Monthly Archives: July 2006

Sparky: Thirteen Months Old

This morning, the new word was “ilk” while showing me his bottle. Yikes. I’m going to start losing track of them all soon.

While nursing Liam this morning, I was thinking about what I was doing one year ago today. It was July 11 2005 when I carried my suitcase into the hospital to stay 48 hours on-site with Liam, so that the nurses could make sure we knew what to do with a baby, and to ensure that we wouldn’t break one another during full-time use. And I remembered being upset when Liam was hungry, trying to nurse in the middle of the night and crying his heart out, and we eventually figured out it was because I had too much milk for him to get a proper latch. Yes, we wouldn’t have this problem today, because the kid’s so enthusiastic he’d go through anything to get milk. But this is now; that was then, when he was a bare 4 lb 12 oz and I was producing an insane amount of milk because I’d been pumping for a month.

No, nursing is very different these days. I phased out the night pumping session about two months ago, and stopped the morning session at the end of June, as the bottles he gets now are few and far between and I still have a small freezer stash. He gets to nurse when winding down for a nap, and this past week he’s also been asking to nurse for five or ten minutes in the morning after he gets up and has played in the living room for a bit, even after he’s had half his cup of milk to drink on his own along with a snack of Cheerios. This past month he’s developed a tendency towards gymnastics when he nurses. He rolls around to get comfortable, tries to stand up, and basically squirms all over the place. This morning I finally sat him down on the chesterfield next to me, facing the back of it, and let him lean over a bit towards me to nurse that way. It seemed to work.

One of his favourite games is peekaboo (of course), and he never gets tired of it. When he decides to take a break from dinner he pulls the dish towel on his lap up and holds it over his face. Whereas before he’d pull it down again almost immediately and laugh, now he’ll wait a good long time while we wonder where he is before dropping the towel and grinning at us with that wonderful open-mouth grin he has. Not only does he hide his own face, he’ll reach forward and cover our faces, then pull the towel down and be delighted to see us. If we cover our faces with our hands, he’ll pull the hands away, then push them back to start the sequence over again. He tried to do it with Maggie, but she wasn’t interested in playing.

The obsession with putting small things into bigger things continues. The Fisher Price school bus makes an excellent Cheerio taxi, he has discovered. Food on the go. Snacks for busy babies and their toys. It’s the next big thing.

I mentioned the walking. The shelves have now become a climbing challenge. Liam will pile toys into his toy basket and step on them to get a better angle from which to reach the next shelf up. He’s also beginning to move furniture, if it’s light enough. He can move the coffee table, and the rocking chair. He also figured out how to open the glass doors beneath the television that house the electronics. We push the coffee table up against them, but now that he can move it when he sets his mind to it, who knows how long that will last? He loves opening the drawers in the kitchen and pulling my measuring cups and spoons out. The baking pans on the open bottom shelf are his toys too, as are the pot lids we keep in the stove drawer. It’s fascinating to watch him develop his own little games and ways of doing things. Not as fascinating is his recent exploration of high-volume screeching, just for the heck of it.

Bathtime is still awesome fun. He dunks his face in water at least twice a week. My in-laws had him dunking his feet in their pool last week, and he loved it. He had fun pulling handfuls of petals off the adjacent geraniums and tossing them into water to watch them float, too. ( “Thank goodness for skimmers,” said HRH.) At home he loves his sandbox, but he seems to have developed a dislike of the swing, which is unfortunate because we did get that swingset. It will still be there when he decides he likes swinging again.

His hair is long enough to start forming into little curls at the base of his neck. When he wakes up from a nap it’s in cowlicks all over his head, and I have to wet it to get it to lie flat. It’s so light and fine, with a brownish red sheen to it. A haircut is ages off, though, thank goodness. His eyes are now definitely dark green and I love them, because I was hoping he’d end up with green eyes. His naps are going well enough in that he still has them, but they’re getting shorter. Now the max is around an hour and a quarter. He’s still sleeping about ten to twelve hours at night, though. If I didn’t feel so dead at the end of his day I’d probably appreciate it even more.

I already journaled about one of the hand signs Liam makes. He has two others which are similar but separate. He waves at people and things to say hi or bye, sometimes with the associated word (sometimes even if they’re not arriving or departing!). He also has a similiar version of the point “more/give it to me” hand action, where he just opens and closes his fist in a direction, which means “that way” or “over there”. When I ask him where a specific toy is, such as “Where’s your bus?” he turns around and makes the sign at it. This morning I saw him put his palm to his mouth, hand flat, while he made eye contact with me, but I don’t know if he’s trying to blow kisses or tell me that he’s hungry. We’ll figure that one out within the next day or so.

As for food, he pretty much eats everything now. Pasta with meat sauce is very fun. He’ll eat a whole banana or pear or apple in one sitting as a snack, with a side serving of Cheerios or crackers and a good five ounces of beverage. He drinks milk, orange juice, apple juice, and water. He had steak with us again the other day at my in-laws’ house, and chewed on the bone, as well as nibbling some of my early birthday cake. (Chocolate! Yum!)

He’s got a place in a home daycare run by a woman I’ve seen care for a child over two years, and I’m excited about it. He’ll have so much fun! He’ll be starting with one day a week to ease into it (and give me that one day I need to get work done while my mother in law is out of town!), and then go to two so that I’ll have the time I’ll need to write whichever book gets contracted next. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also a little sad, because I know that no matter how tired or annoyed I am at the end of a bad day with him, I’ll still miss him when he’s not here. It’s good to miss him, though, because it reminds me of how much I appreciate him. I don’t like being fed up at the end of a trying day, nor do I ever want to reach a point where I resent him because I haven’t been able to get my work done. I know there are millions of mothers who do the full-time at-home thing all over the world, and who’ve done it for aeons, but this is my family right here and now, our personalities, my son who loves people and likes constant interaction, and my work that I love doing. I think this flexible solution is ideal right now, with the option to keep him home if I like, or to ask if the caregiver can take him an extra day or afternoon if a deadline requires it. I don’t have to choose between my son or my job, and I’m thankful for that. I can have both, and it’s a blessing.

I love him. He’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. And I think he’s pretty darn lucky to have us as parents, too.

Sure, The Thirteen-Month Post Is Two Days Away, But I Feel Like Sharing

Liam said “truck” on Friday while playing with his local grandparents. Later that night, when HRH told him that the dishes were swimming in the sink, Liam looked at him and said, “ssimmingsinsing.” Blink, blink. Okay, so now it’s officially time to watch what we say, because he’s at a point where he can echo it very closely.

Yesterday he finished the water in his cup, and held it out to HRH. When HRH had taken it from him, Liam pointed at the empty cup and made his “more”/”give to me” sign, which closely resembles the popular “bring it on” motion of closing fingers into a fist over and over. So HRH got up and went into the kitchen to refill the cup while Liam waited quietly in the living room. (This in itself is a big thing. Usually when we leave the room with an empty bowl or cup he gets very upset, as if we’re taking away a full one or something.) HRH came back and held it out to the boy, who reached up for it with a big happy smile and then drank noisily. “I thought my heart was going to burst,” HRH said later. “My son asked me for more water.”

And he’s using his Thomas the Tank Engine ride-on toy as a walking aid. He walks along in the living room pushing Thomas along in front of him. Of course, then he wants to see Thomas’ face, so he drops back to all fours to scurry around front and give him a kiss. But there’s definite walking.

So it’s official: we have a toddler. Yes, he’s taken a step here or there from hand to hand or from table to bookcase, but this is the real thing.

Days Five And Six

What do you know: three fish, still very alive.

We may have winners. The aquarium additives have probably helped a lot too.

If we get to Sunday with no losses, we will have a little fish party. There will be party hats. No, really. Noisemakers would be nice, but useless, because, you know, there’s that whole underwater thing.

Cellists Don’t Count

Last night I went out with some other Band People (TM) to the Montreal Musician and Musical Instrument Show. Since three quarters of the exhibitors were luthiers, I was looking forward to seeing, if not actually playtesting, some electric cellos. In particular, Vector Instruments, a Nova Scotian maker of electric instruments of the violin family, was going to be there. I’d been researching their stuff recently, and if no one else had anything, at least they would. And I was in the mood to mess about with one. This is a big thing — it takes me a while to psych myself up to test instruments, particularly in public places.

There were a grand total of — wait for it — zero cellos there. Anywhere, in any of the rooms or halls. Traditional or otherwise. There were violins (trad and electric), basses (ditto), but if you’re a cellist, you apparently have no place anywhere in or around the jazz festival.

I wasn’t as bothered about it there as I was by the time I got home. Thinking about it on the metro made it worse, for some reason.

On the other hand, there were a surprising number of saxophones, flutes, clarinets, and accordions among the other expected string instruments. There were bassoons, for heaven’s sake. And drum kits being played by four and five year olds who had better coordination than I could demonstrate in the same situation. I had fun watching them, and looking at the beautiful beautiful work-of-art guitars, and watching Jan and the Baron play pretty things, and hanging out with everyone’s mother’s favourite guitarist and Ceri until the show closed.

The one piece of information I gathered that was directly applicable to my instrument was from the reps for Schatten Design, Canadian makers of pickups for various acoustic instruments, specifically the cello pickup. The reps were informative and friendly, and promised me a money-back guarantee if I tried it out and didn’t like it. They also told me that if I ordered it within the next week and mentioned that I’d talked to them at the exhibition, they’d ship it to me free of charge. It’s fifty dollars more than the ubiquitous Fishman C-100 pickup, but I’m more inclined to test it because of the support offered by the makers. Part of my resistance to the Fishman comes from the fact that it’s what the local guitar salespeople try to sell me, and they know guitars, not cellos, so when I ask them for more details they can’t tell me anything but keep trying to sell it to me irregardless. (Yes, yes, I know, it’s my birthday soon, and I’m not buying anything for myself until it’s well past, just in case someone has taken it into their head to do something extravagant. More evidence proving that I can learn.) And the Schatten is Canadian, too; I like that.

And because I’ve had several less than stellar days in a row, here is a terrific picture of Liam that makes me laugh every time I see it. I hope it brightens your afternoon as well, in the last hour before the weekend arrives!

To: Everyone. Re: The Birthday Thing.

Okay, look.

I’m not seeking a babysitter. I truly appreciate the flood of offers that have poured in, but that’s not the actual issue. The problem really revolves around scheduling the event.

It’s nice to know there are piles of people willing to spend time with the boy, really, it is. But it’s not the solution. When a solution has been found, there will be a general notice, and everyone can be happy, including me, and Liam, and HRH, and you too, dear reader.

So thank you, and thank you again, and by the way thank you. Now go read a book or go play outside or something.

Life Is Determined To Unhinge Me

Yes, because an unstable hard drive threatening failure is precisely what I need right now.

Blade, if you could stop by tonight, I’d really appreciate it. I’ve done all I can without your expertise. (I’m probably blowing my chances of a third-degree Geek Cord by calling in a friend, but a hard drive is a hard drive, not a card or a peripheral.)

I’m going to go back up while I can. Then I think I’ll go cry, then beat something up.

ETA: Hang on — it’s my back-up drive that’s had the biscuit. It’s not even registering as being on the computer. Still not good, of course, but at least it’s not the end of the world, either. I’m going to back up to CDs, because I don’t trust anything today. Blade, it still wouldn’t hurt for you to come scowl at it.