kissing baby

Every night of Jack's life, Martin has come in and kissed him goodnight. Finally, on day 354, jack kissed him back! A great sloppy French kiss. So much repetition with the baby spuds, and then occasionally this fabulous reward.

He is super into kissing now, and is a master of the open-mouthed kiss. He lies in bed with me some mornings, giving me wet kiss after wet kiss. His friend Owen cam over the other day and all he wanted to do was kiss him (sometimes first softening him up with a head butt, to be completely honest). When reading, he kisses pictures that he particularly likes. Such delight.

holiday in the sun

We are off to Cuba, one last blast before I go back to work at the end of February. I am starting to worry about the return, not much, as I know he will be in good hands with Martin, but more that I will lose this intense closeness and miss out on things. He is so active now, starting to run, and BUSY, things to do, places to be. He has a big shiner, he fell sideways while standing at our coffee table.. poor spud.

Well I started this post in early February and now it's late March.. wow.. Cuba was a blast, Jack was one of the only kids at the resort and everyone knew him by name, it was like being the mother of a celebrity. People would come up to us and admire him, play with him, let slip remarks that revealed that our every move was seen: "wow, that was quite a tumble he took this morning" or "I can't believe he's not afraid of the waves".

He ran everywhere, first thing he did was get covered in sand, even his eyelids and lips, a thick all-over coating, like he had been turned into a sculpture, but he did not complain or fuss at all. He loved running into the waves, just completely reckless and fearless. In Ottawa he had never run outside so this was a whole new level of freedom.

He also showed deliberate naughtiness for the first time which was hilarious. We would put him in his travel crib -all mesh sides - for a nap, but he could see us lying on the bed, so would start to wave at us - perfect waves, like royalty, waves that he never does on command. When we would tell him to lie down, he would lie down but press his face against the mesh so he looked like he was wearing a stocking over his face and smile at us. It would take him ages to settle down, even with us refusing to interact with him, and trying not to laugh.

Given that he's still on two naps a day, we were not very adventurous. Our routine was breakfast, beach, nap (one of us presiding, while the other got Free Time to swim, drink delicious coffees, read, loll about), lunch, beach, nap (the other presiding) beach or pool, supper, bed. We often ended up going to bed at 8:30 ourselves as we couldn't leave him alone in the room. All in all very relaxing.

The way home was a crazy unnecessarily long 11 hour journey, including an hour trapped on the plane on the ground in Cancun, where he ran up and down the aisles risking head injury at every step. Because over half the plane had been at our resort, people were very nice when he started to fuss. I guess he'd proved himself as a basically 'good' baby on the flight down and over the week.

Back home there was a hideous line at the airport and it was 10:30 and he started to scream. Some other people in the line encouraged us to go ahead, so we went over to the empty 'Diplomats and Airline Staff' lineup. The Customs officer - who was doing Nothing to help her incredibly overworked colleagues- gave us a lecture and said we had no right to be there, and that we were queue-jumping. True. I pointed out (while aiming his wailing mouth at her head) that he was disturbing the entire echoing room full of tired passengers, and that many of them had encouraged us to leave the queue. She finally let us through. Meanwhile there was a poor woman with such bad food poisoning that she had been put on the plane in a wheelchair, stuck back in the queue, all hunched over. Do they do no sort of triage at all?? It doesn't bother me if elderly/infirm/sick/people with upset kids go ahead of me.

I was thinking about how often my first negative impression of a country is formed on arrival when dealing with authoritarian, obsessively rule-bound bureaucratic passport/customs officers, and realized that that would be the same impression a new arrival to Ottawa would get.

Anyhow, that hiccup aside, a gorgeous holiday.

11 months yesterday

What he does now:

walks, has moved from Frankenstein lurching walk to fast walking, still quite a few falls, but what graceful falls..

when asked 'where's your tummy?' he slaps his belly, most cute when he is in the bath so you can see the full roundness of his dimensions.

points at the light, even if we just mention the word in conversation.

has made up his own sign for 'finished' - basically washing his hands.

is really into the breast and grabs at my shirt to get at the goods - unfortunately just as my return-to-work is looming.

is still obsessed with Hello Kitty ( a plastic mechanical toy that skips rope) but slightly less so.

throws the remote on the floor so that the battery case falls off, then throws it again so that the batteries fall out.

tries to open every possible kind of container -shampoo, pot, tupperware, lotion, his bottles.

is starting to get very stroppy when he can't get his own way.

likes to try to hold three spoons, his bottle and feed himself with his hand, all at the same time.

getting so much better all the time

Latest Theory:

My latest theory (actually perhaps not latest, perhaps I have already proposed this in these e-pages?? god knows, my memory is shot) is that we/the west suffers from a progressive view of history.. okay that part is not mine, but my specific application of the theory is mine.. Basically we think things just improve and get better -the empancipation of slaves, women, no more wars involving our soldiers/civilians (or maybe that should be no more wars threatening our territory), introduction of the welfare state, creation of new, more diverse multicultural communities, etc.. This translates in the parent world into the baby growing ever larger, eating a little bit more each day, saying a few more words each month, geting more and more adept. Of course this is largely true, but there are all sorts of relapses - babies stop eating or eat less, forget their new words, forget abilities they once had. But the Western parent, obsessed with progress, finds this hard to deal with.. 'but, but, she was eating last week, now just back to the boob', 'i swear he can say 'cup' i swear, he could, he just did, really. Really'.

Latest Cute Thing:

Martin usually gets out of bed when Jack wakes. Martin goes and gets a few more winks in the spare bedroom while I feed and baby wrangle Jack (he likes to try to stand/crawl/bounce while at the breast, somewhat challenging, especially as I like to keep the room dark in case he falls back to sleep.. as he did yesterday lying on my neck with his back against my mouth (!) but I digress).

The other day the brilliant boy slept until 7:30 instead of his usual 5:55, so Martin stayed in the bed and as soon as Jack had had some milk, he rolled over, kissed Martin, lay cheek to cheek with him, then rolled over, kissed me and lay cheek to cheek with me, and kept this alternate cuddling up for quite a while. Lovely.

lull.. 10+ months

I am tired, fatigued, worn out by Christmas and the weird quietness of after-Christmas, feeling I have not accomplished much.. amazing how just getting through the day can take most of my energy.. anyhow.. on a more positive note..

THE BOY..

can walk! (but often chooses not to).. it started just after he turned 9 months, M witnessed the first steps, and a week later, I too saw him take several steps in a row, very exciting/moving. Now he judges things, if he thinks it's too far, he crawls, otherwise he walks.. he walks! HE WALKS!

still thinks 'Mama, mama' is a form of complaint.

is into dancing, especially Chuck Berry but also Hi-5, a dancing, MTV for babies show.

is very happy.

is chubby-faced, and chubby-thighed, and was 23 full-figured pounds at his 9th month checkup..

can say 'cup'.

can point to both a picture of a mouth and a real mouth.
is currently trying to unplug the computer

See, I feel better. I have accomplished something. I have written a few words, I have documented a tiny bit of the crazy-busy-crawling-cruising-laughing-drumming-throwing-whirling dervish that I brought into the world 10 months and 4 days ago.

latest sweetest things

The other night, as I gave him his final feed, he struggled up (against my attempts to shush/restrain him) and grabbed my face and kissed me, twice. The fact that his kisses are still open mouthed kisses made it even sweeter.

The love affair with himself continues. If being held in parental arms, and he catches sight of himself in the mirror, he jiggles and thrashes his whole body in delight. One night in Spain, when it was clear that he was wide awake, after half an hour of trying to calm him down with the lights off, after many failed shushes and rockings, I turned on the light. There was a mirror by the bed and when he saw himself, he flung out his arms in delight.

He says 'mama'. Sadly, he thinks 'mama' means 'I'm frustrated, I'm bored, I'm just not that happy'.

Stair climbing with toys in both hands.

In the bath with me, tries to climb out, eat soap, suck on shampoo bottles.

At a baby party the other day - where none of the other babies were mobile and a lovely ungated staircase beckoned - he tried to eat dog food, got the heating grates out of the floor, and headed for the stairs countless times. Needless to say I did not get to engage much with the other mums, who all sat and got to eat their lunch. I rather prefer baby parties for the mobile crowd.. I notice that the adults tend to sit around the edge and all collectively try to fend off disaster in a rather abstracted way, rather than the immobile baby crowd, where all sit at a table holding onto their respective babies.. How quickly things change, I wish Jack had not learned to crawl so early, but on the other hand it is very fun.

When with his friend Eliane - a day younger, and almost identical in weight/height/charm and ability, he laughs and laughs. The other day he was chasing her while crawling and they were both giggling.

Likes to clap hands, and then gets carried away and slaps himself on the sides of his head.

Starting to be constructive occasionally rather than solely destructive. Tries to stack things, or put things in a larger container - the operative word being 'tries'.

sleep glorious sleep

woah, woah, wooah... so much has changed in the last Freaking two months.. where has the time gone?? Actually I do know where the time went.. in travel, usual domestic mayhem, and (for the last three weeks) in delicious sleep..

Jack is now 8 months.. he's crawling and cruising and has been for most of the last two months.. also very jovial, very busy and a real handful.. into everything, especially Dangerous Things.

We were in England for a month, staying with family and friends (nine different houses in all) we had a great time hiking, drinking, eating and chatting. During this the spud ended up co-sleeping a lot, and for whatever reason (change of rooms, proximity to the milk-delight being the obvious top two) he started to wake a LOT, like six or seven times a night, and then I would nurse him to go back to sleep so that he would not wake our hosts. Needless to say I was a bit tired. Plus very few of our houses had 'baby proof' houses and Jack was very mobile, so a lot of active baby-care was needed to save their houses from chaos, and to save Jack from burning, electrocution, falling, pulling priceless vases onto his priceless head, and other dangers. (Even with all our vigilance, he usually has a row of bruises across his poor little forehead.)

That said, it was fun to see people, and we would have been doing the babyminding anyway, so it was fun to do it with new conversation, great food, and the usual English diligence in wine consumption. The spud even made it to Spain, where he was very much a cafe baby,lying back in his stroller in the sun, indulging in crispy bread, and being cossetted by the waiters. So all in all a good trip.

On our return, however, I decided that sleep training was in order, egged on by two friends who had successfully done it, and who kept counselling 'short term pain, long term gain'. Well, after three days of stoking up our energy to do it, and then choking at the last minute, we finally Implemented the Plan -the plan being letting him cry for progressively longer intervals, but going in to remind him that we were there, and check on him. The first cry came at 1:00, and I had to go in about 4 or 5 times over the next 45 minutes, to confront his accusing, sobbing little face clearly asking (ok, yelling) 'what have you done to me, why don't you love me?? why have you abandoned me, you evil excuse of a mother'. I would mutter some vague platitudes like 'I love you, you're fine, really, you just have to 'learn' to go to sleep, you'll be fine, you'd thank me in the morning if you were capable of remembering this', and lie him down, and stroke his little head, and then I would leave, hearing him struggling back to his feet, grabbing the bars and screaming even louder.

After 10 minutes of hearing the crying (but not even having seen the angry, heartmelting face) Martin knuckled under and wanted to stop. I, being the parental tough-ass, refused, and we made it through the long, looong 45 minutes of crying.. but, dear reader, the spud did fall asleep at long (did I mention loooong) last, and woke the next time for only 8 minutes, and basically since then he has been happily sleeping at least 10 hours a night ever since. The knock-on effect is that I have been happily sleeping at least 7 hours a night (in a ROW) ever since, the first time in a full freaking year. Yes, I do look fabulously youthful and glamorous, thanks for asking.

In other news, it's fall, we have been walking a lot of course, even hiking with Baby-in-the-Backpack, but it's getting cold and I'm getting worried about winter - how warm are these baby snowsuits? is it fair to drag the poor kid around in the minus-20s?

Lots else to stay but the spud is stirring, so I'd best go.