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.

I live in a hollow tree

Look who's sitting all by himself! And I couldn't help it, I had to pixellate out his junk. It totally cracks me up.

We've had a bit of warmer weather, followed by another wee cool spell. On the warm days, I like to just put a towel down and let Zephyr hang out in the buff, as is his birthright. But after he pees on me I usually get his little nekkid butt into a diaper again.

On cooler days, we like to stay in most of the day, helping Zephyr look at the world from a different perspective. He loves being upside-down now, or sometimes he'll cock his head to the side to see how things look sideways. Sometimes when he's upside-down I'll take the opportunity to snorgle his tiny chin, and this makes him squeal and laugh like a little pixie, the way it ought to.

I have such a soft spot for I am a Bunny because I had (and loved) it when I was a little girl. My beloved grandma Laverne used to read it to me. Whenever I buy books for Zephyr that I had as a child, I get a little extra nostalgic and misty, and write him a little inscription that makes me think of his future and this always makes me lose it, and I cry like a ninny. I've been making little notes to him in his Richard Scarry's Best Storybook Ever! that I hope he'll enjoy one day. On the page that shows different careers, I'm going to draw a girl bunny that is a biologist wearing her field vest and rubber boots.

Hey, look at him go, cramming some leaf or another into his mouth.

Still fresh on the heels of the raccoon shit brain-eating roundworm paranoia (particularly now that zomg, I personally KNOW SOMEONE who heard about a kid in her hometown THAT DIED FROM EATING RACCOON POOP!!! I decided he can eat some raw arugula straight from the garden instead of grass and clover. I was sure that it would be too peppery and that it'd staunch his desire to cram all the grassy stuff into his mouth. But whaddayaknow, he loves it!

...or does he?

Juneuary

It's the end of June, yet look how bundled I have to keep Zephyr. And the heat's still on! It's been such a cold spring this year. We've broken several records for precipitation and low temperatures. I guess I don't mind that much - it's easier to bundle Zephyr up in cozy layers than to cool him off, and his room is nice and dark and cool for blissful slumber. My tomato plants are hating it, but I can't say I really care. The rain doesn't keep us indoors, not one whit.

Just because I have a baby now doesn't mean I love children. I still sort of find most of them annoying, especially the little girl across the street. She's about 5 or so, and always hollering or crying or singing in that nasal Little Orphan Annie voice. The world is her stage, god help us all. But a long as it keeps raining, the insufferable Little Princess of Darkness stays indoors.

Anyways, this post is very late because we had our hands full with planning Scott's birthday pig roast (plus I had a lot of work-work to do last week, boo). And to celebrate his first Father's Day, I did (almost) all of the chores and party cleanup the following day. Three days of prep, one day of go-time, and one day of cleanup, and I'm just tired. But Zephyr performed admirable at his first shindig - he played happily with his baby friends, made a nekkid appearance (while I paraded him around, holding him over my head yelling, "blood for the blood god!") and then went right to sleep at bedtime.

You're probably thinking, "god, does that baby ever make any other face?" The answer is no, no he doesn't. Oh wait, here's a different one (though he was in the middle of getting his grin ready, and not really screwing his face up in a frump).

I have come out to play, and I'm here to stay

Last Saturday was gorgeous. I got some long-overdue yard work done, including mowing the lawn with our rusty, old reel mower ("Sally"). In these complicated times, I find it really satisfying to do some things the old-fashioned way, and the hard-earned whirr of a good, old push-mower hearkens back to simpler times.

Once the yard was cleaned up and the sun was safely behind the maple tree, I brought Zephyr out on a blanket to enjoy some fresh air. He was at the edge of the blanket and immediately began to stuff handfuls of freshly-mown lawn (ahem, weeds) into his eager baby maw. I wouldn't really mind, since everything growing back there is technically edible, but I've watched one too many episodes of Monsters Inside Me and am terrified of Zeph ingesting those brain-eating roundworms that live in raccoon feces. You think I'm being paranoid, but one end of our little pond is actually a midden site for the neighborhood raccoons (I've seen the scat!), and I stupidly watched that whole episode twice (for fuck's sake, it infected a baby boy!) and goddammit some things you just can't unsee. Unfortunately, Scott and I were too busy tag-teaming Operation No, Boosh, No to get a photo, but I have a feeling this won't be the last time we scramble to pull something horrible out of his mouth.

Hey, it turns out that Zephyr is a huge Simon and Garfunkel fan. He is awesome at singing along, and damn, this kid has some motherfucking soul. Here he is singing with all his gusto:



...and here's some general goofing-off and merriment with his old man. If you listen carefully, you can hear him telling his "joke" (the part where he emits a high-pitched gurgle). He always busts this out for a laugh.




And for those keeping score, yes, his pooping is completely back to normal.

Who Gives a Shit?

After a couple weeks of eating rice, bananas, squash, and anything else I could find and cook up for this kid, Zephyr has experienced his first bout of constipation. He hadn't pooped all week, so at his 6-month checkup on Friday I asked his doc, who told me not to worry about it unless he had very hard, small shits (but in a more doctor-y tone).

Over the weekend he strained to shit numerous times, but to no avail. His backed-up tummy was preventing him from getting comfy enough to take afternoon naps (and this was starting to trickle into the night sleep), so finally, yesterday, we decided to do something about it. We picked up some Pedia-Lax - suppositories of glycerin that come loaded in an "anatomically-correct applicator." Scott and I had a good, creeped-out laugh wondering what part of the anatomy it was supposed to correctly resemble, but they're basically a soft plastic pipette of liquid glycerin that you squirt up the baby's butt. I cautiously and apologetically administered the glycerin to Zephyr's pinched behind and he made the biggest, reddest "I'm poopin" face you ever saw on a baby. I felt too bad for him to remember to take a photo of this face (plus I was trying not to laugh). Scott and I exchanged uncomfortable looks and sympathetic words of support to our struggling baby, as I gently massaged his tummy in a clockwise motion.

Baby's first "Fuck you, Mom!"

An hour later, success! We had a poo. But it was a tiny stone of a poo, and I knew there was more. I fed him some apricots and greens, got him into bed for the night, and figured we'd try again today. This afternoon, he slept like the dead. Almost 4 hours. I ended up finally waking him up at 5:20 so I could keep him on schedule for bedtime. As I went to change his post-nap dipe, he started crying pitifully. He often needs a bit of a snuggle and chat before his diaper change when he wakes up, so Scott and I hugged him for a bit, then put him back onto the changing table, singing and goofing at him to stave off the tears. There was another tiny poo in his diaper, wedged up in his butt crack. Hooray!

Then, suddenly, came tears. A torrent of real tears, accompanied by cries of pain. He was straining to pass another poo, a big, dry, hard poo that was obviously hurting his tiny tushy! It was so sad to see my baby suffering, but what can you do? Yes, I finally grabbed that hard poo and tried to pull it out, but it broke off and his butt closed back, keeping the rest inside. I called the pediatrician, and we'll be therefore giving him a wee teaspoon of milk of magnesia tomorrow to help soften his stools (I'll also give him another round of glycerin to help him slide out the last of that mean old poo). And from now on, high-fiber foods will be dominant, and we'll be having less bananas and rice.

Other news from his 6-month check-up: at 27.5", he is off the charts for length for his age. They actually said he's in the 100th centile, and Scott and I laughed at this reporting error. "He's the tallest baby in the world!" He's dropping in rank for weight - 19lbs lands him at the 80th centile. His head is catching up with his body though, and has grown from the 50th to 80th centiles.

Zephyr also got his third round of shots. We thought about waiting until the 9 month visit, but we figured we may as well do it now while he still smiles at strangers. We braced ourselves for the screams that come with the injections, but they never came. The first two shots, not a peep out of Zeph. The third shot, only a yelp. Our brave little Viking took those shots like a champ.

So yeah, it's been an uneventful week. Sometimes shit doesn't happen.