This Just In

Teeth!

They came almost overnight. Last Friday (the day after whenever I updated last), we were here:

See the little nubs just poking through?

By Monday, we were here:

Fully cut through, and out a good half millimeter or so...

And after yesterday's nice, long naps (3.5 hours in the morning, then another 3 hours in the afternoon!), we were here:

"What is the haps."

Could he be chilling out any harder? In case you were wondering, yes, he is sitting in the middle of the sidewalk at the end of our driveway. They don't make lawn chairs that small, so he's in his Bumbo (plus his legs barely fit into it and I want to get the last but of mileage out of that thing before I have to pass it down to babies with svelter thighs. The neighbors have kind of an unkempt situation with their front yard (to put it mildly), and the blackberries are getting ripe now. So I'm picking berries instead of whacking down the canes and mumbling expletives. I plied Zeph with a few to keep him happy while I picked, then eventually passed him my iPhone with some music playing to keep him from stuffing dog-piss-zone dandelions into his mouth.

Scott is certain that Zephyr is thisclose to crawling, then I guess all hell will break loose and we'll have to actually baby-proof our house. That bites.

Infanta Dentata

He's teething. We hate it. Yet, Zephyr manages to (mostly) keep on a happy face.

Mostly.

...it just doesn't stick around as long as it used to.

Hopefully they'll cut the rest of the way through soon. In the meantime, we're giving him Tylenol, frozen mango and lots of hugs.

Back on Track

Another late post! It was my birthday this week, and between work-work, the food blog and the blog I guest-write, I just haven't found the time to update Zephyr's blog. I'm a terrible mother, I know! I can just hear my mother-in-law's coworkers rapping their fingernails on their desks, impatient for an update. But since I'm a bit lazy, I think I'll excerpt from my post this week on the Big Latch On blog:

To Nurture is a Mother's Nature

My son, pictured in the photo you see here at one week old, is now a robust 7 months old. Nursing was then, and continues to be, our special shared time. To nurse is to feed, to care for, to tend. Think of the words that sound similar, and are of the same etymology: nourish; nurture.

While we once spent the better part of our days together this way - intimate, luxuriating in one another's company - the time spent breastfeeding my son is now a collection of fleeting moments between a rapid-fire succession of developmental milestones. I cherish these precious moments of his mutable infancy, even as he squirms kicking from my cradled arms, distracted by the so-much-excitement of his surroundings.

Even if I continue to nurse well into toddlerhood, I know I can't breastfeed him forever. I already miss it. So I relish the time we do still have after every nap, during every lullaby. And I search for other ways now to nourish and nurture my sweet baby.

Check out these amazing vintage trousers I found. He looks like a little baby from the 1950s, dunnhe? He's growing so fast. Talking is imminent! We're sure he said "buh-bye!" to Scott the other day when he was leaving for work, but he hasn't said it again yet. He waves his hand back and forth now when we greet him. He babbles incoherently, but with determination.


Blurry photo, but worth it for the comedy. He loves technology (always and forever), but obviously we can't allow him to destroy our iPhones, cameras, and other gadgets, so we took the batteries out of an old remote control and he just gums the shit out of it. He loves it! I hold it and press the buttons while I'm secretly using the "real" remote behind my back so he thinks he has the power. But usually, he's content just chewing on it. Look at our little future flutist!

Thank goodness, his waking has subsided for the past three nights (sorry, Natasha!). I'm not quite calling it yet, but it's been nice to have uninterrupted sleep again. It affords me the energy to do millions of things with my day...besides write about my baby boy.

Wazzberries

Wazzberries (wāz'běr'ēz) n. the soft sound of a baby blowing a zephyr through his lips and tongue; "blfblfbbltlfbltfblt." Not to be confused with raspberries, the small, aggregate fruits that a Zephyr enjoys eating directly from neighborhood bushes whilst on strolls to the store.

So, it's been kind of a helluva week. Of course, it was the dreaded 4th of July last weekend, and I think any but the most redneck parent of an infant or small child curses Independence Day with fist aclench and brow afurrow. Zephyr did okay, I guess, all things considered. As usual, we kept his room pitch dark (but for a night light) and kept two loud, cool fans running to lull him into white noise oblivion. But a few epic booms from illegal fireworks (likely purchased from the 'Couve, Portland's armpit neighbor to the north) finally took their toll, and he was up at 11:00, crying, needing to be nursed back to sleep.

And then, as he has done every night for the past week, he woke up again at 3:00am. We thought those days were behind us. We were out of the woods! But, no.

Every night for a week, Zephyr has woken up once, sometimes twice, unable to put himself back to sleep. It varied - sometimes 4:00, then 3:00, 2:30, 5:00. Sometimes he'd wake only two or three hours after being put to bed. Last night he went back to sleeping straight through to 6:00, but who knows what tonight holds in store?

He's also been a bit of a grumpus the past week or so. Granted, this is Zephyr's version of grumpin', so it means he frowns and says "buhbuhbuh", not that he's throwing tantrums or anything. But lately, unless we actively distract him by singing or playing, he will cry actual hair-wetting tears almost every time we try to change his diaper or get him into a sleep sack for bed. I can't figure out what's going on with him that makes him this upset. So we just keep singing and goofing at him to distract.

We have, though, figured out that "buhbuhbuh" is his frustration/pissed off word, as it is always accompanied by a scowl (I like to think he's sounding out the word "bitch"). Other words: "dwadwadwa" (happy, excited, interested) or "blftlbltfbbttltft" (wazzberries of contentment). And this morning he finished one breast, said "moh" (more?) and then moved to the other breast to keep eating.

I think he's going to have teeth any day now, for real this time. He gnaws anything that drifts into his field of vision, and I can actually see the bumps under the gums. So, any day. This will be exciting for his diet, too, since he has recently developed the pincer-like grasp that separates him from the other primates! He can grab blueberries and get them to his mouth, and other finger foods will follow his ability to chew them.

His new favorite foods are pretty much anything that we eat, undumbed, but chopped up for his tiny craw. He loves my minestrone, and grits with blue cheese and corn, and I made him some tomato-roasted red pepper soup with tiny star-shaped pastina, and it tastes exactly like Spaghettios. On these hot days, he really loves shoving a whole wedge of cold watermelon into his mouth and gumming the rind while sucking the sweet juice. I also made him a smoothie by blending strawberries with frozen breast milk, and he really seemed to enjoy that.

Here's Zephyr hanging out with his towheaded friend Zane at the Stanley's raspberry party. Hopefully when they're a bit older they'll form a supergroup of z-named kids and will take over the playground.