Fluffer Nutter

Here's Zephyr an hour before surgery last Wednesday, giving the proverbial thumbs-up, being a strong little trooper at the hospital and charming the shit out of everyone. His surgery went well, and he's recovering nicely. I even held it together, only crying a little, and only once. It wasn't even over Zephyr per se, it was over some little boy being pushed on a gurney to or from surgery. The little boy was really scared and was just wailing. It just really hit a nerve and I had to duck into the waiting room kitchen for a tissue.

Rather, when Zephyr woke up from his sedation in the recovery room, I heard him crying from down the hall and went into Mother Bear mode, all raw adrenaline, and ran to him, undoing my shirt on the way. It felt amazing to be the thing he needed, to hold him and make him feel safe and loved. The nurse in the recovery room tried to cover me up to give me privacy, but coming off the heels of Big Latch On (in which we participated) I righteously shrugged off the blanket and insisted that more people should see a mother nursing her infant. The other mothers (their personal feelings on public breastfeeding notwithstanding) didn't notice, though, because they were too busy staring love at their own cubs.

But that's all done now, and he's healing up quite nicely. Now he can get back to the unfortunate business of cutting his two upper incisors. These ones are really fucking him in the head - for the first time, today he pulled away from the breast mid-nurse just to arch and sob. Not even cherry-flavored codeine could chase this pain, and it took sheer exhaustion (ours and his) to get him to nap for more than 20 minutes today. Adding insult to injury, this nap came at 3:30pm, so I had to wake him up after only an hour and a half so we could still get him to bed on time.

Good news, though: Zephyr has just learned that pressing his face against the mesh of his pack 'n play a) feels interesting and b) gets major laughs. He likes getting laughs. Since he can't hang out in his exersaucer while his nuts recover from being helped into their new location, he's been spending a little more time in his little pen. Or as I like to think of it: "Baby's First Prizzin!" Scott said he even saw Zephyr running his little cup along the mesh, like a prisoner running a rusty tin cup across the bars of a jail cell.

He got to spend a little time hanging out with his cousins Logan, Ellie and Charlotte over the weekend last week, which he loved. He absolutely adores them, for obvious reasons: they are hilarious and completely rapt with him, and this is a winning combination in his book.

To top things off, his Grandma was in town. It's been so great having her around this week - not for the help, necessarily, but because she is in love with Zephyr, and he with her.

Oh, his new trick of the week: demonstrative word recognition (is that a thing)? Besides "mommy" or "dada," that is. We've been seeing quite a few squirrels outside our window since I refilled the bird feeder. These are basically smaller versions of our cats, as far as he's concerned, and he screams with excitement when he sees them. New trick: we were reading I Am a Bunny and got to the page that shows the squirrels in their tree with the acorns and all that, and I said, "look! there's a squirrel!" to Zephyr, and he looked up and out the window at the tree where the squirrels normally hang out. It blows my mind that he's already absorbing information - my work is just beginning.

He has had such a great week overall. Plus, his nuts are finally in their proper place, so there's that.

Yay!