Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Little bits of good news

The pediatrician told us we can expect AwesomeCloud to take 2 or 3 weeks to get over his jet lag, and in the meantime we can just cope. "You'll survive. A soldier finds a way to get up and march some more. You can too."

Good line! Compared to combat soldiers, we have it real easy.

Guess what happened then: he slept practically the whole night. So did we.

(I must confess to some cheating. His daily routine said he gets a bottle before bed, and I've discovered that a bottle calms him much better than rocking and singing. We still try rocking and singing, but the bottle's the thing. I gave him one before bed last night and another when he woke up in the middle of the night. With maybe not as much rocking and singing as was physically possible.)

Small improvements:

This morning he was singing along to the musical toy. It wasn't real babble; just "Ah ah ah ah" still, but he was doing it at the same time as the toy was beeping. That counts as singing along to me.

He looked at Trixie and said, "Dat." Okay, still not quite astrophysics, and it might just be wishful thinking on my part, but when I write it out, it sounds like he was beginning to identify objects by their names. I will leave you with that highly optimistic assumption.

He held onto my shoulder when I picked him up. The elbow in my chest is still not a thing of the past, however. Geez, I wish he'd learned the shoulder grabbing trick when we were rushing about in the airports.

Lack of improvement:

I thought I had a good way for him to hang out with me while I work today. Alas, he was not into it. As he was screaming equally loudly whether I had him alone in the crib or next to me, I stuck him in the crib again. Sorry, Cloud. I'd like to stop doing that and turn worktime into Mama-baby hangout time, but the crib is the safer place for you to be when I have my hands full if you must be uncooperative.

My friend Lori brought a delicious hot dinner of mac&cheese, caesar salad, and berry cobbler over last night. The cobbler has become my #1 comfort food and is already 1/3 gone. *blush* She knows how ubiquitous those post-baby moments are:

Husband: "What are we eating tonight?"

Wife: "Umm... I guess I should cook something..." *collapse*


AwesomeCloud and I just had a nature lesson. We sat in the sun on the front stoop and crushed some dead leaves.

I'm tired, and still a little blue, and though AwesomeCloud won't willingly take a nap, I have laundry to do and dishes to wash. I'm slowly getting the house back in order. I scrubbed the cats' food corner clean; it gets so filthy when anyone but me feeds them, and after 3 weeks' absence, it was quite a mess. The trick is to not give them too much food at once. If they have too much, they happily splatter it all over and then it dries and turns disgusting. If there's just enough, they're careful not to lose a single crumb. Cats aren't completely dumb.

I also must remark on my amusement at how similar a pediatrician visit is to a vet visit. Some people may disparage the idea of getting a pet as a preparation for parenthood, but there is some wisdom to learning your way around caring for a dog or a cat before you get an actual baby. There are still plenty of new skills to learn that a pet can't help you with!

Also, babies still don't purr. Sometimes they giggle, which is great, but I'm partial to the whole purring thing.

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