Happy Halloween!

The Peapod hopes you get lots of candy!

The tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth.

Sam's been drooling up a storm lately and I'll admit, he's been a little crotchety. But we're talking about a kid who is rather...intense...by nature, so crotchety seemed kind of normal to me.  When Jeff suggested that Sam might be teething, I scornfully told him that he knew NOTHING ABOUT BABIES.  Babies don't get teeth at just barely four months old!  Don't be ridiculous!  Go back downstairs and build a circuit or something.  Just you leave this baby stuff to me.

Ahem.

This morning as my son howled in my arms, mouth wiiiiide open, I noticed he had a bit of something stuck to his lower jaw and attempted to wipe it away.  But that thing?  Was hard and SHARP.  In fact (cough) it was a tooth, newly erupted from my son's tender flesh.  Hence the screaming.  And the drool. 

I was too excited to care that I'd been wrong and woke Jeff up right away to let him know of his vindication.  He high-fived me, and Sam, totally confused at our happiness in the face of his meltdown, stopped crying and stared about in teary confusion.  We gave him some Tylenol and praised him for being such a clever lad.  He tried a tentative "Goo?" from behind his pacie.  He had no idea what he'd done but he drifted off contentedly in a Tylenol haze, his little mouth finally comforted.

My baby grew a tooth!  I couldn't be prouder!

trying to get just one good shot of the tooth:









Finally!  You can just barely see it on the bottome right.  (His right.)

Four Months

Sweet Boy~

Today you are four months old. 

For the past few days you have been eating like there's never going to be another bottle again and napping almost every hour.  You are ready to poop out for the night at 5:30 and we have to jolly you along as best we can until 6:15 when you give up and scream yourself purple until we put you in bed.  You are most definitely experiencing a growth spurt which makes my back muscles tremble in literal and metaphorical fear; you are already over 18 pounds and carrying you around all day has gotten to be rather sweaty work.  Aunty JoJo has a babysling for every stage though, so we have given her back the NoJo and now we use the BabyHawk, which you adore. 

Aunty Sarah lent us her exersaucer just this past week since you had begun crying every time we put you into your playgym.  You were bored with that! You wanted to be up.  You wanted new toys.  So Aunty Sarah and your friend Evan let you use theirs and you love it.  Your favorite thing is for me to tap out a rhythm with the rhythm sticks that Grandpa gave me last Christmas as you make the buttons on your toy play music.  You also love our rainstick from Chile and the emu caller from Australia, although the deep tones of the emu caller startled you when you first heard it.  Now you stare at me in puzzled fascination when I blow into it until I trail off into something that sounds very much like a fart because I am laughing so hard at your expression.  As I sit there cracking up, you start to smile and laugh too, dropping your pacifier, and then we are both lost in a world of giggles.  Darling, those are some of my favorite times.

This month your father went away for two days and you missed him.  We went to see both sets of grandparents while he was gone and even though you enjoyed yourself immensely at both houses, by the end of the weekend you were just plain done.  In the car on the way home you just wailed and wailed.  You'd fall asleep occasionally only to wake up and look around, then at me in the mirror as if to say: "Are we still doing THIS?  WHY?!"  And your tiny face would crumple and the crying would begin anew.  When we finally got back home and Daddy was there, you were surprised and confused for a second but then no one else would do.  You'd had Mommy all weekend, you wanted Daddy.  You screamed a lot to let him know how angry you were with his absence and with all the car travel and then we had to put you in bed early.  But you got up at 4 AM the next morning to make sure you didn't miss any time with your father and to make sure he was still there and didn't miss you.  

I still have nightmares that they've come to take you away from me, sweet boy.  But with each passing month they grow less and you grow more.  You are light and life and sweetness and an intensity that I've never before known.  I love you with all that is within me.

always~

your mother 

*Heh.  Apparently I've been playing the emu caller wrong.  I've been blowing into it like a didgeridoo when you're supposed to bang on it with the flat of your hand.  My bad.  No wonder I haven't been able to scare any emus.