Stealing a kiss.

04.22.2011.

Jonah was NOT a willing participant. But how often is he when it comes to photos?

Face plant.

04.21.2011.

Sometimes, Ben can remain in one position for hours and hours: head on pillow, blankets smooth all around, Sacha the Cat tucked in beside. Sometimes, Ben can fall out of bed or sleep in some uncomfortable position or flip head to feet, all without waking up. This is one of those times.

Pillows.

04.20.2011.

One of Ben's new things: tossing all of our many pillows and cushions from the couches onto the floor, or else just piling them up on one couch, and pretending they are a car, a garbage truck, a bed, etc. On this occasion, he was in his car, having just dropped off his baby with the teacher at school. "Little Jonah," who can fit in Ben's cupped hands and is, conveniently, invisible, played the baby, and I played the teacher.

Sounds a bit dull for an active toddler, perhaps, but this can keep him occupied for a fabulously long time--often, a solid hour. Really.

Okay, new idea...

How 'bout a photo posted every day? Not necessarily earth-shattering, just...a photo taken that day? And, yes, I totally AM stealing this idea from various mom bloggers, thanks for asking.

It does sound like fun, and we certainly use enough digital photo memory anyhow... I'll plan on adding one this evening, as I have no photos yet for today and two napping boys.

Shall we give this new project three days, tops?

25 weeks, 2 days.

Hey, the belly doesn't look THAT big for this far along. I mean, 25 weeks? Not bad at all--



Oh...wait. There it is. Conveniently and coincidentally located near the latest ultrasound snaps.


Flattering camera angles make such the difference...now and for the next year or so.

Worst. Mother. Ever.*

The mother who gives her child "just a few" chocolate chips before breakfast. The mother who lets her child watch way too much Thomas the Tank Engine so she can dry her hair, put on makeup, get dressed. The mother who just notices how incredibly long and vampire-like some of her child's fingernails are. The mother who, apparently, is the only parent who forgot to put boots (do the ones from last year even fit?) on her child on the first snowy day (albeit just a dusting). The mother who asks a daycare employee to inspect her child's mouth before nap to ensure that he isn't holding any of his lunch tangerine in his cheeks because she'd forgotten when she packed his lunch that he sometimes does that.

And that was all this morning--before 11 a.m.!

And, of course, last week's incident:




Though perhaps I can blame his father for that one.
Yes, I can...at least partially.

I feel better now...but how will I feel in about 15 weeks, 1 day, when #2 is scheduled to arrive?



*With, yet again, apologies to The Simpsons.

Maybe I should do that?

"that" being, have a blog about thrift store/yard sale treasures, as I've just spent a good half-hour looking at the treasures of others. I get enough good stuff, don't I? Perhaps I shall try this week...planning on shopping for my birthday treat--thrift and yard, of course. Though I really do want a new immersion blender, which may just be a gift by way of my father-in-law's birthday check...

Seriously? A YEAR since I posted last?

I know that no one reads this but Rob and me (yeah, I read my own posts), but really? COME ON! So, here's a pic of the Speck, all 30+ lbs. of him, coated in melted chocolate ice cream:

Just as the advent of e-mail has led to the decline of letter-writing and telephone-calling, I think the advent of Facebook has led to the decline of e-mailing and blogging, at least for me! Hopefully, I'll be a bit better...

mama, da, kitty, car, elbow, puppy, apple.

Such are the words that our kid can pronounce (well, sorta) thus far, in the order that he's learned them. A few are perfectly clear, while others require a bit of aural creativity on his parents' behalf.

Most amazing of all: today marks the first day that Ben initiated play (as those child-rearing guys phrase it) before I left his daycare room. On Mondays and Wednesdays, he immediately sits down for his lunch, and on Fridays, he usually whines and/or cries and/or clings and/or looks absolutely stricken while I shove his food and sippy cups in the fridge. Yet, this morn, after the (cling-free!) fridge-shoving, I turned around to see him happily wheeling a toy shopping cart around the room. Shocking. He seemed content until the other Ben shoved him away from the cart and--insult to injury--stole the lone block that was inside. Of course, lead teacher reminded both Bens that "nice touches" were expected of them, which remarkably prompted Other Ben to look a bit ashamed and wander all of 16 inches away to play with Other Shopping Cart. And my Ben was still playing with his cart after I left the room (yes, I peek, every lovin' day).

Dearest Ben, have we turned over a new leaf with the daycare thing? Other Ben, where did you learn to glower like that?

Drawing a blank.

I really, truly do believe that having a baby really, truly rots one's brain, just a little bit. I can think of nothing witty to say (well, I've never exactly been Oscar Wilde), yet I feel compelled to type. Perhaps it's best that I'm doing so on my very own blog, which no one ever reads, rather than on Facebook, or in an e-mail, or in a chatroom. Do chatrooms still exist? Haven't seen or been in one since circa 1998, at Chris's old apartment. (On AOL. Does AOL still exist? Does dial-up AOL still exist?) Mostly, I just logged in to politically conservative rooms and tried to rile people up with liberal comments and arguments. Yeah, that's me: the troublemaker, the rabble-rouser, the rebel. Ah, memories...

And as for the word "e-mail": are we skipping the hyphen these days? Has it come to that, finally? At one point it was "electronic mail," and then "E-mail," and then "e-mail." Or is everyone else texting or twittering or whatever, and e-mail's just totally passe? I, for one, am sticking with "e-mail" and e-mail.

I think this is why I never took up journaling after 6th grade-ish. I think I need to get to bed...

3.

So, I'm only posting again because it's depressing to have more than 5 full months of the year under one's belt--well, under all of our belts, I suppose--and to see that I only have "2" posts for 2009. And now it says "3." And I think I shall take this as my accomplishment for the day...

14 months, 3 weeks...

I thought that I'd planned to post here more often, yet I see it's been (almost) 4 months since my last...and I'm only posting now because I likely will forget next Friday, when Ben is 15 months by the calendar. Ye gods...as Rob and I say nearly every day--as maybe most people with little ones think every day--where has the time gone? Walking, babbling, imitating, feeding himself...and Ben's really progressed as well (ha).

Well, Ben, you and I have a full (vacation) day tomorrow of garage sales and thrift stores, just in case your Da is laid off/fired soon; Guy must be fashionably dressed, and there are still a few things I'm hoping for that are a bit too pricey new (wagon, bike trailer, etc.). Oh, who am I kidding? If we earned triple what we do now, I'd still hit the ol' Value World and block sales...

11 months. Holy crap. HOLY CRAP.

This child is 11 months old. ELEVEN MONTHS OLD. And looking less like a baby, more like a little boy lately. Just look at him:

Ben is quite the talented one. He says "mama" (to and in reference to Mama and Da and the kitties and anything else that pleases him). He eats finger foods (tofu and pasta and all manner of fruit and veg, taking what he wants and throwing the rest on the floor quite methodically and calmly). He grooves to music (big fan of R & B and the oldies station). He knows the meaning of the words "no" and "NO" and "NOOOOO!" (laughing and moving faster as soon as he hears any variation, of course).

Unfortunately, some bad habits persist: How dare we consider, even for the briefest of moments, that cribs are appropriate sleeping environments for babies? How dare we put him down to use the bathroom or brush teeth or put on socks? Yeah, he's coddled, and I'm wrapped...

Better get moving on the first birthday extravaganza...

Thanks for Thanksgiving...

1. What is the title of a beautiful children's book (author Julie Markes, illustrator Doris Barrette)?



2. What is appreciation for a brief day in the year on which we are encouraged--nay, obligated--to consider for what we are truly thankful, in the manner of a sitcom episode?



Here goes (please feel free to mentally make bulleted statements parallel; I haven't quite the energy.):

• a healthy baby (well, not at this particular moment, what with the ear infection and oozing nose and eyes and antibiotics...but, you get the big picture)


• a wonderful husband, who's a fantastic father, even if he can't (won't?) wash the diapers, do the non-stanky laundry, cook meals, bathe the baby, do the grocery shopping...but he does earn points for dealing so well with the whole vegetarian thing


• a loving family


• that Speck has healthy grandparents


• that Speck has a healthy great-grandfather!


• my own health (well, again, not at this particular moment, what with the horrendous colds that husband and I have gotten from baby and daycare, apparently)


• a good job that I enjoy


• affordable, reputable childcare, even if we aren't thrilled to need childcare


• sufficient health insurance


• a house, even if it isn't paid off quite yet (check back in a few decades)


• a reliable, fuel-efficient car that is paid off


• money enough for food, for utilities, for necessities, for some luxuries (eating out a mite too often, someone's unbreakable comic book habit, another someone's insistence that Baby only eat organic foods and be cleansed and anointed with only natural, expensive toiletries)

I suppose that's enough for this year. We hope for more, and not less, in the coming years...

Gah! Counters!

Although I should be in bed at present, I stopped by my own blog to check on things...yep, still here...and noticed that a baby counter is still lingering at the very bottom of the page. Speck's ETA is -222 days. Yikes. And "impending parenthood"? Parenthood has indeed impeded.

Further proof that I take as good care of my virtual spaces as my physical spaces.

I need a housekeeper.

Sleep.

After weeks of having too little of it (both Baby and Mama), I checked out a dozen or so library books on getting the wee one to sleep for longer stretches at night. (All gentle, no-cry, very loving, of course.) Strangely, I haven't had to implement a single strategy, as Ben, for the last five nights, has fallen out fairly early for him, though still in his charmingly unscheduled way--between 8:30 and 10:00 p.m.--and awoken only once--around 2 a.m. or maybe 3:22 a.m. or perhaps 5:14 a.m.--before crashing again until 8:00ish a.m. At other times, he has napped IN HIS CRIB. My mother and her friend claim it's because of the solids, but he's had solids for the past four weeks or so and only just started this week with the whole sleeping-for-more-than-three-hours-at-a-time business. But babies can go through sleeping/night-waking phases. And breastfed babies need to awaken more frequently anyhow. It's true--Dr. Sears and his many publications tell me so! Why would a book like to a person?

Whatever the cause, it's bliss. But also like waiting for the inevitable storm. And, yes, he's still in the itty-bitty bassinet each night. We did, however, retire the swaddler this week in favor of a sleep sack. In recent weeks, Speck had been wearing the much-adored, much-too-small swaddler in the manner of a toga, then of a tube dress (sassy!), then of a bellydancing skirt.

The next great concern and debate: where to drop Boy at night now that he's beefy (tofu-y?) enough to drag his bassinet around on a string like a pull-toy? His crib, you say? Ha.

Big fish in a little sea.

Unacceptable.

6 months, 11 days, nearly completed, and STILL nary a word. Oh, the shame! We now pin our (unreasonable?) hopes on Dot, our as-yet-unconceived second...

As one can see, I am quite immune to

the unbearable cuteness of being...Ben.

On the occasion of a weekday off...

I wonder, "Is it wrong to daydream about being laid off, so I could be a stay-at-home parent, if only for a few months?" It's been a good day, of feeding Speck, holding him as he napped, reading to him, singing, taking a walk to the grocery store, attempting to get him to cooperate for his first studio photos (he didn't), et cetera...all without rushing or stressing about being late for work.

And, yes, I think of it now, even as Boy, sitting (writhing) in my lap, slams the keyboard and flings toys and squishes everything in reach with curious, pudgy little fingers...

23 hours, 59 minutes...

...until I officially declare Ben sorely lacking in verbal skills. (And the time is ticking away!) After celebrating Grandma's birthday (60!) with dinner and cake Sunday evening, we dragged out the old photos to determine if Speck really looks like his mother did as a wee tot (he totally does--sorry, Rob & your family). In so doing, we discovered that I spoke my first "official" word (though not my first word--long [or rather, just kinda weird] story) at the ripe old age of 6 months, 10 days...the age that Speck is this very day (it's just after midnight. Shouldn't I be in bed?).

Please, please, dear heart, don't disappoint your mother. We want a "Mama" or a "Da" or a "kitty" or a something distingishable from random babbling or squealing before your (fluid, ever-shifting, negotiable) bedtime. So get crackin', kid.

P.S. You WILL disappoint your mother anyhow if your first word/phrase is not some variation of "mother" or "Jamie." "Ma," "mommy," "yo mama," "Jay," "Mimi," "hey you," and "lunchwagon" are all acceptable. "Ayayay-yiyiyiAHHH!!!" is not. You can beat me at the talking game, as my first word was "daddy."

Kisses, sweet baby!!!

Speck practices his tongue exercises,

in preparation for The First Word.

6 months...

since Benjamin roared into our lives. And I felt utterly compelled, after much neglect, to post--as I began this blog halfway through my pregnancy (at 20 weeks, oh so very long ago), I thought I'd continue the tradition with a post halfway through Speck's first year--and as with my first post, I do so on the momentous occasion with moments to spare. I now make a solemn vow and promise to post more often. Hopefully, my next won't be halfway to Ben's legal voting age. In the meantime, a photograph of our Lord and Master: