Speaking of snuggling.....

I read this on the scary mommy blog this morning - it sort of sums it up.

My husband has told me time and time again to cut the cord… no f*****g way! I’m waiting until that thing rots and falls off. I mean, for how much longer is he going to say “I love you” when he walks out the door, or hug me in front of his friends, or ask me to lie with him at night? Frankly, I don’t know, but I won’t be the one to stop it.

If he’s 40 and wants me to lie with him and scratch his arm, I’ll be all “Move over, Megan,” or whatever his unappreciative, son-stealing wife’s name is.

Holding hands with my boy
 

Merry (belated) Christmas!

Also, this.  Because I can.  And because he's just SO STINKING CUTE!!!!!!!  It seems the reality of Santa's "naughty list" hit home while sitting on Santa's lap.

Aquarium Trip

Over the Christmas break, we took Zac to the aquarium.  It's small enough that it's easy to see everything, and big enough a two year old can get a good run on, just in time to tire him out for a nap.  He really liked the otters, the seahorses and "Nemo".

Literally, nose to the glass, watching "Nemo"

He was decked out in his Ohio State track suit, a Christmas gift from Grandma and Grandpa.  When we stopped to get our tickets, the lady at the counter said "OK, two adults and one little buckeye".

We stopped in the gift shop on the way out (cleverly, the most direct way out of the aquarium is through the gift shop.  "Know your audience" - it's the first rule of stand-up, and apparently the first rule of public attractions, too.)  After a fair amount of deliberation, Zac picked out a stuffed spotted baby seal as his new friend to take home.

After lunch, we were driving home, and he started with the questions.

"People make 'dat?", he asked, holding up his seal.

"Yep, a nice Chinese lady made that," Mark told Zac.

"China lady make 'dat?" Zac repeated.

He spent the rest of the afternoon asking about various things in the house - "China lady make 'dat?", "China lady make 'dis?"

Our little sponge continues to soak things in at a rapid pace. I just hope he's not at childcare asking "China lady make 'dat?" at this exact moment.

Pushing 2

It's been a while since I last checked in.  I could pretend that it's just that my son keeps me so busy, but there's been a free-floating spirit of ennui coursing through my life, which makes it hard to sit down and concentrate.

It's hard to believe there was a time where I worried that Zac didn't talk enough, or that I would beg him to say "Mommy" instead of "Daddy" all the time.  I think he broke a world record for the number of times one person can say "mommy" in a 60 second time frame.  After the 932 reiteration of "MOMMY?" I said "Jeez, Zac, WHAT?!?!" (I was on the phone while he was doing this, of course)

He smiled sweetly and said "HI!" Yep.  That's an almost 2 year old for ya.

He got to spend a fair amount of time with Papa & Granny (My dad & his wife) this summer, and the attraction between Zac and his Papa was almost palpable.  Upon first re-meeting, Zac walked up to his Papa, reached for his hand, and said "Hewwo Papa!" They spent some time reading stories, playing cars, and walking around, holding hands and talking about things.  Zac became very aware that they were a matched set - there is no Granny without Papa, and vice versa.  He also named their RV "Harvey" and likes to check random RV's to see if Papa is inside.  The old ones are back in Arizona for the winter, and they are already missed. 

 

Zac and I also spent a few nights on the Olympic Peninsula with Ahhhhh-neee (Auntie Jennifer) Nom (Uncle Tom).  They had rented a house on the water that was absolutely gorgeous.  Zac enjoyed the boats, seeing wa-wa everywhere, and at one point he exclaimed "Oh My GAWD.  The Tweeees!" (trees). Fwwwwwwy-innnnn kiiiiiiiii-yites! on the beach was a huge hit. 

Fwwwwwwwwwy-innnnnn kiiiiiii-yites! with Nom

He parrots everything I say.  EVERYTHING I SAY.  I've heard him admonishing other drivers from the back seat ("Beep beep, atttttth-hoooooo!") and he met me telling him he could not have Ma-Means (Jelly Beans) for breakfast with a scrunched up face and "Puck you, Mama" (yeah, I'm not gonna translate that one.)

He's sleeping in his own room 100% of the time - we had a sitter over a few months ago and rather jokingly suggested she feel free to get Zac to sleep in his crib.  He went right to sleep for her, and has been sleeping there ever since.  Naps and bedtime have one of three possible outcomes: Really easy, One check in, and fucking awful.  There is not a lot of middle ground with my little man.

Yay! Potty!

He's very interested in the potty.  He likes to tell us to poop, and he likes to undress his doll and sit her on the potty so she can poop.  Last night, he told me he had to go, so I got him undressed.  He peed on the floor NEXT to the potty, yelled "uh-oh!" covered it with a book, and ran away.  It's a start!  My previous experience with cats has not really prepared me for this, I know if a cat was peeing next to his litter box, it would be his way of saying "I'm not particularly happy with you."  For Z, I think he just didn't QUITE make it in time.  I'm pretty content to let this go on his own schedule, with no real pressure about potty training.

He has a fine fashion sense, which is to say he wears what I buy for him without too much of a fuss. He's figured out that he gets fawned over A LOT when he's wearing a hat, so he will keep a hat on.  And while he likes his own hats quite a bit, there's nothing quite like getting his hands on one of my hats, or Daddy's hats. If ever you see him wearing a baseball cap backwards, it's not because I put it on him that way, he has his own sense of style, and he will not be limited by what Mama and Daddy say is "right".  Backwards caps are COOL, you guys!

 

Wearing Mommy's Hat (and Tigger slippers), an Animal hoodie (complete with mohawk), and Mr. I-Do-It baseball cap.

 

It's been an amazing almost two years, a frustrating almost two years, a happy almost two years, the most exhausting experience I've ever had, and more joy than I thought my heart was capable of.

I showed this picture to my primary care doctor.  He said "kids can't fake that happy look."

To forward face, or not to forward face.

Zachary is almost 19 months old, and he's actively rejecting any and everything that might indicate we may be treating his like a baby and not like the big boy that he's fighting to become.  He idily pushes around food that we've cut too small, and aggressively devours food that is in it's original form.  He sighs, patiently, and indulges in our over-protective need to hold his hand while he's going up and down stairs, and his new favorite phrase is "NO MAMA!"

The latest multiple times a day struggle is the car seat.  He's still rear facing, based on newish findings that childrens should stay rear facing until 2 years old.  His legs do not straighten out when he's seated, and it gives him A LOT of leverage for squirming.  I sit him in the car seat, and he pistons his legs out, launching sideways, throwing himself out of the car seat and into the passenger back seat.  He sits there, like a big boy, and starts fumbling with the seat belt.  He KNOWS he needs to be belted in, just has no interest in doing it in a car seat, looking the wrong direction.  When I drag him back into his car seat, I'm pretty much physically restraining him while he screams and I strap him in.  This adds a lot of stress, guilt, and general anxiety to both of our mornings.

Buckle up, Mama!



So, here's my dilema.  He is 35 3/4" tall and 30.5 pounds.  He's off the growth charts in ever category.  Do I continue to fight him for the next 5 months, or do I go ahead and flip him around to forward facing - where the view is more interesting, and his legs won't be up against anything, giving him the momentum to get away faster.  His safety is top priority to me, but there's something to be said for my sanity in this whole deal, too.

P.S. - Look, Jennifer E! 324 words! :-)

Vroom, Vroom!

Where do little boys learn to play cars and make car noises?  We do not have a preponderance of gender specific toys, and the car collection only started once he really got into his first car.  The other night, Zac was wearing pi's that had trucks on them.  It was like light dawned on Marblehead.  He looked at the cars, looked at me, then pinched his fingers together and ran them up his arm, making the "vrooooooooom" noise.  He moved the car to my leg, smiled and said "Beeep beep!  Vrooooooom" then ran it up my leg too.

He's become fascinated with spaces where he doesn't really fit.  He likes to sit in the smallest toy box, he also likes the open nook under the counter.  Last night, he got the empty cardboard box that the delivery of diaper wipes arrived in, and drug it into the kitchen where I was making dinner.   He worked out getting into the box on his own, then started to scoot himself across the floor by bending his knees and scootching his butt.  "VROOOOOOOOOM!"

This was all fine and good until he figured out he was stuck in the box.  "Uh OH!  UH OH!  DAAAAAH-EEEEE! DAAAAAH-EEEEE!" he called.  It took me a moment to stop laughing and lift him out of the box.  He then decided it was a better plan to put Elmo and Cookie Monster in the box, and to push/drive it around the kitchen.

I wish I understood more about how he learns.  He amazes me every day with some new thing.  And whenever I am convinced he's a genius and we should go ahead and enroll him in college, he does something like shoving a super hero down his diaper and laughing maniacally. 

Is that your final answer?

Zachary still doesn't talk as much as I'd like, or as much as I think he should.  I remind myself that I don't actually know the correct amount that he "should" be talking, and when we saw his pediatrician at the 18 month visit, the doctor said his 12 words are absolutely within normal range, so I try not to worry.

In the last week or two, it seems we've had a few words added to the vocabulary.  I sometimes think we assign meaning to sounds he makes repetitively and they aren't really words, but he uses them consistently and contextually, so I'm going to say the B sounds: Ba (bottle), Bee (JB, his bear), Bay-bee (Baby), boo (boots/shoes), burr (bird), are words to him.

He's been asking "was dat?" for months, but he's recently added a new question "Ahh we dere?" (are we there?). He repeats it non-stop while riding in the backseat of the car, as if I gave birth to Bart Simpson.

very stylish, in one of my socks, with a straw fedora, 

and preparing to roll some lint

We spend some time most days looking at pictures of family.  We name all the people on the fridge, and all the people on the dining room wall, mostly with us telling him who they are, then asking "Where's Papa?", "Where's Grandma?", "Where's Auntie Jennifer?", etc.  We were playing this game the other day when he pointed at a picture of Mark and said "Daaaah-eeeee!"  Mark asked him "Where's Mama?"  Zac leaned his head against my shoulder and said "Wight dere."

He love listening to music, and tries to sing along with me, particularly on sustained notes.  He can come close to matching pitches, and he loves songs with sound effects.  A recent favorite is The Beatles "Hey Bulldog", he loves to throw his head back and howl like a dog along with the sounds at the end.

We've been spending a fair amount of time at the zoo, as we renewed our family membership.  It's great because there's plenty of room for him to run, and not really a lot of trouble he can get into.  He likes to watch the penguins, and to visit the sloth bears.  We actually made it past the sloth bears to the meerkats and komodo dragons on the last trip.  He was underwhelmed by the lizards on rocks, but seemed to think the meerkats were fascinating. 

He seems to really like all the pretty flowers blooming, and he asks me over and over "Was Dat?" when we go on walks.  I answer to the best of my knowledge: Tulips, Daffodils, Iris', Dandelions, and I make up what I don't know.  Sometimes I quiz him when we see a flower a second time.  I'll ask "ZAC! What's that?"  He sometimes answers "Ummmmmmmmmm, Fah-wer", which always amuses me.

He's been very intent on learning to blow on dandelions, no unblown dandelion is safe from his hands. 

For Mother's Day, Zac brought me a pack of 12 paper towels and a card he made.  He also took a 4 hour nap, which was a pretty awesome present in itself.

One of his teachers today said "Wow, he's really left all vestiges of babyhood behind, he is a full-on toddler now."  I said "That's not exactly a compliment, is it?" She laughed and said "no, not exactly."  He is showing every sign of a strong-willed only child, pushing boundaries and learning limits.  It's fascinating and insanely frustrating at the same time.

We've come a long way, baby.

17 months ago today, we brought our son home from the hospital.  Zachary was born via scheduled c-section, and it was an uncomplicated and normal birth.  He had some problems the first night - after nursing, he would fall asleep and then make horrible choking noises.  I still remember the terror like nothing I'd ever felt the first time that happened.  I was still attached to an IV and catheter and could not get out of bed, his bassinet was out of my reach, and I couldn't GET TO HIM while he made these awful noises.  It was my job to press the panic button and communicate what was going on.  The nurse came in, took one look at him and grabbed him up to literally run him down to the NICU.    As a C-section baby, he had some amniotic fluid that hadn't fully cleared because he didn't travel down the birth canal and have that compression.  This, coupled with the fact that he had undiagnosed reflux, was causing him to choke a bit on the thicker fluid.  He cleared that incident on his own without having to have a tube into his stomach.  After the heat of the moment, the nurse turned to me and said "OK, you have this panicked look on your face.  Talk to me.  What's going on?"  I couldn't really put words into the absolute helplessness I felt, being connected to tubes and unable to get to my baby, unable to help him.

Nursing was not an easy adjustment for either of us, and Zac lost 12% of his body weight in the first two days.  I was instructed to wake him every two hours to nurse, and we supplemented with a little formula while waiting for nature to do it's magic, my milk to come in, and for the whole thing to get easier.  On the first day home, we had snuggled up for a nap together and I had an alarm set to wake me up to nurse him.

The alarm went off and Mark and I woke up, but we could NOT get Zac to wake up.  I played music for him, stroked his face, we clapped and snapped, I poked and prodded, we even put a cold washcloth on his face and he was having nothing to do with it.  I started to get scared, and we called the consulting nurse line.

I went through their script of questions, and I provided answers.  "No, he has not had a wet or poopy diaper in the last 2 hours.", "Yes, he's breathing", "No, it doesn't seem like he's in distress."  After about 10 minutes on the phone answering questions, she told me it just wasn't worth it to take a chance with a newborn, and that we needed to return with him to the urgent care immediately.

As I was hanging up the phone, there was the tell-tale sound of a soiled diaper and we changed him while he was still refusing to wake up, and returned to the hospital.  I couldn't tell if the diaper was wet AND poopy or just poopy, so I bundled it into a bag and put it in my pocket, and off we went.

I sat in the back seat with him, shining the light of my cell phone on him so I could see if he was still breathing, and could assess if there were any changes to his skin color.  It was a silent ride while Mark drove with focus back to the hospital.

By the time they got us into triage, he had started to wake up. By the time the pediatrician got into the exam room, he was wide awake and ready to chow down.  It turns out, we had brought our baby to the emergency room because he was just really soundly asleep. It became a story we shared with a lot of chagrin and self deprecation.

Fast forward 17 months.  A couple nights ago, Zac tripped and took a header into the door jam, resulting in a scrape and a SPECTACULAR goose egg.  I held him to comfort him while he cried, and blew gently in his face when it seemed like it had been too long since his last sobbing inhale.  He looked up at me with the giant eyes that I love so much and he wailed "BAAAAAAAAAA?"  Even though it was dinner time, I said "Absolutely, sweetheart.  You can have a bottle."  Mark heated him up some milk and I continued to hold and rock and shhhhsh him and tell him he was ok.

"Do you think we should take him to the emergency room?  Does he need stitches?", Mark asked worriedly.

"I think he's fine.  Let's just put some ice on it" I replied.

Zac calmed down, and then I got the shakes and started crying.  He was playing happily on the floor while the tears dripped off my cheeks and nose and I put my head in my hands.  "I just worry about him SO MUCH", I told Mark.

We reassured each other that he really was acting fine, and I went forward with preparing Z's dinner for him.  By the time he sat down to eat, he had completely forgotten about the whole thing, outside of a little annoyance at me for putting a band-aid on his head.

I was out for drinks with a few of the moms from our parenting group, and I showed off the picture of Z's goose egg.  One of the moms asked if we took him to the emergency room, and I shrugged and said "No, we just kept an eye on his pupils and how he was walking and gave him a little tylenol before bed.  He shook it off pretty well."

She said "Wow, you've come a long ways from taking him to the emergency room because he was asleep."

I thought about that, and I thought about this journey.  We really HAVE come a long way!  Emotionally, mentally, and physically for Zac, we are not the same parents today that we were when we brought him home.  Neither one of us worry any less, but I like to think we've all changed for the better as we've got to know each other.