind of a crappy job, but at least be decent to people, you know? Me and my bruised ass and knee would appreciate it.

Photo Friday

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Greater than

(stolen from Jen and Kerri)

music > silence

books > TV

woods > beaches

reading > shopping

thrift stores > malls

bare face > makeup

daily ponytail > flat ironing

flip flops > heels

jeans > dresses

ice cream > steak

milk > any other drink

camping > five star hotels

camels > monkeys

cake > pie

yoga > therapy

Fall > Summer

friends & family > fortune

life with my boys > anything else, ever

Boobylicious

As silly as it feels to shoot a video of my kid doing something as mundane as lying on his playmat making funny noises, I'm glad that I got his dolphin squeals on video last week, because he has suddenly dropped that skill completely from his repertoire. He's changing so fast, a point underscored yesterday when I ran into a friend and her six-week-old daughter who just now is about the size Nico was when he was born. I was actually a bit nervous to hold her baby, even though I hold mine every day. At 4 1/2 months, Nico is solid, heavy, almost always wiggling. In comparison, this sleeping newborn felt impossibly light and fragile. How can it be that my giant vibrant boy was not too long ago tiny and calm?



We've come to another highly symbolic milestone for Nico this week. Since strapping him into his carseat always makes him cranky and since he does such a good job holding his head steady, I decided to let him try riding in his stroller on his own last Wednesday when we took Indy for a walk, instead of making him ride in the carseat snapped into the stroller. It was such a success that we've been doing it ever since, despite the pangs I feel seeing him look like such a toddler. It's a small and stupid thing to get nostalgic over, but that's what mothering a baby seems to be -- a constant reminder of how fleeting each stage is before they're moving on to bigger and better things.

Exhibit A:  baby
Exhibit B:  big boy
On Thursday Nico and I went out to lunch with my friend Evilducky and we went thrift shopping for the first time since Nico was born. I have a problem now where jeans that fit my thighs are baggy in the butt and jeans that fit in the butt are too tight in the thighs. For decency's sake, I always choose the ones that fit in the thigh, but I only have one pair that looks nice enough to wear to work. I cling to the hope that I won't carry this last seven pounds of pregnancy weight on my thighs forever, so I am unwilling to pay full price for jeans. After attempting to try on about a dozen pairs at several thrift stores, it has been made clear that I am officially stuck in thunder thigh / saggy butt territory for a while. But I did find a reasonably cute pair of Old Navy jeans for $5 that I found passable at the store, almost regretted buying, and then ended up loving once I got home and put them on. I'm sure they feel more attractive than they look, but I'm just going to roll with it.

Another wardrobe problem I'm having is beyond the power of thrift stores to heal, unfortunately. Before I got pregnant my boobs were already hovering around a size 34F. Well, sagging around. Nothing hovers when you're an F cup. No, it's not awesome. No, you don't wish you had this problem, no matter how petite your bosoms are, believe me. I have disliked the way I look for years, and only the knowledge that I wanted to try to breastfeed my kids kept me from seeking a reduction ages ago. Since Nico's birth, the hated "girls" (let's be honest, these things are full-on babushka grandmothers) have grown regrettably larger. I'm actually not even sure what bra size I should be wearing. There's no way I'm going to get fitted right now, either. They're too grotesque and besides, the one time i did get fitted, back when I was probably still a DD, the "bra fit specialist" told me I was a 36C. I haven't been a C since high school. I finally sucked it up and ordered a pretty and expensive nursing bra about a month ago in the largest size I could imagine needing, a 34 H/I. As in hell, no. I'm horrified to tell you that it didn't fit and I had to return it in the hope of finding a site that carries the same bra in a J/K. As in I wish I was kidding. It probably goes without saying that I'll be doing everything in my power to get downsized as soon as I wean Hugo 2, whenever that may be. I will never be glad that I had giant boobs, but at least I can send them off one day with a slightly fond farewell just for these months I've been able to exclusively breastfeed Nico. We'll always have that, my dear frenemies!

In his inexplicably petite pack and play

Cheeks!

Photo Friday

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A little Wednesday morning happy

(OHMYGOD, you guys. MY HEART.)

miscellania

It seems like almost everyone I follow on Twitter or my blogroll has recently started running and is signing up to do 5Ks and half marathons. I'm reminded of a dream that I had when I was pregnant with Nico. For as long as I can remember, running is the one thing I can never do in dreams. I can walk, but as soon as I start to try to run, it's like I'm moving through Jello. Lots of times in my dreams I will end up crawling along on hands and knees because it's faster than trying to run. I don't know if this is some screwed up aspect of my psyche manifesting or if it's sleep paralysis or something else entirely, but it's weird and sort of frustrating. But one night during my pregnancy, I dreamed that I was running, I was free, my body was carrying me along and it was exhiliarating. I woke up and I thought, that's why people run. And also, I want to do that. Maybe someday I will, though I don't think they've invented a sports bra that could allow it right now.

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Speaking of dreams, I must be reaching the saturation point with all the episodes of The Wire that I've watched. I've got season five on DVD from the library after watching the previous four seasons in succession, and the other night I dreamed that I offered Marlo Stanfield shelter in the (nonexistent) apartment in my garage. When I told MB about it, he said, "That's crazy. You'd offer it to Omar first." Damn straight I would. If Omar dies before the end of the show, don't tell me. I need to believe he rides off into the sunset in the finale. It's a goddamn marvel, this show, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't sometimes make me wish I was a drinker so I could drink myself to sleep after watching a few episodes. It's so fundamentally sad, especially season four.

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I just finished reading Olive Kitteridge for the Book Lushes, and I really liked it. It seems to be a love it or hate it kind of book, and the most remarkable thing about it for me is that it made me want to write again. The tone and pacing and voices of the characters tripped something in my brain and I spent a few days after I finished it walking around composing passages in my head, something I haven't done in at least a year. One of my old college writing classmates contacted me on facebook a few weeks ago and has set up a get-together for a writing group in June, and I am really looking forward to it. Could I write fiction again? I feel a glimmer of hope that I could.

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Overall he doesn't do a type of music that appeals to me, but the photographer who took Nico's picture a few weeks back has this song on her website, and I could listen to it over and over:

I'm the same way about Rihanna's "Umbrella," to be honest. I sometimes look it up on YouTube when MB's not around and hit replay about forty times. Does anyone else do that? If so, what songs catch you in their web?

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Are you sick of hearing about my kid? I hope not, because I need to tell you that I bought him a package of SIZE THREE DIAPERS yesterday. SIIIIIZE THREEEEEE. OMFG. He seems to have blown right past his 3 - 6 month clothes, and I can't figure out how that happened. How did he go from still fitting into his 0-3s (albeit just barely) and now not even a full month later he's busting out of the 3-6s? Crazy talk, that's what that is. I'm suddenly extra glad for the handful of 6-9 rompers that were in the box of hand-me-downs my cousin gave me. Somehow we ended up with a quarter of a zillion 0-3 clothes, a billion 3-6s, a few dozen 6-9s, and barely any 9-12s. Then he's got an entire plastic tote each jammed full of 12-18s and 18-24s. Apparently I'm prejudiced against 9-12 month clothes for some reason. I guess it's a good thing he'll probably be in that size at the end of the summer, because apparently he's going to be mostly naked.

His new things: 1. Screech-squealing at top volume and way up in dolphin-speak octaves. The dog is not a fan. 2. Locating and grabbing his feet. Makes it hard to get diapers on him, but it's so damn cute. One of the girls at breastfeeding group last time said she found her daughter in her crib one day with both big toes in her mouth, so I'm waiting for that and fully expect to keel over dead from the adorability. 3. Actually putting toys into his mouth. He's still a bit hit-or-miss on the hand / mouth coordination, but he's getting much better. He has this rattle that looks like a weird lumpy caterpillar with a mohawk, and so far it's his favorite to nom. I live in constant fear that the dog is going to find and eat it. I suppose it's inevitable that the dog will one day eat one of his stuffed toys, so maybe it's better that he do it now before Nico knows the difference. But man I'd be bummed if that weirdass little caterpillar bit it.


Oh, and 4. Rolling over. He's become a champion of rolling onto his front and then getting stuck there. I keep telling him he needs to stay on his belly and practice rolling back to his back, but he's not convinced. Here he is demonstrating #1 and #4 while dressed in the most adorable owl pajamas ever made:



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Don't forget to enter my giveaway! US & Canada, $40 shopping spree, blah-de-blah, go leave a comment!

Happy baby overlo...;flakweja;iwe[oai *KABOOM*

Photo Friday

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