Category Archives: updates

0

everybody poops

|

Another thing that I need to catch up on:  My little man is potty trained.  He’s been for… oh, a couple months now?  He was potty trained right after he turned 2, which people never stop telling me is highly unusual – especially for a boy.  Well… it’s not so unusual for OUR boy, no?  *smile*

A couple people have asked how we did it, upon noticing the lack of “diaper bulge” when we’re out and about, but I have little advice to offer.  As always, I simply followed his lead.  When we was around 6 months old, I considered trying “elimination communication” with him and purchased a little red potty.  It’s been sitting in the bathroom since then.  I was too lazy to do the elimination communication thing, though, especially since he was, at 6 months, “a late starter.”  The only advice I can possibly think to offer, then, is this:  Don’t be shy.  Chris & I have not been at all shy (ahem) about bathroom habits.  Felix has seen everything & has always tended to wander in and hang out.  Since his little red potty is in his bathroom, he would often sit on it and wait.  I’m sure that has much to do with it.  We never pushed and never made a big deal out of it.  I did notice that he found the whole idea pretty interesting (I know, strange, but we’re talking about toddlers here) and liked sitting on his potty.  Then I found out that, in order to go to preschool, he needed to be fully potty trained.  So I started letting him run around the house sans diaper and pants and would occasionally ask if he wanted to sit on the potty.  After only a couple of days, he was totally in to the idea.  At home, without his pants on, he just started going to sit on his potty whenever he had to pee.  Flash forward to now – he never wears diapers during the day, even when we’re out and about.  We’ve been out for entire afternoons and he will always ask to go.

Poop (just what you want to hear about, right?) was another matter.  For a couple of weeks, it seemed to frighten him and he would get frantic whenever he’d feel like he had to go.  For about a week, he drove me mad by asking me to “wipe” him every 5 minutes, for hours on end.  And then he’d poop on the floor, which cracked me up.  I didn’t care that he pooped on the floor, I just didn’t like the endless demand of “wipe wipe wipe?”  That lasted for a couple of weeks and then he started going on the potty.  Another couple weeks of letting him run around without pants all day (because that was the next hangup) and then I eased him in to wearing underwear (toddler boxers briefs!  CUTEST THING EVER) and now it’s all exactly what you’d expect from a civilized, socialized person.  And I will say… having a potty trained kid, at 2 years, is freaking awesome.  Life truly is grand, after diapers.  But other than “don’t be shy” the only other bit of advice I have doesn’t work for everyone because it seems like parents just get obsessed with the process:  don’t stress out, don’t push.  This all happened, for us, because we didn’t care that much.  It was “if you want to, here’s the option but if you don’t want to, cool.  Do whatever.”   I mean, I had a little internal pressure going on about the preschool thing but I knew that the worst case scenario would be that he’d start a little later than we wanted.  No big deal.

0

yet more words and other things

|

More things that Felix says, off the top of my head (still forgetting a zillion things):

Bye bye (often said as he races down the hall when he hears Chris opening the gate to leave for work.)

He says Jenn and Denise, for our sitter and her sister, who also watches him.  Coffee when he sees our coffee mugs.  Milk.  Smoothie, as soon as he sees me break out the blender for our morning smoothies – though it sounds like moo-ey.  Chocolate, which he loves.  Water.  Swing.  Mail (he loves to go outside with us to get the mail.  Especially on rainy or busy days when we haven’t otherwise gotten outside.)  Socks. Slippers. Bird (for actual birds in the sky and my favorite red bird necklace.)  Cat.  Truck, which seems to sound more like “dot” and bus.

Bath and bath time (which sounds like “bad time”).  He often races to his bathroom, bangs on the door and says bad time bad time bad time when Chris gets home from work.

Dinner.  Outside.

More (milk, water, smoothie).

Blankie.  Ami (“ah-mee”), which has somehow come to mean all of his stuffed elephants.  Bear.

He also repeats another million words right as we say them, with perfect or near perfect clarity.  Unfortunately, this means that he occasionally walks around saying, “Sh*t sh*t sh*t”. (I’m working on that.)

Oh, and my favorite, of course – I love you, which is sometimes accompanied by a sneak attack hug.

And then there’s all the routines and habits that he knows.  Like after we change his diaper, we go to the bathroom to put his (cloth) diaper in the bucket.  Though we’ve started changing him in the bathroom and letting him sit on his toilet for a few minutes, which he actually seems to enjoy.  On one hand – it’s early for typical potty training, but we’re way late for “elimination communication” potty training.  So I figure, since there’s really no pressure now, there’s no harm in introducing the idea to him and seeing what happens.  Honestly, I suspect if I hadn’t been so lazy about the elimination communication training at a year old, he’d be potty trained by now.  So I suspect he’ll be potty trained early & easily when we really do it.  He’s smart and he picks stuff up quickly, understands concepts without much trouble.

We’ve visited one Montessori school so far, and will be checking out a few more.  Yet again, we were told that he seems incredibly (read: above average) bright, very independent and observant, and yes, yes he has MANY more words than most kids his age.  Not only that, but also that usually, only the parents can understand most of their child’s words and language at this age, but that everyone can understand Felix because he speaks so clearly.

I’m really eager to get him into Montessori school, I think it’ll be really really good for him (he’s explored about as much as he can at home – though we will be getting out more now that the weather is getting nicer again.)

I’ve also realized that he demands manners and patience.  For example, when he opens the drawer and pulls out the tv remotes – if I yell at him (as you tend to do when someone gets into something a zillion times) to put them back, all I get in return is a mocking grin.  So I sigh, change my tone and say, “Felix, please put the remotes back.”  And then, “Thank you, now please close the drawer.”  So long as I say please and am polite, he’ll do anything I ask.  Kid isn’t even a year and a half years old yet, and already keeping me in check.  Point taken, kid.

Oh, but he will also announce when he’s doing something he shouldn’t.  I might be in the bedroom and he’ll be in our room and I hear him saying, “No no no no no!”  So I go in and find him rifling through drawers or carrying a pair of my glasses around.  Let’s see if he does the same as a teenager!  ha!

He’s a delightful kid, all around.  I sometimes forget he’s just a toddler because he seems so aware and so … well, wise.

He has his first swimming lessons in June – I can’t wait.  I think he’ll do well with them because he looooooooooves water.

And then, just like that, I’ll be writing about him going off to college in Spain or some such.  Sigh.

 

0

Time

|

Oops.  A lot of time has passed since my last update.  The thing is, it’s a lot easier to update when they’re LITTLE and there’s not as much to say.  Then one day, you wake up and OH MY GOD, THAT’S A LOT OF MILESTONES.  I didn’t realize it’d be like this already.  By “like this” I mean, he seems so grown up.  I have to stop calling him “baby” because he’s not.  He’s a little boy.

He started full-on walking right after his 1 year birthday, as predicted (by me.)

In fact, this past week it seems he discovered that he can also walk backwards and he does it often, at completely random moments.  It’s pretty funny to watch.

I think his vocabulary is about to explode – he’s had his repertoire of onomatopoeia words (like “Boom!”) and “Uh-oh” was his first word, months ago.  Whenever I ask him where his froggy is, he runs towards it, saying “baahdee baahdee!”  He’s recently started repeating “pee!” (and even peed when I said it, in the bathtub, a few nights in a row.  I still can’t tell if that was coincidence or not?)   A couple days ago it sounded like he said “monkey” after me, but not again.  This morning he was playing with one of his “noisy” toys and when he pushed the yellow key and the voice sang out, “yellow!”, he said, “Yoh.”

There’s so many I’m already forgetting them all. Regardless of any words that we understand, he talks a lot.

I took him to the KidsQuest something something Museum the other day, which *I* did not like, at all. No point in mincing words, there were a lot of brats there.  One kid pushed him over & away and while *I* was pissed, Felix just got up and walked away, calmly, not a care.  Anytime any other kid would get in his way or grab something he was going for, he’d just change course.  He’s rarely interested in objects and toys when we’re out, anyway.  He just walks and walks and walks and walks around and around and around and around.  I took him out of the little kids area (for crawlers and new walkers) and into the other area, where all the big kids were running around.  (Luckily, it wasn’t that crowded so I didn’t have to worry about big kids running by and slamming into him.)  He seemed to enjoy the “big kids” stuff a lot more.  More to see, more buttons to push.  And the WATER, he loved splashing his hands around in that.

But KidsQuest is an indoor area, attached to a mall, of all things – I don’t really like that atmosphere.  Yesterday it was sunny and blue, so I decided we needed to get outside and took him to the zoo.  *I* thought he’d enjoy looking at all the animals, but nope – what he loved was all the open space, so he walked and walked and walked and walked and turned around and around and walked and walked.  He just loves to look around and observe.  The one animal he was interested in was the peacock.  There was a peacock running around, loose, and Felix wanted to run right up and grab it.  I had to hold him back a few feet and Felix fought me the entire time, eyes glued to the peacock.  For the rest of this winter season, we’re sticking to outdoor stuff.  Even when we’re at home,  he walks and walks and walks and walks, stopping only occasionally to flip through a book or play with his workbench.

Oh! And yesterday, the babysitter told me that she was reading to him from a book about colors.  When she got to the “pink” page, he pointed to her fingernails – which were bright, bright pink.  He didn’t do that with any other page.  Coincidence?  I think not!

I also taught him the “monkey” gesture (one hand on head, one hand scratching armpit) and the monkey, “ooh!  ooh!  ooh!”  Now when I either make the noise or say “monkey” he makes the gesture.  We’re working on elephant, next.

He’s an excellent eater.  (I realize this can change and he could turn picky, but the thing is, I don’t care.  We’re not going to make an issue of it, he’ll eat or not – all I care about is that what he DOES eat will be healthy.  He’s not going to be one of those kids who gets picky, so we start giving him junk and processed foods just to get him to eat.  I do plan on including him in meal planning and decision making as he gets older, so I think that will help.)  He still loves his raw milk, which I am happy to let him drink a few times a day because it’s good for him.  He also loves water – whenever I fill his sippy cup, he dances around excitedly until I hand it to him.  That’s pretty much all he drinks.  In the Fall, I gave him some apple cider occasionally and in the summer, I’ll give him some fresh squeeze orange juice or some such, but he eats bananas and oranges and real fruit, so why bother with sugary juices?  He loves the bananas and orange slices.  Apples in his oatmeal, with raisins.  Pears.  Strawberries.  Blueberries.  I’ve started making baked oatmeal, so that we make it once and just heat it up every morning, he enjoys that with a little raw honey and yogurt.   He likes quiche (this morning he had some broccoli cheddar quiche with his oatmeal).  Oh my god – he does not like cheese.  This befuddles me.  How can you not like cheese? *shrug*

People have said things to us like, “Oh, just wait until he’s such and such age and he’s got personality!”  I want to ask them what’s wrong with their kid, but this one has had big personality from the get go.

We (I?) waffle back and forth about having another one.  One one hand, sure.  On the other hand – Felix has kind of set an impossibly high standard.  He is such an easy going, independent kid.  He amuses himself all day (sometimes pushing me away if I try to play with him – just like he does if I try to help him over a small obstacle when walking, “I can do it myself!!”) and he sleeps from 8-9:30 in the morning!!!!  If he didn’t nap much the previous day, he’ll sleep till around 9.  But otherwise, he averages around 8:30.  My worst nightmare, when thinking about having children, was of having to get up at 6 am every day.  UGH.  What are the odds of getting another one that sleeps until after 8am???  What are the odds of having another one that is so easy and independent as this one?

And CUTE?  I know his cuteness is because of his genes, but c’mon – I think we used up every ounce of cute available on this one.

0

*crickets*

|

Wow, I’ve been slack in updating.  The longer you go, the more there is to write, which just overwhelms my brain and makes me procrastinate even longer.

There aren’t any specific changes, really, just changes to the overall picture.  He’s so much bigger & older & more capable than he did a month ago.  He seems far less like a baby and more like an actual person.  He’s grabbier, smiley-er, more persistent, more stubborn, more aware, more communicative.

I’ve been continuing with feeding him solids, a couple times a day.  I originally thought he didn’t like cauliflower or avocado so much, but he loves it.  Apricots, avocado, cauliflower, yams, carrots, apples, pears, peaches, potatos, broccoli, and now peas are all in his repertoire.  He seemed to really love the peas, I was surprised.   I’m planning on adding cherries this week.

And NOISES!  His noises have stopped sounding like baby nonsense and more like human language. He says, “mamamamamamamamamamama” a lot and once, when I picked him up out of his bed, he looked right at me and said, “mama.”  Hmm…  He says, “baba” when he sees us bringing his bottle over.

I can’t believe I was ever worried about him not rolling over from his belly to his back.  Uh… the kid can MOVE.  He rolls, he scoots, he damn near winds up on the other side of the country.

He has a fascination with his hands, as of late.  He holds one out, as if conducting an orchestra, and stares at it.  Or just waves it around.

Right now he’s playing bumper cars with the stool I put in front of the stairs to block them.  He LOVES his walker.  His favorite position, ever, has long since been standing.  It took him all of 10 minutes in the walker to figure out how to zip all over.  It took me all of 5 minutes to realize we need to get a baby gate & start baby proofing, STAT.  In his walker, he likes to spy for things to grab.  Often, he finds power cords, dangling and likes to see just how long it’ll take me to run over and unplug.

OH!  And oh my god!  He has teeth.  It seemed like we were waiting forever to those bottom two to bust out.  They were RIGHT THERE for the longest time.  Then one day I looked and SHAZAM!  The left of the bottom pair had broken through about halfway.  Now the right one is about halfway out and the right one is done.

Now he’s wandering around the kitchen, banging his hand on the cabinets.  He also found the bottom drawer that we keep bags in, half open.  He reached in and started pulling out all the plastic bags.  Oh yes, yes I know – TIME TO BABY PROOF.

Yesterday, I realized that he’s probably going to be a shy kid.  And that he’s the sensitive little Scorpio baby I expected him to be.  He used to give smiles out easily & quickly.  But the past couple months, when we’re out and someone gets in his face to admire him & talk to him, he seems to pull back and start scowling.  (I can hear Chris saying, “He’s just like his mother.”)  He needs time to get to know people and doesn’t like people getting in his face.  Nuthin’ wrong with that.   But then yesterday, we were out for a walk, many of our neighbors were out enjoying the sun in one of the neighbor’s driveways.  We stopped to say hi and talk and introduce another baby on the block to him (10 months, his first girlfriend, perhaps?)  I noticed that the 10 month old was happy to be around a lot of people, smiling at everyone and grabbing for Felix.  Felix sat in his stroller looking disturbed & overwhelmed by all the people and finally started crying.  I picked him up and he hid his face in my shoulder.

Yup.  He might look like his Dad but he’s sure starting to seem a lot like his mom.

0

Montana!

|

This is why we love Korey:

(He woke up when I came home.)

As far as first babysitters go, we totally hit the jackpot.  I was, admittedly, petrified the first time I left him with anyone other than my parents.  It only took once for me to trust her implicitly – she exudes genuine warmth & adoration when it comes to Nugget.  The only problem now is that she’ll be leaving us in June and she’s set an impossibly high standard for babysitters!

0

all through the night

|

SUCCESS!

Well, I say this now, but ask me again next week.

After the most torturous couple weeks of non-sleep (for us), it finally occurred to me that maybe – just maybe – if we taped up the stupid, ghetto, handmade skylights in the bedroom so that we didn’t all get drowned in sunlight at the crack of dawn every morning, Nugget might stay asleep.  I, personally, did not appreciate the light, either.  I am of the firm belief that bedroom should be dark, dark, dark.

Well, we taped them up and he’s been sleeping from around 10-10:30p until AT LEAST 8, sometimes 9, every morning this week.  Let’s hope this lasts.  But I’ve a strong feeling it will. And I don’t have a thing to complain about now.

My biggest fear about having a baby has always been that we’d have one of those babies that always woke up at 5 or 6 and you couldn’t break them of it.  Really.  My BIGGEST fear.  Because as long as I’ve had sleep, I can handle just about anything.

Life suddenly seems very easy.

People keep telling us to enjoy this age because it’s the best age, and once they start crawling, all bets are off.  I’ve already realized this – that this is a fabulous age.  He’s really not all that high maintenance, as far as babies go.  Most of the day he hangs out in his seat while I cook/do stuff on my laptop/do other things.  Or he naps.  Or he lays on his play mat.  Or he sits in our laps and observes.

And that right there is part of the reason I don’t want a second one.  There is NO WAY that a child could be easier and more amicable than he is.  There are plenty of ways that another one could be supremely difficult.  Let’s say, such as being the baby that has to wake up at 6 every day?  (I know, some of you are scoffing at that because a LOT of people get up at 6 or earlier every day just for work.  But at night, I’m on Chris’s schedule, which means I don’t go to bed until I’ve seen him for a few hours.  And look, I can’t help it.  I’m not just “not a morning person” like some people don’t like mornings.  I’m not a morning person in the respect that waking up early leaves me feeling drugged up, inhuman, and disconnected from the world.  So if I can get up anytime after 7, that’s a huge help.)

And it’s also helpful for Chris, who works long & hard hours at work.  Being able to stay in bed till the alarm goes off is a huge help for him, as well.  Quite frankly, after the year we’ve had, I think we deserve to sleep past 7 for awhile.

0

|

This weekend, Felix & Chris begin their “Musical Expressions for Babies” class.  I’d gotten a catalog of classes offered by our county community center and when I saw this, I knew it would be the perfect thing for him to do with Nugget.  Get all that noise out of their system and all.  (Huh.  Wishful thinking, on my part, that they’ll “get it out of their system.”  I know darn well that they’ll probably only be inspired to make even more noise.) :

Ages 1 month to 15 months with parent. Play musically with your baby through bouncing and rocking songs, wiggle and peek-a-boo games, and dancing, moving, and singing! The foundation is laid for beat awareness, vocal production, and aural discrimination. A 45-minute class for parent and infant.

There would be times when Nugget would look so big, and then moments later, he’d look little again.  Usually while naked.  But now, even naked (which he looooooooooves to be), he looks big.  Little man is GROWIN’.  He’s a full 16 pounds now.  I suspect he had a small growth spurt because this past week, for 3 nights in a row he woke up at 3, 4 and 5:30 am.  (YAWN.)  And he was cranky & taking 3 hour naps during the afternoon.  But then, just like that it stopped.  Well… maybe.  He woke up at 6:30 this morning, so I can’t really tell just yet.  Really, Chris & I would be THRILLED at a 7 am schedule.  7am is nothing to sneeze at.  And, funny, that’s what parenthood does to you.  Once upone a time, we relished in sleeping till 11 am on weekends.  Now I’m ready to do somersaults about sleeping until 7.

He loves being held up in the air, like an airplane.  He giggles & squeals and he does this thing where he scrunches up his nose and opens his mouth real wide when he’s having a blast.

He’s got a million expressions & faces, as evidenced by the photos.  A million and one.  And, hey! He even flipped me the bird last week!  Did you see that picture?  He may look like his Daddy (it’s the eyebrows), but he’s got my personality (flipping the bird.)  Or not.  He’s awfully cheerful, and he definitely doesn’t get that from me.

0

monkey

|

I let Felix lick a banana yesterday, while I was making gluten-free banana bread.  He seemed perturbed by the flavor.

0

*cricket*

|

I’ve decided that one month is far too long to go between “newsletters.”  Maybe I’ll just give up on this scheduled newsletter business and write whenever.

Our little Nugget is chock full of personality (well, that’s not news, he always was) and turning into such a little person.

We’ve been using goat milk, in place of formula, quite successfully.  He seems to actually like it (as opposed to being ambivalent about it), has less gas and spits up less since we started giving it to him.  And his POOP!  (Sorry, it has to be said.)  His poop is a joy to deal with, compared to that god awful formula crap.  Uh… no pun intended.  It’s very easy to clean up, doesn’t stink as bad as formula poop, and quite frankly, looks like the result of a much healthier eating habit.  Since giving him goat milk, I’ve started to come across & talk to many more people who’ve done the same.

He’s still as inconsistent as ever, with sleeping.  He stayed up until 10, one night, and we thought, “GREAT! Surely, he’ll sleep till 7 or 8?” Nope.  Woke up at 6.  Then a couple nights later, he fell asleep around 7:30p and I thought, “Sigh.  He’ll be up at the crack of dawn,” but he slept till close to 8.

He is grabby, grabby, grabby and has even figure out how to not only hold things, but to put them in his mouth, with intent.  He pulls his pacifier out and is able to get it back to his mouth.  Not always correctly, but pretty close.  He’s also taken to putting his arm around my neck when I hold him and gosh, I love that…

I also love our morning routine.  No matter the hour, there’s no being grumpy or unhappy when he’s the first thing you see.  Every morning, weekend or weekday, we spend time playing with him in bed before getting up.  If you strip him naked, he’ll lay down in bed for a long time, flailing his limbs about and laughing like mad.  (Naked is the only way he’ll stay laying down for an extended period of time.  Otherwise, he’s quite insistent on sitting UP UP UP, so that he can see everything.)  But boy, does he love being naked.  And he’s CHATTY.   I imagine he’ll be a chatty, naked boy, running around the house all day.

When he tires of laying down, or if he’s not naked, we prop him up in bed, to sit, or play airplane.  He loves being held up high and/or bounced around.  (Bouncing him after he eats is not such a good idea, however.)  He squeals and smiles and giggles nonstop.

Speaking of laughing… both Chris and my mom have said they think he’ll be a boy with a goofy laugh.  He sounds like a baby pterodactyl or an inverse squeaky toy.  It’s adorable.

Last week, I laid him on his new rug, for belly time… and he flipped over! I put him back on his belly and he did it again! And then he stopped.  Again.  Ah, well.  He’s stubborn, that one.

He’s also finally started to look to his right.  He used to have this insistence, while being held, of only looking to the left.  If you tried to put him to the right, he’d struggle and bang into your head until he arranged  himself to the left.  Suddenly, the other day, I realized that he was just as likely to shove your face out of the way to go right as he was left.  Look out, world.

He is a happy, happy boy, for the most part.

There’s a whole ton of pictures here, that I haven’t sent out yet because I was waiting until the end of month 4.  But I suppose that’s too long, also, so … to hell with schedules.  There’s too much growing going on…