Dinnertime Conversation

If Luke could talk, the conversation at our apartment yesterday evening would have gone something like this:

Me: Look, Little Bug! I have some oatmeal for you!
Luke: Oatmeal, you say? Hm. It comes on a spoon. I like things that come on spoons. Okay, let's give it a try.
*I feed him a spoonful of oatmeal*
Luke: *Gag! Spit, spit, spit! Gaaaaaaaaaaaag!!!! Spit, spit, spit, spit, spit, spit, spit!*
Me: Well. That was dramatic. But then again, you're always dramatic on the first bite. Wanna try another?
Luke: I guess....
*Takes another spoonful*
Luke: *Gag! Spit, spit, spit! Gaaaaaaaaaaaag!!! Spit, spit, spit, spit, spit, spit, spit! Sticks hand into mouth to attempt to pull out all remaining vestiges of oatmeal. Arches back, spits straight upwards. Realizes that's a fun new game and continues. Swishes spit around in mouth. Figures out how to spit for DISTANCE. Spits on highchair. Spits on dining table. Spits on dog cage. Spits on wall BEHIND HIM. Spits on carpet. Spits on me.*
Me: Right. No more oatmeal for you. Quit spitting and I'll get you some pears. *I go warm up some pears and put a spoonful in his mouth, which he eagerly opens.*
Luke: *Gaaaaaaag! Spit, spit, spit* Hey, look how far I can spit my pears!
Me: STOP spitting! You like pears! No, you LOVE pears!!!
Luke: *Opens mouth for more. Spits out entire mouthful. Laughs. Opens mouth for more*
Me: Um. No. No more pears for you. Here, just feed yourself some banana puffs while I go get a washrag to clean you off with.
Luke: Hey! These banana puffs are SO MUCH FUN! *Smushes banana puffs into high chair. And clothes. And hair.*
Me: You. Are. Being. Ridiculous. Just...drink some water or something.
Luke: EWWWW, water! I will throw it at the dog!

Usually, McMoose is in charge of bathing the baby. Last night, McMoose got home to find me AND the baby hanging out in the tub because as it turns out, congealed oatmeal-pear-banana puff-water mixtures do NOT clean off easily. (It's also really hard to get that stuff out of a baby's ear. Especially a wiggling, giggling, still-spitting baby.)

Suffice it to say, there will be no more oatmeal fed to this child for a Very Long Time.

Thank You, Captain Obvious

I love advice. Especially unsolicited advice. ESPECIALLY unsolicited advice given by people who have no experience with the topic that they're giving you advice about. Yeah, that's the BEST KIND. Today, for example, I had a meeting and as usual, little Bug went with me. The person I was meeting with has no children and very little experience with other people's children. As usual, the talk turned to whether I missed school (I wholeheartedly do NOT), whether I wished I were working (again, a definite no), and whether I was happy being home with Luke (very much yes).

Apparently, my answers were less than satisfactory because she then informed me that at some point, I would have to "let go" because I couldn't be attached at the hip him when he's 18. Wow, REALLY? Gee, I had no idea.

It seems to me that everyone who has any advice to give about this whole parenting endeavor feels the need to follow it up with "or else, he'll be doing that FOREVER!" Really? Forever? If I rock my 6-month-old to sleep, I'll have to move my rocking chair into his dorm room? If I don't put him in daycare by the time he's 1, he'll be living in my basement when he's 43? Because if that's the case, I'd better start teaching the kid how to drive, lest he expect me to chauffeur him to his doctor's appointments for the rest of his life.

Yes, He's Mine. Yes, I'm Sure.

I love Thursday nights. Thursday nights, in case you didn't know, are Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice nights, which are the only two shows I actually care about enough to watch when they're actually on, instead of TiVo-ing and watching in 10 or 15 minute increments (or, as is the case with several TLC shows which should all just be called "See Our Enormous Family Take Yet Another Vacation," TiVo-ing and then deleting after reading the summary.) So a couple of weeks ago, I had my cup of tea, I had my comfy pillows, I had my lovely blanket-with-sleeves, and McMoose and I were all settled in watching Private Practice and as it turned out, there was a story that week about a couple who wanted a baby who "looked like them," which posed an ethical problem for the fertility specialist because they were Little People.

At one point during the episode, the would-be expectant mom made an emotional plea (because all good primetime dramas contain at least one emotional plea per episode, of course) to the doctor, asking how she (the black doctor) would feel if there were a 50% chance that her child could be white. McMoose and I looked at each other, then at the sleeping baby between us, and burst out laughing because hey, guess what! We BOTH faced the chance that our child would look nothing like us. (Ok...I'll admit, I didn't actually think it was a real possibility that our kid would look like him instead of me, and of course, the Universe has responded by proving to me that yes, it was a very real possibility.)

For the most part, I think the desire for a child-who-looks-like-me is pretty universal, but also, really, really easy to get over. As in, I took one look at my blue-eyed boy in the delivery room and decided that he was far cuter than ANY child of my imagination. So really, not an issue at all, right?

Except apparently, this whole having-a-child-who-isn't-a-mirror-image-of-you is a really foreign concept to people who haven't directly been in this situation. Which is why I constantly get questions about who I am, who Luke is, how come he doesn't look like me, am I sure he's mine, etc. And can I just say, that last question there? The "Are you sure he's really yours" thing? Every time I get that, I just have to shake my head because how do you even respond to that? "Well, gee, the maternity test SAID it was 99.99% sure he's mine..."

In any case, I was in the grocery store the other day, and the same cashier who got on my nerves while I was pregnant decided it was time to get on my nerves again:

Cashier: Aww...
Me: *smile*
Cashier: Are you baby-sitting?
Me: No...
Cashier: He's not yours, is he?
Me: Yes...
Cashier: Really?
Me: Yes...
Cashier: He doesn't look like yours.
Me: *Sigh* *Make non-committal noises while swiping my credit card as quickly as possible.*
Cashier: Well, if he is yours, blah-blah-blah-insert unsolicited advice here-blah.

I'm sorry, IF HE'S MINE? I just TOLD you he's mine. If he's mine. Feh. And then, THEN! I was at the pediatrician's office last Friday, and this happened:

Random woman (RW): How old is your baby?
Me: 6 months.
RW: Aww. How long have you had him?
Me: Umm.....6 months.....
RW: Oh! How long did it take you to get him?
Me: Ummmmmmmm...9....months....?
RW: Wow! My sister and her husband adopted and it took them over 2 years!

Once I explained that no, Luke is not adopted, he just looks like his dad, the woman quickly turned beet red and apologized profusely. But seriously, how hard is it to just Mind. Your. Own. Damn. Business. How hard?

Six, Take Two

As promised, here's the picture portion of Luke's six month post:

Our trip to Wisconsin was his first plane ride, his first hotel stay, AND his first wedding...and in keeping with my phenomenally poor record of taking pictures, this is the only evidence I have of that weekend:

That green thing he's sleeping on? Yeah, that was the bedspread in the hotel.

Here he is, enjoying a dinner of smushed up avocado. See the giant grin? That grin had me convinced that smushed up avocado tasted good. So I tried a spoonful. Big. Mistake.

He was a frog for Halloween. A big, shiny, velveteen frog.

Why was the baby hanging upside down and sticking his tongue out at McMoose at 10 pm? Good question.

This is what we do on days when we don't leave the house. In other words, THIS IS WHY WE LEAVE THE HOUSE.

I thought it would be cute to take a picture of him with the pumpkin before, during, and after the carving process. And by the time I remembered the during and after part, the pumpkin had started growing mold.

And last but not least, a picture that needs no explanation:

Catchin' zzzzs

I've always liked the idea of co-sleeping with your baby, of having them nearby, of being able to respond to their nighttime needs quickly and without too much disruption to your own sleep.

I loved the first two months when Luke slept between me and McMoose, when we could check on him by putting a hand on his belly, when we could cuddle him back to sleep before he even woke up. And then, he figured out how to move around in bed and we started finding him lying sideways between us, which meant that he took up 50% of the bed, leaving McMoose and me with 25% each. Obviously, that wasn't working for us, so we put the crib right beside my side of the bed and he slept in there for part of the night and beside me in bed for the other part.

And then, his nighttime sleeping began deteriorating and he went from being able to sleep hours at a time to only sleeping for about 45 minutes at a time. After spending several weeks being convinced that my kid was the worst sleeper ever, it occurred to me that between McMoose snoring all night long and the Dog sneezing and whimpering and clawing at the carpet, maybe we were waking him up instead of the other way around.

So this past weekend, we moved the crib to his room, and of course, he's been sleeping like a normal human being again for the past two nights. I, on the other hand, am very grouchy about this new development because (a) no baby to cuddle at night and (b) since Luke lives in his own room at night, the cats have once again been allowed into ours, which means that they spend all night chasing each other around and attacking my feet under the covers. Seems to me the better alternative would have been to give the animals their own room at night, get a king sized bed, and buy McMoose some no-snore nose strips.

Promises, Promises

Lately, I've started blocking out certain days on my calendar and calling them "Stay home days" because if I don't, we end up finding something to do every single day and after about a week of that, I end up all grouchy at the world because I feel like I haven't had any time to just sit and be. So one or two days each week, we stay home, the baby gets all his naps, everyone goes to bed on time, and life is happy again.

Today was totally supposed to be one of those days. And then, I realized I didn't have contact lens solution, so of course, I had to go to the drug store. And when I left the apartment, I couldn't help but notice how unbelievably nice it was outside. And since it's November, we don't have too many of these days left, right? So really, we HAD to go enjoy the weather. Which is why at 3 this afternoon, we were watching the clouds on a blanket near a lake, instead of sticking to the nap schedule. And that in turn is why at 5:30, Luke is snoring away in his crib instead of eating his dinner. And THAT is why, when he's acting like a hyperactive hyena at 9 tonight, I'll be swearing up and down that tomorrow, we WILL stay home all day.

(Let's just see how that works out, shall we?)

Six!

Luke turned six months old yesterday. That's half a year, for those who are interested. Half. A. Year. Remember how I was all oh-my-baby-is-growing-so-fast-where-has-the-time-gone when he was a month old? Take that, multiply it by, oh, THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE, and you might have some idea of where I am right now.

It seems like he does something new every day. He can sit up by himself. (Okay, most of the time he can sit up by himself. But then one of the animals walks by or we go on a play date and he sees other babies and he gets distracted and falls over. Hence the many, many bumps on his head.) He wants desperately to crawl. The problem is that he spends all his energy getting up on his knees and his head flops onto the ground because apparently? You can only concentrate on holding up one body part at a time. (On the plus side, he has mastered the downward dog pose.) Oddly enough, he can get from one end of the bed to the other with this odd flip-floppy crawling, which means that any day now, you're going to see a post about how he fell off the bed. (I know it's coming. I'm doing everything I can to stop it from coming, but I think every single child has a falling-off-the-bed story.)

I had planned to wait until he turned 6 months to start feeding him baby food, but as with everything else, he had his own ideas on the matter and at 5 months, he decided that he wanted a change. To that end, he started helping himself to things off McMoose's and my plates: hummus, ketchup, fruit, and in one memorable occasion that involved a face first dive into my plate, a piece of quiche. So. We started feeding him. He hates bananas, but loves apples and sweet potatoes and (go figure) avocados. And in keeping with this whole growing up business, he has decided that he's big, so he no longer has any use for a bottle, but is happy to drink from sippy cups, straws, and shot glasses. (You'd be surprised by how well shot glasses work as baby cups...)

I know that this is the point in the post where I usually post pictures, but in case you haven't noticed, I'm seriously slacking lately, so stay tuned and the pictures will come later this week.

Happy Birthday, McMoose!

McMoose turns 26 today! And as you can see, his excitement knows no bounds:

P.S. I don't have the slightest clue what he was doing in this picture. Pantomiming eating a piece of cake? Blowing someone a kiss? Twirling his goatee? Hey, what good is a birthday if a ridiculous picture of you doesn't show up on the internet?

Aisle Ten

I love the baby aisle at grocery stores. LOVE it. Before I was pregnant, I used to sneak down it, covertly eyeing all the sweet, pastel colored things I assumed that I would one day be buying. During my pregnancy, when I'd get especially anxious about whatever genetic disorder I had convinced myself that my child would have, I'd stroll down the baby aisle and look at bottles and pacifiers and the cute baby on the Huggies cover.

You can imagine my surprise that almost six months into this endeavor, I...um...don't really go down the baby aisle at the grocery store anymore. I had fully expected that I would, but as it turns out, I don't have too much use for the products they sell there. Formula? Nope. Disposable diapers? Very rarely. Baby food? Well, so far, Luke's perfectly happy with the homemade stuff.

So, instead, I make up reasons. Gee, I say to McMoose, maybe Luke would like to try a new kind of pacifier. Or a sippy cup. Or, I don't know, a spoon.

And McMoose goes along with it and is kind enough to pretend not to notice that all I really wanted was to sneak another peek at the cute Huggies baby.

A Mini-Post

I'd like to point out YET AGAIN that McMoose and I make horrible first-time parents. Yesterday was our child's first Halloween and although we did dress him up and take him to a Halloween party, what we forgot to do was take pictures. Again. So not only did we not record the party itself, we now have to put him in the costume again just so we can have some pictures of him as a frog.

On another note entirely, Luke just woke up and turned off his baby monitor by himself. And then, McMoose went to get him out of his crib and he (the baby) very matter of factly picked up his pacifier to bring with him. Because apparently, he's done with being a needy baby and would like to try his hand at being an independent, adult person now, thank you very much.