girlfiend

My baby is one month old. It’s kind of tough to do a monthly update for a month because at one month not much happens. Babies are still so fetal, and my little one-month-old is no exception. But he’s getting so, so big. He’s grown out of some of his diapers already and moved to a more generous snap setting on the diapers that were so huge just a few weeks before. His face is losing that newborn puffiness and starting to look more like the baby he’s going to become. His hair, while still dark, has lightened considerably from black to brown. His eyes are still a dark navy blue, a blue that makes me wonder what color his eyes will become.

He still spends the majority of the day sleeping, but when he’s awake he spends his time looking around with those dark blue eyes. He’s mostly calm and content and very rarely cries for reasons I can’t figure out immediately. He’s a good sleeper and naps on his own for hours at a time in his crib, the pack n play in my bedroom, or on a mat on the floor. At night he wakes to eat twice between 11 and 6 but generally goes back to sleep immediately after nursing for a few minutes. Last night he pleased me by sleeping for a good six-hour stretch. I am grateful.

He nurses quickly and efficiently and doesn’t spend a lot of time just hanging out on the breast, which I really appreciate. The quick and efficient nursing makes him pretty gassy which leads to spectacular spit ups once or twice a day. It’s astounding how much liquid can spew from a newborn’s mouth without them really noticing or caring. The pooping seems to have slowed down, and while there’s still plenty of poop (one of the downsides of parenting) I no longer have to change three diapers in a 30-minute period because of it.

The poor little guy hasn’t had the best health so far. He’s already had a staph infection, a nasty yeast rash (which the other pediatrician in the office told me was not yeast when I brought him in the first time. Two days later she wrote me the prescription for the yeast cream and it promptly went away), and now he’s got a cough. The same cough his brother and I both have. It’s awful to hear his little body coughing, especially since I know how much it hurts. But it hasn’t seemed to affect his mood and it hasn’t affected his sleep.

He’s really pretty strong. He surprised everyone by lifting his head and looking around immediately after his birth and he’s continued to show off his impressive head control since. When he’s on his belly he pushes up on his arms and looks around. He’s also got strong legs. Sometimes when he sleeps he’ll push himself several inches forward. One day he turned a full 90 degrees. I’ve also seen him turn from his back to his side. He’s so advanced. (doesn’t every parent say that about their kid?)

My little baby is growing up. It’s amazing how easily and how immediately we loved him. I’ll miss the newborn stage when it’s over. I love how soft and cuddly he is and how perfectly he fits under my chin. But I can’t wait to see what he’ll be like as he grows.

So far 27 months is miserable. The Fiendling, totally shell shocked from the birth of his little brother, is not himself. Four weeks into big brotherhood and he’s still sad, angry and regressing. Right now I’m stuck in the house with him because after trying to kick his baby brother off of the couch and hitting me when he was in time out I told him we wouldn’t be going to story hour if he hit me again. Of course when he got up from time out and gave me a hug and a kiss he promptly hit me in the back twice as I walked back into the other room. So no story hour.

He might be getting a little better. He’s not hitting, biting or kicking quite as often as he was a few weeks ago, and he’s cuddly with me again, but it’s been a shitty couple of weeks. It doesn’t help that he got some sort of virus that led to a fever, snotty nose, and terrible cough. It also doesn’t help that we’re in the middle of a god-awful heat wave and it’s been in the high 90s with a heat index in the 100s. His third floor bedroom is ridiculously hot and the sound of him coughing over the monitor was keeping me awake so he’s been sleeping in our room. He didn’t accept the mattress on the floor. He preferred to sleep in the pack n play, or the green crib as he calls it, since the baby gets to sleep in the blue crib in our room. I fear we won’t be able to move him out after the illness and heat subside, but at least he’s been sleeping through the night.

He no longer plays nicely with any of his friends, yanking toys from them and shouting, “It’s mine!!” at the top of his lungs. He screams open-mouthed, arms extended as soon as another kid touches anything, whether he wants it or not. It’s embarrassing to have play dates where he argues and fights and whines and cries the whole time but it’s worse when we’re stuck in the house.

Now when he’s tired or sad he’s taken to saying, “Mommy, Daddy, Fiendling,” clearly mourning the loss of our three person family. It breaks my heart to hear it.

Good news? Ummm. Well, I guess he’s getting better at speaking. He speaks in complete sentences a good portion of the time and is using pronouns (usually incorrectly) instead of his name. He plays very nicely by himself and can occupy himself with his toys and trains for long periods of time. He’s interested in longer books these days and has discovered The Cat in the Hat. It’s nice to no longer have to read Thomas stories every night. He’s still sweet and cuddly with me when the baby’s not around and I’ve been spending as much one-on-one time with him as I can. Now instead of taking the Fiendling out when he gets home, Boyfiend takes the baby so the Fiendling and I can spend some special mommy-Fiendling time together.

Sometimes he’s sweet to his baby brother, kissing him and telling him, “It’s okay,” when he cries.

It blows that I just can’t think of anymore nice things to say right now. I love him so much, but things have just been so hard. I dread hearing his screams of “It’s mine,” and I dread being alone with him and the baby. I hate letting the baby cry to get to the Fiendling first and putting the baby down in a room out of sight and out of reach to keep him safe. I feel like I just can’t baby this baby the way I babied the Fiendling and I know he’ll never get the full benefit of cuddling all day long. The poor kid gets yanked and pulled almost every time he’s on my lap when the Fiendling’s in the same room.

Fiendling, I am so sorry you feel so awful. I am so sorry that you’re angry and sad. I am doing everything I can to let you know that you’re loved and wanted and every bit as important to us as you were four weeks ago. I just hope that this stage ends, because I don’t know if I can handle this forever.

After the Fiendling was born I could not lose the weight. I was puffy and bloated forever and despite my careful attention to diet and exercise I couldn’t fit into my pre-pregnancy pants for 9 months. Three weeks after the birth of number 2 I’m small again. I’m not pre-pregnancy size and I don’t plan on trying on my jeans for a few more months, but I’m not puffy or bloated. I’m surprised when I look in the mirror by how much I look like myself. I don’t know what happened and I’m not complaining. This is a gift.

A while back I wrote that the Fiendling was becoming a bit too independent and started trying to leave through the front door. After finding him on the front porch deep in discussion with a neighbor we started locking the door from the inside, using a key well out of his reach.

The other night I was cooking dinner. The Fiendling walked into the kitchen, said “Fiendling need step stool,” looked around, picked it up and left the room. It took me about two seconds to process and I quickly followed him out of the room, through the dining room, down the hall and into the foyer where he put the step stool in front of the door and climbed up. He locked and unlocked the door and put the key in and out of the lock.

I asked, “Fiendling, what are you doing?”

He replied, “Fiendling go outside.”

I said, “No. It’s dinner time and it’s dark out. You’re not wearing shoes or a coat. You need to stay inside.” I put him on the floor, made sure the door was locked, picked up the stool and returned to the kitchen with him running behind me yelling, “Uh-uh dinner time! Fiendling’s step stool. Fiendling go outside. Fiendling’s step stool!”

In two days he’ll be two years old.

The Fiendling loves to read to himself. His memory is excellent and he often “reads” pages of books we haven’t read together in a while without making a mistake.

Unfortunately his love for television is still growing. He’s learned how to turn on the tv and the dvd player, open a dvd case, put it in the player and press play. We get new ones from the library each week so I don’t lose my mind watching the same ones repeatedly.

He now identifies shapes without prompting. Except for octagon and pentagon. He needs prompting for those. But triangle, rectangle, circle, oval, diamond and square he’s got down. He also knows ten colors- ROYGBV (well, purple), black, white and brown.

His toddler thoughts astound me.  The other day in the car he randomly said, “helicopters fly up high.”

Earlier he opened the refrigerator, opened the drawer, took out a handful of cheese sticks, closed the drawer, closed the drawer, ripped on off one of the sticks, put them all on the counter, opened the fridge, opened the drawer, put back the two sticks he wasn’t going to eat, closed the drawer, closed the door, then started to try to open the plastic on the cheese stick himself before he needed help.

When he asks for chocolate milk he opens the fridge and takes out the milk and chocolate syrup. I hate that he learned how to open the fridge.

He’s in a mommy stage where he demands that I do things like make the chocolate milk and feed him dinner when he’s too hungry/lazy/cranky to feed himself.

He likes to sit in a chair without his tray most of the time now. The other night he climbed up in the chair beside me and ate his butternut squash and caramelized onion galette with a fork. He didn’t even hesitate or test the temperature before digging right in. I was so proud.

He’s in a huge “Fiendling do it” stage where he wants to do everything himself whether he can or not. We have to compromise. He can peel oranges by himself. He can’t change his own diaper. He can pick out what color diaper he wants to wear.

Cuddling with Isaac the cat is a new favorite activity. A quote: “Uh-uh, playground! Cuddle with Isaac!”

Playing with trains is another favorite activity, especially playing with Boyfiend’s old (they were his dad’s) electric trains. The Fiendling can turn them on and off, make them go forward and backward, have them switch tracks (though he often screws this up) and he loves to blow the whistle. His 12 piece wooden train set from Ikea is a reasonable substitute when Boyfiend’s not home to supervise. He makes the trains “go through tunnel,” “crash” and often shoves one in my hand and says, “mama have one too.” Then he throws a fit when I push the train in the wrong direction.

I didn’t want to say “no” to him when he was little because I was afraid he’d grow up to be a toddler who said “no” all of the time. Instead of no I ended up saying “uh-uh,” because now he’s a toddler who says “uh-uh” all of the time. “Uh-uh bath!” “Uh-uh bed!” “Uh-uh playground, watch Thomas!” I suppose “uh-uh” is slightly better than “no,” but I much prefer when he says “uh-huh” with a smile.

Bedtime is less of a battle. Now we read a few stories, kiss him good night and leave the room. We have to stand in the hall until he falls asleep because he will get out of bed repeatedly some nights, but when we tell him to get back into bed he does.

Naps still only happen in the car, but I’ll take what I can get. I’d rather have him sleep in the car than not sleep at all.

I think we’re officially weaned. He hasn’t nursed in more than four weeks. I never dreamed I’d nurse this long, but I’m glad I did. I’m also glad we’re done.

His most charming new habit is that he directs kisses. If I kiss him on the head he’ll sometimes cry, “uh-uh!’ and wipe it off. Then he’ll say nose and present his nose for me to kiss. Then cheek. Then other cheek. Then chin. Then other chin which is his neck. Then eye and other eye. Ear and other ear. Hand and other hand. Head and other head which is just a different place on his head. I love him so much.

While he’s in his room, screaming at the gate instead of napping (Today is operation nap indoors day one. It’s a miserable failure thus far.) I figured I’d fill you in the 21 month updates. When he’s not screaming and crying instead of sleeping, the Fiendling continues to be a great kid.

In the past few weeks he’s discovered singing. So far his repetoire includes Old Macdonald,  Head and shoulders, knees and toes (though he leaves the shoulders out every time), the alphabet song, The Wheels on the Bus along with the appropriate gestures, and Ring Around the Rosie. He’s pretty good at remembering most of the words and fills in the different actions and words for the Wheels on the Bus on his own. He can do three or four verses solo- the wheels, the doors, the wipers and the windows. He seems to have a lot more fun at story hour now that he can join in a little more.

He continues to name everything, everyone and what they’re doing. He narrates the day.  Dog running. Rabbit eating flower. Mama tired. Babies kissing. Cats sleeping. Mix’s hat. Buddy making mess. Oven mitt. The other day at Mix’s parents house he seemed perplexed in the kitchen when he couldn’t see an oven mitt anywhere.

He consistently surprises me with new vocabulary and memory. I accidentally referred to the movie neighborhood animals as baby farm and he’s called it baby farm ever since. He rolled pie crust once now says pie crust whenever he sees a rolling pin. Says chanukah candles when he sees the menorah or hears someone else say chanukah. He says catch it when he sees football on tv. He gets distraught with excitement when he sees the mixer or food processor because he thinks that pressing the buttons must be a rip-roaring good time and I won’t let him touch them.

He’s really into tv right now (mother of the year) and asks to watch certain shows. Specifically, he adores the aforementioned baby farm, Sesame Street, Clifford and Curious George. It’s a good thing we got rid of cable. I have a feeling we’d be watching a lot more TV if PBS wasn’t the only channel with children’s programming.

He’s learned how to roar like a lion (or tiger, or jaguar, or cheetah) and ribbit like a frog.

He somehow learned how to count to ten, a skill I’ve never actually worked on with him. Sure we count when we go up and down steps and read tons of counting books, but we’ve only ever tried to count three things at a time before because he tends to get stuck after two. So when he busted out the numbers up to seven the other day I was shocked. When he added eight, nine and ten (in that order!!) the next day I was thrilled.

He reads to himself and to others, either naming the objects on a page or remembering and repeating the story. He’s great with the Richard Scarry books and can read pages before losing interest. He can also tell you what happens on each page of books with plots.
He’s still a shitty sleeper. Now when he wakes up he’ll climb out of bed, put on his Phillies hat, grab his sippy cup and stand at the gate in his doorway calling for mama and dada.

He does not like to get dressed in the morning. He likes to stay in his sleep sack and pajamas for as long as possible.

He’s really getting hair now. He may even have a full head of hair by his second birthday, but he may not be quite there yet.

He likes to draw circles and asks me to draw pictures for him. His requests are usually mama, dada, baby fiendling with Phillies hat, and Clifford the dog.

He tries to do somersaults with moderate success.

He loves to walk on the beam and seeks out beam-like sidewalks and walls. When he sees a good sidewalk he’ll say “beam! beam!” And walk back and forth on it 30 or 40 times or until I lose interest.

He requests to go places. The playhouse, treehouse, grandmom’s house and his aunt’s house are his favorites.

He names his friends when you ask who his friends are and requests to look at their pictures.

He’s not good at sharing but he knows how to take turns. At gymnastics class he’ll anxiously wait for his turn to walk on the beam or be bounced on the parachute saying Fiendling’s turn every time another kid’s turn is over. He’s not very patient, but it’s adorable to hear him demand his turn repeatedly. He’s better about taking turns when he’s in charge of whose turn it is. When we play catch he like to decide who the person with the ball should throw it to by saying, “Dada’s turn” or “Mama’s turn.”

He’s a very sweet kid.

The Fiendling and I have had two full nights of sleep in a row. I’m writing this down because jinxing it is impossible. He’s proven that he sleeps well for longish periods time then doesn’t sleep well for equally longish periods of time. It goes in stages. We might be entering a good one. Or tonight he will wake up three times and I’ll end up sleeping with him, cranky and cramped while he clutches my nose for comfort. There’s no way of knowing.

I do know I feel fairly well rested. Only fairly because I’m back to coughing in the night which sucks, but like the sleeping it will pass along with the irritating runny nose I’ve got going on. But enough about me.

The Fiendling is 20 months old and his vocabulary is out of control. He repeats the last two words of just about every sentence and has taken to talking to almost everyone, not just Boyfiend, our families and me.

He’s starting to have the cutest baby memory where he’ll actually sometimes respond when you ask him what he did on a day. He remembers places he likes and will announce where we are when we pull up in the car or the stroller. When you ask who he played with he sometimes remembers which friends he saw but he’ll usually throw in “Grandmom” whether he’s seen her or not. Yesterday he was cramming slices of cheese in his mouth after a bad wakeup from a nap. His mouth got too full and he opened his mouth and let the wet, slimy cheese fall to the floor. Phyllis the cat was thrilled and started licking it up. He said “Phyllis, chicken. Phyllis, cheese” remembering that Phyllis also enjoys eating chicken, something he hasn’t fed her for well over a week.

My mother scarred him and now everytime he sees a dog in a book with a woman he’ll say her name and her dog Stuart’s name.

He hasn’t yet lost interest in letters and continues to identify more and more of them. He stopped in front of a woman and her son carrying balloons at a bus stop the other day and we all thought he was looking at the balloons, but really he was checking out the billboard and after a few minutes he started pointing to and naming the letters. He still loves reading books and his favorites change on a rotating basis. He’s gotten to a stage where he’s able to sit still for longer stories with plots- Curious George is his current favorite- and he’s able to “read” short picture books by himself. He remembers the words and can name the pictures so I’ll often overhear, ‘brown bear, red bird, yellow duck, blue horse.”
Though the number of toddler tantrums are increasing daily, I enjoy just hanging out with him most days.  Now lets just hope he keeps sleeping.

When someone sneezes the Fiendling says, “Bless you, mama (or dada, or grandmom, or pop, or whoever’s name he knows.)

He refers to himself in pictures as “Baby Fiendling.” Only, you know, his real name. And labels all of his friends, pointing excitedly.

He does the hokey pokey. (see youtube- my user name is sireia)

He thinks Sandra Boynton’s hilarious. (see youtube)

He repeats and names just about everything. Example- I said, “Mama’s going to the bathroom to get a tissue.” Minutes later he looked at my tissue and said, “mama tissue bathroom.” He pronounces bathroom as bapoom.

He labels things by owner- mama’s phone, dada’s car, etc.

He’ll pretend to get stuck to my face when I kiss him and I have to try to push away, screaming in “protest” all the while.

Every time the phone rings he says dada or grandmom.

Yesterday he spent all morning wearing his cousin’s garter-like headband around his neck. Every so often he’d give it a tug and say Aya heband. (her name is not Aya, but that’s how he prounounces it.)

He orders me around, which isn’t always so cute, but sometimes when he says stand up so I can hug him better it’s utterly charming.

He hugs and kisses other kids on the playground, whether they like it or not. Sometimes he’ll follow them around with his head jutted out in kiss position until they submit.

Boyfiend taught him to say, “mama’s pretty.”

In the morning when he wakes up too early and all I want to do is sleep he’ll sometimes sit on my lap and watch cartoons and snuggle.

He knows a ton of animal names and sounds now. We’re working on hee-haw.

He can get a tissue, wipe his nose (we’re working on blowing his nose, but that may take a while) and throw the tissue out.

He often remembers to say please without prompting. Thank you is tougher, but the other day, every time I gave him a sip of my juice he said, “thank you, mama.”

This is not always so cute, but it’s notable. He’s started to get picky about what he wears. When I pull out a shirt for him he’ll shake his head no and tell me “plane” because his favorite shirt is his plane shirt. He’ll settle for the train sweater with button wheels (he loves to say button. It’s one of the words he enunciates perfectly), either of his motorcycle shirts, or his shirt with the car filled with surfboards. Everything else is a struggle. Though he loves to wear jackets- another word he says quite well. Oh, and jeans.He often asks to wear jeans. Such a fashion plate.

He’s obsessed with the alphabet and sometimes follows the words with his fingers when we read a book that’s not an alphabet book. He’ll sing the ABC song (badly, he’s not a genius or anything) several times a day and repeat each letter (pretty well, actually) after me. He can recognize A and O and occasionally C and D though he tends to confuse them. The other day he shocked me by singing “now I know my abcs” after we’d gone through the alphabet in call and repeat fashion.

Can you tell he’s sleeping better these days? He’s not 100%, but it’s good enough that I’m back to gushing about him.

Things are a little bit better. A combination of Motrin and teething tablets for the molar that’s coming in resulted in one really good night and two okay nights of sleep. Last night he was up at 4.30 but back to sleep by 5. It sucks that he’s waking, but at least it didn’t take too long to get him back down. We bought him a big boy bed to see if that helps at all. We’re hoping that at the very least it will eliminate the step of transferring him from glider to crib. I don’t know if he’ll sleep any longer or go down any easier, but it’s worth a try. I’m still tired and run down but I’m not quite as miserable.

The Fiendling’s been going through yet another fucking sleep regression where he won’t go to sleep and he wakes in the night and every time he falls asleep on me or Boyfiend he wakes up as soon as we try to put him down, either on the crib or on our bed. How does anyone ever have more than one kid? Seriously, this is awful. I know there’s an 18 month sleep regression, but he’s 19 and a half months old and the last sleep regression, the 16 month sleep regression no one told me about, lasted more than month.

For the past hour and a half I’ve been trying to get him to sleep and all I want to do is go back to Boyfiend’s birthday party, which was supposed to be a happy hour because I didn’t want to feel bad when I had to go at 8 to put the Fiendling to bed. I knew we couldn’t have a party here because of the stupid sleep thing, so Mix had it at his house and now everyone’s there having fun and I’m here listening to the Fiendling cry. He’s been asleep, snoring even, three times already.

On top of it, there are ants in my kitchen. We went to the pumpkin patch this morning for a hayride and lunch and I got rear-ended on the way home. The Fiendling fell asleep in the car but woke up as soon as the car stopped 25 minutes later and of course, because of this stupid 19 and half month sleep regression he wouldn’t go back to sleep. So I tried to make icing for the birthday cake (I’m not currently enjoying at the party) with a fussy, tired toddler climbing on the fucking window sills. I had chocolate and butter melting in the double boiler when he took off upstairs. I was too far gone to stop what I was doing so I had to wait about three minutes to finish stirring and take it off the heat. When I got upstairs he’d figured out how to unlatch the laptop and had ripped off three keys. One, the up arrow, is still missing. When I got downstairs I realized the kitchen sink was covered in ants. I think they’re coming in through the window.

I called Boyfiend because I was downstairs, didn’t want to go upstairs to get on the up arrow-less laptop to see if it was baking powder or baking soda that’s supposed to keep them out. I got an answer, baking soda, and poured it all over the cracks of the window, killed every ant in sight, washed my hands and the surfaces thoroughly and iced the cake which was a whole other nightmare with a still miserable tired kid.

Hours later, the ants are back in full force. The baking soda didn’t do shit. They’re everywhere. On the stove, in the sink, everywhere, and I’m so grossed out. Of course we don’t have any chemicals in the house because of the fucking environment and baby-proofing, but I did manage to find a small bit of Fantastik near the cat litter so I sprayed the shit out of every ant in sight, hoping any new ones would see their kin dying painfully in a puddle of all-purpose spray.

I suppose it’s time to try to get the Fiendling to sleep again. Wish me luck.