A Week in Florida

As I type this (on my iPhone, to be posted whenever I next connect to the Internet and pictures to be added later), I'm hovering somewhere over mid-America on my way to San Francisco for a conference. I have a talk to give tomorrow morning and I was rehearsing it until my computer battery died. My iPhone battery is extremely low, but I really have nothing else to entertain myself with. Might as well catch up with blogging, right?

This past week, J and I have been visiting his family in Florida. (In fact, he and Squeakles are still there now without me. Sniffle. More on that later.) As usual, we had a very leisurely time. We slept in every morning until 10 am - even Squeakles! We would get up and have breakfast, play with Squeakles, put Squeakles down for a nap and take advantage of that time to shower, and then in the later afternoon we would finally get around to deciding what to do with the day (if anything). One afternoon (which turned into evening) we went to downtown Orlando to walk around Lake Eola and see the birds (egrets, ducks and baby chicks, black swans, white swans, and some other cool bird I can't remember the name of), and then we went out for gelato.

Another day we went to the zoo where Squeakles was most interested in the snakes (probably because they were easier to see than the other animals hidden in their cages).

And in the evenings we got together with J's brother and sisters to watch movies (Ironman) or just hang out. Last night we played Wii games and I was reminded of just how hilarious J and his siblings are. I might have tried karaoke myself (Rock Band) if they hadn't put on such a show that I just couldn't bring myself to follow them. Instead I just laughed my head off listening to them and holding Squeakles as he threw himself into the fun. He was dancing as best he could - shaking his body and wildly waving his arms up and down - and babbling whatever sounds he could as if he was trying to sing too. But the absolute funniest was when he started pointing his finger up into the air, usually whenever J would hit a particularly screechy high note. He would stretch out his little body as he stood up, point up into the air, and then open his hand like he was a superstar. And J's parents and his brother would do the same point in the air from the couch, and Squeakles couldn't get enough of it.

I also had the chance to try out a couple more baby food recipes from a cookbook Ianqui gave me. I made a cheesy chicken dish with carrots and broccoli, and minty mashed potatoes with peas (surprisingly good actually). Both were good enough that I might make larger amounts in the future so J and I can have some too. For breakfasts I cut up fruits - bananas, cherries, peaches, apples, and pears. We also bought some jarred food, which was easy to bring along and be able to feed him something whenever we went out to eat.) For some reason, though, people often react with confusion (I think that's what it is?) when they see that I'm making food for Squeakles, not really understanding why I want to spend time preparing food when I could just buy it in jars. But I have so many reasons for doing it, that I am surprised by their reaction. First of all, have you ever smelled jarred baby food? If it's not fruit, it smells like Spaghetti O's. All of it, regardless of what the mixture actually contains. I want Squeakles to experience a real variety of flavors and get used to eating different foods. Second, jarred food does have somewhat lower nutrient value - the food is heated at such high temperatures so that it can be jarred without preservatives and yet not spoil, and in the process, some of the nutrients are lost. (Of course, Squeakles eats so much that it probably doesn't matter.) And finally, I LIKE to do it! I enjoy cooking! And so that's why I wanted to do it even on my vacation. (This is not to say that they all thought I was crazy for doing it. I think J's mom especially understood. But J thinks I try to do too much and he views cooking food for Squeakles as something maybe I shouldn't try so hard to keep up with.)

But anyway, there won't be any cooking this weekend. I'm off on a trip without Squeakles now for four days. I really dreaded leaving him and was teary last night thinking about it (though I managed the goodbye today just fine). Now, on the plane, I have this lingering ache and I hate the thought of not seeing him for this long! I know I'll be busy and it will be so much easier to focus on this conference without him there, so I know I made the right choice not to bring him. But it doesn't really make me miss him any less.

One thing I am really going to miss is the sleeping. After a difficult November of trying to get him to sleep more than 2-3 hours at a time (followed by me or J spending half an hour or more each time in his room trying to get him back to sleep, or letting him cry), we finally gave up and brought him back to our bed. We let him sleep with us at my parent's house, at my grandmother's house, at my friend Chiaroscuro's house, and finally this past week at J's parents' house. The alternative would have been to have him cry it out in all of these places, always starting over in a new environment. And we just didn't want to have that many sleepless crying-filled nights, and neither did we want to inflict this on the people we were staying with.

What's fascinating to me is that Squeakles sleeps so well when he's in our bed. It's not that he can't sleep or needs to nurse to to back to sleep. He just wants our presence. Now he can sleep for several hours straight, or even when he does stir, he goes back to sleep so easily and I don't have to get up or hear him cry!

Around 9:30 or later, I nurse him and he usually falls asleep so that I can just lay him down by himself while I stay up longer. (I'll probably work on making this earlier once we're back home and J and I have to be on a regular work schedule.) If he doesn't sleep, I lay with him and we listen to music until be stops playing with my face and falls asleep. Then around 1 am he wakes up crying and we take him into bed with us. I don't actually nurse him then - I just lie next to him cuddling a little and he goes right back to sleep. He then sleeps until at least 4 with only really minor wakings in between (if that happens, I just have to shhhhh a couple times or give him the pacifier). I nurse him at that time and he goes right back to sleep and I don't have to get up and force myself to stay awake in the glider chair! He sometimes wakes up one more time or sleeps throught until 10-ish. And then he wakes up in a great mood, making quiet sounds and lightly touching my face to wake me up.

I really look forward to nights now! I get to cuddle with J while Squeakles is still sleeping by himself, and then I get to cuddle with my baby for the rest of the night, and NOT in the glider chair, half-awake! (At ten months old, he's much easier to sleep with than when he was five months old.). The only problem with this sleeping arrangement is that we'll have to transition him back to his crib eventually (assuming we have another child), and I worry about how that will go. But he does sleep alone for naps and he goes to bed alone at night. Maybe as he gets older, he'll sleep longer in his crib and eventually it will turn into all night. It could happen, right? :). In the meantime, I'm just enjoying the cuddles with him.

Except this weekend. :(