Swimmy Funtime

Swimmy 1
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

Two More Teeth, and Hugs

Limelet now has two more little teeth stubs on the top, for a total of six (four up, two down.) For some reason I was surprised--I thought he'd have just two on top and bottom for a while. I don't know why I thought that.

He was especially chewy yesterday evening, and groungy and cranky this morning. I feel guilty because I was impatient with his grounging this morning. This teething often manifests as irritability, where he irritably just wants to grab everything. Probably so he can chew on it. Then he gets frustrated that he can't have whatever it is. When I say everything, I mean like cars, signposts, and parts of the bedframe, in addition to the kinds of things you'd think. I need to start assuming that when he's irritable, teeth are about to come through.

Did I mention how great it is that he's been going to sleep in the rocking chair? Because it's really, really great.

I forgot to mention that lately he's begun hugging us (sort of). It's so endearing. When one of us is carrying him, he sort of hunches forward and presses his face and shoulders against the carrier, usually in the neck. Though this evening he hugged my face for quite a long time. It was so cute. I didn't even say anything when he then grabbed my lips with his pinchy little fist.

I'm also so glad for the whole co-sleeping thing. I will tell you now that there is nothing like snuggling with a sleeping baby for comfort. By way of comparison, it's nicer than cats, dogs, rats, cousins, siblings, and boys. (I mean romantic-partner boys, not one's-own-children boys.)

He likes to prop his little hot feet up on my leg when he's sleeping. As he's grown, the feet have gradually gone farther and farther over my leg. When I'm putting him to sleep, I put socks on him with his jammies, but when I get into bed I take off the little socks and free his feet from the tight sock-tops. It's also so I can feel his soft little beignet feet wiggling as I fall asleep.

Seven Months

Brighteyes
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

Last night I was up past 4 a.m., which is about 2.6 hours before I normally get up. Limelet was awake in the middle of the night for a relatively long time, too. I think this is due to a recent growth spurt on his part, but only indirectly.

See, he's been nursing a whole lot more lately, and I've been feeling absolutely ravenous. I ended up eating probably half a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips yesterday evening as a result, not thinking of the caffeine involved.

In my pre-baby days, no amount of chocolate coud possibly have enough caffeine to affect me at all. But now that I never drink coffee, I think my tolerance is so low that even chocolate can affect me, at least in hujambous amounts like that. And of course he would get some of the effect, too, in nursing.

Other than that, things went quite well yesterday. I think that this three-month spate of teething may finally be dwindling down. All four of his front teeth are out and clear (the sound when he grits his teeth is horrible, but he seems to like doing it).

Lately I've been only walking him to sleep for about three minutes, and then as soon as he starts to close his eyes, I've been sitting down in the rocking chair. (This is basically an adaptation of the technique from that No-Cry Sleep Solution.) The first couple of times it woke him up and I had to go back to walking, but then he got used to it and continued going to sleep.

Yesterday I was having a very tired day, so when it was naptime I turned on the sleepy music (Music for Airports) and simply sat down in the rocker. Lo and behold, he nursed and fell asleep in the standard seven minutes! No need to put him in the sleepy sling or anything. It was great! Since then, he's been able to do this almost every time I've put him to sleep. Now it feels like I'm putting a little kid to sleep, not a baby. He's still been having a bit of trouble staying asleep in the evenings, but I wonder if that won't recede a bit now that those teeth are out.

I guess now that he's officially seven months, he won't be doing the super-early speaking thing that my sister and I did (I don't know about the others), as it's past that point already. He thinks that when I say Mama it's one of my silly jokes, and he laughs at it. However, he did start signing pretty dang early, to ask for upsies at five months. And then milk shortly thereafter. I'm not saying he doesn't conflate the two at times, but then they look kind of similar to me, too, and in his mind they may have closely related meanings.

He's also added poo (toilet), to his vocabulary, though every time he's used that sign we haven't believed him, until we opened the nappy. I don't know why we don't believe he's signing that. It just seems too sophisticated in both meaning and form, I guess. But clearly, he really is doing it, as he's now three for three.

He's now considering crawling, which might help with his frustration--or make it worse, as then we'll have to curb him from even more of the wonderful objects he wants to put in his mouth. His pre-crawling posture looks really darn cute, though.

Must get baby gates for stairs.

Though it appears his eyes will stay blue, unlike his parents' green eyes, I noticed they are much darker than his Daddy's eyes today when they were both facing the window. I still can't tell if he's going to be a redhead. There were two other boys at La Leche League the other day with much redder-looking hair than his.

Guess I'll find out eventually.

Insane Baby Singing

I may have mentioned that I sing (usually adapted) silly baby songs around the house. Here's what they are.

When he wakes up in the morning, I sing a version of a song that I think is from Singin' in the Rain. It goes like this:

Good morning, good morning
You nursed the whole night through
Good morning, good morning
My little babyboo
Good morning, good morning
Good morning to you!

That one always gets the big smiles. And then as we head downstairs, I sing about that, with apologies to Petula Clark.

When you're a baby and you wake in the morning
Well you want to go / downstairs
When you awaken and your parents are snoring
Well you want to go /downstairs
Just listen to the clatter of the dishes when we hurry
Baby's nighttime wakings never make your Daddy worry
'Cause he didn't hear
You know we've got toys down there
You can look out of the window
And see what's out there/ when we're
Downstairs!
There's lots of lights down there
Downstairs!
We don't spend nights down there
Downstairs!
Morning is waiting for you

There's the song for going out to the laundry room, which is next door (you'll be sure to figure out what this tune is without my help):

Let's go out to the laundry
Let's go out to the laundry
Let's go out to the laundry
And wash ourselves some clothes

(I can't help but picture Mr. Burns singing this. If you, too, know what I mean by that, you've also seen too many episodes of the Simpsons.)

When I'm pretty sure that there's something waiting in the nappy, I sing this old standard:

Ta ra ra boom-de-ay
I think there's poo today
So let's just see what's there
Inside your underwear

Finally, there's the little song I sing when he's nursing and my milk is letting down. If his attention wanders and I sing this, he quickly zaps back to the nursie to get the milk, so he knows what it means.

You know that little intro to the Green Acres theme song? I thought you might.

Here comes your milkies, deet deet!
Here comes your milkies, deet deet!
Here comes your milkies
Here comes your milkies
Here comes your milkies
Deet deet!

I didn't really plan to sing any of these things--they just ended up fitting some tune I knew. That last one is so insidious, that it's hard not to sing it at other times, but I don't want to raise his expectations if there's no milk forthcoming, you know.

In fact, it's so insidious that TheLimey has admitted to finding himself singing it tonight while he was cooking dinner. Poor guy. He really is becoming as insane as I am.

Teething, Swimming, Weather, and Holidays

joggie_2
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

I think I mentioned that last week Limelet's swimming class was cancelled due to the Easter weekend, which in retrospect makes sense. However, I didn't think of it until we spent the morning getting ready (really, it takes an entiremorning, although the swimming itself lasts exactly 30 minutes) and then I found the parking lot completely empty when we got there.

This week he's been particularly cranky (this kid's been teething for three months now!) but getting outside seems to help (see photo). Too bad the weather's been so freakishly cold again so we've been trapped indoors nearly every day!

TheLimey and I changed our weekend baby watching plans, given that my dissertation is getting pretty urgent, and half-days have just not been cutting it. Too fragmented (especially for me, as I frequently have to stop midstream to nurse or consult or console or whatever), sense of urgency means no time for lunch/bathroom, etc. I've hardly been getting anything done, and I've been feeling more and more panicked about it as each week passes and then each month.

So we tried each taking a whole weekend day, which actually worked well for both of us (work-wise, anyway). And then to try to get my diss moving, we then decided that for a couple of weekends, I'll get both Saturday and Sunday to work while he watches Limelet, and see how it goes. Maybe I can actually get a draft done.

...Then I remembered that Saturday mornings are baby swimming. We've only been able to go to that first one so far, which he loved, and I have been looking forward to it myself for so long. I felt like he really needed it this weekend to help counteract how ucky he's been feeling. He needs something fun and exciting, and to get out of the house/baby prison! If I have to sacrifice a partial day of work for something, it would be this.

So I planned, once again, to get him up extra-early (6:30) so that his first nap would fall before we had to leave.

Unfortunately, in his tossings, flippings, and nursings last night, I awoke around 4:30 and then inexplicably couldn't get back to sleep until about 6:00. So I was pretty darn tired at 6:30. Nevertheless, I was determined to make this swimming thing work this time, so I kindly and slowly woke him up.

My plan was to share his second nap when we got back (to make up for the lost sleep), and then get to work. We had nursie-breakfast, and solid-food breakfast, and then as planned he fell asleep earlier for his first nap. I blessedly grabbed a shower, donned my suit, put my hair up, and packed his diaper bag.

When he awoke I nursed him again, got him dressed in his swim diaper, had TheLimey start the car (it's still so blanged freezing that we need to pre-heat it before I want to put the baby in his car seat), got our towels and water bottle, put on our coats and hats and etc., and packed it all into the car. Whew!

I drove to the high school, where I saw...

...a completely empty parking lot AGAIN. %$@*&!!

No doubt if he had not been sick the second week, I would have known about all these cancelled classes. Meanwhile, I was a tired and cranky Mummy, I tell you what. Even the schedule book listed only "April 11" (a wednesday) as a day when the class would not be held.

If I had known there was going to be no class, we could have slept until, oh, probably 7:30 or so, AND I could have gotten a full day of work in, instead of yet another partial, fragmented day in which I felt like I got almost nothing accomplished. So as you can see, I still feel pretty cranky about it.

However, I'm so desperate for recreation that now I'm up late writing this post instead of sleeping.

And I really wanted to take him in the water again, because he had so much fun with it that one time we got to go. I mean, water other than the bathtub, although he liked that well enough. Until he started wanting to play with my feet again, but that's another post.

At Puberty...

...was supposed to go here on this blog. But now it's cross-posted to Doctorlizardo. Oh well.

...there should be more of those baby-simulating events that some organizations hold. I'm not talking about carrying an egg around all week. Or even that crying doll. That's still way too easy.

I mean something more realistic. Like some evening when the kid is worn out as heck from a long day and hasn't had dinner yet, they should have a 20-lb potato sack strapped to their chest and have to walk and walk and walk and walk around a dim room, for four hours. No bathroom breaks! No snack breaks!

No teenager would ever have (heterosexual) sex.

Ha! Who am I kidding? They still would.

Unless there were booster sessions; maybe weekly ones...

Teethies

Discovered why Limelet was so groungy today...he got his upper incisors! No wonder he didn't want me to put him down for the entire day.

He's one of those babies that teethe for months and months, apparently. So far, four months to nearly seven months. I think it's disrupted some of my efforts at sleep hygiene.

I admit I'm a little scared of the biting factor in nursing, especially now that he's got 'em upstairs and down. Ouchie. Luckily he mainly likes to teethe on hard things (like the potato masher, frozen applesauce, a pen, wooden furniture, etc.) and the nursies are very soft and squishy, hence unsatisfying.

So he normally doesn't bite much--when he's awake. When he's falling asleep, it's another story. I guess he does actually control it after all, since the control leaves in his sleep.

I normally don't give him a binky and he's normally not interested in one, but he'll take one when Dad's putting him to sleep. I think I may give him one after he falls asleep nursing (though he'll still wake up to nurse at night a few times.) I've heard some nursing stories about sleepy biting--not pretty.

However, the little teethies are very cute, if you can disregard the ouch factor.

Triple

Easter
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

Meant to re-post this here...I like the tenderness of non-flash photos, even if they are blurry.

Sleepies 2

Sleepies 2
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

Nothing is nicer than snuggling a baby.

I read that in infant/mother sleeping dyad studies, the baby faces the mother 95% of the time or something like that. Until recently, Limelet has always faced me in his sleep.

Lately he's been okay with turning over after he's done nursing, however. It makes sleeping a bit easier, because he can turn himself to a comfortable position now without waiting for me to turn us both over as a unit.

Yesterday he desperately wanted to catch snowflakes, but didn't like the accompanying wind. I did some baking, and now that he's older I find he's afraid of the electric mixer (he was okay with it at Christmastime).

I had to do it in small stages, and turn him so I could wear him facing inward again. Oh, and distract him with a nice wooden spoon with some traces of butter and sugar on it.

I know, I know! No dairy yet, and definitely no sugar. But boy, was he happy about that spoon.

I'm a bad, bad mother.

Easter Baby

jolly_2
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

Limelet is looking pretty redheaded these days; people have begun commenting on it.

Funny, I always thought I'd have a red-haired daughter and a dark-haired son. Maybe it'll be the other way around!

Swimming was canceled for the holiday weekend, so we had to come home and have swimmy funtime in the bathtub instead. He still looked adorable in his little swim trunks.

Man, he's getting big.

Beastfeeding

Raufman Wedding
Originally uploaded by Gluttonmush.

(No, I didn't type that wrong. Look closer!)

Okay,

I take it back about him going to sleep earlier...sort of.

Yes, he's going to sleep around 7:30 or 8:00, but it's more like a series of light naps until about 10:00. (When he needs us in there in order to stay asleep anyway.) So I end up going in there so much to put him back to sleep, it's like I'm having to lie there keeping him asleep for hours until it's already past my bedtime anyway. Feel like I might as well pack it in at 7:30 myself. But I desperately need some decompression time after a 15 or 16 hour shift. (Even just 20 minutes helps.)

I got kinda cranky last night after the third time spending 40 minutes putting him to sleep within a two hour stretch.

I know you're supposed to try to dash in and keep them asleep as much as possible at night so their bodies get in and maintain the habit of being asleep at that time (unless you're in the cry-it-out school of thought, which I'm definitely not).

I wonder how many years that actually takes...

Backwearing

backwearing
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

...In the sweatpants carrier.

Limelet had about two good days without teething, then he developed his first cold. I think it also exacerbated the teething, too, like when your sinuses are clogged and it makes your teeth ache. He has been sick pretty much all this week. I didn't take him to swimming yesterday. He makes this horrible persistent growling noise that I call "grounging" (for some reason).

It's often been hard for him to nurse (which makes him cry) unless I suction his nose out, which he hates. He thinks I'm torturing him and cries about that, too, but at least he can nurse afterwards. Also, one must keep the poor baby nose suctioned out in order to reduce the incidence of ear infection. I started him on the garlic oil again, too (in ears at night.) Poor little garlic shrimp.

I pretty much haven't been able to put him down for anything more than two minutes as a result of his crankiness (even with baby Motrin some days), nor sit down myself, so I've resorted to backwearing a couple of times just to get a few things done like sweeping the kitchen. He's beginning to tolerate the knees-up position now, so that helps a lot. I still have to lean forward, but I guess I have to lean forward for those tasks anyway.

He was a little better yesterday, and I can tell that he's better yet today, though he's still grounging somewhat. At least he was able to nurse this morning without any suctioning.