Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Creepy Crawly

Will turned seven months old today! He also got his first tooth. (Can I get a "FINALLY" up in here?)

What else? He's blowing raspberries (that's a euphemism for projectile spitting) on everyone and everything. Cindy and Aunt Mary Ann assured me that it's a symptom of "pre-speech," so I'm going with that explanation. He loves to say "Goooooo" and "Gaaaaahhhh." That reminds me, I have to take video of him tomorrow before he moves on to the next consonant sounds!

He crawled on his belly throughout our long and wonderful road trip. When he wasn't strapped mercilessly into his carseat, that is. He can crawl a few paces on hands and knees, but then he slides onto his belly to complete the journey.

And mostly, Will just wants to walk. When he's on the floor and spots our hands in close proximity, he'll grunt and grab for them, use them to pull himself up to his knees, and then find his footing and start locomoting. The intensity...it reminds me of someone...someone I married, perhaps?

He could honestly do this all day, but it hurts my arms to support him so much--although I am developing some pretty fantastic bi- and triceps--so mainly I encourage him to "try crawling again, buddy!" No luck; upright it is!

I know I promised pictures from the christening last week, and now I also owe photos from Erin's beautiful, fun-filled wedding...but I'll have to wait until someone else sends them to me, because between my bridesmaid duties and Dave's Mr. Mom detail, we were left with only a few photo ops. The handful I have are of Erin getting ready, which are, um, not fit for viewing by the general public. (Matt, give me a shout when you're back from the honeymoon and I'll send them your way!)

It will probably take me until the end of this week to write anything coherent about these events (and our visit to the Ohio branch of the family tree), so bear with me. And enjoy this warm weather you're probably having, wherever you are.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Keep on Truckin'...or Minivan-in'

Just got back from NJ and PA Sunday night. We were a mere thirty minutes from home when a poop explosion woke Will up at 11 p.m. We changed him in the backseat at a rest stop gas station (where Dave had to run in and buy more wipes. I said explosion and I meant it).

The christening was wonderful, as was the rest of the weekend, but our camera's being fritzy and I don't have time to troubleshoot it. I'll upload pics next week when we get back from our Midwest Road Trip. We leave on Thursday, and the first leg of said trip? Eleven hours.

At least we'll have a minivan with an entire row of seats devoted to poop explosion management, though. So that's an upgrade. Score!

(Pray for us.)

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

GiST, Easter Edition

Grandparents who live nearby. Uncles, aunts and cousins who come to visit, entertain, and even feed your baby. Easter at a church where everybody loves your kid and asks if you bringing him to his first holiday mass means "you're ready to get involved again with the young adults, and maybe you can lead an ARISE group this year?" (I love feeling needed and missed. As if you didn't know.) Pink polo shirts with flipped collars on baby boys. Stomping, pounding, baby-waking neighbors...because they remind me that some things aren't worth worrying about. A walk in the sunshine, alone with a sleeping infant in a stroller and my thoughts to keep me company. Finally: friends and relatives with great news...congratulations, Leah, on getting into Columbia's principal-in-training graduate school!




Sunday, April 12, 2009

Easter Party

For Will's first Easter, his Aunt Jen came to spend the weekend with him.



Will got to practice his walking with Uncle Kai:








The Easter bunny brought a special surprise for Will: he got to meet his cousin Kylie for the first time.


It was love at first sight.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Five Foods

In honor of my recent trolling of the internet to find Easter feast recipes, I started making a list of all the foods I think I like but IN FACT, DO NOT LIKE AT ALL.

1. Muffins.

Whenever I go to Dunkin, I ignore the donuts and go straight for the muffins. They look so inviting and flavorful. I take one bite and am suddenly completely satiated, as if my muffin quota for the month has just been reached. Yes, I do like the crustier tops better than the rest of the muffin, which is just a hunk of bland mush to me. But one bite of the crust, and I'm done. And yet...I always order one. It's a waste of those wax paper bags, and I have to stop.

2. Caesar salad.

Actually, I honestly love Caesar salad, but most fall way short. There used to be a restaurant near my house in Coolidge Corner called Matt Garrett's, and the Caesar there was fabulous. Ditto the Caesar at the old Pizzeria Regina on Harvard street in Brookline. (Ashley and I used to split a half-pepperoni pizza and a Caesar, two Diet Cokes please--yes, Pepsi's fine, gawd, we always forget they only have Pepsi here blah blah.)

Bertucci's Caesar? Absolutely not. If I wanted a pile of old lettuce and over-peppered croutons with a bag of mayonnaise on the side, I would buy those three things at the grocery store, after which I would experience a wave of nausea at the sight of them and have to throw them away.

My sister's brother-in-law makes an awesome Caesar dressing that's barely even creamy and has lots of lemon and garlic in it, but I never make it correctly...to the point where I once bought a shallot thinking it was garlic and started to "press" the shallot into the mixing bowl. But that was senior year of college, so I think I get one big GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card. Right?

3. Soup.

I just crave it more than I like it. The end.

4. Red wine.

Never met one I truly enjoyed. Next!

5. Bananas.

Re-reading this list, I am realizing how odd this all sounds, and in turn, how odd I am. I am such a creeper, as Melissa would say. Who doesn't like soup or bananas? Or muffins? They are such innocuous foods.

Maybe that's the problem.

Anyway, with Will constantly testing different mashed concoctions (which by the way, isn't it so cool to think that when you're a mom you get to witness your child's FIRST EVER fill-in-the-food?), I'm so much more conscious of my own eating preferences.

Anyone else had a revelation that they're eating and ordering out of habit instead of true affinity?

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Backhanded

Thank you, upstairs neighbors.

Thank you for teaching my infant how to sleep through the sound of screaming, undisciplined four-year-old antics.

Thank you for teaching my son how to sleep through the slamming, pounding, elephantine footsteps of a 30-pound preschooler and a dad who should know better.

Thank you for coaching him in the art of snoozing while a toddler attempts to play the recorder at 6:30 in the morning. On a Saturday.

Thanks also for showing him how to catch some z's while your child chases the vacuum cleaner, yipping like a puppy, across all the hardwood floors of your condo, EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Many thanks for inuring him to the sounds of a temper tantrum directly outside our living room, and for teaching him to look quizzically in the direction of the door while your small daughter laughingly locks you out of the house. (Thanks for giving me a teachable moment on WHAT WILL NEVER BE TOLERATED IN THIS HOUSE, YOUNG MAN when my son is old enough to understand, too!)

Finally, thank you, upstairs neighbors, for testing my patience every day that I spend here. I think I can safely say that I now have an inkling of what it will be like to have the four kids I've always wanted, at least in terms of noise. You are a blessing in (really, really annoying) disguise.

(Remind me to erase this post someday when we put this condo on the market.)

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

It's the Little Things (and the big ones too)

ONE Align Left

Watching a six-month-old try to crawl and stand.

TWO

Washing sheets, covering duvets and planning meals
in preparation for a visit from family.

THREE

Getting fitted for a late-April wedding...
in a beautiful kelly green dress.

FOUR

Playing "Where's mama? There she is!"
until your cheeks ache from all the laughter.

FIVE

Talking to your best friends on the phone.
(Wishing you were talking to them in person--
and that you all lived next door to each other--
but feeling happy to be talking to them, period.)

SIX

Figuring out how to make time in life
for all the right things
with the help of your truly wonderful spouse.*

SEVEN

Watching the Twilight movie on demand.
Some things never change. :-)


* Does anyone else feel that the words for spouse--husband/wife/life partner, etc. are dangerously formal in a lot of contexts? Sometimes I just want to use the lifetime-commitment equivalent of "boyfriend," you know? Or maybe that's just me.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Zero and a Half

Will meets his cousin Michael one day before his six-month birthday...
I've been mulling over my words for Will's half-birthday and then forgetting about it, lost in multiple small-scale whirlwinds throughout the day.

There is so much to say, but most of it has already been poured out in the baby journal, intermixed with nap times and ounce totals. "The mundane alongside the profound," I was about to write, but the truth is that most of the time, the mundane is the profound around here. The small, repetitive tasks of the day are equal to the major milestones because every moment is about how much fun Will is to be around.
It hasn't always been this fun, and I'm not naive enough to think that it will last as long as I want it to--namely, forever, although another seventeen years of pure fun might make for some pathological separation anxiety as Will leaves for college.

But right now, it is FUN. He sleeps all night long, so when we all wake up, he's happy and we're happy, and his eyes are sleepy and one cheek is redder than the other from sleeping on his belly.
In that first minute of consciousness, his smile is immediate, his laughter is imminent, his appetite is inevitable. I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with him. When he's tired, I feed him in my arms so he can go to sleep comfortably. When we're in the car, I clap at the red lights to remind him that I'm still there. He entertains himself in carseats, strollers, cribs, and looks at me with pure glee when he accomplishes something.
He buries his head in my neck when he's tired, or sometimes when he's trying to turn to look at something and my neck's impeding his range of motion.
He grunts and whines when he's trying to crawl, but he never loses his focus or his drive.

He grins all the time.
He tries to talk when we talk. He thinks we chat on the phone purely for his amusement, and he giggles accordingly.
If he had a driver's license, it would say "28 inches tall; 18.5 pounds; green/hazel eyes," because those are the things that everyone asks you about. It might also say "Bald; immunizations up-to-date," because people care about those things, too.
Only 5% of six-month-olds are taller than Will, and 25% weigh more. (Only 5% have bigger heads. Seriously, I know there are reasons for measuring their heads, but it always seems so archaic, like it's a holdover from a time when craniometry was the closest they could get to internal medicine. Plus, I truly didn't need a doctor to tell me my kid's head was a wrecking ball.)
Beyond that, I just don't know what to say. I guess no parent does, not when they're in the thick of this transformation, the my-baby's-a-person(-and-an-enjoyable-one-at-that) lovequake. Maybe never?
I'm sure I've left a million things out, both here and in the journal, but I know that if I strain to remember every moment, I'll drive myself batty...and I won't be enjoying the moments when they're here. And right now, they're everywhere.