PhiLLy RoLL

25 Things (About Squeakles)

I've been tagged (five times now) on Facebook to do the 25 Things About Me meme, and I actually started it. But after about five things I got bored. But of course I can always come up with 25 things to say about Squeakles...

1. He loves to say "cat" and he definitely knows what it means. Whenever Koji or Tako walk into the room, he cranes his neck to watch wherever they go and excitedly says "cat cat cat cat".
2. A couple of nights ago he repeated "Tako" for the first time (one of the cat's names) and he did it perfectly. Since then it tends to come out as "ako".
3. He also loves to say "duck" when he sees a toy or a picture of a duck (sometimes it's a repetition of what we've said first). And when I follow it up with "What does the duck say? ... Quack, quack", he says "Kak Kak!"
4. He eats and loves everything we give him. This week he has even tried salmon and lamb (not together).
5. He's got almost five teeth - two adorable center bottom ones, two center top ones (with a gap between them!), and a fifth top one that has just appeared. So far he doesn't seem too bothered by teething.
6. He has started spontaneously dancing whenever he hears music, even if it's just a few seconds of a commercial or music that comes from a toy. He bounces up and down and looks around to see if we've noticed and if we're joining in.
7. He imitates sounds - recently he's imitated J's crazy sounds, a baby crying on tv, and the coffee grinder.
8. He sleeps fine in his crib for naps.
9. At night he wakes up in the crib crying and will not settle, but put him in bed with us and he's out within seconds.
10. That's on good nights. Sometimes I can't even get him to go down to sleep in the crib. Those nights I lie down with him, we listen to music, he complains a little bit, and eventually likes to have my hand resting on his face over his eyes as he finally succumbs to sleep.
11. He really loves people.
12. People love him too, even people who claim not to be "baby people".
13. According to the experimenter who ran him in a study yesterday, he seems to know some body part names like "mouth" and "leg". At least, he knows them compared to an apple.
14. I think one reason he has so much trouble letting go and going to sleep is that, unless he's really tired, he cannot. stop. exploring.
15. He does not have a "lovey" toy or blanket. There's too much exploring to do to be attached to just one object.
16. He's not especially interested in reading. That would involve too much sitting still.
17. He has learned how to smack Koji on the butt. (This is what Koji likes, really!)
18. He likes to laugh and will force a fake laugh if he needs to.
19. He can walk if you hold his hands.
20. He knows what "no" means but he doesn't like it. However, if the temptation of whatever he was going for is not too great, he will sometimes move on to something else.
21. He hardly interacts with other kids because he has no siblings, is not in daycare, and it's too cold to play outside.
22. He's on a waiting list for a daycare. They told us the "average" wait is 9 to 12 months (which would be any time between May and August), but we know someone who's been on the waiting list for three years.
23. He likes the taste of beer (courtesy of J's boss, who is, in his defense, a doctor).
24. His favorite segment of Yo Gabba Gabba is when Mark draws.
25. He has recently started to wave good-bye when we (or someone else) leaves the room. The other day he did it when I just opened the front door to go down to the laundry room. (Actually, it's not really a wave. He holds out his arm and opens and closes his fist. Yesterday he did it with both hands.

A Dream

Last night I had a dizzying dream.  I was sitting alone in one of the back rows of a large jet which was headed on a no return trip into outer space.  Looking out the windows, I saw huge cliffs - the last view of Earth I would ever see.  I imagined the sorts of landscapes I would be seeing from now on.  The dark expansive universe.  But maybe also an interesting planet, and I pictured vast desserts.  I worried for a moment about whether our plane was prepared for the stronger effects of gravity when trying to land on a planet larger than Earth - that is, if we even succeeded in getting to a planet.  I didn't want to worry about this, so I tried to think of other things.  I looked down at the camera in my hands and realized I'd only brought my 4 GB card with me.  I should have stocked up before I left.  I knew I had my laptop, but wasn't sure what I would do when I ran out of space, or power.

Almost everyone on the plane was quiet, deep in their own thoughts.

A Day in the Life (11 months)

I have previously written "a day in the life" posts, but it's been a long time since I've done that. So here is Squeakles at almost eleven months old:

6:00 am Wake up to nurse.

He now sleeps in our bed, which has resulted in a lot more sleep for everyone! At least, I'm not getting up every couple of hours to nurse and cajole Squeakles back to sleep, or lying in bed fitfully while listening to J trying to get him back to sleep. However, although Squeakles usually starts out in the middle of the bed, he ends up shifting closer and closer to me. So J gets his half of the bed, while I snake my body in and around Squeakles and two persistent cats. But this is what works for now and I can't say I mind the cuddles with Squeakles. (This is different than when he was five months old and wanted to keep latching on to me all night and nurse. That was really draining.) Anyway, he sleeps pretty soundly from about midnight (yes, crazy bedtime) until around 6 am. At this time he starts fidgeting, and without opening his eyes he reaches over and starts feeling around my chest. He's very persistent and eventually it wakes me up and I look over at the clock. If it's before six, I shush him back to sleep and turn on my back so he has less access to the goods. If it's after six, I nurse him.

9:00 am Wakes up for the day. Change him and nurse him within the hour.

Usually I ask J to change him (since he's been sleeping peacefully all night on his spacious half of the bed, except for whenever I poke him to get him to stop snoring). Then I nurse Squeakles in the living room while watching tv (usually a recorded repeat of The Office) and drinking my coffee (I'm up to a full inch of coffee these days!).

By 10 am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the babysitter arrives and Squeakles twists all around in order to smile at her. When I'm done, I "walk" him over to her - he holds my hands, but does the walking himself!

11:00 am Breakfast - mixed fruit with rice cereal (today was mango, bananas, and red berries).

That picture is not from today; that's a pear, banana, and strawberry smoothie from earlier in the month. Now I'm leaving the fruit in bigger chunks so that he has to chew it.

1:00 pm Nurse, then a nap.

This nap has been going very well lately. In fact, he's napping now, in the crib, while I'm writing this post.

3:00 pm Wake up, nurse, then lunch - vegetables(today is harvest vegetables - sweet potatoes, yams, and butternut squash - cooked with a little butter and ginger)

We just started giving him lunch as a third meal. It's great because he loves it (he loves all food) and also because it means that I can cut back on pumping while I'm at work. I'm down to pumping once a day now, which is really nice. I honestly can't wait to stop pumping altogether, but I am keeping up with it for now because I'm home three to four days a week with him (Saturday, Sunday, Thursday, and sometimes I also work from home on Tuesdays while J takes care of Squeakles except for nursing) and I don't want my milk supply to drop too much. But I'm totally eyeing his upcoming one-year birthday as the date when I will likely stop pumping during the day.

5:00 pm Nurse and a nap attempt.

5:30 pm Nap over!

We are not sure how to handle this nap. It's not always at 5; sometimes it can be as late as 7. But whenever it happens, Squeakles nurses for about 15 minutes, and then stays asleep in the crib for 15 minutes as most (while I scarf down dinner), and then he's up again. He definitely will not stay in the crib, but we still think he needs another nap. We think this because of what happens next...

7:00 pm Nurse. Possibly fall asleep in my lap for 1-2 hours.

He's often a bit cranky at this time and clearly wants to nurse, but then he falls asleep in my lap. While it's sweet and I do enjoy holding him, I also wouldn't mind not being bound to a chair while he sleeps. Actually, last night it was J he slept on for over two hours! After retrieving him from the crib, J sat with him while he watched a catch-up episode of Lost for people who haven't been following the show (as if it's possible to summarize the past seasons with anything resembling clarity), and Squeakles happily fell asleep in his arms. If only cribs were made out of humans, I think maybe Squeakles would be willing to sleep there.

Anyway, we're working on figuring out how to move this evening nap from our arms to his crib.

8:00-ish? pm Dinner - something hearty (tonight will be chicken with zucchini and a little cheddar cheese)

We follow every meal with brushing his teeth, which he thinks is great fun. First we brush his teeth and gums for him, and then let him have the toothbrush to play with.

11:30 pm Nurse, and put him in the crib. Ha ha. Okay, TRY to put him in the crib. If it fails (as it has been lately), I bring him to bed with me while I fall asleep and eventually he drops off too.

Yes, it's a late bed time. Yes, we're working on slowly moving it up. But after all the traveling of November through January, he's naturally settled into his preferred night owl routine.

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And now he's awake from his afternoon nap. Time to retrieve him, change him, feed him, and go grocery shopping!

Bathtime

In the bathroom this morning, as J is showering.

     Me: "Look Squeakles, Daddy is taking a bath!"

From behind the glass shower doors:

     J: "Splash, splash, splash! Duck, duck, duck! Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba."

Superstar!

I said I would upload pictures to go along with a previous (long) post, but I just haven't had time to go through my pictures. But here is one that Amber sent me of Squeakles pointing his finger into the air during a raucous Rock Band performance.

There is something familiar about his pose...

Returning Home

I am above a billowy layer of clouds which remind me of snow. Will there be snow when my flight lands in Philadelphia? I haven't checked the weather to find out; in fact, I haven't even thought about the weather there in many days.

It was beautiful in San Francisco.

I wish I'd had more time to spend there - I forgot how much I love big cities! I felt the same jumpy excitement I feel when I'm in New York or Chicago. But I only had two days, and I was there for a conference.

I arrived after dinner on Thursday evening, took a ridiculously expensive cab to the hotel in my rush to get there, said hello to my roommates, pumped, practiced my talk for the next morning (all four of is had talks to give the next day), and went to bed.

On Friday, I got up before the others and brought my pump and my laptop into the bathroom for more pumping and practicing. (I really hate pumping.) I'm not sure exactly why, but I wasn't very nervous about the talk. I can think of several reasons (like that I'd given this talk before), but my calm nerves almost unnerved me, if that makes any sense. I gave the talk at 9:30, so it was over with pretty early and then I could pay attention to the other talks.

I was surprised to find that I actually enjoyed the conference this year. Last year I was really bored by the selection of talks and felt kind of grumpy about it, like I was there under duress or something. In retrospect it was probably because I was almost seven months pregnant and it was in Chicago at a time when it was really freezing cold. And that year I presented a poster that no one came to (the poster sessions as a whole were really poorly attended) and it just felt like an inconvenience to be there, albeit a nice opportunity to visit with friends.

But this year there were more talks that I enjoyed. (And some I didn't enjoy as much, but which were still thought-provoking in some way.) As for my own talk, although I didn't get the accolades after giving it that I had gotten the last time I gave it, I think it went well. I got different questions this time, but they were about issues I had already thought about so I had ready (though not perfectly formulated) answers to give. What was strange to me though was that I didn't recognize most of the people in the audience. I knew the moderator, I knew most of the people giving the talks, and I recognized one other person in the audience. It's not that I am so enmeshed in my field that I expect to know everyone, but it is a bit strange to me that there was a whole room of people who were interested in our research more than in any of the other concurrent talks going on, but yet they were not more familiar to us. Who were these people and where did they come from?

That evening I went out with some friends to a nearby pub. One of them has a baby the same age as Squeakles, so he and I talked about them a lot. It's kind of fun to hear about other people's experiences - the different quirky things their babies do and, of course, talking about the experiences we share. I was relieved to find, though, that talking about Squeakles didn't make me miss him unbearably (though, I still did miss him!).

After the pub I walked around a little with two if my hotel roommates. We went down to Fisherman's Wharf and Ghiradelli Square. It was a more touristy destination than I might have picked on my own, but we were too tired/full to go out to another restaurant or bar, and I was sort of hopeful that we could see the Golden Gate Bridge there and that I could take some night pictures of it.

Well, the view of the bridge wasn't quite what I'd hoped (and there was no where good to rest my camera for long exposures), but we did go to Ghiradelli where I got a free peanut butter chocolate square and bought a root beer float (kind of because I was missing J and he loves them).

The next day I went to some talks in the morning and then went on a (virtual) hunt for ramen. I called J who used the power of Google to find the best ramen in the neighborhood I was in, and within the hour I was slurping down noodles and eating a bowl of salmon don. (Actually, I can't remember what "don" means - does it mean "bowl"? A bowl of salmon bowl?)

After lunch, I was going to head out to the Golden Gate Bridge (yes, touristy, but also beautiful), but I ran into a friend who said she was in the mood for a beer and suddenly I was in the mood for a beer too. So we went to the pub I'd been to the night before to sit and talk for a while.

We finished just in time for me to catch a bus and get to the bridge just as the sun was setting, which is when I really wanted to be there anyway. I took the picture that you see here with my iPhone, but I also had my "real" camera with me. I went by myself, which was actually kind of nice. (One of my hotel roommates was going to come meet me there, but she's not really familiar with public transportation I guess and couldn't figure out how/where to catch the bus she needed.). On the way there and back I found myself chatting with people on the bus, but at the bridge I wandered around by myself taking pictures. I had just enough sunlight to start at Baker Beach (this is where this picture was taken), and then to climb up the hills and walk along a path that brought me to the start of the bridge, where I picked up a different bus to take back to the hotel.

In the evening, I met up with my friends for dinner (good Mexican from a place that served really nice magaritas, which they refused to blend and which had tequila in them that tasted like the tequila I had in Mexico).

And now it's Sunday and I'm flying home. The plane is descending now and it's dark outside. My iPhone still says 3:36, but it's 6:36 in Philadelphia. And now I have to turn off my electronics... will post this when we land!

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. :(

Squeakles Meets Dudley