All worn out from voting

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.

Three Months

My dear sweet Sam~

Today you are three months old.  It hardly seems possible that you have only been here three months.  It feels as though you have been part of our lives forever and I cannot imagine what I ever did with myself before you arrived.  And yet simultaneously it feels as though you just got here yesterday.  How can you be so big already?  You are 16 pounds and 25 inches long.  How did my tiny baby grow into such a big boy?

Now that we have figure out how to make your tummy comfortable, you are an entirely different baby.  You have made up the developmental milestones you missed in spades.  You smile at me now, delighted to see me after a nap or a long night's sleep.  You laugh, gasping with glee as I ask you "MORE kisses?" and smother your cheeks and mouth with five years of pent up love.    You love to play the tongue game with me, smiling that wide smile as I stick my tongue out at you.  You look at me intently and then stick your tongue out hesitantly until I praise you, clapping my hands, and then you smile and coo at me, pleased no end with yourself. 

You love to play with the animals in the play gym Auntie Kath sent you, particularly the giraffe.  You take a savage delight in grabbing hold of his colored feet and yanking at him until he comes off his linky and crashes to the ground.  You shake him above your head like a trophy while blowing raspberries, a tiny little Lord of the Flies.

You are snuggly and sweet at night, a sleepy weight in my arms.  You follow your father and me with your eyes if someone else is holding you, making sure you know where we are at all times.  You are content with babysitters, especially Auntie JoJo who wears you around in her baby sling, but you seem happy to see us when we come back.  You have changed from a screamy, pain-filled baby into a happy, playful child and we find you just delicious.

Darling son, I love being your mother.  It is the single most fulfilling thing I have ever done and your very presence sometimes brings me to tears.  I know that everyone has glommed onto this fact already but I HAVE A BABY!  And that baby is you.  You are worth every tear, every sleepless night, every year we had to wait.  You are more than I ever dared hope for and I am in love with you so much that I physically ache.  You are a gift, my child, and I hope you will always remember that.

All my love,

your mother

Super Gerbil Baby Does The Crib

Jeff is narrating (forgive the heavy breathing; the man has sinus issues) but you'll hear my voice in the background saying "Thank you Jesus!" and "We should have done this two weeks ago!"

Sam had been sleeping in my room for the past month (has it really been a whole month?!) (and I say "my room" because Jeff snores so badly that he spends most nights in the guest room) but it got to the point where neither Sam nor I were getting any sleep together. 

In the beginning it worked great.  He slept like a rock, I woke up when he cried and fed him and then we both went back to sleep.  Then came the Gerbil Baby.  Sam would make these noises in his sleep (and sometimes while awake) that made me turn to Jeff and say "Are you sure we didn't adopt a gerbil?"  And then Jeff would pick Sam up and say "Little man, you gotta lay off the cigarettes!" because it seriously sounded like he had spent his tiny lifetime chain-smoking menthols.  At first it was kind of cute.  But then we realized he wasn't getting very good sleep because the gerbil noises were increasing to become nearly constant.  And he was spitting up a lot.  And smelling like sour milk an increasing amount of the time.

When my best friend Char, mother of four, came to visit, I asked her if any of her children had ever made these noises.  "No," she replied, looking vaguely alarmed.  "I've never heard a baby make noises like that."  That was enough for me; I was pretty sure Sam had reflux.  One visit to our awesome pediatrician later and I was proven right; my poor Gerbil Baby was gerbiling because acid was burning up his esophagus.  We tried thickening his bottles for a week to see if maybe some low intervention methodology would do the trick but alas, the Zan.tac, it is our new best friend.  I haven't heard from Gerbil Baby in three days.

However, Pirate Monkey the Wiggle Worm was still in da house and every time mommy rolled over in bed, his eyes would pop open (I imagine, I can't see inside his bassinet from the bed) and the screaming/whining/complaining would begin.  I see his point; no one likes to be disturbed during their sleep--I certainly don't.  Several nights of this brought me to the edge of a breakdown.  Sam started to sleep during the day and stay up all night.  Jeff ever so gently suggested Sam sleep in the crib, in his own room.

WHAT?!  HAVE MY BABY SLEEP AWAY FROM ME?!  He still wakes up twice a night to eat! I argued.  It's so much more convenient to have him near me!  He's too little to sleep on his own! 

You need sleep, insisted my husband, mostly out of self-preservation, I assume.  So, reluctantly, I tried it last week.  I put the reflux wedge under the crib sheet (he had been sleeping in his bouncy seat), put Sam in his sleep sack and put him in the crib.  THE KID WENT OUT LIKE A LIGHT.  FOR FOUR AND A HALF HOURS.  HE DIDN'T EVEN CRY.

All night I kept thinking: time to ditch the cosleeper, lady.  I should probably have put Sam in his crib a week ago, when he made it clear that he no longer needed or wanted to sleep with me.  He sleeps so well at night, barely waking to eat, and he's been a much happier baby since the switch than he had been previously.  He has a disturbing tendency to migrate off the wedge and into a sideways position but I rest easy knowing that the crib bumpers are piled safely beside the crib, instead of tied to the sides.  I still have to wake up to feed him but I hear him better than I thought I would (I've got the monitor turned up loud, just in case) and when he grunted in his sleep last night, I just pulled the pillow over my head.  He stayed alseep, I went back to sleep eventually and we all woke up happy this morning.

My little baby is growing!

Of Gardens and Wishes

Back in April, after Jeff turned over the soil in my garden, I put the seeds for my vegetable crop in the ground.  I was behind in my planting; the peas should have been in by St. Patrick's Day and where I live, the beans were more than ready to go in, too.  I was still a little tender from surgery but eager to be outside, taking advantage of the beautiful weather.  And I was eager to get back to my garden.

I crouched over the ground, sun fading behind me, fingers in the cold dirt, pushing the seeds deep down and patting them until they were covered with dirt.  As I planted, I whispered to them: "Grow.  Send roots down deep and grow.  I'm planting you in hope.  Maybe by the time you come there will be a baby taking root inside me, too.  They tell me there is hope, that though everything looks dead there is still the possibility for life.  There might be a baby in this garden before too long."  I whispered, my face close to the dirt.  The chill of the evening wind sent me inside, cheeks rosy and eyes bright with dreams.  I remember that I slept well that night.

It's July now and the cold April evenings are nothing more than a memory.  We bake during the day with temperatures over a hundred and humidity that makes me feel like I'm drowning.  Nights are cooler but still as humid and anyone who ventures outside is begging to be eaten by bugs.  The garden that I planted in April is a mess these days; I haven't been able to tend to it for over a month now.  There are more weeds than plants out there and my lone rosebush had to be cut back severly because it contracted black spot.  And I'm not sleeping much these nights.

But before the garden went completely wild, there were beans.  Glorius and green, bursting with flavor, we ate them the first week Sam came home.  It was sweeter than I can describe, holding Sam in my arms, savoring the taste of hope fulfilled after such a long, fallow season.  I stroked his cheek, watched his mouth move in lazy sucking motions and thought about that April garden, sleepy with promise.  I could hardly believe that after all this time, after so many seasons spent reaping despair, he was finally here, in my arms.  It's a miracle I'm still not over.

The yield was enough that there are bags full of beans in my freezer, stored away for the winter season when flavors go stale with the fading sun.  We'll eat them this winter, feed them to Sam as he tries solids for the first time.  Next year he will crawl across the lawn as I pick the harvest.  He'll be too young just yet to help me plant the next season's crop but he'll be old enough to "help" me pick it.   

I have half a package of bean seeds left from this year's planting.  Next year we will whisper to them together.