The Wisdom Of Strangers

Remember when Luke was tiny and I hated, despised, and reviled breastfeeding? Yeah, fun times. Luckily, he got bigger and better at the process and I adjusted my expectations and everything has been chugging along for the past few months. So you can understand how I'm reluctant to mess with a good thing. But apparently, now that he's reaching the 1-year mark, people are getting a little bit less tolerant.

I was sitting IN MY CAR a couple of weeks ago, feeding the baby, when a random woman came up to "look at the baby." Now, (a) I have no idea how she knew there was a baby in the car, unless she was looking really, really closely and happened to see his feet kicking at the semi-open door. And (b) you're at a park. With lots of babies. Is it really necessary to go to someone's CAR to look at a baby? I mean, way to freak a mama out. So anyway, she came up, INTRUDED on us, and then, THEN, when she realized what I was doing, proceeded to ask, "Don't you think he's a little old for that?" So. Do I think my not-yet-1-year-old is too old to still be nursing? Even though the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a MINIMUM of 12 months and the World Health Organization recommends a MINIMUM of 2 years? No. No, I do not. Thanks for asking.

And then, last week, I went to an eye doctor who prescribed some eye drops and when I asked if they would be safe to take while breastfeeding, got all weird and said that I'd have to ask the pharmacist because he "didn't deal with THAT stuff." And then, proceeded to say that if I were really worried about it, I could just let the eye heal (from the side effects of pink eye that I had back in FEBRUARY) on its own and that it would probably take a few years, but he assumed that I'd be done with "THAT stuff" by then. And THEN, he told me that I didn't need to come back again because if the eye drops didn't work, he really couldn't help me any further. I mean, really? How are you gonna be rude to a PAYING customer who happens to bring up a valid concern? (And also, did he really think that I was PLANNING to go back to see him???)

I get the feeling that I'm either going to have to develop a thicker skin when it comes to ignoring strangers' opinions OR I'm going to have to let my inner sarcasm have free reign.

Does This Count As A Bullet Post?

I had to add an extra, mid-month "Things Luke is doing" post because (a) it seems like he learns something new EVERYDAY and (b) if I don't write it down, I'm going to forget it and writing it down here is just so much easier than hunting down the baby book, finding the right page, and then writing in super-tiny handwriting to get everything to fit.

• I think I mentioned last week that he knows how to take off his pants now? Yeah. Apparently, taking off one's pants is the GREATEST THING EVER and must be repeated at least 20 times a day. Needless to say, the kid's going to be wearing a lot of rompers and overalls this summer.
• The walking is really starting to take off this week. He can walk from one room to another...he can walk in sand...he can walk in his new sandals...in fact, he's starting to try to run. Granted, at the moment, most of his attempts at running end with a face plant into the carpet, but I see what's coming and I'm afraid. (So are the animals.)
• He gives hugs. The best hugs EVER. Except the cat doesn't think so. He wrestles Yellow Cat to the ground, halfway crawls onto him and then ever so gently hugs him and puts his head on Yellow Cat's back or belly. Yellow Cat is soooooo not pleased.
• Yesterday, we went to the playground, where Luke was trying to eat every piece of rock/gravel/wood chip. One time, he looked straight at me and put something in his mouth...or so I thought. So I asked him what in the world he was eating now and he gets a huge grin, reaches into his mouth, and pulls out...NOTHING. And then, says "Haaaaa!" Because apparently, he now understands How To Trick People And Then Laugh At Them.
• Also at the playground, he walked up to a random dog and started barking at it. The dog seemed confused.
• Other Baby and Luke now have crawling races. Most of the time, Other Baby is far behind because Luke has been doing this crawling thing for 4 months now and Other Baby only JUST started, but the times when it looks like Other Baby is going to catch up, Luke quickly reaches out and TRIPS him. Not cool, dude. Not cool.

Life on an Island

I feel like an island unto myself.

I'm not, of course. There's McMoose. There's Luke. There's Other Baby, whom I see every day and whose mom often stays and chats and hangs out when she comes to pick him up in the afternoons. There are friends whom I see often. There's my mom, whom I talk to a couple times a week and whom I see every couple of months. There's my dad, whom I talk to at least once a week and whom I text message and email at random moments. Clearly, I am not an island.

But the fact of the matter is that McMoose and Luke and I live far, far away from either of our families. The closest family members are my mom and step-dad, who live a good 5 hours away. And this was fine, in fact this was WHAT WE WANTED. Until Luke came along. And now, when I hear about how Other Baby sees his grandparents at least once a week, when I hear about friends getting together with their siblings for lunch, when I hear about people who can visit with their aunts and uncles and grandmothers at the drop of a hat, I get a little bit...wistful.

Because even though I may not be an island unto myself, there are many, many days when I feel like the three of us are an island unto ourselves. I think about how close I was to my grandparents and how much fun I had living close to my cousins and I do so wish that Luke could experience that, too. But since that isn't going to happen, we'll just have to make this a really big island, as I said to McMoose last night--we'll have to fill it up with friends and neighbors and kids and dogs and cats and frogs. And chickens. And maybe goats. (Because apparently, my island is also going to be a farm.)

Flab-solutely Terrific

I don't like to exercise. At all. Ever. I mean, given the option between exercising and having someone poke me in the kidney with an icicle, I'd be hunting down the nearest icicle. And up until now, I really haven't had to do much in the way of dedicated exercise. I am used to being a thin person, the kind of person whose BMI is always on the edge of "underweight."

So you can imagine my unhappiness when, almost a year after having a baby, I still have a pooch. I very honestly thought that all the baby weight would just kind of go away on its own. And truth be told, the baby WEIGHT has gone away, but apparently, the distribution of skin and, um, poochiness on my body is forever changed. So I've been exercising.

So far? I see no difference. Now granted, it's only been two weeks, but here's the thing. Not only do I not see any noticeable difference when I look in the mirror, but when I step on the scale, I've actually GAINED a couple of pounds. McMoose tries to make me feel better by saying that it's because I'm gaining muscle, but let's be perfectly honest here. It's not muscle. It's the extra slice of cake I justified by saying "Oh, I work out now. I can have two desserts!"

Basic Truths

I'm going to mention YET AGAIN that I worked at a daycare. For two years. With babies. So you'd think that a statement as simple as "Babies crawl" would come as no surprise to me, right? As it turns out, you'd be wrong.

Because dude, BABIES CRAWL. I mean, I knew Luke crawled and it necessitated some level of baby-proofing, although we didn't do nearly as much as we could (should?) have because, um, we're lazy. And because we're constantly watching him and it's a small apartment and I mean, we moved all the truly dangerous stuff like the scissors and the sewing needles (once we realized that it was utterly useless to try to teach him not to open the sewing drawer, that is...)

But up until now, Other Baby did not crawl. Well, he kinda did, but he didn't get very far, so usually, I chased after Luke and Other Baby just sort of hung out in one spot and figured out brilliantly genius things like How To Put Together The Shape Puzzle. (Can I just say that Other Baby is going to be High School Valedictorian someday? Because people, he's not even 9 months old and he can already put in the circle and the square. On a puzzle made for TWO-YEAR-OLDS.)

As of today, however, Other Baby crawls. A lot. And of course, today was my long day with him, so my afternoon went something like this:

-Chase down Luke, who is busily splashing in the dog water bowl. Return him to the living room, only to realize that Other Baby is nowhere in sight.
-Have a half panic attack, then realize he's getting into the recycling. Bring him back. Now, Luke is gone.
-Look around, spot him crawling off into the office to push the button on the computer that opens up the CD drawer thing (By the way, McMoose, THANK YOU SO MUCH for teaching the kid how to do that. It makes my days oh-so-much more fun.) Catch him, tell him we don't touch the computer, bring him back and--can you guess?--Other Baby is gone again.
-Search frantically, find him behind the couch, licking the sliding glass doors (Um. The SAME sliding glass doors that the Dog frequently licks. Ew.) Bring him back.
-Now, both babies are in the same place, but Luke's pants are mysteriously missing. Apparently, he chose today to figure out how to take his pants off, which would be okay except that without pants, he has UNRESTRICTED ACCESS to his diaper. And he crawls around in a tripod position with one hand sticking into the back of his diaper. And I'm sorry, but my son is not going to be THAT KID. So I hunt down the pants and wrestle them onto a kicking, screaming baby.
-Of course, during all of this, Other Baby has vanished again and is soon found attempting to eat 12 pieces of carpet fuzz, which he had apparently been collecting and saving for a mid-afternoon snack.

So. Babies? They crawl.

Month Eleven, Part Two

I think this is the most, um, "relaxed" I've ever been when it comes to posting Luke's monthly pictures. Sorry, folks.

Here he is, modeling his explorer hat:

Trying out a new hairdo:

Another new hairdo:

We went to the Children's Museum this month, where Luke got to sit in a boat:

And splash:

And pretend to be a shark:

And finally, watch out, world! Luke can climb:

The Crazy is Back

Remember how when I was pregnant, I thought I was going to have a two-headed baby? And obviously, if I had a two-headed baby, I'd have to have a c-section, so not only would I have failed the natural birth class we spent HOURS going to each week, I'd also have, you know, major surgery? And then, the doctor on call would probably be drunk and cause all kinds of chaos and maybe cut my fallopian tubes and leave me unable to have any other kids? And then, after all that, we'd have to decide whether we wanted to separate the two heads of the baby, except that there would only be one body, so "separate" would just be a nice way of saying "decapitate one of the heads?" And then, if we *did* separate the heads, one of our baby-heads would die and the other one would be left resenting us for killing his brother, but if we didn't then which head would control the body? Would they take turns? Would we have to work out some kind of schedule? If they were having a fight and it was Head A's turn to control the body, would Head B randomly take control of an arm to use it to slap Head A across the face? And OH MY GOD, WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE MESSED WITH THIS WHOLE HAVING-A-BABY-RUSSIAN-ROULETTE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Yeah. Those were fun times, huh? Luckily, everyone got through it, no one got decapitated, no one had a drunk, fallopian-tube-cutting doctor, and we've spent a very blissful 11 and a half months enjoying our one-headed baby.

But I was lying in bed last night, unable to sleep (as usual), and I started thinking about the things I was afraid of when I was pregnant and I thought, "Gee, I was so silly. What ridiculous fears I had. Goofy, pregnant woman."

And then, I started thinking about how really, we've been so blessed this year because Luke is just such a healthy, happy kid. He's had all of two colds which were annoying at the time, but took care of themselves in time. No ear infections, no antibiotics, no food sensitivities, heck, not even a bad bout of teething yet.

And THEN, I started thinking about how maybe everyone has a quota of illness in their life and if he has had such a healthy first year, maybe it means that he'll have to fill his illness quota later on in life. Maybe it means he'll have the disease that turns people into trees, you know, the one that was on the Discovery Channel a couple of months ago that I didn't want to watch, but I turned to the channel and then couldn't turn away? Or maybe he'll eat some bad pork and end up with a tapeworm in his brain. Or maybe he'll have childhood cancer and need to have chemo and radiation and all his hair will fall out and he won't be able to keep anything down and he'll have to spend his nights all alone in a hospital because they won't let me stay with him.

And THEN! I started thinking about The Secret. You know. The idea that you "call" things to you by thinking about them? And what if that's true and I just called cancer, a brain tapeworm, and the tree disease to my baby?

And then, I pulled the blanket over my head and hyperventilated myself to sleep because GOOD GRIEF, WHO THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO LET ME HAVE A KID?

Be Veeeery Quiet

It's naptime in this apartment right now. There are two sleeping babies and they both sleep like babies, which is to say that they wake up at EVERY NOISE. All those idiot parenting book authors who say "Just go about your day making a normal amount of noise and eventually, your child will sleep through it," all those people are LYING. (Or maybe when they say "eventually," they mean "In 12 years, when you WANT your kid to wake up because otherwise, they're going to miss the school bus.") Because I've tried making a normal amount of noise and you know what happens? TWO BABIES WAKE UP. Because apparently, the beeping of the microwave sounds exactly like an alarm to sleeping babies, even from behind closed doors. So right now, the normal amount of noise in this apartment at naptime is zero. NO noise allowed. I shushed the Dog a few minutes ago because he breathed in a snuffly way.

Of course, the Universe likes to thwart me at every turn so in the past 90 minutes, SEVEN trains have gone by, each blowing their horns. Two ambulances with lights and sirens. Five barking dogs. A car alarm. A fire truck, also with lights and sirens. A very loud plane. A UPS truck, which induced the Dog to go into a hysterical bout of barking. The babies, amazingly enough, are still asleep. My nerves, on the other hand, are completely SHOT.

Sprung

At the start of every season, I decide that that's my favorite season. Winter is always highly exciting because of the possibility of snow, however remote. Summer is great because there are pools and trail walks and up until this year, summer break. Fall? Very pretty, lots of birthdays, Halloween, thanksgiving, etc. But right now, the benefits of Spring outweigh all the rest by far.

I'm loving the new-green color of the trees, the recently returned birds, the fact that we can once again venture out without worrying about a coat. I love wearing flip-flops and I really love all the warm weather clothes I got to buy Luke this past weekend. But the really great thing about Spring is that it's always filled with a sense of wonder.

By the time Summer rolls around, it's easy to take all the awesome-ness of warm weather for granted. Especially when "warm" has turned to "blisteringly hot" and just stepping outside saps you of all your energy. But right now, everything is still a novelty and it's just SO MUCH FUN!

(Added benefit of Spring this year: having a baby who (a) enjoys being outside and (b) takes great naps after playing outside)

((Not so great thing about the warm weather? The wasps have returned to our porch. Buzz.))

Eleven!

We're doing the whole new-month-with-no-pictures thing again because, well, because I'm lazy. And also? Doing the new month posts in two parts raises my post count for the month and makes me feel like I'm actually keeping up with this blog when, in fact, I'm only posting maybe one-third as much as I used to.

So. Luke is eleven months old. And I'm pretty sure the world is going to end in the next 30 days because I cannot imagine having a one-year-old. Cannot. Imagine. It. I mean, he was just born, right? Like two days ago? And now, all of a sudden, he's eleven months old? Come onnnnnn.

As the months passed and all of his (younger) friends started growing teeth, I was pretty much convinced that he'd be the only kid in kindergarten with a toothless grin. Of course, he proved me wrong, as he likes to do because he woke up this morning with...a TOOTH! Or at least a sharp, jagged white thing that looks like it might, with a lot of work, someday become a tooth. But see, here's the thing. I've been expecting him to go through all the awfulness of teething, right? And every time he's had a rough night or a runny nose or whatever, McMoose and I have dutifully spent a couple of days checking his mouth, and of course, the only thing in there up until now has been a lot of slobber. And then, this morning, he laughed about something with his mouth wide open and there it was. Just sitting there. No fanfare. No warning. No grumpiness the day (or night) before. And after listening to my friends' tales of woe surrounding this whole tooth-growing thing, I am just so grateful. (Dear Luke: Please continue to grow ALL of your teeth this way. Please, please, please!)

He has also been taking a few unassisted steps here and there this month. I wouldn't say he's walking yet, but he is considering the possibility. For now, of course, crawling is a much faster way to get from Here to There, especially when There is where the dog food or trash can is.

He's working on learning the fine art of sharing. By which I mean that when Other Baby is here, he holds out a toy to him. And then, if Other Baby ignores him (which he usually does), Luke proceeds to take the toy and try to beat Other Baby with it. So, um, we're working on it.

Oh, and let's talk about baby-proofing for a second, shall we? I mean, are there actually kids in this world whose nefarious plans are foiled by these baby-proofing devices? Because if there are, those kids should stay far, far away from my kid, who will probably corrupt them for life. We used to have edge protectors to protect Luke's head from meeting the sharp corners of bookshelves and entertainment centers. Until he figured out (a) how to pull off said edge protectors and (b) how to eat the tape that was supposed to hold them in place. So now, we have edge protectors lying strewn about the apartment and the baby has eaten a lot of double-sided tape. He also pulls the socket protectors out of the sockets. And then chews on them. So not only do they NOT protect him from getting shocked but they have now actually turned into perfectly sized choking hazards. AWESOME.

So that's been our month. Lots of crawling, lots of eating, lots of getting into stuff that shouldn't be gotten into. And now? Now, I'm going to go call the park district about renting a space for Luke's--shudder, shudder, shiver, shudder--first birthday party. Ack!

A Cherry Pickin' Good Time

Spring has been really odd this year. It was cold and rainy and cold and rainy and cold and SNOWY and cold and rainy and then, all of a sudden, it was summer. No gradual progression. No subtle shifts in temperature. Just we went to bed and it was 40 degrees and we woke up and it was 75.

As a result, the trees? They're confused. Some of them still had dead, brown leaves on them up until last week and now, they're suddenly in full summer color. Which means that the annual 2-3 weeks of cherry blossom blooming in our neighborhood was shortened to five days. My favorite part of the year and it was a measly five days.

Luckily for me, we're planning to go visit my mom and stepdad in D.C. this weekend and hey, guess what? IT'S CHERRY BLOSSOM TIME in D.C.! So I get to see my fill of cherry blossoms. (And also, I'll be able to post my annual cherry blossom pictures next week since I didn't even take any pictures before the blossoms fell and turned into leaves here in our neighborhood.)