milk goddess

Me: "I'm reading about Valerie giving up exclusive breastfeeding.
Jaime: "She exclusively breastfed twins for five months?"
Me: "Uh-huh"
Jaime: "Geez, she must be a milk-goddess."

home

We are home from visiting grandma and grandpa in Colorado. I was going to post photos, but Flickr is down. I'll get them up when I can. Meanwhile, here are some highlights from the trip:

• David is man about town. Thursday evening, Friday morning and Friday evening, David's dance card is booked at gatherings of friends of Grandma Susie--chamber events, anniversary celebrations and a brunch.


• David gets sick as a dog. Barf barf barf. He has to be given anti-nausea meds. But they can't go in the mouth because he will throw them up. So they have to go . . . elsewhere. Fortunately Grandma Susie seems to have lots of experience with this, which tells us more than we want to know about Jaime's and Uncle Grant's childhood.


• David gets his revenge. After the administration of some meds, David unloads on Grandma Susie's lap.


• Worst night ever. David is vomiting and can't have too much real food or formula so he is hungry. Since the day that he was born, this is the loudest, angriest screaming I have ever heard from him. I am completely undone by it.


• The Glenwood Canyon Pass. I challenge anyone to show me a more beautiful stretch of I-70. I got to drive down and back when I went to pick up a rental mountain bike.


• Jason faces his mortality. Remember how my bicycle was stolen back in June? Well I have been pretty much sedentary since then. Additionally, Grandma and Grandpa live at over 6,000 feet. I tool off to the nearest trail on the rented bike and am completely winded by the time I get to the trailhead. Half-way up the first hill, I have to stop and get off. I go back home. I return the bike, which means another beautiful drive through the canyon.


• David, Jason, and Grandpa Steve go for a stroll by the river. We got to break in the new backpack. Towards the end David gets tired and I feel him lay his cheek on the back of my head and rest.


• Deer visit the back patio. Jaime gets great photos.


• Jaime and Grandma Susie shop. They probably bought a pair of shoes or something, but they also bought me an espresso maker for my birthday!


• The Volvo. With bottom warmers in the front seats.


• David vomits and get diarrhea on the way to the airport.


• Bonding. Jaime gets her mom and dad fix, Sue and Steve get a David fix. We all get good food and a lovely, lovely time.

happy birthday, david!

What does it mean to have a first birthday? Sleeping a lot, very much like the day he was born. He is still on the anti-nausea meds and they make him drowsy. But at least he is not barfy.

At one-year old David will hold up one finger when asked how old he is.

When I sing, "she loves you. . ." he says, "yeah, yeah, yeah."

The stairs are his favorite place to play

He can stack one block atop another.

"dog, ball, duck, book, dada, momma, that, that, that"

He points at something and says, "that" and I tell him what it is. Then, he points at something else. If he runs out of things, then he will repeat the pointing at some of his favorite items, such as the carved duck at grandma Susie's.

He knows the sign for "more," but he also knows how to point and then bang on the table which is also pretty effective.

While Jaime was pregnant, her parents gave us a camcorder on the assumption that we would be sending them regular tapes of their grandchild. A sort of baby-tape-of-the-month club. "You get a camcorder for $0.01 and your only obligation is to send six tapes over the next 12 months."

That didn't happen.

So I have been given the task of dubbing all of our home-movies of David to VHS before vacation is over.

So, on David's first birthday, I am watching again the tape of the day he was born.

Excuse me while I tear up just a little.

I never really posted about when he was born. It was a couple of days of terror, let me tell you. All of us who are parents know this fear "I can't do this. This baby is going to die in my care."

One year later, I feel that fear again. David has had a virus that has left him listless and unhappy and uninterested. Repeated vomiting, fever, and anger that he is so hungry and we won't feed him enough. Seeing such an active and engaged child, simply lying on his grandmother's lap whimpering simply undid me, bring back many of the same feelings of helplessness I felt in the first couple of weeks of his life.

But, I know that this is not the worst thing that will happen to him and I am lucky that we went a whole year before such an episode.

So, Happy Birthday, David. I would give you cake if I thought you could keep it down.

one shopping day left

My father reminded me that I have not told him, or anyone else, what David wants for his first birthday. Here is my reply to his reminder (spell-checked).

Oh, sorry, um Samsung has come out with an am/fm/mp3 player that also displays photos on a color lcd screen. It is only 512 megs, but is VERY reasonably priced for what you get. David has really been jonesing for one.

Toys for toddlers. Things that he can push and pull around.

Jaime and I bought him some alphabet cards with pictures on them of things that begin with the letters of the alphabet. Very soon he is going to be at the point where he can memorize things and be asked to identify them when asked. Eg. "Touch apple." More cards like that would be cool.

At the same time, Jaime wanted to buy him one of those games with all the picture cards where you turn all the cards picture down and then turn then back over one-by-one and try to remember where the matches are. He is still a little young for this, but he will be there soon. The reason that Jaime wanted the set she saw is that the pictures were particularly artful watercolor images.

In Topeka, on Fairlawn at 21st, there is a toy store call "The Toy Store" that is very cool. Much cooler than Toys "backwards 'R'" Us (now that Skylar, the only TRU person capable of customer service, no longer works there). Go there, close your eyes, grab something. He will love it.

Later birthday fans.

rota evil

Last night, a week after he threw-up the first time almost to the minute, David barfed again. Then, he was happy as a clam. He babbled and played and crawled around like he was ready for a beautiful new day. Of course it was 4:00 in the morning, so that posed a problem.

This morning, he barfed again. I called our doctor whom I could not speak with, of course. I love our family doctor, but it drives me crazy that I have to have an appointment three months in advance to speak with her about anything. Her nurse suggested that I talk to the doctor here in Eagle who saw David on Thursday to confirm that the ear infection was gone. I did. Appearantly, there is a rotavirus going around making kids throw up. David had the bad luck of catching it.

So, he has little baby dry heaves and is vomiting mucus and has a temp of 100 and is miserable and unhappy and sad. I was rocking him on my lap when he spotted his ball and started asking for it. I put him on the floor to see if he wanted to get it himself. He started off across the floor. At about half-way, he flopped down on his tummy for a moment. Then he got back up and finished. Ariving at the ball, he flopped down again, arms and legs akimbo, head resting against the ball, and just laid there until I picked him up.

Later.

bananas rice apples toast

It's been a long week.

Last Friday night, he awoke vomiting and with diarrhea (sp?). Gross. After a lovely-smelling weekend of pedialite and bananas, I took him to the doctor. Diagnosis--ear infection, which can cause Montazuma's Revenge in infants. So we got a script for antibiotics.

On Wednesday morning, we boarded a plane for Denver to see the grandparents. David was a bit cranky and a terrible flirt. Lately, he has started getting shy and cranky around strangers. It is annoying, but not unusual. But when an eighteen-year-old girl gets seated next to us on the plane, he will not leave her alone. He keeps pointing at her and lunging towards her and pulling her pillow away from her. My infant son is already having pillow fights with cute girls.

David's special, starch-heavy diet fixed the runs, but we over-shot our mark a bit. Now, we have banana's and applesauce on hand to give him depending on which way he goes.

But, he is a trooper through it all. Short moments of crankiness and unhappiness occationally interrupt an otherwise smiling, sunny disposition. Here in Colorado, he gets to play with Hildy, the one-eyed dog, and Kramer the hairy hairy cat. And, stairs . . . with carpeting! He is so excited.

As I type in Grandma Susie's office, fat, lazy snowflakes are drifting by the window and adding highlights to the juniper. David is sleeping with mommy. She doesn't feel well and he cannot adjust to the time change, so he is up at 6:00 am and back down at 9:00.

Later, I'll tell you about David's appearances at Eagle's social gatherings.

. . . (after the spell check). . . sun's out, snow is gone.

coupl'a extra hits for val

It's funny that Val over at Alexander and Sebastian should say this:
"I've also noticed that their hands used to barely reach the top of their heads and now they go an inch or two past."

I was changing David today and he dropped whatever was in his hand. It was up by his head somewhere and he was searching for it. I noticed that he can now reach completely up over his head and pretty much touch his hands together.

In many other ways, he is developing proportions that are more human-like. He is thinning--he still weighs 23 lbs fully-clothed but is getting taller. As he moves around and expresses himself, he is losing some of that chubby infant quality (until you change him and see his theighs).

The most dramatic result of this is that he is now properly proportioned enough to face the car seat forward. He loves that. I can turn around from the front seat and look at him and he will smile every time.

tent

So, we have this play tent in the house. Nobody is sure where it came from--probably aunt Skylar.

David loves it.

yes, it comes with the bear

Apparently, if you want to be comfortable carrying a 25 lb boy on a mountain, you just need to pay a lot of money

This is our latest piece of gear in preparation for the upcoming Colorado trip.


The Deuter, Kid Comfort II.

We decided on this one after trying on a half a dozen different packs in three different stores in three different cities. This is the process:

• Make adjustments to the harness
  


• Stick David in the pack, strap him down


• Sling pack onto back, make adjustments


• Walk around looking like a serious dork being ridden like a camel by a baby who is thrilled to have such direct, two-handed access to the hair on the back of our head.


• Remove pack, readjust for spouse


• Repeat previous steps


• Move to next pack up on the price scale, repeat

Fortunately, there are a finite number of packs available to us to try on, or we would keep it up until we died. For the last three we tried on, we didn't even take poor, exhausted David with us. We just filled the pack with some dead-weight.

But it is way comfortable. The baby goes into it, we sling it on our back, we make 25 quick adjustments, and then forget that we even have a child.

We are calling it an "investment" in David and all our future kids. For the price, I think this guarantees me at least four more children.

No, not four total. No, not a Linus, either.

I will post photos of David loaded into it as soon as I am able. Promise.

Later, gear fans.

of course, i didn't get mentioned

Listen to a public radio discussion with daddy and blogging superstar Matthew Balwin of Defective Yeti about parenting blogs.

Way less condesending than the New Dork Times.

miniblog revisited

Due to the overwhelming imaginary response to the miniblog problem in Internet Explorer, I have researched and found new code that should allow you IE users to see the miniblog.

I have tested this in a couple of different browsers with a couple of different computers. Mostly it seems to work. However, if your Explorer freezes up after you have loaded the blog, please send me an email.

journey

Last night, it seemed that David suddenly achieved a new level of self-awareness. While dressing him for bed, I pulled his pjs up to his shoulder and maneuvered his arm to the opening of the sleeve. He knows that he must then straighten his arm to push it through the sleeve. But this time, as his hand emerged through the little knit cuff, he seem fascinated. He stared intently at his hand, turning it back and forth and over and over. He repeated this with the other hand. He even reached across with his left hand to explore his right hand and the cuff that it had just come through.

This morning was more of the same. When he woke up, he gave careful examination to the designs on his pjs. While being changed, he was again thrilled by the whole hand-through-the-cuff trick. He always holds his feet on the changing table, but this morning, he stared them and explored them with his hands. While I changed his diaper, he kept this up. I have mentioned before on this blog that public blogging sometimes clashes with private issues. Those of you who are familiar with a one-year-old's journey of self-discovery know what we got to discover this morning. The rest of you will just have to go out and get your own baby.

Later, fans of the hand in the cuff.

david's first fall down the stairs

So, it happened like this.

Jaime is now a senior in the Social Work Department and has learned a lot about "boundaries." As parents, it is important to keep boundaries, to make them clear, and not to cross them. We have to take care of ourselves, you know. And we have to teach these important lessons to David as well. Of course, we are not cruel and we understand that he can't take all this in one bite. We would never let him fall all the way to the bottom the first time. Baby steps, that is the key.

So, it wasn't bad parenting.

He was sitting at the top of the stairs and I was on the landing. He would throw the plastic fish down the stairs and say "uh oh." You see, he doesn't understand that when you deliberately surrender an object to gravity, "uh oh" doesn't apply. So, everything that goes from his hand to the ground gets an "uh oh." It is very cute the first 300 times. . . but I digress.

He gives a weak toss and the fish only goes down one step. He reaches down to pick it up. I've seen him do this before, so I know that he is able to get the fish unassisted. This time, however, he must have thought that he was not getting enough attention from me. Instead of simply grabbing the fish and throwing it again, he tumbles forward head first, trying to violate my boundaries manipulating me into interacting with him in an inappropriate manner. As a good parent I let him land head-first on the first step, then, as his little body is upside down in mid-air preparing to continue to fall, I lunge like a maniac, swooping him up and holding him tight and trying to console him and trying not to cry myself.

On a positive note, he hit on the right side of his forehead so the bruise will compliment the one on the left side of his forehead from when he tumbled to the ground from the bottom step a couple of days ago.

david's first blog post

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At the zoo

monkeycropped
Originally uploaded by jandjgilbert.

I've finally posted photos from the trip to the zoo this weekend with Grandpa Brice. Click on the photo to see the full set of seven.

it's nice when others do your blogging for you

Val over at Alexander and Sebastian sums up my feelings on this issue nicely: "Now I understand the importance of drugs. They were made for parents."