Exciting news! I've invited a friend of mine to contribute some of her experiences to the site. I will let J's Mama introduce herself, but suffice it to say she's a wonderful mom and a great friend. I would probably have gone crazy if it weren't for her friendship and understanding! Stay tuned for her first post!! (No pressure JM ;)
Speaking of new faces, MLO has moved into and possibly out of the stage of making this hilarious Klingon face. It is in response to everything from happiness to frustration. If not for the myriad weirdos on the internet, I would share it with you. Much like the fearsome Klingons, MLO has begun to yell and scream. He mostly shares this over-vocalization when things simply aren't going his way. Remove him from the dog bowl? Ear-splitting shriek. Take the time to cut up his banana? Repeated angry yelling. Change his diaper? Both. It's really lovely to be yelled at for meeting his needs... all day long... every day.
He finally mastered coming down the stairs, though I would never allow him to do this unsupervised. He moves down feet first, backward. We decided early on that we didn't want to tempt him with gates. Gates present a challenge, and MLO loves nothing more than to do exactly what he knows we don't want him to do. Since I recently noticed him getting a foot up on the middle of a panel of Alcatraz, I decided that our decision was a good one. The last thing we need is a baby taking a header from over a gate at the top of 13 steps. I sometimes wish we had a gate at the bottom so that he were relatively penned in downstairs, but oh well. It keeps me on my toes. He actually took a spill from a few steps up the other day. I was standing a couple of feet from the bottom of the stairs, going over his list of tried solid foods when I glanced up and caught him tumbling down head first into our wood floor. We both freaked out. He was fine, scared but uninjured. I felt like a terrible mother. Of course I know better than to let my 10 month old play around the stairs; he's a fast little bugger and it doesn't take long for him to get much higher up the stairs than one might expect.
He has also begun to wave. This motion is somewhat rudimentary as it mostly consists of a fist in the air with perhaps the addition of a single finger or splayed hand in the direction of whomever's attention he is trying to get. His friend (2-weeks younger than he is) already has waving, clapping and head shaking down, and she has for months.
I've also made what, for me, is a big move. I have officially stopped the regular pumping I've been doing 2-3 times a day for the last 2 months. I hated it. It was restrictive, isolating, and increased the difficulty of caring for MLO when it was just me and him, because I had to pump when I had to pump regardless of whether he was asleep or not. This made tending to his needs and keeping him out of trouble especially challenging. The problem with this decision is that I don't have milk with which to make his cereal, which means that he isn't getting the high calorie, and ultimately nutritionally complete meal he was getting in the past. With his low weight and height I worry that I'm selfishly keeping him from breaking that 5% mark on the growth curve, though he isn't a hungry baby and he is already eating yogurts and cheeses.
Ah, the trials and triumphs of motherhood.
Well, that's the news from Lake Wobegon...
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