Aybee Seedy

Long time, sorry. What's been going on: Zephyr has had a few visits with Holly, his speech therapist (though at this age, the "therapy" is really about repeatedly labeling objects and sounds in a way that's not too pushy or exhausting for him). I think it's going well, but I also am becoming more convicted in my thinking that he really is just a little late, and will actually be just fine.

His obsession with cars is, thankfully, starting to transfer to letters of the alphabet. He's fascinated with letters, and flashcards, and letter magnets. He can say a few of the letters: I (his favorite), O, E, A, Y, S, M and D; he holds up the B and says "zzzz." Because that's the sound a bee makes. The rest of the letters, he usually just says "E" because that's as close as he can get to making the sound.

I tend to forget that his receptive language skills are just fine because his expressive language is lagging, so just for fun I decided to test his knowledge. I hold up a book and starting with an easy one, ask him, "where's the I?" He points to it. "C?" I know he can't say that one, so I'm pleased when he points to it. And H, and J, and Q. He can read all of the letters. Little genius has been holding out on us.

He does have a few new words (mostly bullshit ones, but still):

• bye (bus; or bye, if waving)
• die (car)
• die-die (truck or airplane)
• dee (train)
• nana (banana)
• brr (anything that is marginally wet or cold)
• no (no)
• mo (more; also uses signs for more and please)
• moon (for moon or sun, or any picture of a celestial body)
• ow (owl)
• nummynummy (yummy)
• buhbuhbuhbuh (bubbles)
• Dada (Daddy)
• Mama (music to my ears)

He'll be starting co-op day care in a couple weeks, which will be great for us. It's family-run, for kids 18 months to three years old, and is really nice. I'll be there with him one morning a week, and he'll be there without me two mornings a week. I'll get a break to work, he'll get to be out of the house and around other kids his age (which will undoubtedly help his speech development), and everyone wins. We got our official welcome email today, and couldn't be happier.

Riding the train at Seaside was marginally less thrilling for him than the carousel ride.

And we had our first family trip to the beach last week! Grandma was in town and we rented a little house in Seaside called the Lobster House. It was wonderful to be in the salt air and sunshine, to revisit my favorite childhood haunts, and Zephyr had a blast on the coast (aka That Giant Sandbox). We even got our first family portrait since he was new.

I love how squirmy and funny he is in this photo. It perfectly sums up the little boy we have.

Manic Panic

Zephyr just wowed the both of us with the most amazing collection of mood swings. After his bath tonight, before bed, he was in top form. Here's how it went:

"Dat? Dat? Dat?" he asks about nothing in particular, jabbing his little index finger in random directions. He leans into my arms and hugs me into a stranglehold, then pulls back and bucks giddily, grinning with his eyes squeezed tight, shrieking peals of laughter as he squirms his naked tushie out of his towel.

"Et? Et!" (his word for blanket) He's pointing at his blanket, so I grab it and tuck it into his arms as I lay him onto the changing table to get him into his jammies.

Epic meltdown. Inconsolable crying.

"What's wrong, honey?" I ask. He looks at me, face in a cartoon frown, and sobs. Then he flips over (Scott has just gotten a diaper on him), crying, and points to the Totoro mural on his wall, says "dat" and starts laughing maniacally.

Scott and I look at each other, confused, eyebrows raised, trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness, lest we encourage him to act like this on purpose.

I pull his jammies over his head. Tears again. He's hugging me around the neck as he steps into his pajama bottoms. He starts slapping at me, and I gently scold him, "no hitting, Zephyr. That hurts." His face slowly crumples into another frown, and he wraps his arms around me and buries his head against my chest. More crying.

We get to the rocking chair, sing our songs and when he's finished nursing he flips his legs around to kick off my lap. He crawls off toward his crib, leaving me and Scott in our places at the rocker and starts to lay down on his rug. Scott picks him to sing the rest of the lullabies, and Zephyr shoos me off by making his kissy word, "mmmuh." Then he starts pointing at each of the stars lit up on his ceiling, "stahs. stahs. stahs. stahs. stahs. stahs." Points at the fan, "dat," then "stahs."

Sigh. "Goodnight, Zephyr. Sweet dreams. I love you."

"Stahs."

Oh, toddlers.

The Strong, Silent Type

After reading every book and website on speech delays, and after having a brief visit with a speech-language pathologist (SLP), we had Zephyr evaluated for developmental delays last Wednesday, and it turns out he is completely, smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-the-normal-curve normal. Except for speech. That part, he's only 79th centile.

Normally, they wouldn't consider this a far enough deviation from normal to qualify him for federally-funded therapy, but luckily the SLPs that evaluated him used their best professional judgment to determine that he'd be a good candidate for speech therapy. He might just be a late bloomer, or he might end up with literacy problems later if we don't do something now, early.

So now we wait for the Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) to arrive, and then we can start weekly, in-home speech training. I reckon most of the training will be for me and Scott, to help us help Zephyr. In the meantime, I just try to play with him more intently, annunciate more intentionally, use proper English instead of "toddlerese," though we still use the "toddlerese" to quell his thunderstorms, which come and go with frustrating frequency as he cuts four molars and four canines simultaneously, and is unable to communicate much further than pointing and nodding. And disdah. Disdah is, I think, "this is a car."

As in:

Disdah.

But dis is still used to tell me about other things he's observing. Like the white clovers in the garden and the busy little Hymenopteran sisters tending their nectar.

He tells me there are bees here, matter-of-factly. My budding naturalist loves squatting low to watch industrious honeybees and bumblebees, and buzzes alongside them. He loves blowing the fluffy achenes off of dandelions, and perfectly imitating the guttural melody of the American crow.

We spend lots of time at the park, providing happy respite from boredom (for both of us). We usually go in the early morning, so we have the whole place to ourselves. This doesn't really do his social development any favors, but it does help us avoid interactions like the one we had the other day. There's this one mom in the neighborhood, and her son, Liam, is about 6 months older than Zephyr. He's a really skinny little kid, almost always in her lap. He's verbally advanced for his age, but seems pretty shy and xenophobic and may have a social/emotional delay. Thing is, he always has really cool cars with him, which are irresistible to Zephyr. So like any other toddler, Zephyr grabbed one off the ground and started to try to take off with it to play. The other mom scoops up Liam, says something like "you don't want him to play with your car, do you?" and Liam buries his face in her neck and sort of says no, shaking his head.

This is the second time Zephyr has tried to play with this kid's toys at the park, so obviously he's established a pattern of behavior. This woman says to me, "he probably just senses that he can easily dominate Liam."

Yes, you stupid bitch, my 20 month-old son is a cold-blooded predator, can sense weakness in your son, and knew he'd easily overpower him to get what he wanted. He's cold-blooded, merciless and calculating. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he is a FUCKING TODDLER and the part of his brain that feels empathy or understands the concept of sharing has literally not grown yet. But go ahead and keep treating your son like a helpless victim. That should bode well for him socially, especially if he stays in the 10th centile for weight. You can protect him his whole life.

I muttered an apology, took the car away from Zephyr, handed it back and Zephyr started crying. I picked him up and we took off. If we see them again, I think I'll just tell Zephyr that Liam is too scared to play and we'll go to the other end of the park where he can't hurt anyone. The funny thing is, our friend's boy, Jude, is 14 months old, and takes cars from Zephyr all the time. Zephyr cries, then when it's time to part, we take the car from Jude and he cries. No one thinks Jude is a sociopath for not knowing how to share, and since Zephyr has almost ten pounds on Jude, it's clearly not that Jude thinks he can dominate Zephyr. I honestly don't know how anyone can go into parenthood without at least knowing that toddlers think everything is "mine."

But I can see how she'd think that Zephyr's a monster. I mean, look at this face.

Diabolical.

Walky Talky, Redux

...or, Why I am So Damn Tired All the Time

It's been a long time, I know. Sorry about that. I've been too busy chasing my kid all over the damn place, and couldn't be bothered to blog about. And even now that he's taking a nice long nap (all tuckered out from his first swimming lesson), I barely have time to eat lunch and get the rest of my other writing done. So here's what I'll do instead: I'll just show you.

Dizzy? Me too. My favorite part at 0:24, when he's startled by my presence with the camera.

Here's Zephyr's version of a phone call (on a remote control), which is representative of pretty much all talking he does.

No, I can't understand a word he's saying either. I'm hoping that eventually he starts trying to talk correctly, but for now he just babbles incoherently at varying volumes. Sooner or later he'll realize that it's just faster to tell me what he wants instead of pointing and saying "dis, dis" all time.

The last video I want to post is of him splashing around and being silly in his kiddie pool, but he's nekkid as a jay bird in that video, and I don't want any trouble. So that one will just be for Grandma to watch on my phone when she comes to visit in a couple months.

Zephyr's been doing great, though, and aside from the not speaking clearly, I think he's humming right along on his little milestones. His pediatrician said to let her know if he doesn't say ten words in a month or two, so that's a nice thing to be paranoid about. As it stands, he can say "mama," "dada," "caw! caw!" (for crow), "ball," "all done," "hi," "hello," and "I love you." A few weeks ago we were at the book store (he was in the carrier on my back) and I guess he got bored standing there, because he patted me on the shoulder and said "yecko, Mama" ("let's go, Mama"). And he never said it again. Same with several other words, uttered perfectly clearly, plain as day: strawberry, medicine, kitty. I'm choosing not to worry about it yet, because I feel like I'm already doing what I'm supposed to. I talk and read to him plenty, play with him every day, and narrate everything for him, nearly to the point of lunacy. We always freak out and panic that he's behind on things, then just at the last minute he comes along like it ain't no thang.

And it ain't.

Nappy-Headed Fool

This is a very sleepy boy.

After a month of waking up at 5:00 am to an alternately angry/chatty Zephyr, we have reluctantly decided to wean him down to one nap. We're hoping that if he sleeps less during the day that he'll go back to sleeping longer at night (or later into the morning). We started on Saturday, moving his 9:00 am nap to 10:00. Then yesterday, we bumped it another 30 minutes. Today, due to a spur-of-the-moment brunch date, he went down for his afternoon nap at 11:30. The books say to move the nap in 15 minute increments over the course of a week, but I trust Zephyr's ability to adapt quickly, and other than acting sleepy in the morning (yawns and eye rubs at his old nap time), he seems to be doing just fine.

My goal is to get him to a noon-3:00 pm nap so that we can schedule morning classes and activities to give our days some order, and I'll still have a little time for working and writing every day without having to cut into my evenings too much. Then in the afternoons we can run errands and fix dinner together. He's been very into playing in the kitchen lately, and I want to start letting him "help" soon. Also, with my afternoons shifting to being with Zephyr instead of working while he naps, I can get dinner ready earlier so we can all start eating together instead of just throwing something together for Zephyr, and Scott and I waiting to eat dinner until after Zephyr goes to bed.

The new nap schedule, while excruciating on the first two days (being up at 5:00 and out of ideas by 7:30), is already starting to show some results. Yesterday instead of wailing at 5:00 he just cried half-heartedly and then stayed quiet for a half hour. Today, he woke briefly at 3:30 am, but then went back to sleep until around 6:15 am. And that may have only been because he pooped. We'll see what tonight holds, but I'm already feeling better about things with the prospect of once again getting a full night's sleep on the horizon.

Other than sleep drama, everything is pretty much normal. Walking is going well, though he tends to prefer doing it from the comfort and security of home. When I take him to the park, he just crawls around, grinding sawdust and mud into his knees. Evidently he walks just fine when he's at the park with Scott, so I'm not sure what's going on.

He's really into coloring right now, which is great, because crayons are relatively light and small enough to fit into my purse. He doesn't even need to taste them anymore. He is always entertained now.

He's also started finally breaking his molars. His bottom left second incisor is still showing no signs of coming, or that it even exists. I guess there's a chance that he is missing one of his teeth? Wonderful. In addition to serious orthodontia, he'll need an implant. Hopefully this is just a baby tooth issue.

Talking, too, is coming along slowly. He verbalizes constantly, it's just usually not any words that I can understand. And it's not because I'm not paying attention, it's because he literally says "bzbzbzbzbz. dis. dis, bzbzbzbz." He also makes this cooing sing-song sound like an owl where he starts high and then drops and octave, going progressively lower and lower, "hoo-OOH, hoo-OOH." He can say "all done" when he's finished eating (which he does, while presenting either his empty plate or the plate full of food that he's not interested in eating). When I ask him if we wants to nurse, he nods and says "dub."

He calls Scott "Daddoo" which is adorable. He never calls me Mama, though, or requests me verbally at all, as far as I can tell. Maybe it's because I'm ubiquitous. I hope it's because he just knows that I'm always there.

Walky Talky

Oh, what a long time it's been since I last updated this blog. Such a bad mommy I am! I've had lots of other writing to do, and I guess I let things slide around here a bit.

Zephyr can walk now - measurable distances, even. He slowly, carefully makes his way across the living room. It's funny, when he's holding something such as a sippy cup, he covers much more ground and with less trepidation than when he is consciously walking.

Other than that, not a whole lot is different. He said the word 'medicine' last night, then repeated it twice to assure us it wasn't an accident. "Mmmm-dsin," he says sweetly, yearning for that candy-syrup Tylenol. We only give it to him at night, when his impending molars seem to genuinely fuck with his head.


Actually, the persistent waking has gotten so out of hand that we finally had to draw the line, and began the night weaning process last night. No, let me be more specific: we are sleep training him, for reals this time. We were having pretty good success with just letting Scott go in and give him a hug, but at 17 months, he really should not be waking up every couple hours hollering at the top of his lungs. Somewhere along the way, he forgot how to just suck his thumb or resettle, and learned to shout for us. So now, no more rocking him back to sleep in the middle of the night. We go in, pat him on the back, give him his blankie and wish him a good night. No more nursing in the night. He hates this. Last night, the first one, was very rough. From around 1:00am to 3:00am none of us slept. Scott didn't get back to sleep until about an hour before his alarm went off.

Today we're all pretty exhausted, but we'll survive. Hopefully it won't take long to get him squared away again.

I'll post again as there are updates, but for now, I'm just looking forward to Mother's Day with my guys.

Good Hurr

Don't ask why, but I decided to give Zephyr his first haircut. Myself. After a glass of wine (or two). Here he is before:


Laid back. A little too laid back. Things are getting scraggly. Clearly, something must be done.

Whoooops, totally fucked his head up.


Yes, Zephyr, "gag." Mommy fucked up your hair. It is a terrible look. It looks like a hipster chick with low self esteem cut her own bangs after that guy she went out with last week didn't call like he said he would.

Now what, though?


What else, a good old-fashioned, Ron Swanson-approved High and Tight. But a little less tight. And with an unintentional Vanilla Ice notch above the ear. Scott, surprisingly, wouldn't let me take it all the way by adding a couple more. He's no fun.

He looks like this little German boy from the 1920s. I wish I hadn't snipped across the front, but whaddayagonnado. At least it'll grow back.

Not much new to report, but he has a new trick: pretend talking on the phone. One day he snuck over to my phone and just held it to the side of his head saying, "Yah. Yah. Yah." And now any object that is roughly rectangular in shape is a phone. Or just an empty hand. That works, too.

And he's just been having a good old time with his little buddy Fred. They are the cutest little besties ever. This is the only kid that Zephyr hugs, and I finally caught it on film.


He loves him some Freddlez. They have so much fun playing and talking to each other. I know, totally gay.