Post 200

How's our boy doing? Well, he and I just crawled up the stairs together. He laughed uproariously the whole way. We were chasing Jake.

We had our nine-month-checkup yesterday that had been rescheduled twice. He's 20 pounds, 11 ounces and 28 inches long, which makes him average for weight and short. The pediatrician says not to worry about it; he's fine and right on track. He had to have a hemoglobin test (which was fine) and the last of his Hep B vaccine. He didn't cry for either. It was amazing.

He's also now up to three solid food meals a day and starting to eat real people food. We fed him a mushy, cut up banana this morning and he thought we were loony. He looked horrified by the texture. This is what he eats: Sweet potatoes, bananas, pears, apples, carrots, winter squash, and yes, even peas. They're not his favorite but he's becoming reconciled. The doctor says we're okay to introduce other foods that don't have us hopping about allergy fears: wheat-free/corn-free O-cereal, yogurt, cheese, meat, tofu. The wheat and corn we can discuss at the one-year visit; nuts, shellfish, berries, and citrus are off the table until two without further discussion with the doctor.

The nurse goes through a series of questions when we walk in, and one of them was, "Does he respond to his name and 'No'?" Well, yes, he laughs hysterically when we say "No." That is a response. Consistency, consistency, consistency.

Other notes: I had a visit to grown-up land. The surly (and I mean surly) office worker who checked me out told me there was absolutely no appointment first thing in the morning for the month surrounding his birthday for his one-year visit. "Is that okay?"

Well, I'd like something first thing in the morning because then my husband can accompany me.

Don't have anything. Okay. She hands me a card and it's for 8/22, which is three months from yesterday and much closer to his 13 month than 12 month.

"Could I have something closer to his birthday?" I asked.

She hemmed and hawed. "Well, see, it's pretty full, and it is three months from today."

I went out into the hall and pushed the elevator button and thought about how annoyed I was that they had rescheduled this visit twice and how much I would be pissed off if they rescheduled his 12 month for two or three weeks later. So I went back in and said, "Actually, I'm sorry, but I would really like an appointment closer to his birthday." I didn't yell; I didn't scream; I didn't get bitchy. I asked nicely for an appointment and I got one. Now if I'm smart, I'll call ahead to schedule the next visit for first-thing in the morning.

Look at me, whining whining whining

Since this blog is ostensibly about the boychik, I should have blogged about Mother's Day.

Mother's Day here was grand. I didn't sleep in, but C and A went on a grand tour for the morning that included the grocery store, the French bakery, the coffee shop, and the beautiful open-air flower stand up the street. During this time, I took a nap on the couch with both cats. I had an almond croissant and a chai latte for breakfast, followed by a day of hanging out and idly looking at open houses in the OB/Point Loma area (none of which we would buy or consider buying just because they weren't...us), and then we had goat cheese with goat cheese and garlic bread for dinner. It was a fabulous day.

There's a story about two Jews who meet (I think it's a Hasidic story) and ask how it's going. The first one says, "Oh, it's terrible. My kids are sick, my wife is mean, my job is a mess, my life is awful." And God's watching and says, "Awful? I'll show you awful."

So the second one says, "Well, my life is great. Everyone's healthy, everyone's happy, I can't imagine my life more wonderful than it is right now." And God's still watching and says, "Wonderful? I'll show you wonderful."

Drywall not dry

We had a leak in our showerhead joint that caused rain in our downstairs bathroom. The nice (super nice, actually) plumbers came and fixed it yesterday, and today the drywall guy came. But the drywall guy pointed out to me that there was:

1. at least one soggy wall, mushy enough to sink my thumb into
   
2. a mildew, moldy smell
3. both green and black mold

All of these things made him reluctant to install drywall. So off I trotted to Home Depot to get drying crystals (although I'm not tall enough to install them) and a mold test kit (which they didn't have). In a couple days, we'll get an estimate on ripping out all the moldy/wet drywall in the bathroom and getting it replaced. It's just not a lot of fun.

Peas and swimming

Well, our food loving ways stopped with peas. Yup, peas. A was game for a couple bites, then tried to scrape off his tongue. So we went back to sweet potatoes, bananas, and pears.

The kid doesn't like green veggies. He is my boy, that's for sure.

We're not force-feeding him, learning from my in-laws who force-fed C when he was a wee thing and then C threw up in his dad's bucket seat.

We went to our new swim class, which only has one other person, an 18-month-old named Rachel. Rachel is (obviously) walking and waving and things like that, but in terms of actual swimming prowess, she's not doing much more than A. She's jumping in the pool, sometimes not when she's supposed to jump in the pool. So I was relieved that A suddenly wasn't going to be in a class where he's completely outpaced by someone 9 months older. He did not have a rockin' time, though; less kids means more submersions and he was unprepared for all the submersions. But he did well.

Oh, and it rained in our downstairs bathroom yesterday. Yes, in the bathroom.

Random playdate

We had a random playdate today, which was good. One of our moms is going to Arkansas this weekend, so we rescheduled for her.

A is eating food now like it's going out of style. He's been averaging a small jar and a half of food per meal, a pretty good leap from nothing but nursing in Italy. I had to do a Whole Foods run this afternoon to get more food. C taught him how to get the hang of eating off a spoon. I don't know how, but he did. So feeding is suddenly a lot less messy.

So far, he's had sweet potatoes, bananas, and pears. The next thing we'll probably introduce: peas. He hasn't disliked anything so far, although he disliked sweet potatoes after bananas. But he seems to really like bananas.

In the category of you knew it was going to happen...

Today's the day A discovered a box of tissues and emptied about half of it before I could turn around and say, "Hey there, sport."

Yesterday was the day we fed A sweet potatoes after bananas and he decided he no longer liked sweet potatoes. He made a Calvin face that would have made Terry very proud (Terry having the best Calvin face I know of, in an pseudo-adult, anyway). That was a rookie mistake of our first meal with mixed foods. Next time, fruit last.

9 o'clock and all is well

Mostly, anyway. C is trying to rock A back to sleep as part of ongoing efforts to get A to sleep without Mommy. I'm still getting over my ick but I'm improved.

We went baby gate shopping this weekend. The baby superstore is frightening, but they had the best gates, unfortunately. I got winded somewhere on our walk. I hate being sick.


We'll be at loose ends tomorrow since we switched swimming days and now our class is on Fridays instead of Mondays. But I'm still feeling pretty crappy so I don't think that's a bad thing this week.

My doctor's visit

I'm doing better. I've got bronchitis. I haven't had it long enough yet for my doctor to prescribe antibiotics, and since I'm still breastfeeding my drugs are limited to certain OTCs and an inhaler, just like when I got bronchitis when I was preggo.

Anyway, I got a lot of sleep last night. C did an amazing job of taking care of A quickly when A woke up so that I only had to wake up to feed A. And then I was only half-awake. I think he even took A away quickly after he'd eaten, which doesn't always happen and sometimes we just all drift back to sleep.

A is terribly interested in books today. He has now gone through all the books we keep for him in a basket on the floor and is now trying to fit into the basket.

No doctor's visit today

The stupid office people at the pediatrician's drive me nutso.

We didn't get a confirmation call yesterday, so this morning I called to confirm our appointment this morning. Oh, no, the pediatrician's not here today. Did you need an appointment? Well, yes, I had an appointment for this morning.

Oh, no, she's not here. Let me see when I can get you in. This is his nine month check-up?
Yes.
When will he be nine months?
Last week.
Okay. Well, the earliest I can get you in is two weeks from now, since well care appointments need to be made two to three months in advance.

Let me jump through the phone and throttle you. Yes, I know that, woman; that's why I made the appointment at the end of January for today, which apparently was a bad day or became a bad day and nobody bothered to reschedule us. So just make the damn appointment for whenever the hell we can get in because I know we're at the mercy of the all-mighty scheduling book.

This meant that C could go to "work." Today "work" is in quotes because "work" today consists of the first screening of a certain blockbuster movie opening today and a Cinco de Mayo party. Gotta love his job.

Cranky cranky cranky

I am sick. Nose running like a faucet, coughing like I've been smoking three packs of the Devil's cigarettes, and a headache to boot. When I called the doctor to make an appointment, she said, "My goodness, it sounds like you've got a whistle caught in your throat." But she couldn't get me in until today.

Yesterday C stayed home with me since I was sick. Last night, I couldn't sleep due to a combination of coughing and non-drowsy drugs. I got an hour and a half at one point, broken when A needed to eat.

These are the days when I don't feel like a mom but a teenage vagrant who mysteriously has a baby. I don't want to be the typical fabulous selfless mom who slaps on some lipstick and goes about her daily routine cheerily. I want to climb back into bed with a cat or two and give the baby to anyone willing to keep him quiet for a couple hours. This is, in short, a bad mom day.

Also on an extended note, Master A's started banging his head when he's tired, against my collarbone or C's shoulder. This is a possible sign of autism and has me slightly worried. Thankfully, we have our nine month visit tomorrow and the doctor can reassure me. All the Googling in the universe tells me that it's not uncommon for babies, particularly boys, to develop head banging behaviors in the second half of the first year for self-soothing. God knows this week we've had sleep adjustments up the wazoo with nine hours of time zones.

But still, I'll feel better when I've talked to our pediatrician about it. Growing up with my sister, we had the mantra of "early detection, early intervention," drummed into our brains about any kind of disorder or disability. So if he's got something, I want to know sooner rather than later. This is when I need to go to the grocery store to reassure myself that he's still a sociable little being. Every time we go to the store, people stop me to tell me what a smiley baby I have. "He still seems engaged with people, right?" I ask C, who looks at me like I have three heads. Yes, he says. Look at him smile at you. Look at him laugh. He's okay.

Jet lag

Jet lag is just no fun for anyone. We'd been moving to increasingly later bedtimes until C came home last night and found A and I asleep on the couch together. He put A to bed and when I woke up, I went to bed too. Then we all got up at 3 or 4 this morning and drove aimlessly trying to put the boy to sleep.

So we're tired. But I found quizzes.

Your Birthdate

You're a dynamic, charismatic person who's possibly headed for fame. You tend to charm strangers easily. And you usually can get what you want from them. Verbally talented, you tend to persuade people with your speaking and writing. You are affectionate and loving, but it's hard for you to commit to any one relationship. Your strength: Your charm Your weakness: Your extreme manipulation tactics Your power color: Indigo Your power symbol: Four leaf clover Your power month: December

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Italy: an overview

I just started trying to write a trip report and it's just going to take too long. So I thought I'd write a brief summary of where we went and hope that would satisfy people for now.

Places we went:

• Florence - Duomo, the Duomo Museum, the Bapistry, the Accademia, Santa Croce, the Uffizi Gallery, the Ponte Vecchio, the Medici Chapels, the Straw Market, the Piazza dei Signorina, the Uffizi Loggia, and our own Piazza dei Annunziata.
• Vernazza in the Cinque Terre
  
• Pisa - the Field of Miracles, but we just looked at the outsides of the Leaning Tower and the Duomo before skedaddling. We didn't like Pisa.
  
• Tuscany: San Giminano, Siena, Monteriggiano, Pienza, Volterra. We went into the Duomos of most places.
• Rome: the Campo dei Fiori, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Piazza Novena, the Colosseum, the Forum, Palentine Hill, the Borghese Gallery, St. Peter's, and the Vatican Museum, including the Sistine Chapel.

Things we learned:

• Italians love babies. They passionately love babies. They shower babies with affection. A ate it up.
  
• Carrying your baby gets you special treatment. Places with ridiculous amounts of stairs sent us to the elevator; we were waved through security checkpoints and X-ray machines. I was tapped firmly on the shoulder at the Sistine Chapel and told to follow a security guard. I thought I was in trouble. He walked me over to a bench (most of the Sistine is standing room only aside from benches in one corner), unseated a man, and sat me down.
  
• Most Italians have not seen a baby carried in a wrap and so they're fascinated by it and thrilled to talk to the baby face-to-face. A now smiles when you say, "Ciao, bambino!" to him.
• Packing light is a wonderful thing. We had two carry-on sized bags and a day bag, plus the car seat. That was grand for traveling. I wore a shirt/skirt combo or a dress every day and that was fine.
  
• Those mesh packing cubes that seem like an incredible waste of money are fabulous. Everyone had a cube for their clothes: me, C, A. When you're going from town to town pretty regularly, it keeps you organized and makes the repacking easier. We had some other things in ordinary Ziplock plastic bags, and they were too slippery to make for good packing.
• At some point, you have to stop swabbing everything your baby touches with an antibacterial wipe.
  

It was amazing to have a baby with us in Italy. In the US, I often feel like I'm apologizing for having my baby with me unless it is a patently kid-friendly place, like the Zoo. He yells or squeals in a restaurant and we've got him out of the room quickly.

In Italy, it was like everyone was related to us. Everyone (with one exception in the entire country) was thrilled to see him. He yelled in museums and churches and people still cooed and called him beautiful, asked about his weight, his teething. In Italy, they expected babies to be babies and didn't care when he made noise. It was amazing how much that added to my enjoyment of life. I'm not suggesting the US goes baby-crazy, but it was certainly a refreshing two weeks.

Bellisimo piccolino!

We are home and currently suffering from sleeplessness. This is what happens when you go across nine time zones.

Everything was fabulous; Italians love, love, love babies and they loved, loved, loved A. I felt like royalty: crowds parted, people cooed and waved, people on buses hopped up like they'd been stuck with pins to give me and A a seat, guards ushered us to private elevators and seats in every museum we went to.

I've gone from thinking you must be crazy to take a baby to Italy to thinking you absolutely must take a baby to Italy to experience Italy at its best. Trip report will follow once I've downloaded pictures; my 4 gig card was insufficient and we had to buy another gig for Rome.

Packing packing packing

I am pleased to report that we are mostly (90%) packed for Italy and we don't leave until Wednesday morning. The luggage count still stands at two carry-on bags and a small backpack, plus car seat. Please compare to the luggage count for Christmas to be awed by the improvement in our mad packing skills.

Saturday I had a pedicure, then we ran around doing last-minute trip stuff, like getting a couple new toys for A for the plane and getting a self-stuffing jacket for C.

Easter was low-key with J&T but surprisingly good: ham, mashed potatoes, broiled pineapple with brown sugar. Sunday morning, A woke us up horribly: pulling on hair, crying, yelling. Then he waved at us for the first time. That kid knows how to ladle out a little sugar with his crankiness to keep us from BBQ-ing him.

Today's plan: swim class and last-minute errands like getting a key made for the pet sitter, picking up minor things, and stopping our mail service. If we can just finish our taxes before we leave the country, we'll be set.

The Poop Post

You've been warned.

We met a pet sitter, went to the Zoo, had a happy morning, yadda yadda. A is particularly smiley and happy today.

Then A pooped more than I think he's ever pooped. It was not contained by the diaper or the onesie (Hanna freaking Andersson, of course, because he only has blow-outs in Hanna freaking Andersson, not the cheap stuff) and was barely contained by the pants. It was the first time he's been so filthy that I just put him in the bathtub instead of trying to wipe him up.

We had a bath, cleaned him up, and fifteen minutes later we have another poop blow-out (in Old Navy, not Hanna).

Fine. I wipe him up, get him dressed in outfit number 3 (resale, so we're safe, right?), and we play. He's standing and teething on everything and is happy. We play Superman, where I hold him over my head horizontally and cheer him on. He's laughing and giggling and boy is the world a fabulous place when he's laughing.

He spits up all over my face.

Travel Crib and Sleep Deprivation

Happy April! There's nothing like April to make you say, "Wow, we're leaving the country in less than two weeks; we better get a move on."

We actually completed a dry-run of packing this weekend. At this time, it looks like we'll be traveling with two carry-on bags and a day bag (and no more). Well, the car seat, but we think we can hook that over our rolling bag.

Most of our clothes and toiletries are all within one bag, if you can believe that. The other bag is mostly consumed by the travel crib. We've used the travel crib with middling success when we went to Denver last month and began having the debate about its usefulness Saturday.

"Let's try it out," C said, and I said okey-dokey, knowing full well that A has been sleepless this week and it's about the worst time to try a sleep experiment.

Except that he slept brilliantly in the travel crib.

So we tried it again last night, and again, he slept soundly and peacefully in the travel crib.

Now the travel crib is definitely going.

Eight months old

Young Master A has been around for eight months. Amazing, no?

This has been a long hard week of teething. We got one night of good sleep in the middle and then poof, no sleep the rest of the week. Last night wasn't too bad. We've been dosing him with Tylenol, which he likes, happily.

Monday we had swim class, where A did super, as always. He likes to drink the pool water (bad) but he is starting to close his mouth when we cue him that he's going into the water (great). There's no class next week for spring break.

Also on Monday, A decided he knew how to scale things. One day, he's completely horizontal and the next day, poof, he's vertical. He's moving somewhat from side to side, but he's now looking to get over things, like the side of the crib or the bins I set up as barricades. I'm trying to teach him how to get off the couch safely (feet first) but he still wants to go head first. All the other babies we hang out with do that too; I don't know why.

He decided he knew how to crawl. After months and months of crawling with the one, two, inchworm rhythm, he started cross-crawling on Monday. Now he's wicked fast. We need some baby gates.

We had a baby playdate yesterday. Half the moms I know are moving within the next year or two. That's sad for me; I really like them. Hopefully, we'll all keep in touch. It's been fun to watch the babies grow in all their different ways together.

Now if A could get those teeth through so we can all get some sleep...

Writing Class, Workshop Style

Writing class means every week we read one or two people's work (the euphemism for "don't know what the hell it is yet but I had to have some text to come to class") and then we talk about some other aspect of writing, like character development or plot or style or dialogue.

This class is a "breaking into fiction" class. It's for people who haven't written much before. I am not sure that I am the target audience for this class, but it's also good for me to be able to moderate the level of the challenge for class myself. Like this week, we're supposed to write a scene in the style of our favorite author. First, I have a hard time picking a favorite author, so I'll just pick from the ones I like the most. I could do Roald Dahl pretty easily, but I've opted to try Wodehouse instead. I'm not worthy of attempting, say, Toni Morrison. See? Self-moderated challenge. (By the way, the Wodehouse went okay but not great. Wodehouse is hard. Funny is hard.)

My fiction class has the same old people who are in everyone's fiction class. We've got the people who are weathered and grizzly and taking this class to write about their own lives. We've got the fan girl who follows this teacher from class to class. We've got the girl from the Peace Corps who has many interesting stories to tell and wants to tell them. We have the mommy who's taking the class to have something adult to do (that's me). And we have the prat.

In my past life, I ended up becoming a pretty decent (and harsh) copyeditor. I hack and slash with the best of them. I didn't realize how technical I had become about good writing until I started doing serious editing. But what I learned is that nobody (except the serious writers) wants every detail the editor has to offer. It's too much for most people.

I turn off my copyeditor brain when I read stories for class. I'm not talking about punctuation or typos, although I do mark the random typo from time to time. I'm talking about basic Elements of Style stuff. Why? Because Elements of Style is so simple that nobody does it all well, at least not in a "Breaking into Fiction" class.

This gets us back to the prat. The prat is the person who introduced himself at the first class as "specializing in sci-fi/fantasy, currently shopping my novel around to agents." Whoop de freaking do, sir. Get back to me when you sell the damn thing. The prat, having a novel that he's "marketing," feels the need to comment on all the Elementsof Style stuff, plus typos, plus ripping whatever story is there to shreds because, hey, that's how you learn, right?

I think it's crappy, especially when I don't see any signs of brilliance in his edits. Being a good writer does not make you a good editor.

Anyway, I submitted a short story (but only five pages, since, you know, people don't have time to read 15 pages) and I didn't get much feedback at all, which I don't know if that's a good sign. It was raining and I believe most people in SoCal turn their brains off when it's raining and they have to drive; maybe they didn't turn their brains back on. Maybe they didn't have any places for hack-and-slash improvement. I don't know. I used the word "genitalia" at one point in the story and someone commented that I shouldn't use the euphemism, which just made me laugh. I think anyone who knows me would have a hard time accusing me of holding back on a vulgar or obscene word out of shyness or prissiness.

There you go. Taking the class makes me think I need to do something to keep my editorial brain primed. We've got one left this week and that will be it. I'm not seeing anything that I'm terribly interested in for the next round (at least, not that I won't miss significant sections of for Bella Italia), but I'll definitely try a class again on some other level. Maybe not so much the workshopping.

The TV Experiment

As some of you may or may not know, due to interpretation of a pain-in-the-ass HOA as a possible sign from the greater things on heaven and earth that we may dream of, we jettisoned our TV service at the beginning of this month No, we're not going to carve a sofa out of wood or start making our own clothes out of hemp. Yes, I know all HOAs are a pain in the ass.

I was really worried that I would be jonesing for a TV fix, if not Heroes or House (sigh, House), then at least an Oprah snack every once in a while. But it's been surprisingly easy to live without TV. It feels like we have much more time. We're getting Netflix movies and we watch those from time to time; I've been watching our West Wing collection while A and I go to recuperative nurse/nap mode. I've read about three times the number of books I normally do in a week. So far, the experiment's going well.

I have three blog entires going...

...and I'm going to ignore them all and start this one.

We haven't fallen off the face of the earth. A has been teething, a fact confirmed this week when C and I noticed at least one and possibly two teeth making their way through A's upper gum. He has been cranky and not sleeping well. The teething has been making A's gums hurt, which then makes him latch funny during breastfeeding, which means we've all been cranky here. There was a day last week when I heard myself say, "Oh, you're going to be weaned today if this keeps up." He's been nursing back on the 2-3 hour schedule for most of this week, which makes me cranky (and sore, right now--I had to dig out my tube of lanolin in your TMI moment of the blog).

We've been cranky, but still going through our normal routines. Swim class is super; A is really enjoying it. We've spent a lot of time walking through both the Zoo and Balboa Park in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Italy. I must look like a raving lunatic since I'm talking to myself with my Italian lessons in my ear. "D'ove il museo nazionale? E veccino? No, e ladro." (They are tapes, people, not books, so the Italian is completely as I hear it and wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.)

We've had playdates, one at Miss M's and one here. Of course, we vacuumed and prepared upstairs and everyone wanted to be downstairs. Why? I have no idea. I need to ask someone if the litter box really drove them out. We try not to be the "oh, you have cats" people but the cats do need to go.

A played with his first flashlight this week (part of mommy babyproofing the computer) and has started standing up next to things. His crawl isn't more than it ever was; I'm wondering if he's going to move straight to walking.

For those of you concerned about the state of the Mommy, I've been having grown-up time: my first pedicure since A made his appearance (lovely, going back there in two weeks), writing class (another blog entry, languishing in the draft box), and the plumeria society (which is having a cutting sale in another two weeks). The Daddy had a great review (he's modest, but I'm going to check my sources to confirm that he's understating the coolness of his review) at his kick-ass job and if he gets some sleep he'll be doing great.