It's All Foot Fetish and Oral Fixation: Annie, 5 1/2 months

Hoo-WEE...your momma is behind the times. But I tell you what, my tardiness in writing your five month newsletter has turned out to be a great thing because had I been on time, your update would have read something like this: "Annie lies on her back and sucks her toes all day long. The End.". But now I can report that you, my dear, are finally rolling over. Belly to back. As soon as I put you on your tummy you flip yourself right back over and start sucking on your toes. As it turns out, toe sucking is highly motivating for you. Different strokes for different folks, I say.



And no way, no how are you interested in voluntarily rolling yourself onto your belly. When I have you grab my finger so I can give you a helpful tug over, you kick your leg back behind you and lean away from my hand, stubbornly maintaining your recumbent position all the while giving me a look that says: "Nice try." I'm not sure how to motivate you to roll the other way given that there is no toe access from the prone position, but I know you'll make it over one way or another....my luck it will probably be to cram some tiny little treasure of your brother's into your mouth.

And that brings me to another of your favorite pastimes. Sucking and gnawing on anything and everything that happens into your airspace. An ear, an elbow, a nose, your fist, an errant sleeve.....they are all fair game when it comes to your mouth. This morning I came down to see you closing in on your brother's beloved blanky. He had inadvertently left it on the floor within your grippy reach and with your mouth wide, drool dripping and eyes zoned in on the prize, I snagged it out of your hands just seconds before you had the chance to sample it. Believe me, sister-girl, that is no way to fall into your brother's good graces. He is just barely beginning to tolerate your presence, a faux pas like that could just set you back a good 15 years.



You have just started sampling solid foods. You are not so crazy about cereal but quiver and shake with excitement at the mere sight of orange veggies. And peas. Right now you are sitting in your bouncy seat because you can't quite sit up straight in a high chair....and in any case, when you do sit up, your belly has delightful way of returning all the food we attempt to feed you. Poor thing. So, you eat while reclining. We should all be so lucky.
(By the by, your brother is feeding you in that picture, not poking you with a stick. Although he's been known to do that too.)



You are still a complete delight, Annabel. And I challenge anyone to show me a happier baby. You are all smiles and goos and happy screeches. Really, the only time you cry is when you are hungry and you want to eat. Now. RIGHT NOW. And believe me, love, you are preachin' to the choir on that one. When I come to get you in the morning or after naps, you lay there in your mummy wrap (oh how you so love that swaddle) grinning and laughing, your eyes closed and squinty against the light. I keep expecting to one day come into your room to find cartoony blue birds and forest animals perched on your crib smiling and basking in your sweetness. You are that happy. And I am so, so lucky.

I love you , Birdie girl. MMMMmmmmwah.

Momma


P.S. I wonder how many disappointed weirdos Google will point my way with a title like that.......

Liam on Motherhood

Tonight while laying in bed with Liam, snuggling and calming after the hour long ( and still ongoing) battle to get him to bed and after many failed attempts to ensnare me into his circular conversations, he whispered to me "Mommy, why are you not talking?". "Oh, Liam" I said, "I am just soooooo tired."

He was quiet for a minute or two.

"Well" he finally said, "that's just too bad".


Ain't that the truth.

Almost Four

Liam -

Tonight we had such a lovely time. Just you and me. It was inspiring and fun and silly and so what we both needed right now (I think).

First, you had your haircut, which typically does not rank among your best moments, but we visited a fun new kid's place and you hopped right into that vintage fire truck and let the nice lady clip and trim your hair (with actual clippers..*gasp*) with only a few reminders to keep your head up and your shoulders down and with absolutely no tears. For real. When it came time to leave, you were able to choose a prize from the treasure chest by the door. Out of all the choices you had...dinosaurs, Spidey stickers, eye patches...you chose a beautiful green bejeweled ring. "Look mommy", you said turning to me, "now I have beautiful jewelry too". Indeed.

Our next stop was Burgerville where you were absolutely certain you were going to order for yourself , "a cheeseburger, please, with milk", but when it came time to walk the walk, you got a little shy. So I took care of your order, and mine (sweet potato fries and a Diet Coke, thank you very much) and we scouted out a table. As luck would have it, we wandered by the jukebox. Seriously, I thought you were going to lose your mechanical little mind you were so completely blown away by it. The bubbles floating up the sides ("that's the hot lava, mommy, it prolly makes the engine go"), the buttons that flip the song menus, and the arm, oh my good lord, the arm that picks up the CD that has just played, puts it back on the rack and chooses another CD to lay on the turn table. It was all I could do to tear you away to come and eat. You continued to visit the jukebox between bites of burger and all that random button pushing was providing the other diners with quite an interesting array of musical genres. At one point in time, "Boogie Nights" by Heatwave came on and my sweet boy, it was clearly your siren song. You started bouncing, then moved to spinning and threw in a hop or two for good measure. You were seriously giving this guy a run for his money. And then you beckoned to me and there we were, the two of us, getting our groove on right there in the middle of the dining room. It was awesome.

Our last stop was to the store to find you a new pair of rain boots. Tis already the season here in Oregon. You really, really wanted galoshes in the style of "fireman boots" (of course) and I was really unsure if we were going to be able to find your hearts desire. But we went anyway and at best I was hoping that you would find something that would serve as a suitable replacement. We found racks upon racks of boots and upon first glance I did not see what you were hoping for. As I began pulling down a red pair that looked sort of firefighter-y, I heard you exclaim "there they are...!!!" I looked wear you were pointing and there on the tippy top shelf among the dinosaur and monster truck varieties was a single pair of shiny black and yellow rain boots. The exact boots you have been coveting for months now. A miracle (sort of). I shimmied up the lowers shelves and grabbed the boots all the while quietly wishing and hoping that they would be the right size. They weren't. They were way way too big. But when I looked up again I saw that there was one more pair up there, hiding itself behind all of it's jolly red friends. I shimmied again and grabbed them and saw they were a Toddler size 11. My heart sunk. No way were those elevens going to fit you. But we tried them on and guess what? Perfect fit. An eleven. My child, you wear an eleven. Your feet are huge. And you are thrilled. Elated. Over the moon. Me too.

Then we went home. And you stomped in some puddles and ran through our soggy front yard and sang some sweet little songs and it was a wonderful way to say goodnight. It was also past your bedtime and I knew at some point things would all come crashing down around us (and they eventually did), but I was glad for those last moments of the day, to share your bliss and bask in your energy.

We have had a rough few months, you and I. Change is hard. Being three years old has probably been pretty hard too. I know it hasn't been a stellar year for your momma, I can tell you that. But here you are....almost four. And here we are, having a lovely night. You are remarkable. And we are okay.

There are times this year that I felt we had lost our way. Feared that we somehow wouldn't find our way back. But what I learned tonight is that we have weathered this storm just fine. We're still quite a team, Pickle. And I love you, heart and soul.

XOXOX,

Momma

Pretty Fly For A White Guy

In honor of Husband's 38th birthday today, I wanted to re-post something I wrote a few years ago. All of it is still true and not much has changed except we now have one more child who delights in him. He continues to amaze me and there really isn't much I can add except this:

You are my very best friend and I cannot imagine walking through this world without you by my side. Thank you so much for this beautiful life.

Happy Birthday, sweetie. I love, Love, LOVE you.


Originally written August 22, 2005


This one goes out to Husband, who may or may not still be reading my blog. I don't speak of him often....my son seems to permiate my every thought these days.... so I thought I would share a little about the other man in my life!

Let's start with the fact that he has, for the time being, become the other man....second fiddle, if you will. He has accepted this temporary situation with much grace and understanding and has been nothing but supportive over these past 6 months of new parenthood. But if I am totally honest, this shouldn't shock me at all...after knowing him all of these years I would expect nothing less than what he has so freely given.

He wanted to have kids long before I did and sat back patiently until I felt I was ready and gave him the green light. Over the subsequent year it took for us to get pregnant, he remained his calm and patient self as I turned what had started out as "let's just stop using birth control and see what happens" into an elaborate math and science project of temperature, cycles and peak fertility days. My need for control is incessant, to say the least....but he just went with the flow. When I finally gave up on my experiment and went back to the original plan of just letting things happen, we, of course, hit pay dirt. He didn't bother with the I told you so's...he was just too damn excited about a baby to care how it happened.

He was so good to me during the pregnancy, especially on my darkest most hormonal days during that first trimester when it seemed all I did was cry, laugh, sleep, eat and cry again. I once stopped talking to him for two days because he is a Republican. Seriously. I couldn't imagine a worse affront to me and my growing child. Now, this was not new knowledge, mind you. It just really pissed me off on that particular day. But he just took it in stride and bore no grudge once I decided to talk to him again.

As the pregnancy progressed and we started all of those classes they recommend you attend, he started to share with me how scared he was about the impending birth and how he was really worried that he would be of no use to me or the baby once we got home....the last time he even held a baby was 27 years ago...caring and nurturing one was beyond his scope of understanding!! The classes helped with the parenting part, so all we had left was the actual birth and he was worried sick that he would pass out or wouldn't be able to help me. But he held up like a trooper. He helped as much as he could, but back labor was not something we had been prepared for so his best efforts went unnoticed...at least where my pain was concerned. But he tried and I was grateful. When it became apparent that a C-section was the only way our boy was going to be joining us, he set aside his fear of blood and all things medical and sat by my side, holding my hand while they worked on me. As soon as our son was born he followed him into the recovery room and never left his side. I have a beautiful picture of he and Liam in our room just minutes after the birth. He is feeding him for the first time and they are both blissfully unaware of the fact that I was still on the operating table, rapidly losing my blood. When I finally(& thankfully) made it out of surgery 2 hours later, he brought Liam into see me. He knew how much I was looking forward to bonding with our son those first few minutes after he was born, and since I didn't get to do that, he was bound and determined to make sure that I would get to see him and hold him before anyone else. He left his parents waiting in the lobby for 2 1/2 hours just so I could be the first to see him. I will always love him for that.

Fast-forward to life at home these past 6 months. When Liam was at the peak of his colic, Husband started coming home at lunch every day so that I could shower, or eat or just go for a walk. Liam's screams did not faze him and that 45 minutes of solitude saved my sanity. Now that the colic has passed, he continues with his daily lunch visits. But now it is not to aid me in my mental health or personal hygiene but simply to see his son. And let me tell you, Liam lights up the minute Husband walks through the door. He adores his dad. And rightly so. My husband has a knack with kids that I was completley unaware of. It probably helps that he is a bit of a dork...and I mean that in the warmest most respectful sense of the word. He is goofy and proud of it and our son delights in him! He is able to interact with Liam on a whole other level than I am. He is the entertainment, I am the comfort. He is the ocean, I am the safe harbor. Our roles couldn't be more defined.

He thinks of things to do with Liam that would never cross my mind. Saturday I came downstairs to a gale of laughter to find my husband and my son singing and dancing to Radio Disney. They were doing the Cha-Cha and something Husband called the Charlie Brown...when he demonstrated, it looked like the old Cabbage Patch with a little White Man's Overbite thrown in....but nonetheless, Liam was having a ball. It's no wonder that Liam's babbles consist soley of variations of da-da! And yesterday afternoon Husband was giving Liam a lesson in crawling because as it stands right now, he is only able to crawl backwards and it's really pissing him off. So there was my husband offering demonstrations and then manually moving Liam's legs and arms so that he was able to propel forward at warp speed.

And their conversations are a riot. Husband just talks to him as he would any old person on the street...no baby-talk for him. The other day I overheard him explaining to an especially gassy Liam the benefits of blaming farts on the dog. Priceless!

So there is a not-so-brief description of my fella. I realize that it mostly has to do with him as a parent but that's because I have learned more about him in the last 6 months than I have in all of the 8 years I have known him. He is a good man, a good husband....but as a father he just SHINES!

A Conversation with Annie

"Hi there, momma...do you have that silly camera out again?"

"Ummm...wait a sec, what is that over on the table? Is that my ba-ba?"

"Ba- Ba!"

"BAAAAAAA-BAAAAAAAA!!!"

"Oh, hi there, momma...do you have that silly camera out again?"

Il Parle Le Français. Qui a su ?

Liam is in love with the little French children's song "Savez-vous Planter Les Choux ?" that we have on CD in the car. Driving home today he was singing along (um, kind of) and asked me "what is a 'shay new' after the verse, "À la mode de chez nou". Cute, huh? I told him it loosely meant, "like we do". Good enough.

He then had me play it over and over and over while he sang along in his phonetic approximations of French, performed all the feet stomping, finger snapping, hand clapping and mouth noises that accompany each verse and asked me endless questions about the words he was hearing (why are they planting a shoe?). After about the 15th time, I asked him why he liked the song so much if he couldn't understand the words.

"I understand them."

"You do? They are speaking French."

"I can speak French mommy, I just decided not to do it anymore."

Indeed. Or rather, en effet.

From His Mouth To My Rear

This evening I learned the hard way that Liam equates strength with girth.

At dinner, he was transferring his food to Husband's plate, his latest avoidance tactic at meal time (which he refers to as "just sharing, mommy"), all the while saying "here daddy you need this food so you can get strong and have a big tummy like mommy so you can lift heavy stuff up up up over your head." He continued with, "it will give you big arms like mommy too so you can be strong strong".

I had to laugh. Hard. First off, well, his observations are not entirely inaccurate. And second, he is clearly quite impressed with my "strength". I have never heard my poochy belly or my flabby, flappy arms spoken about with such reverence.

However, consider this the official wake up call that it is high time for this momma to kick it into gear and maybe grow a little, um, weaker, before he starts referring to me as "the world's strongest mommy".

That would not make me laugh. At all.

Wishful Thinking

Tonight at bedtime I was snuggling up with Liam and he said to me, "Mommy, do you know what I wish?" Thinking I was going to be granted some insight into the depths of my favorite boy's soul, I asked, "what do you wish, sweetie"...and held my breath.

"I wish that Annie would fly up, up high over the trees and be lost forever."

Ahhhh. Of course.

Breakfast Club

With Liam at school and the house relatively quiet and distraction free (will Levi ever not bark?), Annie and I decided to have a little breakfast together. She had cereal for the very first time and I had, I think, my 1,348,279th cup of coffee. Girl time. Sweet.

Here it comes........

(oooh look...a window)

No, Annie. Over here sweetie......

In .......

.....and out.

No gagging. No shuddering. No crying. Success by any measure, I'd say.

Liam's Best Day

While in Wichita, (I promise I will get to the actual Getting There at some point) Liam was introduced to a buddy of Grandpa Bryan's who just happened to be a lieutenant with the fire department. Fire Fighter Rick, as he was from then on referred to, invited Liam along for a tour of his fire house, the engines and all the gear. I think it was the best day in Liam's life thus far.

Thank you, Firefighter Rick, from the bottom of our hearts.