Chattin' It Up

So every time I talk to my dad, he asks if Luke is talking yet. So Dad, this post is for you...

No, Luke doesn't talk. But here's what he does do:

-Pitiful cry # 1: he says "Hey, Boo-boo, boo-boo, boo-booooooooo. Heeeeeyyyy, Boo-boo, boo-booooooo." I have no idea where this came from, but McMoose and I both agree that it is hilarious and it has led to us calling Luke "Boo-boo."
-Pitiful cry # 2: "Oh, Mama, Ohhhh, Maaamaaa, Ohhhhhhh, Mmmmaaaammmaaaaaa." This one is more recent and he mostly does it when I've done something to piss him off--wipe his face, change his diaper, etc.
-When the cat purrs, Luke goes "Arrrrrr...arrrrrr...arrrrrr." He's been doing this since he was 4 months old, and technically, it was his first attempt at vocal communication. Figures it'd be aimed at the cat...
-When the dog barks, he goes "Oooohhh, ooooohhh, ooooooohhh," and then cracks up. What can I say, the kid has a weird sense of humor.
-He imitates the vacuum cleaner ("Hmmmmmmmmmrrrrrrrrr"), the leaf blowers that the maintenance guys have ("Harr, harr, harrrrrrrrrr"), and McMoose coughing ("Eh, eh, eh.")
-And earlier today, I was cleaning the oatmeal off his face, which always infuriates him and to make him smile, I started saying "Eek!" every time I wiped his mouth. Of course, he picked up on the game immediately, saying "Eeee! Eeee!" back to me in high-pitched voice and then grinning in oh-so-obvious pride.

And the rest of the time, he babbles and hisses and growls and basically narrates every moment of his life. So here's my question: how come he can mimic the dog, the cats, various loud machines and what he considers funny noises, but he can't mimic a simple "Mama" (except when he's crying, of course)?

Anatomy Of An Illness

Luke has been sick for the past two days, which doesn't seem like a long time until you're sitting there at 3 am on the second consecutive night of getting Very Little Sleep with a baby who is on HIS second consecutive night of getting Very Little Sleep and who, as an added bonus, has a 103 degree fever that WILL NOT respond to medication. I was wondering when his first real sickness would happen and I am so, so glad that it was now and not when he was younger and--let's be perfectly honest here--generally grumpier.

And as a person who has had more than her fair share of colds, I was very surprised that baby illnesses are so different from, you know, normal PEOPLE illnesses. Basically, the last two days have gone something like this:
-Coughing.
-Sneezing.
-Not sleeping.
-Spiking (what I would consider) high fevers.
-Not sleeping.
-Nursing incessantly, then refusing to nurse, then nursing incessantly, then refusing to nurse, repeat, repeat, repeat.
-NOT SLEEPING.
-Refusing to eat anything except processed Baby Junk Food.
-And did I mention the not sleeping?

Here's hoping that he doesn't get sick again for, oh, at least another 18 years.

Leaving Me Speechless

Ever since we got home from the holidays, Luke has been putting himself to sleep in his crib. Which is wonderful, except that ever since we got home from the holidays, Luke has also been pulling up. On every blessed thing. And the putting-self-to-sleep thing only works if he's, you know, lying down. So a couple of weeks ago, we did a little experiment to see exactly what would happen, now that he's fully capable of falling asleep by himself, if we left the room.

I expected tears. I expected anger. I expected pouting. None of which actually ensued. Instead, he stood up and shrieked quite happily for an over. an. hour. Loud, ear-piercing shrieks of joy. At which point McMoose made the decree that We Will Not Let The Baby Shriek For Long Periods Of Time. Now, McMoose doesn't make too many decrees--I think so far, the only ones he's come up with are: (1) We Will Not Feed The Baby Large, Chokable Pieces Of Food; (2) We Will Not Let The Baby Play With Dangerous Objects; and (3) the aforementioned edict against shrieking.

What all this means, of course, is that someone has to sit beside the crib for about 20 minutes every time Luke goes to bed and tell him to put his head back down every time he picks it up. And since McMoose is gone during the day, the task fell to me. And I have to admit that as far as tasks go, this is a pretty easy one. I sit in a chair, read my book, and occasionally pat or rub the child's back for a few seconds. Not a bad deal, right?

Of course, as a result of all this, I realized yesterday that I'm going to need more books to read, so off we headed to the library. I should mention here that I love, love, LOVE the library and that I'm always a much friendlier person while I'm there. So there I was in my friendly-library-mode when a woman approached me in the parking lot. She started off asking if Luke was mine, so of course, I expected it to be another "Really? He's yours? Are you sure?" kind of conversations. Imagine my surprise when it went wildly, freakishly off track:

Lady [to Luke]: Hi, Buddy! [To me]: Aww...is he yours?
Me: Yes.
Lady: How old is he?
Me: 8 months.
Lady: That's great.
Me: *Smile* Yeah. (Aside: what exactly was I saying "yeah" to here? The fact that he's 8 months old? Or that being 8 months is great? Conversations are so weird sometimes.)
Lady: So what did you think of pregnancy?
Me, starting to realize this wasn't going to be a run of the mill conversation: Well, it was fine. I loved the second trimester, when he finally started kicking and moving a lot.
Lady: Oh, I bet! And how was your labor?
Me, getting a little bit weirded out: Um...it was...fine...
Lady: Did you have a vaginal delivery?
Me: Ye...yes...
Lady: That's great! Did you have to get an epidural right away?
Me, looking around for the cameras because this kind of thing has to be for some kind of weird reality show, right?: Um...I...didn't...actually...need...one...
Lady: Oh, wow! Hey, listen, I was wondering...have you ever considered being a surrogate?
Me: Ok, I have to go...

Bad Morning, Good Day

I woke up in quite the snit today. (Now there's a word that gets vastly underused: snit.) It was 30 minutes earlier than I expected to wake up, and for some reason, Luke was bouncing around his crib and babbling LOUDLY over the monitor. (I don't think he has a quiet volume just yet. So far, everything he does, be it laughing or babbling or crying or burping is LOUD.) So I turned off the monitor, dragged myself out of bed, tripped over a cat, tripped over a dog, grumbled all the way to the nursery, got Luke out of the crib, grumbled all the way back to bed, tripped over the other cat, and finally got back under the covers.

Of course, Luke took this to mean that I was trying to put him back to sleep, and he didn't WANT to go back to sleep, so the happy babbling turned into enraged, high-pitched shrieking, and right that moment, any hopes I had of waking up slowly and peacefully were shattered. (Any hopes McMoose had of doing the same were also shattered, but somehow, he manages to handle these situations with grace and patience, while I moan about how all I want is 10 more minutes of sleep, IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK FOR?)

And when I got in the shower, I ran out of hot water right when I started shampooing my hair. And then, the Dog stepped on me and I hit my (already hurting) wrist on the doorjamb and the baby whined at me while I was trying to get dressed and I could not, for the life of me, imagine how I was going to survive the rest of this day.

Until I remembered reading something the other day about how a woman noticed that if she expected to have a bad, overwhelming day, she invariably did. So I made the conscious effort to smile at McMoose and coo at the baby and pet the dog. And by 9 o'clock, my day had taken a drastic turn for the better. And furthermore, so had Luke's--I don't know if he sensed my mood or just enjoyed having his playful, laughing Mama back, but his whininess disappeared and he has been the picture of glee all day long.

Now if only I could remember this the next time I get woken up too early...

The Ever Beleaguered Dog

The Dog has officially put in his petition to be relocated to a different family. Apparently, he has had it up to HERE with us and his only regret is that McMoose won't be able to go with him. I mean, first, we brought home Yellow Cat, who spent many weeks convinced that the Dog was his mother and trying to nurse from him. And then, just when he finally made his peace with sharing the humans' attention with Yellow Cat, we brought home Black Cat. And then, THEN, if that weren't bad enough, we had the gall to go and get a baby. A BABY, for crying out loud...and in fact, the baby spent much of his early months doing just that.

Then, when he finally accepted the fact that his life had changed and he had now been eclipsed by YET another little being, we put him in the car for a 16-hour drive, and at the end of the drive, we forced him to spend two hellish weeks with a two-year-old who chased him and made weird noises at him and spent a lot of time saying "No!" to him. And then, to add insult to injury, the baby, whom he had finally befriended when he realized that he could skulk under the high chair and get free handouts, went and decided to start CRAWLING.

Which means that the Dog has spent all morning being chased, headbutted, and laughed at. Now granted, the Dog could just hop up on any of the pieces of furniture we have in our apartment and then, he'd be well out of the baby's reach, but the Dog? Not the smartest creature ever created. So instead, every time he gets headbutted, he jumps, looks startled, and moves 6 inches away. And then, 2 seconds later, he gets headbutted again.

Of course, he did manage to get his revenge after lunch, when he licked the baby from head to toe in an attempt to get every stray molecule of pasta and egg. I guess this is as symbiotic as their relationship will ever be.

Eight, Part Two

A few days late, but here are the pictures for this month.

He hears the camera beeping and starts making foolish faces...for example, here he is with Nana:

As you can tell from the enormous cheeks, eating? By far, his favorite activity:

Being all festive in his Santa outfit:

Standing, Take 1:

Standing, Take 2:

Eight!

Guess who's eight months old today! (Luke. In case you were wondering.)

The last month has brought so many changes that I have trouble believing that just one month ago, I was celebrating the fact that he finally figured out how to roll from back to tummy. That seems like such baby stuff, now that he's crawling and standing and jumping and dancing. The physical changes have been huge this month, but maybe equally amazing is the personality that's emerging more every day. This kid has a completely goofy sense of humor, which is to be expected given the fact that he's been exposed to McMoose every day for the past eight months, I guess. He makes odd faces, he growls at the animals, he pulls the diaper out of my hands when I'm trying to change him and then laughs at me. Whenever one of us coughs or sneezes, he mimics the sound, which always cracks him (and us) up.

We got all excited that he figured out how to pull himself up that we went out and bought him a little car thing that he can push around. Of course, he tried pulling up on it, it rolled, and he's been terrified of the thing ever since. He will, however, consent to sitting on it and being pushed around the apartment. So. Instead of the kid pushing the car around, we end up pushing the kid AND the car around. And that right there probably has something to do with the fact that I now fit into most of my pre-pregnancy jeans again.

McMoose and I were thrilled to realize that Luke recognizes the uh-uh-UH sound that we make when we want the animals to stop whatever bad thing they're doing, so when we make it at him, he stops whatever he's doing too. Which is great, right? Yeah. Except that the baby-proofing is going painfully slowly because I decided that this would also be a good time to go through all the contents of our apartment and purge what we no longer use. So basically, my days now look something like this:
*Luke decides to explore electrical outlet. I say uh-uh-UH!
*Luke leaves electrical outlet alone and instead pulls up on entertainment center, where he promptly starts pushing buttons on the DVD player. I say uh-uh-UH!
*He shuffles two feet over and pushes buttons on the TV. I say uh-uh-UH!
*He crawls over to the couch, where he pulls himself up and finds the remote control, which goes into his mouth. I say uh-uh-UH!
*He goes to the lamp, which he tries to pull down. I say uh-uh-UH!
*He decides to explore the electrical outlet again.
Because really, who wants to play with the mountain of brightly colored TOYS that have taken over the apartment when you could play with electrical wires and carpet fuzz instead?!

Once again, I have no pictures today, but I will tomorrow(-ish).

Home. Sweet, Sweet Home.

I wonder whether, when Luke is in elementary school, they'll learn all about how people thought the world was going to end when the computers hit the year 2000. Remember that? That was a DECADE ago. The mind, it boggles.

As you can see, we're back from our trip. We had a dubious start because we had planned to drive to Mississippi overnight so that Luke would sleep through the 13-hour drive, but of course, here in the Land Of No Snow, they had forecasted a snow and ice storm for the night we had planned to leave, so that was a no-go. Instead, we left the next morning (oh, and for the record? We had NO SNOW), which meant that the 13-hour drive turned into a 16.5 hour drive because we had to stop every 2 hours to let Little Bug stretch out his not-so-little limbs.

But other than the excruciatingly long drive, the trip went surprisingly well. The Dog did not eat any cat litter or pecan pies or get into any fights with any cats or vomit in the living room, all of which he has done in the past. Luke was friendly to the family and adjusted as well as can be expected to the changes in his schedule. I did get sick, which wasn't so much fun, but if I had to be sick, what better time than when McMoose was off work for 2 weeks AND we were surrounded by grandparents and aunts and uncles who were happy to hold and play with Luke?

In any case, we're in that weird twilight zone between vacation life and regular life. Physically, we're back and thrilled to be home, but at the same time, it's awfully quiet with just the three of us around. And now that Luke has fully figured out how to crawl (and pull up on furniture, gah!), we'll be spending the next couple of days cleaning and baby-proofing because we've been home for all of 6 hours and we're ALREADY sick of saying "No, don't EAT that piece of fuzz/dog hair/shoe/other inedible and usually gross object."