PhiLLy RoLL

It's Starting to Feel Like Spring

I am tired of life always feeling so busy that I can't keep up. And by keep up, I mean, get enough sleep and not have the apartment look like a tornado just blew through. And I certainly never seem to manage to write posts here on a regular basis.

But this weekend I got out of the house - out of the state even! (okay just to New Jersey) - on a "mom date", which stereotypically involved the grocery store and coffee. That's what moms are supposed to do, right? But it was wonderful. My friend D took me to a Vietnamese grocery store, then to Wegmans, and then to Panera Bread (after all, we were playing suburban moms with a car). Among my exciting purchases: a 50 lb bag of premium rice (Kokuho), sticky rice and banana wrapped in banana leaves, noodles, Chinese broccoli, and Firecracker chocolate (dark chocolate with chipotle, salt and popping candy).

In the past couple of weeks I am rediscovering the importance of getting out beyond the small world of my family and my immediate work colleagues. It's not that there's anything wrong with them, but keeping my sphere of interactions so small makes me think very narrowly about life in general. Of course, it's hard when you have two small children and a full time job to just go out on a whim. But what I end up doing is living week by week, each week feeling the immediate pressures of things that need to get done, and not taking a little time out to relax and gain some perspective.

Also in the past few weeks I am starting to enjoy my family life a little bit more. Squeakles has largely gotten past the tantrums. There are still remnants, but he no longer throws a fit when we bring him to school, bring him home, or basically ask him to do anything. When he tries it we are usually either able to talk him out of it, or some time in his room by himself does the trick. Today he was in a fantastic mood - chatting all day long to anyone within earshot, or when we attempted a (failed) nap, he just kept talking happily to himself. He even chatted up one of our neighbors when we were in the laundry room. I was standing at the washer throwing him wet clothes which he was trying to catch and then put in the drier. Every time he caught one, he would crane around to see our neighbor, saying things to her like "I did a good job catching what Mommy throwed me!" or "I caught that one with my face!" Later I asked him if he remembered her name and giddily he joked that her name was Cilantro. He was so pleased with this joke that he brought it back hours later, calling me Cilantro with a big laugh and a look of utter delight on his face.

Because I like to keep track of his language development, here's a little picture of what he's saying lately:

• "I ate the rice all." (analagous to "I ate it all")
• "What is that in the world?" (trying to say "What in the world is that?")
• "How is that crazy?" (trying to say "How crazy is that?")
• Whenever I comment on anything he does, he repeats back what I say as a "why" question. Although he's finally figured out which pronouns to use (he no longer refers to himself as "you"), he hasn't mastered the correct agreement on the verb, so he says things like "Why weren't I?"
• He also hasn't mastered gender pronouns fully, though I actually suspect he's not really clear what gender/sex actually is. He does tend to correctly refer to me and Weeble as "she" and J as "he", but it's not 100%. And he's definitely noticed a difference in our anatomy, though I think he's simply just mystified by it. As for people outside the family, he tends to refer to everyone as "he". Just the other day, a woman with extremely long hair said something to him and when she passed by, he asked "What did he say to me?"
• Sort of related to the above point, a couple of weeks ago we were standing in front of the elevator doors at his preschool, musing about whether anyone would be inside. The doors opened and a middle aged woman came out and walked past us. I am pretty sure she was within earshot, but I'm not sure she was able to make out what Squeakles said (I hope not): "It's a grandma!" (My concern about her hearing is that she was not all that old. I take that as a compliment to his own grandmothers who do not look the least bit elderly, but I doubt that the woman who was called a "grandma" would assume that!
• J got back from a trip to San Francisco on Wednesday morning after flying overnight. He crawled right into bed and I commented to Squeakles that Daddy was going to bed in the morning! J tried to explain to him that in San Francisco it was still nighttime even though it was morning here. Squeakles thought it over for a second and then said, "Two suns!" I was so impressed with his reasoning that I jumped right in with an explanation about how the sun moves around the earth, then tried to correct myself, and then was kind of relieved to notice that no one was really listening to me. :)

And our Weeble is such a little sweetie who is happy almost all the time unless she has a specific need to eat or sleep or have her diaper changed. Otherwise she spends her time either raising her arm up in the air and smiling at us, or inspecting the floor for anything she can put into her mouth. She loves to laugh in that way that babies do - uncontrollable belly laughs when something surprises her or strikes her as really funny (like fingers crawling towards her). At ten months old, she still isn't talking, but yesterday she started saying "uh oh" with a little glint in her eye whenever she dropped something (usually on purpose).

She is also an amazing sleeper. For which I am so, so grateful.

Squeakles continues to have his sleep problems, but we have just compounded them by taking the "fier" (pacifier) away. We tried about a week ago, but gave in because no one was sleeping well to begin with because everyone was sick, and anyway both J and I were going out of town the following weekend. But last night I just told him no more fier. He already doesn't use one at school for naps, so he didn't freak out about it. He definitely has more trouble getting to sleep, but I've been being really gentle about it - not getting frustrated with him when he tells me he's having trouble sleeping (over and over), but instead trying to help him relax and go to sleep - a couple of head rubs, some quiet (and hopefully) boring counting, etc.

But now both kids are asleep, so I would be an idiot if I stayed at my computer any longer. Good night world!

Day-o

If you've ever had any tooth pain, you probably know how debilitating and painful it is. It's always surprising to me just how much pain you can feel from a tiny little chunk of tooth - such a little piece in the grand scheme of our whole body. In fact, I've been putting off having my extracted tooth replaced with an implant because I just haven't been able to foresee a week which would be a particularly good one to ruin.

Keeping this in mind makes me all the more sympathetic to my poor little Weeble who has basically been getting her entire top palette of teeth all at once. The front two teeth have finally broken through, but when I can manage to get a close enough look, I think she's also getting the two side front teeth and possibly even the two on the outsides of that. That seems so unlikely - I don't think that's how teeth usually come in - but when I look at her gums I can see the bulging outlines of those teeth right at the surface.

(I should probably be grateful that I am no longer breastfeeding!)

On a positive note however, the past couple of nights have been significantly better for her. Now that the top two teeth have cut through, her fever's been gone for a few days now. And her congestion has finally gotten a lot better. Last night she slept for about 11 hours straight!

Now that she's feeling better she has started scooting all over the place. Her main goal seems to be to taste everything in the room - from whatever little crumbs she can scavange off the ground to the straps on a backpack. Whatever she gets her hands on goes straight into her mouth. Even if we try to plug her mouth with a pacifier as a stopgap, she just takes the pacifier out, pops in whatever she's just picked up, and then replaces the pacifier - so that if we weren't watching it happen, we would never know. Squeakles just watches her like she's a crazed animal.

In addition to floor scraps (kidding!), she also loves to eat in her high chair. Here she is enjoying some roasted beets:

She's still not saying very much - she's been too focused on growing teeth and learning how to crawl. But in between jaunts across the room, she often stops to sit and look around for us. When she catches our eye, she smiles, raises one arm up to the sky, and says "d'oh" or "day-o".

Not Sleeping

Who's not sleeping? Weeble. And therefore me and J.

Somehow Squeakles is sleeping and we are so, so grateful for that. That's not to say he doesn't still wake up in the night, sometimes up to four times. But there are nights he doesn't call us at all, and when he does, it usually only requires a short visit to his room. Very occasionally he has a dream and calls me to tell me things like how "Weeble was not doing a good job of not putting batteries in her mouth" or crying about how Koji (our cat) "broke the remonitor [thermometer] - why did he break the remonitor!?"

In contrast to her brother, Weeble has been a fantastic sleeper right from the start. She slept so well as a newborn that I kept asking the doctor if she was ok. When she was about eight weeks old she switched her sleep schedule to include sleeping at night, and from that point on, we all slept through the night. It is truly mindblowing.

But a little over a week ago her lingering cold moved up inside her sinuses and she has been so stuffed up she can hardly drink or sleep. When she tries to drink from the bottle, she can't breathe out of her nose, and so she starts gasping and sputtering. Typically we can only manage to feed her two or three ounces at a time before she gets frustrated or tired and pushes the bottle away. And sleep is a complete disaster. But the sleep is compounded by a second factor - teething.

It was clear that she was cutting her top teeth, because starting a couple of weeks ago she started slobbering all over everything and soaking the front of her clothes. She also started runnng a low grade fever that would occasionally go up to 103 in the middle of the night. She became truly miserable at night. She would try to sleep, but was just clearly uncomfortable. And we have been trying everything - rocking, bouncing, singing, movies, baby Tylenol, the nasal aspirator, and saline drops. And finally, sleeping on top of our chests.

Daycare sent her home last Thursday and then we just kept her home ourselves on Friday because her fever was up to 103 during the night. Because of this, her sleep schedule has been really messed up. Lately she dozes off a little before 8 and then wakes up sometime between midnight and 2:30, crying and no longer with any intention of sleeping. When J and I have tried to fight through it to get her back to sleep, she just cries and cries and cries. And obviously we don't sleep either. So for the past few nights we've been trading off Weeble care, and therefore alternating whose turn it is to sleepwalk through the day.

Last night I was finishing up a presentation I had to give today, so I (stupidly and naively) told J to go to bed when it was about midnight, telling him that I was "sure I could bounce her to sleep". Clearly I was dreaming when I said that. By 1:30 she still wasn't going to sleep and I was getting not only tired, but a little panicked because I had to get up at 6:30 and wanted to be at least a little rested for work. But Weeble wasn't thinking about that.

So I confess, I put her in front of the tv and went to sleep. Yes, that is what over a week of sleep deprivation will do to you. I didn't just leave her of course - I put her swaddled in the bouncy seat and I lay down next to her on the couch. I got about an hour of sleep like that before I heard her crying and I suspect she'd started to drift off and then woke up again. I tried bouncing her from my supine position on the couch, but she just cried more. Eventually I had to pick her up and lay her on my chest and bounce around like I was a living bouncy seat, while she alternated between crying and putting her head down to go to sleep. By 4 am she was finally out and so was I. Only to be awakened by the alarm at 6:30.

But the good news is that she has a new front tooth now. (Well, kinda. So far it's just a shiny spot on her gums.)

Tears All Around

Remember when I said that Squeakles loves school?

Well, now he doesn't like it quite so much.

This morning he whined, cried, yelled, and screamed at every step that got him closer to school. He didn't want to change his clothes, he didn't want to eat breakfast, and even when I plopped him on the toilet before going, he tried to stop peeing mid-stream to demonstrate that he did not want to do these things. My approach was simply to soldier on, get him ready and out the door by 8:30, whether he'd eaten or not. But I will confess to losing my cool pretty early on when he was screaming. In fact, both J and I got angry when he was doing that, but now upon further reflection, we think that our getting angry wasn't having the effect of laying down the law, but instead was ramping up the tension.

We left the house at 9 am, only half an hour after I'd wanted to. That's not bad, but I was really annoyed and vowed in my head to start getting Squeakles up at least half an hour earlier next week in case he intends to throw a long drawn out fit again. Right before leaving, Squeakles asked for a pacifier "so that I won't scream and cry". I was torn because he never uses a pacifier except when he's sleeping, but at the same time he asked without whining and he seemed aware that he was trying to find a way to keep calm. So we gave him the pacifier.

J stayed at home because he'd suffered the same sudden vomiting the previous night that I'd had two nights prior. When I threw up, we thought that maybe I was actually just that stressed out because we'd eaten all the same food that day and yet he wasn't sick. But when J got sick after eating the leftover spare ribs that we'd had on the day I got sick, I suddenly remembered that I'd bought three packages of individually cut ribs (instead of one package of ribs I would have had to cut myself). Probably J had eaten from the good packages the first time, and then yesterday when he had leftovers, he ate the ribs from came from the package that had made me sick. I had only eaten one rib, so I couldn't have eaten from multiple packages. I guess there must have been something wrong with the ribs to start with, because I don't think they were undercooked - they were cooked at 300 degrees for three hours and the meat looked fully cooked, fell easily off the bone, etc. I'd been nauseous and tired after I'd been sick, and J was the same, so he decided to rest at home. (Fortunately, Squeakles had only eaten a little bit of the ribs on the first night and didn't get sick that night, and then didn't eat any of the leftovers.)

Squeakles was quiet on the way to school, but when we got to the door he started saying again that he didn't want to go to school. I quickly dropped Weeble off at her classroom, giving her a little kiss as she started to cry when she saw me leaving. (She was either crying because I was leaving, or because the teacher had the audacity to try to take off her coat. Maybe it was both.)

Then I got Squeakles out of the stroller and with a bit of cajoling, into the classroom. He immediately pulled me over to the play kitchen and tried to make sure I would stay with him and that we would not go anywhere near the other kids. I talked with the teacher a bit, who completely understood the situation and has been observing the exact same kind of behaviors from Squeakles that we've been seeing at home. In the meantime, across the room, I watched as the other little boy who started in the class on the same day as Squeakles, was bawling and hanging on to his dad. (This poor kid is crying his eyes out almost every time I see him.) I showed Squeakles that this other boy was also sad because he didn't want his daddy to leave, and then pointed out the other kids in the classroom who have been coming to school for a longer time and who are now having fun together. I think Squeakles got the point, but it didn't convince him to drop his guard.

Soon, Squeakles willingly took off his own coat and laughed with me a little bit as we joked about where it was supposed to go - on a chair? in the sink? in the trash? Squeakles brought me over to the hook where the coat went.

It looked like things were going well, but then I suggested that we go over to where the other children were, and his guard went right back up. I picked him up, thinking I would bring him over to the group and he would know that obviously that meant I was coming too, but of course he also realized that he no longer had control over whether he was going over there or not, so he started yelling. I tried to get him to be quiet, and he just yelled louder. At that point, one of the teacher's helpers came over and took him from me, saying that he they would go over to the "library" (some books and pillows in a corner) to calm down. I motioned to ask whether she thought I should go, and she nodded, so I stepped out.

Once in the hallway, I immediately teared up and I headed for the stroller, passing another two other parents on the way, wondering if there was a discrete place I could cry. I only made it the few steps to our stroller before I heard Squeakles' classroom teacher behind me (not the helper who was currently with Squeakles), and in one quick motion she was there, saw my tears, and gave me a hug. It was an extremely sweet gesture and I really appreciated that she'd just known to come out and see how I was doing. She told me that this was all very normal, and I told her that I knew that rationally and knew that they were doing the right thing with Squeakles and with me. After she left, a mom that I had passed in the hallway came over to me and said that she had the same issue with her daughter for the first month. She said she used to come back to the classroom every hour and would look in and see that her daughter was doing fine, and then after a while, school drop off wasn't so hard anymore. That was nice to hear and I thought it was just so nice of her to reach out to me like that.

Tearily, I gathered my things and, before going, stopped back at Weeble's room. I'd said that I would come back after I dropped Squeakles off (because I'd been in a rush), but the lights were now off in the room. I could hear Weeble crying from her crib and I saw the teacher in the room go over to her. I decided that going in there wasn't going to help anyone, so I left.

On my walk to work, I talked with J, and reminded myself that our goal at the moment is to get the kids comfortable with the school. Yes, I can comfort Weeble better than the teachers can. And yes I am the person Squeakles wants to be around, rather than the teachers or the other kids. Of course that's true. But part of growing up and attending school is learning to trust and be comforted by the people at the school, and that will help them learn to be more independent. So although I may want to stick around with Squeakles until he feels comfortable enough for me to leave, that may not be the best approach because then he's not actually trying to get comfortable there - he's just using all of his energy to interact with me and try to keep me there with him.

Shortly after sitting down at my desk at work, I got a call from Squeakles' teacher, telling me that after I'd left, they'd taken Squeakles to another room where she and another teacher (from a different class) gave Squeakles some water and made him laugh and calm down a little. They then brought him back to the classroom where he seemed fine but subdued. A little while later I got a second phone call, from the teacher again saying that Squeakles wanted to talk to me. He told me over the phone that he wanted me to come back and get him, so I told him that I would talk to his teacher about when I would come back. I don't know how he felt about that because suddenly all I heard was "snotty nose! snotty nose!" and then the teacher took a little break to help him wipe his nose. Then Squeakles said bye and I was back on with the teacher, who said she thought that had helped him a little. I said I didn't think he was under the impression that I wouldn't actually be coming back for several hours, and asked her to let me know if he needed me to come get him earlier. If he doesn't need to be picked up earlier, we may stay for a pizza and ice skating party they have tonight, so she will keep reminding him about this as something fun that will be happening later that I will be coming for.

I don't know if we'll actually make the ice skating part of the night. J might not be up for it, Weeble is often tired when I pick her up, and who knows what state Squeakles will be in. But that is still hours away...

I woke up this morning feeling simultaneously tired (because I never get enough sleep) and good because my stomach was no longer churning from whatever it is that was bothering it the past 24 hours. I got ready quickly and headed to the kitchen to make my coffee and prepare the kids' things for school. Shortly, Weeble woke up, also in a good mood, and it was looking like we were on track to get out the door, not only on time, but without the usual chaos. It looked like I might even manage to eat some breakfast.

(It's not that we're normally incapable of getting out the door, but previously we just had to get the adults out. Now we also have to make sure both children are awake, fed, and clothed, had a diaper changed or made a bathroom trip, and are packed into the stroller and the baby carrier.)

I went in to Squeakles room to wake him up and ... he pulled the blanket up over his head and said he wanted to go back to sleep. I gave him a few minutes and tried again. Same thing. And then again.

Squeakles has been sick, but it seems to be a lingering cold at this point, not a fever or anything that is completely wiping him out. I figured food would help and eventually we convinced him to get up and to start eating some cereal.

But he still said he was tired. J volunteered to take the hit and stay home with him today because lately I've been the one doing it. But guess what ... Squeakles wanted me to stay home with him, not Daddy. And upon the realization that he had a choice between staying home with Daddy or going to school, he completely lost it. He refused to make the choice, and would only say that he didn't want either of those things.

Crying. Yelling. Nose running. A bit of thrashing. He was not happy about it and intended to cry and cry until he got his way, which unfortunately (for him), wasn't going to happen. We let him cry it out in his bed, occasionally trying to talk to him but he did not want to talk or listen.

And so we decided that he would stay home with Daddy today. Given the choice of literally holding him down to dress him and put him in the stroller and then hand him off to the teachers in this state, or leaving him to cry in bed and then have a day of rest at home, we figured that rest might be a good thing for him. And, at the same time, since he didn't actually want to stay home with Daddy, we figured we were not exactly giving in to his demands.

It's not that he's a stranger to whining, complaining, or crying. But school is a bit stressful to him, and I think that being sick on top of it is making it all a little overwhelming to him right now.

Last night J was asking him about some things he doesn't like about school, and Squeakles told us that he doesn't like it when the kids yell at him and take toys away from him. They don't actually yell at him (I don't think), but they reinforce the rules - things like telling him to hang his coat up and pull up his pants. J explained to him that he has to learn the rules and the other kids are just trying to help him learn them. But as for the other kids taking toys away from him, J told him that when that happens, he should just hold onto the toy and say no.

I had tried to tell Squeakles that he can say, "not right now, you can have it when I'm done", but it didn't occur to me (miss passive aggressive people pleaser who abhors saying no) to give him the simpler approach of just saying no! I'm sure we can politen the approach as needed, but of course the first step is teaching him to have the confidence to say no.

(J did clarify that if a teacher asks him to give her something, then Squeakles needs to give it to her. And of course he also explained that Squeakles shouldn't go around taking toys from other kids - so far this has not been a problem.)

So although the teachers are telling us that Squeakles is doing a really great job of adjusting to the new environment, we do see that there are quieter things going on under the surface that are stressing him out.

And so we left Squeakles in his bed screaming and crying this morning, until suddenly - he stopped. J went into his room probably no more than one minute after the crying stopped and found him fast asleep. So I bundled Weeble up in the mei tai carrier and took her out into the rain, where she promptly fell asleep and I considered walking around with her like that all day, cuddled up against me. (But no, she is now at daycare, hopefully finishing up her nap and I am at work, finishing my breakfast.)

Listening

Here are a few of the amusing things Squeakles has been saying the past couple of weeks:

After I showed him how to clear his throat: "Does my voice look better?"

Asking about Weeble: "What is he coughing about?" My response was "Do people usually cough ABOUT something?" Squeakles answered, "I don't think so. People cough when they're sick. And then their throat comes out."

"Is Weeble gonna have blue teeth when she grows up to be a big boy?"

"This is destrosting." (I think he was trying to repeat some things I'd just said, including the words 'destroy' and 'disaster'.) (We were talking about a bulldozer knocking down a building.)

I noticed a piece of cat fur in his cereal bowl and Squeakles commented: "Koji (our cat) must have droppen it in there." (I think that's interesting both for the fact that he is using "must" correctly, and because of the way he inflected the verb drop. He does the same inflection in the next one.)

"My hand hurts because I must have bumpen it or something."

Putting on a hat with a brim and thinking that now he looks like Baka (Grandpa), while also holding a screwdriver up to the brim and pretending to write with it: "I'm gonna write something on my hat so that I can say something to my self. I'm gonna say Baka. I write a letter Baka." (I think he meant that last part as if "Baka" were a letter, like "I write a letter B".)

Seeing a little girl skip past us at the preschool and apparently mistaking her for Weeble: "Weeble's all grown up!"

Joking about putting the paper towel in the soap dispenser: "Should I put it in the soaper?"

When I went into his room in the middle of the night because he called me, he said "I need some water", then picked up the bottle and turned it over as if to show and observe that there was no more water in it. "Can you run some water for me?" (I assume he got that from me often saying I'm going to run the water for the bath.)

Of course, Weeble isn't saying anything much yet - just lots of babbling. But in the past couple of days she's gotten herself up on hands and knees and is starting to crawl - so far she only goes about 1-2 steps before reaching whatever it is she wanted to put in her mouth.

Three Years Old

Two weeks ago on Saturday, Squeakles turned three. This is not a concept that makes any sense to him, but he likes to peel his fingers away from his fist to show you that now he is three and then he'll be four and then he'll be five!

My little boy is ... still a little boy. Of course he's growing up every day, and when I think back to when Weeble was born and Squeakles was only two years and four months old, well the difference is really striking. For one thing, at the time, he'd just started climbing on the furniture and just would not stop, certainly not just because I told him to from across the room where I was trying to nurse a newborn. Now I just have to ask him to stop, and generally he will stop. Though of course, being three, he has to ask why. And then why to my explanation. And then why again.

The Monday after his birthday, he started preschool (after two and a half years on a waiting list). Our preschool is pretty much the greatest place on earth. The facilities are amazing, the staff is simply great, and Squeakles absolutely loves it. When I brought him home the first day, he cried when we reached our apartment door saying that he didn't want to go in. Actually, he hadn't napped at school, but had run around all day, so he was overtired and overstimulated, so it turned into a 20 minute fit like I've never seen him throw before. But the fact that he just didn't want the day to end was, in my mind, a very good indication that he loves the school. The same thing happened the next time he went, with a slight reduction in the length of his fit upon coming home. And then the next time he only complained about going in the apartment, but was generally ok about it.

The biggest adjustments for Squeakles at school are sleeping without a "fier" (pacifier) in a roomful of other kids, having to do a lot of things for himself that previously we were doing for him, and learning to interact with other kids.

The last one - learning to interact with other kids - isn't particularly traumatic at the moment, but the teachers observe what we've always noticed on the playground which is that he tends to play by himself. Of course, up until about 2 1/2 years old, kids are often doing parallel play anyway, but I think Squeakles is particularly tentative - letting other kids take things out of his hands and hanging back and just watching other kids play together. But at school, the other kids come up to him and say things to him and expect him to react, so I think that soon enough he will be feeling more comfortable and will start playing with them.

Sleeping without a fier is also not a really big deal. He managed to do it when he was there on Monday. But at home, we've continued to let him sleep with a fier because he's been sick and we really just want him to get his sleep. Also, to be completely honest, we want to be able to sleep too and we're a little wary of how the night will go without a fier. But we are thinking that it's worth trying soon. It's entirely possible that it will not be a big deal at all, especially if he's been doing it at school.

The biggest adjustment is learning to do a lot of things on his own. This has also been an eye opener for us. I don't think I noticed that he was growing up, especially because we don't usually have other kids around, so I didn't realize all the things that three year olds do independently. Like pull their own pants down to go to the bathroom and pull them back up and wipe their own nose. When Squeakles has a runny nose, he yells "snotty nose" and only recently has learned to actually blow when someone holds a tissue up to his face. But guess what - at school he learned where the tissue box is and will go over and blow his own nose. Sometimes they help him if he's just smearing it all over his face, but they are really working with him to learn to help himself so they are standing back as much as possible.

On top of starting school, Squeakles has been sick on and off for the past couple of weeks, so I think he hasn't really been feeling up to the challenge of doing things for himself. Sometimes he does want to do them, but other times he really just wants me to take care of him. And I get that. But for the most part, we're following the school's model and encouraging him to do these things on his own.

Weeble also goes to the school, but of course she's in an infant room. In contrast to Squeakles who has always been more focused on things than people and never showed any reluctance to be held or played with by a stranger, Weeble is much more concerned about where we are. She cried a lot the first day - actually, she cried a lot the first week. Worse, she got sick right away, so she just wasn't happy at all. I kept her home the morning she woke up with a fever of 103 and after a dose of baby Tylenol and a nap, she woke up much recovered and clearly very happy to have me around. I'm hoping that she has a better day at the school today, but we did hear her crying as we left. (Though for all we know, maybe she was just suffering the pain and injustice of having her nose wiped.)

J and I have also been sick. For J, this is an almost yearly occurrence - he gets sick and then has a lingering cough for a couple of months. But getting sick is an anomaly for me, so I was quite annoyed when it hung around for over a week. I've been recovered for almost two weeks now, but then last night my stomach decided it was not at all happy with what was in it, so today I'm feeling a little drained. (That might also have something to do with the fact that I only got about 4 1/2 hours of sleep.)

But it's Spring Break, so my office is very quiet and I have no meetings or seminars to go to. I'm enjoying working on a talk for an upcoming conference. or well, I will be, when I get back to work.

But first, I'm going to post this, as well as a second post of some of the things Squeakles has said recently that I find either cute or interesting from a language development standpoint.

The Extensions of Cat

Weeble (almost nine months old) loves to use the word cat (pronounced either kæ or kæt) when she sees one of the cats around and we never hear her use it otherwise, leading us to believe that she has acquired something close to the correct meaning of "cat". Last night I got a new glimpse into what she considers relevant "cat" material. While I was changing Squeakles into his pajamas, Weeble was in the crib babbling to herself. Suddenly I heard an unmistakable (if you are one of her parents) "cat, cat". I looked over, surprised to hear her saying it without a cat around, and saw her with a plush puppy toy in her lap, looking at its face and saying "cat!" I said good job, then corrected her saying, "that's a dog", but then I wondered if the distinction would be harder than it's worth and I didn't want to undo whatever was right in her meaning of cat, so I repeated, "yeah, cat!" She grinned as wide as she could and repeated "cat" and then laughed, as if really pleased with herself and her observation.

(Huh, and we wonder why Squeakles spent almost three years referring to himself as "you" and thinking that the way to say yes is "ga".)

Sayings: 2 years 11 months

Although I haven't had the time to blog lately, I've been keeping track of a few of the things Squeakles has said lately.

Some of them are silly.

• I found an arm pasta! (referring to a piece of elbow macaroni)
• (when he misplaced something) I thought it was here, but I couldn't think where it might be!
• They drinked a little bit of that water, remember that, when Mommy was there lasternight?

And then there are the ones about crying. Sometimes Squeakles tells us in advance that he's going to cry, and other times he simply says he's going to cry but doesn't actually do it...

• J: Furikake is not for fingers. And now I have to put it away.
  Squeakles: And now... I have ... (face crumpling) ... to cry.
• Squeakles was put in a time out in his crib for biting me (it wasn't hard, but it was the gesture). He screamed and yelled for us to come back and get him. Eventually J went back to tell him that he could get out when he stopped screaming at us.
  J: You can get up when you stop yelling.
  Squeakles: PLEASE CAN I JUST YELL?!!!
• Yesterday Squeakles locked the pantry door, which for some reason has the lock on the inside of the door, so once it's locked you can't open it unless you happen to be inside the pantry. Although I didn't yell at Squeakles for doing it, my frustration was obvious on my face. I don't think Squeakles was mocking me by what he said next, but I do think he was channeling what I was feeling and was trying to figure out how he should act in response to the locked door. He stopped still and said, in a very sad sounding voice, "I'm so sad. I have a tear. A tear is coming out of my eye and going down my face. I'm crying." Then he turned and stood right in front of the locked door and said in a particularly woeful voice, "I'm so sad."
  (Eventually I managed to get the door open by sliding my arm up through the space between the wooden slats which I'd thought were barely wide enough to stick a finger in but which J noticed had enough give to fit my entire forearm.)

And what is the Weeble saying lately? Some "da", some "tha", and lots and lots of raspberries. She stands up in the exersaucer, balls up her little fists, takes a deep breath, and then turns red in the face as she spits and makes raspberry noises for as long as she can. It's really hilarious.

The Last Seven Months

It's almost 11:30 pm as I start writing* and I am up because the Weeble has recently decided to abandon her early-to-bed routine that we so loved in place of a night-owl schedule that is probably closer to our own tendencies but which we are trying very, very hard to avoid because we have to, you know, get up early and work! I get up every morning at 6:30 am and I have to say, staying up until midnight or later every night means that by the end of the week I am seriously dragging.

We've been placing Weeble on her belly when she's up late in the hopes that it will wear her out. During the day, she doesn't last long on her belly before complaining. But at night she revels in it - laughing whenever she makes eye contact with us and trying to drag herself around the floor. (Last night she dragged herself at least three feet over to one side and clung on to the bottom of the exersaucer - not bad for a baby who cannot crawl at all.)

So while I wait for her to become tired, I thought I'd go through a summary of the past seven months with Weeble:

Sleeping

From the beginning, Weeble has been a fantastic sleeper. In fact, she slept so much the first couple of months that I kept asking the doctor if she was ok. He reassured me that she was fine and that babies can vary a lot. Well, my memory of Squeakles is that he hardly slept from the moment he was born, and getting him to sleep (and to stay asleep) was always a struggle (and often still is). But Weeble seems to love to go to sleep and from the moment we let her sleep uninterrupted (without waking her up to feed her) she regularly sleeps for 10-12 hours straight. I still can't believe it.

The only "trouble" she gives us is that we have to bounce her in our arms until she falls asleep, rather than just putting her in her bed and walking away. But this is not much of a hardship since it takes ten minutes tops for her to fall asleep, and it's often under five minutes. I've never seen anyone fall asleep so quickly on a regular basis. (Well, except J. So I suppose that's where she gets it. In contrast, I need at least 20 minutes to ruminate and worry before I finally get too tired to keep thinking of new things to stress about.)

Breastfeeding

After a really difficult time breastfeeding Squeakles, I thought I was prepared to go in fighting to make this time successful from the beginning. I believed the key to avoiding supplmenting was a better latch from the beginning, fighting off any advice to supplement, and breastfeeding as often as possible (but at the same time, not waking the baby up any more than necessary). But it turns out, I might really just have a low milk supply.

I fought at this for two months straight, feeding Weeble 10-12 times a day (in spite of the fact that she slept around the clock). But by her third week, she was still losing weight! I did start supplementing her, but continued the pace of breastfeeding as if there was no supplement. Then she started gaining weight, so I was hopeful that eventually I could pull back the supplement, just as I had done with Squeakles (it had taken a few months for that to be possible, and as soon as I did it, I went back to work and couldn't keep up through pumping). Once Weeble started gaining weight, I was no longer instructed to wake her every 2-3 hours to feed and soon enough she started having about ten hours of awake time (noon to 5 pm, and midnight to 5 am). I tried to work in feedings during these times, but I suspect that the long periods without breastfeeding did not help my supply.

Through all of this, I worked to maintain a good latch, but something just wasn't quite right. It started to get painful - so painful that I thought it was thrush. My doctor, over the phone, doubted me and started me on antibiotics for mastitis. But I didn't have a fever (except when I coincidentally got sick, but that fever came and went), and when I finally went into the doctor he agreed it wasn't mastitis. But he also said it wasn't thrush. No, I had breast trauma! My nipples were extremely sore and there were blisters. That is truly as gross and uncomfortable as it sounds - no, worse, because I had to breastfeed anyway.

And yet, I fought and fought... until I lost. I went back to work right after my 8 week maternity leave was up and with pumping I simply couldn't keep up the pace I'd been doing breastfeeding. At the end of six months, I stopped breastfeeding completely because my supply had dropped to almost nothing and Weeble was resisting trying to breastfeed under those conditions.

I would say more about what a major disappointment this was for me, but I don't really want to delve into it right now, especially since there's nothing I can do about it. Instead I try to focus on the fact that we have an incredibly healthy and wonderful baby, and all the time I save being able to share feedings with other people, not having to pump at work, not having to cover myself up in order to feed the baby while I'm out, and getting to wear shirts and dresses that don't have elaborate clasps and holes to give easy access to my boobs.

Eating

We've recently started giving "solids" - so far sweet potato, carrots, and broccoli. All of these have gone down very easily. When I regain my perspective on the "lost" breastfeeding, I remember how much I enoyed (and still enjoy) making baby foods. I am hopeful that Weeble will be as willing to eat everything as Squeakles is, but could I really be so lucky?

I'm feeling particularly ambitious and want to try Brussels sprouts next.

Diapering

We've switched to disposible diapers. I debated with myself for a long time over this and eventually concluded that I did not have the time to be washing out poopy diapers and covers right now. Anyway, Weeble's bum wasn't dealing well with the wetness of cloth diapers. I am also pretty sure that our babysitters are relieved not to have to clean out cloth diapers either!

Sitting

Weeble certainly sits up, but needs support or nearby hands because within a few minutes she usually tips over or faceplants. (Thus her nickname.)

Talking

About three weeks ago, Weeble starting babbling, saying ba, ga, da, ta, ka, ma, fa, va, and that same weird syllable that Squeakles said - boeuv. (Rhymes with oeuf, the French word for egg.) Then a week later she stopped saying almost all of them, though ba and ma slip out from time to time. Now da is starting to come back.

Playing the Piano

We have one of those little four-key plastic pianos and when we place it on Weeble's lap, she looooooves to bang on it. Sometimes what comes out is actually almost melodic, kind of like how you get Shakespearean poetry when you have 100 monkeys typing, or something like that.

Personality

So far so good! She smiles (a lot). She's fairly easy going. (Unless you take away a toy she was really enjoying, like my old baby rattle that she was gagging herself with, then she screams with real frustration.) She enjoys watching Squeakles play, and it's very easy to get her to laugh.

Siblings

Since Weeble didn't come with a set of wheels, Squeakles was pretty uninterested in her for the first few months. He didn't show any obvious jealousy either, but we do think he suffered a bit from the undivided attention he was used to. He definitely went through a whiny period which is now finally starting to get better. (At the very least, he knows he's not "supposed" to whine and he usually can stop on demand, especially if he's confident that he'll get what he's asking for if only he uses his "normal" voice.)

More recently Squeakles has started to show a little more interest in Weeble. He likes to let her pull his hair - he goes over to her and rests his head in her lap, and then says "ouchie" when she pulls it. He also imitates our baby talk to her and will gently point out her eyes, cooing "l'il baby eyes" in a high pitched voice. I absolutely need to get this on video because it's so cute.

 

* And of course it ended up taking me almost a week more to finish the post!