The equitemporality of being

Zephyr is a challenging little polliwog these days. He can't seem to settle down anymore - his legs are always kickkickkicking: the arms of the chair we nurse in, the floor, my stomach, none have escaped his restlessness. His arms flapflapflap, slapping palms on the floor, on the surface of his bathwater. He won't stop fidgeting long enough for me to change a diaper, he flips himself over the instant he's on his back (and I, distracted by the adorableness of his tiny, kissable butt, momentarily forget my fear that he'll deposit a dribble of urine onto every surface unless I get a diaper back on him immediately). He won't let me trim his nails, and has the resultant face-gouges to prove it. When I cradle him to shhh and soothe for naps, he squirms like a maggot on a hot rock; when I hold him upright against my shoulder, cheek to forehead, he rears back and punches me in the throat.

Today he won't nap for more than 30 minutes, but I know he's exhausted! He's been yawning and stealthing little eye rubs off and on all day (exacerbating the dark circles that have formed under his eyes), yet when I get him into his dark, white-noisy room for a snuggle and a nurse, he polishes off both breasts in under five minutes and starts arching and squirming again. When I put him down in his crib and walk away, he alternates between laughing with his Fuzzytown forest fauna, rocking back and forth on all fours, and crying from boredom. I know what he wants, but he can't have it all the time. He's gotten a taste of mobility, and now he's chomping at the bit to movemovemove forward; fervent.


I know boys are supposed to be more active than girls (starting in utero), but he's really wearing me down today. I'm starting to feel it everywhere, that I've been getting up to nurse him at 4:00 or 5:00am after trying my best to play hard enough, to engage and stimulate enough, to be sufficiently enriching (then spending the evening playing catch-up with paltry housework, meal preparation, and attempts at having a meaningful relationship with Scott whilst winding myself down). Then he's up at 6:00 or so again, and the rest of the day is spent trying to chase down the nap.

This is the nine month growth spurt.

I wonder if Zephyr has memories of his old life inside my body? I wonder if memories of the womb are like feelings one has for past lovers - they only completely disappear once sufficient time has passed, the amount of which is always equal to how long you were together? If so, maybe this is like some version of baby's first mid-life crisis. One week from today, he's been outside for as long as he was in. X equals Y.

He's been quiet for thirty minutes, and now he's crying again. Maybe it's because he misses me.

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!

The Inchworm and the Orchid

Big week, this week. Two new developments, both pertaining to going mobile. First, Zephyr has started crawling. Not an arm-leg-arm-leg, traditional type of crawl. No, that's a little too on-the-nose for our boy. Instead, he has adopted an inchworm-like movement: he stretches his arms out toward his goal as far as he can, then he scoots his legs up behind to catch up. Repeat until he reaches his destination (usually toward some contraband or other, like the eject button on the PS3). This means that we must always maintain a watchful eye, just when he demands more freedom.

And it begins - the dance of parenthood. We will strive to balance his protection with encouraging him to (safely! safely) explore his world. He seems to have inherited a combination of my impatience and perfectionism with Scott's insistence on doing everything himself, without assistance. Imagine a baby's frustration. And then imagine his.

This grimace is actually just Zephyr feeling his new lower teeth against his still-toothless (but not for long) upper gums, but I like to pretend he's expressing his frustration.

The other type of mobility, or lack thereof, is taking place in Zephyr's little groin. His left testicle has remained up there, undescended, and at this point we know it's never moving down on its own. So it'll need a little help. Surgical help.

Orchidopexy: big, scary word, but evidently this simple outpatient surgery will take only about an hour and a half, and will be harder on me than on him. I'm trying not to worry about it until it's time (next Wednesday), but I can't help it. Since he'll have to take it easy for a couple weeks after the surgery, we're taking advantage of the balmy playtime we have right now.

We go to the park.

We play at the park.


Hard.

And in case any of you were worried that Zephyr doesn't look as chubby as he used to, check out the belly in all of its luscious splendor. He is my fat little drupelet. My juicy little inchworm.

...and when we get home again, we cannot stop hugging him. We never put him down.

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.