Swimming, the grand finale

This was the last of our swimming classes for the first session, so it was super. The instructor got to class early to allow us to ask questions about our children's progress. A is doing super. The next major milestone in swimming we'll be working on is holding his breath. I submerged him today; I was reminded of dog training that's really owner training. It's scary; A is big and long and I'm small and not quite so buff. But I did it twice.

We're signed up for another series of sessions and I even remembered to tell the woman at the front desk we'd be missing some in the middle for vacation. This week's quickly becoming action-packed. Tomorrow we've got our flu shot (sigh) and time in Balboa Park; Wednesday we have an invite to practice baby signing, and Thursday's our weekly play date. Woo.

Oscar night and grown-up updates

TiVo makes the Oscars palatable, especially when they're running 40,000 commercials during the program. Ellen is not nearly the cupcake Jon Stewart is, though she is funny.

This weekend, C's brother came to town to see our Navy boy, so we got to see both him and the Navy boy this weekend, which was lovely. C and K (his brother, not me) got an up-close and personal tour of the helicopters, which impressed the hell out of C. (I had a protective mommy moment where I thought the noise level on a military helicopter base would be a little much for my little darling A, so he'll have to take a tour later when he can appreciate the hearing loss.) Then we tried desperately to find a place open for lunch at 3PM on a Saturday in SD which turned out to be harder than we thought; found ourselves a burger joint and topped it off with IKEA. All the Coloradoans need to make the IKEA pilgrimage when they visit. Anyway, good to see him on his eye-blink of a visit.

I had grown-up time this week, so you're going to be lacking boy updates, although he is still cute and adorable and all that. First of all, I joined a writing class, which I promised Miss Julie I will blog about but I'm going to give it one more class (so it'll have to wait until next week) before I tear it to shredded crunchy bits on the blog. No matter; it's still good for me. I did have the completely gross moment of introducing myself as, "I have an almost-seven-month-old at home and I need some adult time." You'll just have to wait for my startlingly amazing blog entry about writing class.

Also for grown-ups, today I joined the plumeria society. It's so dorky but I had such a good time. I am sure the plumeria society falls below the AV club in geekdom. There were probably 200 people there, so I'm not alone in adoration of the plumeria or geekdom. No, they weren't all blue hairs, either; I was surprised. They had two speakers, one of whom gave me hope that my plumeria isn't completely dead from frost. The other gave such a reassuring overview of plumeria care that I think I won't kill another one if I get one. They had a raffle and enough prizes that at the end they said, "Anyone who hasn't gotten a prize, come up and get one item off the table." I got a book on Gertrude Jekyll, plus I had to buy their starter guide to plumeria cultivation in San Diego. Now if I join the camellia society, I can have garden club meetings (and flowers!) year round. I met some lovely people who talked with great enthusiasm about their frost damage and what new plants they wanted to try and who was bringing cuttings of what to the sale in April--and most of your eyes are rolling into your heads, but to someone garden-deprived like me, it was wonderfully refreshing. It's nice when you encounter members of your tribe, you know?

Irony of the day: the plumeria society meeting usually scheduled for the fourth Sunday of the month is re-scheduled in April because the Balboa Park commissioners decided as a policy to cancel all garden club meetings that fall on Earth Day.

Baby swim and other bits

We've had a busy week or so. We've had play dates again with Miss M and L, last week at M's house and this week at ours. This required serious cleaning. The good news is that the house is now clean (mostly). Play dates require a certain amount of baby proofing that we are not up to yet but nobody died.

A has officially cut two teeth completely. They've not all the way up yet, but they're distinctly teeth. He's pretty cute. No, he hasn't bit me yet, although his latest trick seems to be pulling my hair. That's got to stop.

C had off Saturday, Sunday, and blessed Monday, which was fabulous after the long slog he's been putting in at work. This meant he could go to swim class with us Monday, which was super. A was a champion swimmer Monday. He was submerged and while I still don't think he enjoyed it, he didn't get upset or insulted by it. The other two babies in class bailed before the end of class - Miss M was submerged for the first two times. She looked as insulted and mad as A did the first time he went under. The other baby was just tired at the end of class, I think.

Saturday we took advantage of the sunny San Diego weather and went to the SD Wild Animal Park, which was great. They were having a camellia show. I might have to get myself one; they're pretty, like peonies. I love peonies.

We hosted a play date here yesterday. Everyone is fascinated with our cats. Jake was not prepared for babies that move faster than ours, but he was still faster than the babies. Niles got on top of the bookshelves and peered down from a safe perch. A is now apparently frightened by the vacuum cleaner, which is not good. It's amazing how quickly these things come on, like flipping a switch.

We haven't gotten A's passport yet, but we need to since we now have tickets to Italy.

Baby passport pictures...

...are the cutest thing in the universe. Really.

Happy Heart Day

I heart Valentine's, this year, anyway. Master A's little Valentine's present to C and me was sleeping through the night, like 8PM to 5AM. Boy howdy it's great to sleep.

C's been working a lot of overtime (all weekend, later evenings than I would like) for the last week and so there's been no time or energy to blog. A has cut teeth officially; one came through on Saturday and the other one came through Monday. This made him the crankiest he's been. I haven't been able to go anywhere errand-like, just places where I'm catering to A's needs (swim class, the zoo, so it's a ridiculous hardship, but still annoying when we have to go buy cat food and he's not cooperating). Saturday I thought I would run away and join the circus. It's been better this week but I'm just mentally exhausted from being solely responsible for A (almost) every waking minute of the day for more than a week now. C had a lot of time with him this morning, which was good.

A loves rice cereal, but I haven't been able to get to a store to buy him a sweet potato yet to try other new food yet. He seems pretty happy this morning so maybe we'll put the store on our list of errands (maybe after passport pictures but before IKEA). Feeding a baby is super messy and sticky. C and I are a little too type A for it. We discussed feeding him with a pastry bag this morning.

We had swim class again Monday. At first, A didn't look like he was having a good time. Then I realized that there are things he specifically likes in swim class (standing on the island and splashing, floating on his back) and things he doesn't (being on his side in the water, submersions). He had to chew on a toy the whole time to be happy. He actually got pretty close to free floating on his back; I was just supporting him behind his head with a few fingers. Our class is wrapping up in a couple weeks but I think we're going to sign up for another series of sessions. The instructor seems to be doing a good job of giving each baby one-on-one time and trying to expand on what each baby's good at/enjoying.

Play dates, teeth, and baby signing

We had a playdate yesterday. It was good but A was not in good form. None of us had gotten enough sleep and his teeth were really taking up most of his attention. I don't think he's in great pain, since Tylenol seems to have no effect on his cheerfulness. I can only imagine that he is just preoccupied the way anyone is when they've got something bugging them. I have a partial temporary crown right now that's already popped off once (damn you, almond croissant) and I know my mouth is sore from constantly probing the strange thing in my mouth with my tongue.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to future playdates. It's interesting to see how different babies are at this age. We met with L, who is a month older than A, and Miss M, who is three weeks older than A. They don't play together - other babies are more like other toys than other people. L is a friendly little guy who's already crawling, immediately crawled over me then scaled the vastness of my bosom to stand up. We've seen M off and on; she's happy to scoot around from toy to toy to see what it does. A gets frustrated and complains when he can't go to where he wants to go; he needs an occasional "You're fine, go ahead," from me and then he's smiling again.

I'm trying to decide if we're going to do baby signing or not, since we should start now. It seems like a load of trendy hooey, but my sister had deaf kids in her classes as a baby. She learned some basic ASL (eat, drink, hungry, please, potty) and I know she used it before she could speak. It's supposed to cut down on communication frustration and help explain concepts (the sign for more shows the concept of more, maybe). I just don't know how trendy a mom I want to be.

Oh, and I got Bread and Cie this morning and I got to sleep in, woo hoo. Plus I have a palmier for later today. Sigh.

It's official: we have teeth

There are two tiny pearly teeth just starting to show in the center of Master A's lower gum. Sigh. This does explain how cranky he's been. I know he's supposed to have a cute two-tooth grin, but I really like his toothless big grin. He is continuing to chew on everything and anything he can get his hands on.

What other news? I got his picture taken for six-months which ended up being not great. The photographer made him cry twice, wouldn't show me the shots, and kept ignoring my requests for backgrounds "as plain as possible, please." No, I don't think Autumn Leaves is a good background. No, I don't want him to hug a big faux candy heart that says "HUG ME." I only like my tacky on kitsch mugs, woman, not my baby. She kept getting right up in his face to make him smile and he's just not into having strangers an inch from his nose. He can't stop smiling at everyone who keeps a healthy and respectful distance, so I don't know what her problem was. The photographer told me that she wouldn't be able to review the photos with me since the other guy had to leave and she needed to take more photos, but could I hang around another 15 minutes? Well, see, you made my baby cry and now he's upset, which means I have to walk him around for a while until he gets un-upset. I'll come back with his logical father and we'll buy no pictures. When I leave, the other photo employee peels out in the parking lot, scaring me and the other two moms with strollers. I'm thinking I'll look at the pictures then send a nice letter to corporate about my customer service experience.

We had lunch with C today, which was good, although now that A is high chair able, the state of high chairs in the universe scares me. We got our choice between the high chair with a center post and no straps or the one with straps that were too big and no center post. I've got to research the portable high chair thing (or structured backpack) for Italy.

Swimming, Week...3?

I think it's week three. We skipped a week and that shot all my record keeping to hell.

We had a fun time today in swimming except for submersion. Boy do we hate that. A cried angrily. It's so rare to see him angry like that; it wigs me out. I know he's supposed to learn and blah blah blah but I'm his mom and I hate seeing him mad and crying. The instructor gave him a toy to chew on to cope. He got over it pretty quickly; one of the other babies was having a sad day at the pool.

So let's dwell on the amazing A and his swimming abilities. He kicks and splashes like a pro. He's enjoying swimming. Today I let him float on his back only supporting him with one hand under his head, so he's getting the concept of buoyancy. He really likes the pool, just not going under water. He likes the songs, the splashing, and standing on the ledge of the island in the pool where he can support himself with his hands. He loves that. I discovered this week he was a big fan of "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" and we sang that today in class. Hot diggity dog, he was thrilled. Alas, the instructor only sang it once where I will indulge him twice or more, so he was irritated when we went on to "When you're happy and you know it."

Random baby-weight angst: I don't know if I've introduced the concept here on the blog that the other mommies in my class are drop-dead gorgeous and don't look like they had a cookie in their lives, let alone a baby. C disagrees with me but he doesn't go into the locker room with them. Anyway, I found out today that the most-rail-thin intimidating of them all actually wrote a (published) book on body image, which explains why the heck she's walking around nude so darn casually in the locker room (aside from being rail-thin--if I was that skinny, I might be walking around my neighborhood nude, I'd be so happy). In locker rooms, I try to minimize the amount of time I'm stark naked. This woman walks in, strips down, wanders around, plays a hand of poker--not quite, but you get my drift. She's nice; she's just extremely comfortable with her naked self in the odd public/private place a locker room is. Now I can be intimidated by the fact that she's both happy naked and a published writer (at least it wasn't fiction. I may have cried).

Too much mommy-pudge-angst, back to happy baby news: I think we're going to have teeth pretty soon. I'm going to take him for his six-month picture tomorrow (hopefully) because I think I see and feel something coming through soon in his bottom gum.

And crawling. We're still rocking and army-crawling around, but no actual crawling. A can do a single crawling step and then can't replicate on the other side. He also props himself into a sitting position mid-crawl, which gets distracting for him. But he wants to crawl. I don't know when he'll be crawling, but it's on the horizon.