One (plus one month) would like you to know the following:
One is a cool guy, a fun guy. One knows how to have a good time. He can rock it with the kids and the old folks too. Just throw in some bookshelves full of reading material, a sippy cup full of milk, and some cheerios, and one will party all morning long. Until nap time, when one will fuss for a few minutes and then collapse from the exhaustion brought on by getting his party on. But! And this is key, one sleeps like a rock during said nap, unlike, say six months, who would wake up on the dot after 30 minutes and be all "Wah, wah, why am I not sleeping anymore?"
One likes to tell you things. Or sign you things, as it were. See that light over there? One noticed it and he would like you to acknowledge it as well. One would like some milk now. Um, that was now, did you not notice? And a banana. And maybe also some cheerios on the side. One is how big? So big! He knows that a cow says mmmmmbboooo. And yes, that is his nose, right there in the middle of his face. One makes the sign for 'gentle' when he sees a baby or a cat or your hair. However, one is still not quite clear on the concept of 'gentle,' which in his language translates to "swipe at it quickly and if you're lucky, get a handful of whatever is sticking out."
One is a man on the move. He waddles from here to there to there to here. He climbs stairs and turns around to see if you're watching. He pulls books off the bookshelf and toys out of the basket. He attends to his magnet collection on the refrigerator and then turns around to see if mama or daddy left the dishwasher open so he can stick his books in there. He wanders from the bedroom to the bathroom to the living room to the bedroom to the kitchen, all the while babbling to himself, "Da DA! Da Da Da Da Mama Kkkkeeee."
One is wise. When you ask him what he needs for his bath, he signs "diaper" and then pulls a washcloth from the bin. He gets distracted by the books on the shelf, but then cheerfully grabs his pajamas and makes for the bathroom to start the bath. He waves "bye bye" after we put on his coat and hat. He is studying for his SATs for all we know.
One is charming. He puts his head on your shoulder when you say "hugs" (if, of course, he feels like it). He goes away from you to play and then runs back, arms outstretched as if to say, "phew, there you are." He flirts. He tips his head coyly. He laughs at the old folks' jokes, just because he's a laughing kind of guy. He smiles at you like he's got your number, and boy, does he ever.
One is amazing. Good to meet you, one.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Bibliophile
Bry has come a long way in his appreciation of literature. Over the past few days, he seems to have gained a sudden understanding that books are more than chew toys. Turns out he's been listening while Steve and I have read books over and over and over to him. We can recite a few lines from some of his favorites, like Hey, Wake Up, Pajama Time, and Good Night Baby, and Bry will pick through his piles of books until he finds the one we're reciting.
The crazy part about all of this is that Bry is usually playing while we're reading. He's often too busy pulling all of the other books off the shelf or turning the table lamp on and off to sit still and look at the pictures in the books as we're reading. If he's absorbing all of these books while seemingly tooling around aimlessly, what else, exactly is he picking up? Not that we have any worries about what he's picking up. Um, no, not at all.
Today Bry spent a good portion of the day carrying around The Very Hungry Caterpillar and flipping through the pages with a thoughtful look on his face. His newfound love of books has proved helpful during diaper changes, which have been chaotic since Bry has figured out that he doesn't have to sit still on the changing table. Today, I just handed Bry a book while changing him, and he flipped through as if in early training for the very masculine practice of reading while in the bathroom. I'm not trying to encourage the habit, mind you, but peaceful diaper changes are hard to pass up.
Enjoying a little bathroom literature.
The crazy part about all of this is that Bry is usually playing while we're reading. He's often too busy pulling all of the other books off the shelf or turning the table lamp on and off to sit still and look at the pictures in the books as we're reading. If he's absorbing all of these books while seemingly tooling around aimlessly, what else, exactly is he picking up? Not that we have any worries about what he's picking up. Um, no, not at all.
Today Bry spent a good portion of the day carrying around The Very Hungry Caterpillar and flipping through the pages with a thoughtful look on his face. His newfound love of books has proved helpful during diaper changes, which have been chaotic since Bry has figured out that he doesn't have to sit still on the changing table. Today, I just handed Bry a book while changing him, and he flipped through as if in early training for the very masculine practice of reading while in the bathroom. I'm not trying to encourage the habit, mind you, but peaceful diaper changes are hard to pass up.
Enjoying a little bathroom literature.Saturday, January 19, 2008
Retrospective
When Bry first arrived on the scene (i.e., was born), starting a blog was the furthest thing from my mind, which was preoccupied with things like doing laundry and making sure the baby stayed alive. I did this with my super mommy powers, which apparently came free with the $7000 hospital stay. Totally worth it. I'm still waiting for the eyes in the back of my head to develop, but I figure it's only a matter of time.
It wasn't until the craziness calmed down a little and one of the women in my mom and baby group sent out a link for her own blog that the idea of squandering a lot of time that I should be using on more academic endeavors came to me. All of this is the really long way of saying that I haven't documented many of the early (pre-blog) events in Bry's life. Before my memory gets hazier than it already is, I thought I'd catalog some of the more notable ones, starting with his birth. It went something like this... (FYI: This post is rated PG-13 for some scary themes and graphic material. Also, Steve has helped me with this post. You can see his thoughts in italics). Hey everybody.
Sandy: Twas the day after Christmas and all through the land, not a creature was stirring...except my amniotic sac. At around 9:00 am on December 26th, Steve and I were just waking up and contemplating all of the baby-related tasks we had put off until after the holidays when I heard and felt a distinct pop. "What was that?" I groggily asked Steve.
Stock pregnancy image
Steve: I looked over at her and said "You just farted, right?" But the slight waver in my voice suggested that in my heart I knew that something much more significant had just occurred. Plus, Sandy never farts.
She said: Thirty seconds later I stood up and had a startling answer to my question as, well, I soaked my drawers. I hobbled into the bathroom and called out to Steve, "I think my water just broke." All I got in response was silence... "Are you sure?" he finally called back.
In my defense, I was still processing that "pop" sound. I was still a bit groggy after all, and this was quite a bit to take in.
She said: Fast forward 30 minutes. I'm still in the bathroom, calling my OB, and telling Steve he should eat some breakfast while I get in the shower. Steve, meanwhile, is crouched outside the bathroom door, hugging his knees, and still saying, "Are you sure this is really it?"
Again. Groggy and processing. A bad combination. But then she said something that REALLY threw my struggling brain for a loop: "Why don't you go have a bowl of Cheerios while I take a shower."
I had been very clear on the need to eat before going to the hospital. I had heard all of the horror stories about having only ice chips and air to subsist on after signing in to L&D and I was, after all, a very pregnant woman with an appetite that had in the not distant past led me to take a cheeseburger off of Steve's plate. He had been appalled at the reverse flow of the food, which in pre-pregnancy times always went from my plate to his.
All well and good, but seriously. Cheerios?! Had she gone mad? How could we seriously be talking about Cheerios at a time like this?! But of course, like the dutiful husband I am, I kept my mouth shut and did as I was told.
Post-Cheerios we got down to the task of packing a bag for the hospital (which we had planned to do that very day, but without the complicating factor of my being in labor).
Ah, the bag. If ever there was a moment when I felt woefully unprepared for fatherhood, it was on that fateful morning as I flipped open What to Expect When You're Expecting and gazed down at the section titled What to Bring to the Hospital:
I pretty much put back everything Steve had taken out and gathered the right items. (The tennis balls stayed, though!) Bags packed, we realized that we would be driving to the hospital in Steve's dad's industrial-sized van, which we had borrowed the previous evening, intending on transporting a treadmill to our house, also on that very day (we had plans, people!, though I'm not sure what we thought we'd be doing with a treadmill). Steve's car, with the car seat base installed (we had done some preparing), was at his parent's house, 20 miles away.
By this point I had had about two contractions, but they were mild and not unlike the "practice" (go uterus!) Braxton-Hicks contractions I'd been having off and on for a week or so. But since I was pretty sure my bag o' waters had burst, my OB's office gave me the all clear to head to the hospital and off we went. Right after I heaved my very rotund body up into the van.
Steve pulled up to the hospital entrance, unloaded me and our "bag," (which had somehow morphed into something like three bags) full of useless stuff, like a laptop for watching movies, playing cards, snacks, pajamas, toiletries, etc. We apparently were led to believe that labor was going to be akin to a layover in an airport, where we would need to entertain ourselves for hours on end and possibly spend the night in case of a missed flight. In case you're wondering, labor is nothing like a layover. Unless your layovers involve heavy narcotics and wandering around the same three corridors trying to urge your cervix to open.
I could have gone for a movie, but I had a feeling that popping in a DVD would have gotten me into significant trouble.
Because we were feeling extraordinarily cheap, Steve drove the van to the nearby mall to avoid paying for parking in the hospital ramp, while I sat in the lobby and tried to decide whether I was having more contractions. (Answer: if you're trying to decide whether you're having contractions, you're not.) We checked in to L&D and were escorted to triage, where I was "checked" (if you don't know what that involves, you don't want to know). It was confirmed that my water had broken (duh) and that I could officially stay until the baby was delivered.
This is the point where the sequence gets a little blurry. I was given a room and changed into the ever fashionable hospital gown. I believe I was dilated to about 3 cm when I arrived. Since I still wasn't having strong contractions, I was told that if I didn't "progress" at an "acceptable" rate (am I being graded on labor now?), Pitocin would be administered to speed things along. Having heard some not-so-fun, super-duper heavy labor Pitocin-related stories, I was bound and determined to avoid the drug at all costs. So Steve and I began the process of pacing the same three corridors of the L&D floor over and over and over. In my eagerness to no longer be pregnant, I had dragged Steve out on three walks totaling 9 miles in the week prior to the big day. I figured that walking had served me well thus far, so a little more might just do the trick. I waddled along slowwwwly, with Steve by my side. The first few laps were no big deal, but I started to experience some stronger contractions after about 30 minutes. Every 20 steps or so, I would pause, stop talking, and breathe through the contraction. Steve would often be 3 or 4 steps ahead of me before he figured out that I had stopped and that he should probably turn back and do something. Like stand there and say, "Are you having another contraction?"
Hospitals can be dangerous places, people, so I thought it best to scope out our walking path before allowing my pregnant wife through.
By now we were several hours into this whole thing and the labor pain, it was getting a little more serious. After another check, it was determined that I had sped right along to about 5 cm dilation. I was working this labor, people! The only problem was that my blood pressure had started to creep up, so I was ordered into bed, on my left side, to see if it would come back down on its own. And then I got a taste of what labor really feels like. My body started to kick into a higher gear and all of a sudden I was moaning every time a contraction would hit, without the accompanying respite between contractions that I was promised in our prenatal class. The thought of counting and calmly breathing my way through a contraction was ludicrous at best, because they seemed to come one on top of another with very little signal between the end of the first and the start of the next. I'm not sure exactly what Steve was doing at this point because my eyes were squeezed tightly shut and the moaning I mentioned earlier seemed to drown out a lot of the ambient noise. Every now and then I would hear a nurse say, "Breathe a little deeper, OK? You can keep moaning, just breeeeeathe." Her voice was not unlike a buzzing gnat that I wanted desperately to swat at, except my hands were clenched in a death grip around the bed rail.
For the record, I was watching helplessly as I saw Sandy get hit with more and more pain and feeling rather guilty that I got off scot-free with this whole pregnancy thing.
Look! No stretch marks!
Fast forward 30 minutes, an hour, who knows, I really lost track of time amidst all of the moaning and shallow, completely un-Zen-like breathing I was doing. At some undetermined point, I finally cried uncle and asked for some pain medication. The serene anesthesiologist waltzed in and placed an epidural, while I tried very hard not to contract, or move, while he was you know, poking a needle into my spine. A few minutes later, it was determined that I had just passed 7 cm dilation and was directed to "rest" before gearing up to push some time in the yet to be determined future. And rest I did. I've read lots of descriptions about the difference in sensations pre- and post-epidural and all I really have to add was that for me, it was like the difference between being repeatedly clubbed in the stomach, from the inside, and receiving a nice, soothing massage. Well, perhaps not quite like a massage, but the whole "pressure vs. pain" differential was most welcome.
If memory serves me right, Steve excused himself at some point to retrieve some lunch for himself. He must have known that I would have booted his bum right back out of the room if he had tried to eat in front of me, so he inhaled an entire cheeseburger and fries in about 30 seconds so as not to miss anything.
I "rested" for maybe 45 minutes, during which Steve and I discovered that the only TV station playing in our room was some new-agey nature scene complete with poorly dubbed "soothing" music. Luckily, my overachieving cervix saved us from having to fill the time in other ways, because before I knew it, I was deemed ready to push.
OK. I must comment on this one. Epidurals are amazing. In a very short time, Sandy went from lying on the bed moaning in agony to sitting up and comfortably watching TV. It was eerily mellow. After a short time, a nurse appeared and calmly said, "OK. It's time to start pushing." We said, "OK," Sandy laid back down on the bed, and began pushing. Just like that. It had the intensity of sitting in the waiting room at Great Clips and hearing our name get called, announcing that it was now time to get a hair cut. No screaming, no pain, no anything. I'll say it again: epidurals are amazing.
OK, permit me to counter-comment. Let's just say the intensity was a bit stronger for me than waiting for a haircut.
I'll spare everyone the fun details of this last phase of labor. It took just under an hour between "why don't you try to push now?" and "waaahh waaa wahhhh!" Steve had negotiated with the obstetrician earlier and was given the go ahead to help with the final stages of the delivery process.
During one of our prenatal classes, we saw a video where the father pulled the baby out. I was amazed- that was an option? I really wanted to do it. I liked the idea of being the first person to touch him and to be the one to actually pull him out into the world. The look on the doctor's face when I asked her suggested that this is not a very common request. But after assuring her that I could handle the gore (dissecting everything under the sun as a Bio teacher was finally paying off) she agreed to let me do it. During the last few pushes, the head became visible (which was absolutely amazing, by the way) so I quickly gowned and gloved up. The doctor pulled Bry's head and shoulders out and ensured that everything was proceeding normally and that he was OK. I reached under his arms, pulled him out, and placed him on his Mom's chest.
Bry managed to make his entrance into the world with his fist balled up tightly next to his head (thanks, Bry!), in an angry and triumphant salute at 5:14 that evening. As John, Bry's paternal grandfather likes to say, I wrapped up labor and delivery in a standard, 9-5 workday.
Worth the effort
You've come a long way in a year, little man.
It wasn't until the craziness calmed down a little and one of the women in my mom and baby group sent out a link for her own blog that the idea of squandering a lot of time that I should be using on more academic endeavors came to me. All of this is the really long way of saying that I haven't documented many of the early (pre-blog) events in Bry's life. Before my memory gets hazier than it already is, I thought I'd catalog some of the more notable ones, starting with his birth. It went something like this... (FYI: This post is rated PG-13 for some scary themes and graphic material. Also, Steve has helped me with this post. You can see his thoughts in italics). Hey everybody.
Sandy: Twas the day after Christmas and all through the land, not a creature was stirring...except my amniotic sac. At around 9:00 am on December 26th, Steve and I were just waking up and contemplating all of the baby-related tasks we had put off until after the holidays when I heard and felt a distinct pop. "What was that?" I groggily asked Steve.
Stock pregnancy imageShe said: Thirty seconds later I stood up and had a startling answer to my question as, well, I soaked my drawers. I hobbled into the bathroom and called out to Steve, "I think my water just broke." All I got in response was silence... "Are you sure?" he finally called back.
In my defense, I was still processing that "pop" sound. I was still a bit groggy after all, and this was quite a bit to take in.
She said: Fast forward 30 minutes. I'm still in the bathroom, calling my OB, and telling Steve he should eat some breakfast while I get in the shower. Steve, meanwhile, is crouched outside the bathroom door, hugging his knees, and still saying, "Are you sure this is really it?"
Again. Groggy and processing. A bad combination. But then she said something that REALLY threw my struggling brain for a loop: "Why don't you go have a bowl of Cheerios while I take a shower."
I had been very clear on the need to eat before going to the hospital. I had heard all of the horror stories about having only ice chips and air to subsist on after signing in to L&D and I was, after all, a very pregnant woman with an appetite that had in the not distant past led me to take a cheeseburger off of Steve's plate. He had been appalled at the reverse flow of the food, which in pre-pregnancy times always went from my plate to his.
All well and good, but seriously. Cheerios?! Had she gone mad? How could we seriously be talking about Cheerios at a time like this?! But of course, like the dutiful husband I am, I kept my mouth shut and did as I was told.
Post-Cheerios we got down to the task of packing a bag for the hospital (which we had planned to do that very day, but without the complicating factor of my being in labor).
Ah, the bag. If ever there was a moment when I felt woefully unprepared for fatherhood, it was on that fateful morning as I flipped open What to Expect When You're Expecting and gazed down at the section titled What to Bring to the Hospital:
- "Going home outfit for the baby"... Babies need an "outfit" to go home? Don't you just wrap them up in a blanket for the first few months?
- "Going home outfit for you (something that fit when 5 months pregnant." Uhhhh....
- "Highly absorbent sanitary pads." Next....
- "Tennis balls." Yes! That one I can do!
I pretty much put back everything Steve had taken out and gathered the right items. (The tennis balls stayed, though!) Bags packed, we realized that we would be driving to the hospital in Steve's dad's industrial-sized van, which we had borrowed the previous evening, intending on transporting a treadmill to our house, also on that very day (we had plans, people!, though I'm not sure what we thought we'd be doing with a treadmill). Steve's car, with the car seat base installed (we had done some preparing), was at his parent's house, 20 miles away.
By this point I had had about two contractions, but they were mild and not unlike the "practice" (go uterus!) Braxton-Hicks contractions I'd been having off and on for a week or so. But since I was pretty sure my bag o' waters had burst, my OB's office gave me the all clear to head to the hospital and off we went. Right after I heaved my very rotund body up into the van.
Steve pulled up to the hospital entrance, unloaded me and our "bag," (which had somehow morphed into something like three bags) full of useless stuff, like a laptop for watching movies, playing cards, snacks, pajamas, toiletries, etc. We apparently were led to believe that labor was going to be akin to a layover in an airport, where we would need to entertain ourselves for hours on end and possibly spend the night in case of a missed flight. In case you're wondering, labor is nothing like a layover. Unless your layovers involve heavy narcotics and wandering around the same three corridors trying to urge your cervix to open.
I could have gone for a movie, but I had a feeling that popping in a DVD would have gotten me into significant trouble.
Because we were feeling extraordinarily cheap, Steve drove the van to the nearby mall to avoid paying for parking in the hospital ramp, while I sat in the lobby and tried to decide whether I was having more contractions. (Answer: if you're trying to decide whether you're having contractions, you're not.) We checked in to L&D and were escorted to triage, where I was "checked" (if you don't know what that involves, you don't want to know). It was confirmed that my water had broken (duh) and that I could officially stay until the baby was delivered.
This is the point where the sequence gets a little blurry. I was given a room and changed into the ever fashionable hospital gown. I believe I was dilated to about 3 cm when I arrived. Since I still wasn't having strong contractions, I was told that if I didn't "progress" at an "acceptable" rate (am I being graded on labor now?), Pitocin would be administered to speed things along. Having heard some not-so-fun, super-duper heavy labor Pitocin-related stories, I was bound and determined to avoid the drug at all costs. So Steve and I began the process of pacing the same three corridors of the L&D floor over and over and over. In my eagerness to no longer be pregnant, I had dragged Steve out on three walks totaling 9 miles in the week prior to the big day. I figured that walking had served me well thus far, so a little more might just do the trick. I waddled along slowwwwly, with Steve by my side. The first few laps were no big deal, but I started to experience some stronger contractions after about 30 minutes. Every 20 steps or so, I would pause, stop talking, and breathe through the contraction. Steve would often be 3 or 4 steps ahead of me before he figured out that I had stopped and that he should probably turn back and do something. Like stand there and say, "Are you having another contraction?"
Hospitals can be dangerous places, people, so I thought it best to scope out our walking path before allowing my pregnant wife through.
By now we were several hours into this whole thing and the labor pain, it was getting a little more serious. After another check, it was determined that I had sped right along to about 5 cm dilation. I was working this labor, people! The only problem was that my blood pressure had started to creep up, so I was ordered into bed, on my left side, to see if it would come back down on its own. And then I got a taste of what labor really feels like. My body started to kick into a higher gear and all of a sudden I was moaning every time a contraction would hit, without the accompanying respite between contractions that I was promised in our prenatal class. The thought of counting and calmly breathing my way through a contraction was ludicrous at best, because they seemed to come one on top of another with very little signal between the end of the first and the start of the next. I'm not sure exactly what Steve was doing at this point because my eyes were squeezed tightly shut and the moaning I mentioned earlier seemed to drown out a lot of the ambient noise. Every now and then I would hear a nurse say, "Breathe a little deeper, OK? You can keep moaning, just breeeeeathe." Her voice was not unlike a buzzing gnat that I wanted desperately to swat at, except my hands were clenched in a death grip around the bed rail.
For the record, I was watching helplessly as I saw Sandy get hit with more and more pain and feeling rather guilty that I got off scot-free with this whole pregnancy thing.
Look! No stretch marks!Fast forward 30 minutes, an hour, who knows, I really lost track of time amidst all of the moaning and shallow, completely un-Zen-like breathing I was doing. At some undetermined point, I finally cried uncle and asked for some pain medication. The serene anesthesiologist waltzed in and placed an epidural, while I tried very hard not to contract, or move, while he was you know, poking a needle into my spine. A few minutes later, it was determined that I had just passed 7 cm dilation and was directed to "rest" before gearing up to push some time in the yet to be determined future. And rest I did. I've read lots of descriptions about the difference in sensations pre- and post-epidural and all I really have to add was that for me, it was like the difference between being repeatedly clubbed in the stomach, from the inside, and receiving a nice, soothing massage. Well, perhaps not quite like a massage, but the whole "pressure vs. pain" differential was most welcome.
If memory serves me right, Steve excused himself at some point to retrieve some lunch for himself. He must have known that I would have booted his bum right back out of the room if he had tried to eat in front of me, so he inhaled an entire cheeseburger and fries in about 30 seconds so as not to miss anything.
I "rested" for maybe 45 minutes, during which Steve and I discovered that the only TV station playing in our room was some new-agey nature scene complete with poorly dubbed "soothing" music. Luckily, my overachieving cervix saved us from having to fill the time in other ways, because before I knew it, I was deemed ready to push.
OK. I must comment on this one. Epidurals are amazing. In a very short time, Sandy went from lying on the bed moaning in agony to sitting up and comfortably watching TV. It was eerily mellow. After a short time, a nurse appeared and calmly said, "OK. It's time to start pushing." We said, "OK," Sandy laid back down on the bed, and began pushing. Just like that. It had the intensity of sitting in the waiting room at Great Clips and hearing our name get called, announcing that it was now time to get a hair cut. No screaming, no pain, no anything. I'll say it again: epidurals are amazing.
OK, permit me to counter-comment. Let's just say the intensity was a bit stronger for me than waiting for a haircut.
I'll spare everyone the fun details of this last phase of labor. It took just under an hour between "why don't you try to push now?" and "waaahh waaa wahhhh!" Steve had negotiated with the obstetrician earlier and was given the go ahead to help with the final stages of the delivery process.
During one of our prenatal classes, we saw a video where the father pulled the baby out. I was amazed- that was an option? I really wanted to do it. I liked the idea of being the first person to touch him and to be the one to actually pull him out into the world. The look on the doctor's face when I asked her suggested that this is not a very common request. But after assuring her that I could handle the gore (dissecting everything under the sun as a Bio teacher was finally paying off) she agreed to let me do it. During the last few pushes, the head became visible (which was absolutely amazing, by the way) so I quickly gowned and gloved up. The doctor pulled Bry's head and shoulders out and ensured that everything was proceeding normally and that he was OK. I reached under his arms, pulled him out, and placed him on his Mom's chest.
Bry managed to make his entrance into the world with his fist balled up tightly next to his head (thanks, Bry!), in an angry and triumphant salute at 5:14 that evening. As John, Bry's paternal grandfather likes to say, I wrapped up labor and delivery in a standard, 9-5 workday.
Worth the effort
You've come a long way in a year, little man.Tuesday, January 15, 2008
For the Scrapbook
A sweet moment I'd like to remember the next time that Bry is doing his "screechy screechy I'm a crazy toddler" thing. Which could be any second now, so I'd better write quickly.
Last night, at bedtime, after I had nursed Bry and put him in his crib, I left my hand on his back for a few moments and said goodnight.
Bry, you gently grabbed my hand and rubbed your tummy with it. Then you rolled over onto your stomach, still holding onto my hand. You rubbed my hand across your crib sheet, back and forth, back and forth, until you fell asleep about a minute later. Goodnight, sweet man.
Last night, at bedtime, after I had nursed Bry and put him in his crib, I left my hand on his back for a few moments and said goodnight.
Bry, you gently grabbed my hand and rubbed your tummy with it. Then you rolled over onto your stomach, still holding onto my hand. You rubbed my hand across your crib sheet, back and forth, back and forth, until you fell asleep about a minute later. Goodnight, sweet man.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Winter Wonderland
It only took us about 2 months after the first snowfall of the season to have all of the pieces fall into place for Bry to be able to go outside and enjoy the white stuff. Snowsuit? Check. Boots? Check. Hat and mittens? Check. Illness-free? Check. Non-arctic temperatures? Check. About time.
We bundled Bry up and trundled him over to the local park for his first taste of sledding. All told, we were outside for maybe 20 minutes (including the walk to and from the park) before we decided that Bry seems to share some of his mama's opinions regarding winter outdoor play. Namely, it's cold. And why are we doing this again? Although Steve and I mustered up enough excitement for an entire troop of sledding kids, in the end, Bry gave us several token smiles, more than a few withering looks, and a pointed silence that was plenty indication that we best hightail it home, where it's warm and dry.
See, I'm smiling. Can we go inside now?
Who's doing all of the work here, Bry?
After a few brief sled runs around the park, we took Bry out of the sled and placed him in the snow. Where he sat, frozen, until we plucked him back up and carried him home.
Seriously? This is supposed to be fun?
We bundled Bry up and trundled him over to the local park for his first taste of sledding. All told, we were outside for maybe 20 minutes (including the walk to and from the park) before we decided that Bry seems to share some of his mama's opinions regarding winter outdoor play. Namely, it's cold. And why are we doing this again? Although Steve and I mustered up enough excitement for an entire troop of sledding kids, in the end, Bry gave us several token smiles, more than a few withering looks, and a pointed silence that was plenty indication that we best hightail it home, where it's warm and dry.
See, I'm smiling. Can we go inside now?
Who's doing all of the work here, Bry?After a few brief sled runs around the park, we took Bry out of the sled and placed him in the snow. Where he sat, frozen, until we plucked him back up and carried him home.
Seriously? This is supposed to be fun?Friday, January 4, 2008
Hey Baby, What's Your Sign?
In the weeks surrounding his first birthday, Bry has really taken off with the concept of baby signs. He's been signing "more" for awhile, but since that one involves getting more food tossed in his direction, it's not much of a surprise that he caught on to it first. There was also a period when he seemed to use "more" to signal wanting just about anything. He's been quickly expanding his repertoire though and Steve and I are needing to catch up to learn some new signs to teach him. He's recently added the following to the mix: milk, cheese, banana, diaper, gentle, loud, bath, and hat. As you might imagine, this vocabulary makes for some scintillating conversations. Bry also seems to believe that waving vigorously means "kitty," since he waves like crazy every time the cat comes into view. He also waves madly when we just say kitty, so even though the signals may be getting crossed a little, we generally know what he's talking about. He sometimes makes up composites of the signs too, so that banana, gentle, cheese, and help (which I think he knows, but am not sure) sometimes morph together and we need to add the context of the situation to decipher his meaning. We can tell that Bry is pleased as punch that he's able to communicate, especially when it means that more cheese is coming his way, pronto. We're pretty darn pleased ourselves.
These Are a Few of My Favorite Things
Besides his magical shirt of "sleep" (quotes added to indicate that sleep may or may not occur in the presence of said shirt), Bry has started to form some interesting attachments to objects you or I might overlook as being somewhat pedestrian, shall we say. Among the objects that Bry currently covets are Steve's collection of Nalgene bottles, my bottle of prenatal vitamins that acts as a highly fun "shaker" (and yes, I'm always watching him when he's doing his shaking thing), his toothbrush, an orange bib, and of course, anything that we try to take away from him.
Bry's highchair is positioned to overlook Steve's plastic water bottles, which are housed in a wine rack (classy!) on a shelf in our kitchen. During at least half of his meals, Bry will pause mid-chow, point his arm towards the shelf (he doesn't quite get the finger pointing thing yet), and make an enthusiastic "eehhhhh!" sound while really leaning his whole body into the gesture. I hand him one of the bottles and he beams back at me like I'm the world's most charming, wonderful mother (he's right). He then proceeds to flip the cap off and on about 900 times. If I'm feeling especially generous, I'll hand him some object to place inside the bottle and excitedly tell him to "Trap it!" which means shove the object in the bottle and flip the cap closed. This is very funny, although I'm imagining some of the humor is getting lost in my verbal description.
However, my "Mommy of the Year" award (and any "Daddy of the Year" points that Steve has racked up) is quickly recalled if I dare to pry Bry's toothbrush out of his hand after the obligatory brushing has been completed. He looooves the toothbrush. Loves to chew on it and polish the bathroom floor with it. And then stick it back into his mouth for more brushing. In theory, those actions shouldn't be any more disgusting than him picking up any of his toys from the floor and shoving them in his mouth, which he does all. day. long. But whoever said that logic played into parenting? I get grossed out by the often hairy toothbrush (usually Casey's hair), and try to insist that the toothbrush is to be used only in the bathroom. Turns out Bry does not agree with this assessment and howls and writhes whenever Steve or I confiscate it. We're still working on a solution to this problem that involves neither screaming, nor early tooth decay from hiding every toothbrush in the house. Feel free to insert advice here.
Perhaps most amusing is Bry's newfound attachment to one particular bib in his arsenal of drool-soaker-uppers. I've mentioned before about how he likes to take all of his bibs out of the drawer and strew them about. But for some reason he's particularly fond of his orange "Friday" bib, which is part of a series of - you guessed it - days of the week bibs. Maybe he already understands the concept of TGIF and is expressing his toddler thoughts in metaphor. Steve has a theory that orange is his favorite color, since he also seems to favor the orange diamond from his shapes puzzle. Through more enthusiastic grunts and body leans, I learned of Bry's particular love of the orange bib. I was putting on his pajamas one evening when he started motioning towards his clothes hamper. I carried him over to it and handed him the bib that was sitting on top, given his aforementioned general bib love. But Bry discarded it (threw it back in the hamper actually - nice!) and then leaned over to pluck the orange bib from its hiding spot under several other dirty items of clothing. At bedtime that evening, he insisted on holding the bib while nursing and then played with it for a good 5-10 minutes in his crib, putting it over his face and then peeking out from behind it, undoing the velcro, throwing it about his crib, etc. The whole thing was quite amusing, and several days later, he's still favoring the orange bib.
Silly me, I thought that kids got attached to things like blankets and stuffed animals. Or maybe other kids do. Perhaps Bry's just asserting his eclectic taste a little early.
Bry's highchair is positioned to overlook Steve's plastic water bottles, which are housed in a wine rack (classy!) on a shelf in our kitchen. During at least half of his meals, Bry will pause mid-chow, point his arm towards the shelf (he doesn't quite get the finger pointing thing yet), and make an enthusiastic "eehhhhh!" sound while really leaning his whole body into the gesture. I hand him one of the bottles and he beams back at me like I'm the world's most charming, wonderful mother (he's right). He then proceeds to flip the cap off and on about 900 times. If I'm feeling especially generous, I'll hand him some object to place inside the bottle and excitedly tell him to "Trap it!" which means shove the object in the bottle and flip the cap closed. This is very funny, although I'm imagining some of the humor is getting lost in my verbal description.
However, my "Mommy of the Year" award (and any "Daddy of the Year" points that Steve has racked up) is quickly recalled if I dare to pry Bry's toothbrush out of his hand after the obligatory brushing has been completed. He looooves the toothbrush. Loves to chew on it and polish the bathroom floor with it. And then stick it back into his mouth for more brushing. In theory, those actions shouldn't be any more disgusting than him picking up any of his toys from the floor and shoving them in his mouth, which he does all. day. long. But whoever said that logic played into parenting? I get grossed out by the often hairy toothbrush (usually Casey's hair), and try to insist that the toothbrush is to be used only in the bathroom. Turns out Bry does not agree with this assessment and howls and writhes whenever Steve or I confiscate it. We're still working on a solution to this problem that involves neither screaming, nor early tooth decay from hiding every toothbrush in the house. Feel free to insert advice here.
Perhaps most amusing is Bry's newfound attachment to one particular bib in his arsenal of drool-soaker-uppers. I've mentioned before about how he likes to take all of his bibs out of the drawer and strew them about. But for some reason he's particularly fond of his orange "Friday" bib, which is part of a series of - you guessed it - days of the week bibs. Maybe he already understands the concept of TGIF and is expressing his toddler thoughts in metaphor. Steve has a theory that orange is his favorite color, since he also seems to favor the orange diamond from his shapes puzzle. Through more enthusiastic grunts and body leans, I learned of Bry's particular love of the orange bib. I was putting on his pajamas one evening when he started motioning towards his clothes hamper. I carried him over to it and handed him the bib that was sitting on top, given his aforementioned general bib love. But Bry discarded it (threw it back in the hamper actually - nice!) and then leaned over to pluck the orange bib from its hiding spot under several other dirty items of clothing. At bedtime that evening, he insisted on holding the bib while nursing and then played with it for a good 5-10 minutes in his crib, putting it over his face and then peeking out from behind it, undoing the velcro, throwing it about his crib, etc. The whole thing was quite amusing, and several days later, he's still favoring the orange bib.
Silly me, I thought that kids got attached to things like blankets and stuffed animals. Or maybe other kids do. Perhaps Bry's just asserting his eclectic taste a little early.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
One Year By the Numbers
Bry had his 12-month well-child checkup today. As I was sitting down to write about his current height/weight stats, I started to wonder just how long it's appropriate to keep on publishing the data online. Am I still going to be sharing his height and weight by the time he's 21? Probably.
Anyways, without further ado, at one year, Bry is 30 inches tall (long?) and weighs 22 pounds even. He's in the 60th percentile for height and the 35th for weight. While his height and weight still seem to be stabilizing, his head size has stayed consistent (and big!) in the 70th percentile.
Bry also got three shots, including the MMR vaccine, which our pediatrician told us would be the first among the immunizations that he's received so far that would actually sting going in. The poor kiddo seemed to bounce back quickly after his shots, but while we were waiting for some lab results he upchucked all over a book (that did not belong to us) in the exam room. Apparently he was more shaken by the shots than we initially thought. Ten seconds later he was bounding all over the room again, so no major trauma. I washed off the book while silently vowing to never touch anything in a pediatrician's office again.
Anyways, without further ado, at one year, Bry is 30 inches tall (long?) and weighs 22 pounds even. He's in the 60th percentile for height and the 35th for weight. While his height and weight still seem to be stabilizing, his head size has stayed consistent (and big!) in the 70th percentile.
Bry also got three shots, including the MMR vaccine, which our pediatrician told us would be the first among the immunizations that he's received so far that would actually sting going in. The poor kiddo seemed to bounce back quickly after his shots, but while we were waiting for some lab results he upchucked all over a book (that did not belong to us) in the exam room. Apparently he was more shaken by the shots than we initially thought. Ten seconds later he was bounding all over the room again, so no major trauma. I washed off the book while silently vowing to never touch anything in a pediatrician's office again.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Walking? Walking!
OK, so Bry has actually been bi-pedaling around under his own power for a week or two. But I've been too lazy and/or have experienced too much smoke inhalation in the past couple of weeks to go about documenting all of the crazy, upright, drunken-looking lurching about that has been going on. We decided that Bry took his first official steps just shy of his first birthday. I didn't realize that it would be so difficult to determine when, exactly Bry started walking. Of course, if I actually sat down to think about it, I guess it would make sense that Bry would not one day immediately morph from crawling about on all fours to zipping around on all twos (I'm running out of ways to say 'walk,' here). His daycare providers actually excitedly announced to us about 3 weeks ago that he had taken five steps, which was more than he had taken at that point. I totally didn't count it because Bry hadn't been explicitly told yet that he is to save all momentous firsts for the eyes of his parents alone. Preferably his mother, but I'll give half credit to developmental spurts that occur on daddy's watch.
So far, he's made it up to about 8 or 9 steps unassisted before he tumbles forward or catches himself on a piece of furniture. He's been surprisingly cautious about the whole endeavor, given his rough and tumble style of crawling all over anything that crosses his path (usually Steve). For weeks, Bry would carefully let go of the furniture and take one, maybe two steps before crumpling to his knees and crawling off to wherever he wanted to go. He's definitely gaining more confidence as the days go by. Everyone tells us he's gonna be up to full speed before we know it. Guess we better warn the more vulnerable members of the family about the impending doom. I'm talking to you, kitty.
So far, he's made it up to about 8 or 9 steps unassisted before he tumbles forward or catches himself on a piece of furniture. He's been surprisingly cautious about the whole endeavor, given his rough and tumble style of crawling all over anything that crosses his path (usually Steve). For weeks, Bry would carefully let go of the furniture and take one, maybe two steps before crumpling to his knees and crawling off to wherever he wanted to go. He's definitely gaining more confidence as the days go by. Everyone tells us he's gonna be up to full speed before we know it. Guess we better warn the more vulnerable members of the family about the impending doom. I'm talking to you, kitty.
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