DumbFunnery

The little monster, aka the mook, aka the kook mook, aka the mook riot, aka my son, and my wife are currently … AWAY. WHAT!? My wife and the kiddo are going to have their first night without dad there too and woe is dad, woe is mom, likely unaware is the kiddo. I’ll be joining them shortly to visit family … but for now it’s an unreal amount of free time in the evening.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

First, we’ll go with the betters and then we’ll get into the firsts. Then a grab bag/other category.

BETTERS!

It’s strange how I can look back on a month and think, ‘hmm, did much happen? He just seems like he was last month … but better at everything.’ He’s a quicker crawler, a better sitter, quicker and more stable when pulling himself into a standing position (he has to have help by holding onto an object to get himself up). He is just ever so slightly showing an interest in cruising.

Crawling, it turns out, is the best possible way to find every little crumb or bit of leaf or clump of dog hair or you name it small item in the house. Our vacuum can’t be powerful enough, or run enough. The kid is a seek and destroy missile for tiny bits of debris. And, like a vacuum capable of choking, those items will be picked up and an attempt will be made to suck them down. Crawl, crawl, pause, pick up gross item, slowly lift toward mouth … mom or dad jump in (hopefully the majority of the time), repeat.

A simultaneously fun and not fun new habit is his sense of exploration. At first the monster discovered crawling and would go from toy A to toy B, or make a futile effort to chase down the dog. (It’s futile not because the dog runs away, but because he usually gets distracted along his path to the dog.) Now the kitchen is worth checking out, the front entry way, and oh, oh a NEW favorite toy – DOOR STOPPERS! What fun those little spring loaded, hittable things they are. And what fun it is to try and rip them off the wall, too.

In the category of more movement the standing efforts have really kicked up as well. The kiddo has enjoyed crawling over obstacles for a while, for example a boppy sitting out must be crawled OVER, not around. And parents fall into this obstacle category too. If you are laying down, he’ll crawl over you or on you and then lovingly attack your face. I say lovingly, but it’s not. He will pinch your nose, try to pull off your lips, he is an aggressive explorer. Like a sculptor working with live people, he’ll just keep trying til your face is the shape he’s looking for. If you are sitting upright, then you are his standing assistant. Little pinch-y hands grab your shirt and upsy-daisy go the formerly very wobbly knees (now mildly wobbly). (And can we call them knees, really? He seems to be made of flexible, stretchy, heavenly soft-skinned goo … he is so bendy it boggles the mind. He’ll crawl halfway up me, fall back down and I swear his legs are in some pretzel formation underneath him but he just goes right back to work.) He has a few toys that are great for standing practice, and one day he hinted at a future step because he cruised from one toy to another next to it. Trouble to come. Unfortunately with his standing efforts he has also increased his likelihood of wipeouts, and he rocked a wicked cheek bruise for a while after a tough fall forward INTO a wooden toy. Ouch.

The tiny tyrant has also expanded his food repertoire and has decreased (mildly, so, so mildly) his reliance on his parent’s help. My wife was surprised one day to find the kiddo FEEDING HIMSELF at daycare. What!? We didn’t know he could do that! They had him set up with his bottle of milk, just drinking and chilling. Huh. At home he is now able to feed himself from those squeeze food pouches which is adorable. It’s fun to see his tiny little hand holding that pouch, and the tiny bit leaving each time he sucks on it. AND, big exciting news, he now eats some ‘people foods’ as I call them. As in, a little deli turkey is now possibly his favorite snack. It is adorable and terrifying to watch due to fear of choking.

And now for the sleep front. This month we made the decision to work toward no more night time feedings because he really didn’t need them. Having come back from a trip, and the little fella having a cold, we had made backwards progress with him eating 2-3 times a night. We decided to take one away on Friday, and the next Friday we’d take one more away, etc. We also came up with plans (there is so much planning) around how the night would work.

‘Ok, if he wakes up at 12, you feed him … if he wakes up again before 3, I’ll go in, if he wakes up AT 3 you feed him, if he wakes up after like … 430, I’ll handle him.’

By having me, non-milk dad (that’s what the cool kids call me … nah that’s gross), go in he would know ‘THERE’S NO FOODS IN THAT THERE BREAST! (just tiny pectoral muscles.)’ Harsh comment, son.

Anyway, over the course of 2 weeks we had gotten to ZERO night feedings and the night was going much more predictably! He would wake up only once usually, and friendos, THAT AIN’T BAD. But then, a week into the 0 night feedings, Father’s Day weekend actually, BOOM he’s waking up frequently. My wife and I decided to split the load. Monday my wife took him to the doc and GUESS WHAT! DOUBLE EAR INFECTION! Our son started daycare in April, from April to mid June he managed to get 5 ear infections. That’s rough. The doc advised we see an ENT doc to get tubes put in his ears.

(This is where you might picture the students getting off the magic school bus, grabbing a water tube, and sliding down a SWEET EAR WAX WATER SLIDE! WHEEEEE!)

The great news is that, dipping a little into post 10-month territory, the sleep is now back in great shape with the ear infections having been drugged out of the system. And our little tiny darling will have surgery in late July for the tubes. We had THREE nights he slept through the night, bouncing back and forth with one wake up per night and a sleep-through night … oh, heavenly sleep. Unfortunately, my body seems acclimated to waking up randomly at 230 am. I could do without that.

FIRSTS!

On the sleep front … (Idea: spoof of All Quiet on the Western Front, but instead it’s All Quiet on the Sleep Front … dark children’s bedtime book where a baby and a grown-up are trapped in a foxhole together and one of them, probably the baby, stabs the other and then thinks about how we’re all just people and who are the people even telling us to kill one another who are so far removed from this brutality? What, too dark? Maybe not a bedtime book.) (I ought to re-read that book.)

Anywho … the kiddo also went from FOUR naps a day, short ones at that, to three and then quickly to two. And not just two naps, two pretty darn good naps. We had a run for a while of a solid one hour nap starting between 9 and 930 and then another solid one hour nap at 2pm. It was wonderful. Now they are a little more wobbly, with them sometimes being as short as thirty minutes but it’s still the predictable put down times and oh how wonderful to have those do nothing or accomplish chores lickity split breaks.

Congrats, mook, on having two great naps!

A first that did not go as envisioned: the pool! My wife and I signed up as members for the community center in town. We took the little monster to the pool where they have a great kid’s area with built-in water guns, a play area with buckets that swing around and splash water, a water slide, a lazy river – it’s fantastic. But, perhaps, fantastic for bigger kids who can actually play with these things. Because our little monster got put in the water and began to cry. We then eased him in by walking around with him some, slowly putting his feet in the water, and then slowly sitting him down in one of our laps, etc, etc. Eventually he reached a state of ‘I’m tolerating this.’ We will continue to work on building up his tolerance because … well, it’d be fun.

(Note: I’d love for him to be a great swimmer. I am a terrible one. This morning I went to the community center to swim laps which I enjoy despite the fact that for every minute I spend swimming I spend 1 minute gasping for air at the end of my lane. The swim lanes were full, so a mom came by and asked if her daughter could swim in my lane, too. I said sure, and then both her 10-13 year old daughters hopped in. Great. And you know what those little girls proceeded to do? Zoom past me, time after time. I probably had a solid two feet of height on them, but their tiny legs and arms and ACTUAL PROPER FORM and breathing technique really showed me up. I’d love for my son to smash my swimming abilities, too.)

My wife convinced me (how? why?) that we should buy a kiddie pool to put in the backyard. Given my lame suburban status I was concerned about what it would do to the lawn, and the extra water usage … But we got one. The kiddo is ALSO not particularly fond of this, but it is growing on him. He had gotten spoiled by toasty baths and didn’t know what regular water temperatures are, at least that’s my rationale. He’s not terribly communicative except in a language I don’t speak.

And last but not least (kudos if you stuck with me): first high chair at a restaurant! This was a heavy dose of adorable, and has since been repeated a few times, almost making it seem … dare I say, normal? You really adjust to new normals FAST with a baby because their normal changes so fast. It went from ‘oh, watch him … oh, woah … is he sliding? Is he wobbling too much?’ to ‘here, kiddo, have this food pouch and feed yourself while mom and dad eat.’ INSANE!

As my son would say, pbbbbbbbbtttbbtbtbtbtbt! (He has gotten very skilled at raspberries, or fart noises with your mouth for the crude among us, and boy can he work up the drool.) And, as the title attempts to indicate, he has gotten much more expressive with his babble and his smacking counter tops. He seems to really be settling in well to his Tiny Tyrant nickname. What are you saying, dear dictator?

Until next time!