No title! For some reason Blogger won't let me enter one. Huh.

It feels like forever since I last posted. I constantly compose entries in my head that I haven't had time to enter, as we are packing to move, along with the persistent dissertation-and-baby-care drumbeat.

First, more about sleep:

The sleep plan was working. Oh, it was working great. I loved it! There were days in a row in which he went to sleep by, oh, 8pm or at least 8:30, only needing top-ups for the first few hours. It was wonderful. Then Limelet had several nights of teething, which meant he stayed up late several nights in a row. This was immediately followed by an evening we went out and dragged the poor thing out with us.

I meant to truncate the event severely and only push his bedtime forward a little, but it took most of the allotted time to even find the place. And there were people there that I haven't seen since his birth (who hadn't even seen Limelet in real life yet), who are now leaving state so I won't see them again for who knows how long. So we really didn't get him home until a couple hours past his bedtime. He was falling asleep sitting up by the time we left. And instead of falling asleep in the car as I thought he would, he freaked out and cried, in fact was screaming in misery by the last mile of the trip. So that was terrible.

But since he'd had about 4 nights of staying up, this only served to reinforce the pattern. It's a week later and his circadian cycle is still all messed up. He's been going to sleep immediately after his bath (not my intention), and then waking up at 8, only to remain awake until 10:30. And he's cranky and unhappy during that time--so we are, too (soothed only by Haagen-Dasz, Bailey's flavor). As TheLimey exclaimed in exhaustion, "it's the longest two hours of the day."

But other than that, he's still developing by leaps and bounds, as far as I can tell anyway. He's almost crawling now; he lunges forward from sitting in order to try to grab things that he's purposely thrown out of his own reach, including and especially over the edge of the couch. When he really wants to get somewhere, he rolls, of course.

But that throwing thing--that's his favorite game now. Just two weeks ago, he started realizing that things he dropped went onto the floor and could be picked up again (by his slaves). Within a day or two he started dropping things repeatedly for fun. Then he realized that he could get more interesting results by moving his hand while dropping, and thus he discovered throwing.

He's still obsessed with the baby monitor and cries when he can't have it. Ditto laundry detergent jugs. One of his favorite toys is a big empty vinegar jug. He especially liked it when it had some vinegar traces that he could taste when he chewed on it. (I guess he wouldn't be our kid if that weren't the case.)

Lately he has had several instances of being frightened--no, terrified--by loud noises. One, the train going past the sidewalk he was on and blowing its whistle; two, the suddent demolition of a structure Daddy built out of wooden blocks; and three, the town's monthly test-siren going off. (Needless to say we haven't tried taking him out to any soccer games with crowds lately, like the one that made him scream for an hour straight.)

We got him a wading pool that's on the back patio--he loves it. He is just crazy about water! Cries when it's time to get his little blue-lipped self out of it.

He's eating a lot of meals, but I don't know about total amount of food. He loses patience with eating after a short time, just as I used to. (Used to.) He loves legumes, meats (even fish), grains, and veggies, but oddly is not that interested in fruit. Well, I always used to say I had a "salt-tooth" instead of a "sweet-tooth," so maybe he does, too.

Well, so much for break time, back to the dissertation.