PROGRESS REPORT

Evan is progressing nicely. Eating has become much cleaner,he actually opens his mouth and leans into the spoon now, as opposed to finding it in his mouth at random when he yawns or makes noise. And, it looks like he’s finally stopped choking on thick liquids. We’re proud parents.

He’s able to hold a bottle on his own now, but is still trying to figure out the appropriate degree of tilt he needs in order for it to actually be effective.

He successfully drank from my cup of water for the first time a couple nights ago so now in his mind every cup is his.

Evan is sitting up on his own with ease and the other night he even got himself up on all fours with no prompting or lifting. But he doesn’t seem that interested in crawling. He may just jump straight to walking.

He turns his head when we say his name, and he recognizes Brad when he comes home at night, greeting his dad with a giant grin and a squeal. Evan. Loves. His. Dad.

Peek-a-boo is still as popular as ever, and Evan is definitely learning cause and effect, knowing which buttons on his toys are his favorites.

We’re learning about gravity this week. Evan’s new hobby is holding his toys out and watching them drop and then looking at us expectantly, waiting for us to pick them up so he can do it all over again.

Everything within reach still goes in the mouth, but we have yet to see the phantom tooth that is causing this desire to chew on everything.

The question that seems to be on everyone’s mind: Is Evan sleeping through the night and on his own?

The answer: No. But we’re patient and know this time is so short it doesn’t matter. We’re cherishing every moment and loving parenthood.

First Snow

Evan had his first snow experience today. We brought him outside to show him the snow. We have about 1 ½ inches right now. Not enough to make a snowball, but enough to gather some snow in my hand and let Evan experiment. He grabbed a handful of it and Brad and I watched as his face slowly transformed from wonder and curiosity to downright mad. Evans face melted faster than the snow as he realized how cold it was and then just got madder and madder as he continued to hold it. We finally had to pry his hand open to free it of the snow. Apparently the reflex to let go of something uncomfortable doesn’t develop for a couple more years and Evan certainly is not ahead of the curve on that one.

The Poop-xplosion of 2008

They’ve come to be known in our house as “poop-xplotions” and they’re exactly what they sound like: an explosion of poop. And yesterday’s was one for the books.

I had just gotten off the phone with Brad who was about five minutes from home, when Evan issued a sound and accompanying smell so foul, I actually debated pretending I didn’t hear it. Of course, claiming to not have heard it would have been one thing, but not smelling it? Even I’m not that good of actor. So, dutiful wife and mother that I am, I took Evan upstairs to change what I knew would not be an easy diaper. What I didn’t know about this diaper could have filled a library. For instance, I didn’t know before I unzipped Evan’s pajamas that he was pooping liquid rather than the more solids we have recently come to expect. I knew nothing about the quantity, which beyond filled his diaper. And I certainly didn’t know a thing about the force in which said poop was issued. It actually shot out of his diaper, up his back, and partway out the sleeves of his pajamas. That’s one forceful poop. So, I was ignorant about the consistency, quantity, and in Brad’s mind, quality of this specific poop, and when I opened up his pajamas, I could do nothing but stare. There was nothing else to do. When I laid him down on the changing pad, it had pushed the poop from his back, around his sides and towards his belly button, almost meeting in the middle. The sheer magnitude was simply overwhelming, as was the stench. Talk about a Dutch Oven. The second those pajamas were unzipped they unleashed a stench so ripe, so foul, so assaulting to the senses…

When Brad walked through the door I called down to him, asking him how he felt about getting naked. “I like getting naked,” he called back up, the hope in his voice almost heartbreaking. Brad walked into Evan’s room, took one look at his son, and we both immediately started stripping. How glamorous parenthood is. We actually have a SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) when it comes to poop-xpolsions. When confronted with a poop of this magnitude, there’s nothing else to do but try to limit the clothing casualties. We went through our usual routine of stripping ourselves down, then stripping Evan down, standing him upright and then wiping him off as much as we could with baby-wipes, before carrying him into the shower to finish the job.

After washing him and putting him in a new pair of pajamas, we thought the excitement for the night had been had. After all, how much poop can one baby hold? Evan should have passed out after a poop like that. But he didn’t. In fact, he was up all night. Brad and I took turns staying up with him, rocking him, bouncing him, feeding him and finally, giving up and playing with him. It wasn’t until morning that I learned what Brad had endured by himself while I was taking my turn sleeping.

Poop-xplosion 2.0:

The SOP we’ve devised for poop-xplosions quickly flies out the window when you’re on a solo mission. Brad laid Evan on the changing table and opened up his pajamas to survey the damages. Straight out of the diaper once again. So Brad pulled Evan to the usual standing position and reached for a wipe to begin the job. But when he reached into the baby-wipe dispenser, there were no wipes to be found. He grabbed a new pack of wipes and while struggling to keep Evan in a standing position while opening this new pack of wipes, somehow, I’m not exactly sure of the physics of it, the dirty diaper fell off and landed on the wipes. Not on a single top wipe, on the side of the pile of wipes so that every single wipe in the pack was tainted with poo. That pack of wipes quickly met the garbage can and Brad was once again, left without wipes. So he did what you do when you’re flying solo. You improvise. He laid our poop covered baby down on the changing pad and let it take one for the team. He rolled Evan on that changing pad like it was a makeshift squeegee.

Said changing pad is now soaking in a hot water/bleach mixture, its fate, as of yet, undecided.

Loftier Pursuits

Evan has mastered clapping and has moved on to loftier pursuits. He now spends his free time practicing his head shake; his latest obsession. Of course, since he’s my child, it’s the universal sign for “no” that he’s obsessed with. It’s yet another form of clapping; he’s experimenting with all the things his body can do. But he swings his head back and forth every chance he gets. I even caught him doing it in his sleep last night. I did feel a little better about his “da” obsession when I noticed he was shaking his head back and forth while saying “da.” Translation: “No Dad.” How sick am I?

Verbal Clapping Turns to Slapping

Evan’s moved from “ma” to “da” now. Everything is “da, da, da, da, da.” So if “ma” was mom, “da” becomes dad. Of course, Evan doesn’t know any of this. But I seem to be determined to assign meaning to his lyrical nonsense. He says “da” when we’re playing, “da” when he’s eating, and there’s the crying “da” when I’m trying to get him to sleep. I don’t know what’s worse, having my child cry for me and not go to him, or trying to comfort my child and have him cry for someone else as I stand there rocking him to the tune of his “da, da, da, da, da.” I know, I know, it’s just verbal clapping…

Brad has a runny nose.

So unless he’s cutting a tooth along with his son, it looks like we have a cold on our hands and it will be a little bit longer until we see the arrival of Evan’s first tooth.

Bird Flu or First Tooth?

Evan has his first cold. Of course, they say a runny nose can be a sign of teething, but we’ve been blaming things on teething since day one. Every bout of fussiness, drop of drool or gnawed-on toy has been because maybe he’s teething. The fact that all of these things combined have yet to produce even the slightest inkling of a tooth is irrelevant. If we could have attributed kicks in utero to teething, we probably would have. His hair appears to be getting darker? He's probably teething… Constipated? It must be the teeth... Giggling? His first tooth must be just around the corner... So for now, Evan has a cold. Whether this cold will produce any teeth is yet to be determined…

Evan's Got the Clap

I’m not sure what I expected from Evan. I obviously knew babies are people, but I don’t think it registered that they’re individuals. Just like I knew Evan would have needs; but preferences? I’m not sure I realized that. I just expected him to be… a baby. I wasn’t prepared for the personality quirks at this age. I thought those kinds of things developed much later than 7 months, but he continues to surprise me every day.

Last night, for instance, there was no convincing him of the virtues of rest. He was much too busy to be bothered with something as mundane as sleep. He was practicing his clapping and would not be detoured until he had practiced to perfection. He was determined to become the Mozart of clapping in a single night and every attempt to lull him to sleep was met quite calmly with his passive resistance of continued clapping. He was in a zone. It was almost like he was afraid if he went to sleep, this new and amazing skill would suddenly and mysteriously disappear. But it didn’t. He woke up this morning clapping.

The day-to-day variances were something else I wasn’t entirely prepared for. Tonight when we put Evan to bed, it was completely different. Brad rocked him to sleep with little to no clapping but when he tried to put him down, Evan freaked out and wouldn’t stop crying. Between the crying and the clapping, I’ll take clapping any day. After suffering through his wails crawling up and down my spine for a full half hour, I finally convinced Brad to let me try. (Thirty minutes may not sound like a long time, but try listening to a boat horn held directly to your ear for thirty minutes.) Brad was rocking him and trying his best to soothe him but sometimes it just takes mom. I finally had to intervene not just for Evan’s sake, but for my own. It didn’t help that Evan has started repeating various syllables, randomly working his way through the alphabet, and right now he’s on “ma”. So not only was I hearing him cry, I was hearing him cry for me. Now logically, I know that’s not true. The word may mean something to me, but to him, it’s just a new and fascinating version of verbal clapping. But what I’m quickly learning is that in motherhood, emotion trumps logic every time.

By the time Brad finally conceded, I was worked up into just about as much of a frenzied fit as Evan. I took Evan into our room – yes, he’s still sleeping in our bed. It’s only been 7 months. Don’t judge – and laid down with him and started patting him the way I usually do. He immediately quieted and then reached up with his soft little hand and started patting my cheek in time to me patting him. It was like he was soothing me. I have never in my life experienced anything so unadulterated and pure; so completely void of ulterior motives that it could only be perfection. I melted… it was like I defrosted without ever knowing I was frozen.

Read Instructions Before Using

With our new nanny here helping out for a couple of hours during the day, I have more time and energy to do things I imagine "good" moms should be doing. I got ambitious last night and decided to make some homemade baby food. I have a food processor and a hand blender. It’s not like I'm giving him normal food. In fact, I'm pureeing it beyond recognition. Here I was, thinking I was doing the healthy thing by making pure organic homemade food for Evan rather than that nasty mystery meat mixture that comes in the jars, and instead, I end up choking him. That’s right. He choked. Again. This is now the third time I've had to rip him from his highchair, flip him over, and pound on his back until he pukes. It’s bazaar. Anything even slightly more than a thick liquid is impossible for him to swallow. I had his pediatrician do an examination, fearful maybe he had some sort of esophageal malfunction, but no. He’s just determined to make me crazy with worry. There’s no esophageal malfunction. It’s user error.

Bulimic Baby

Evan loves putting his fingers in his mouth. He’ll use his thumb, his fingers, a combination of fingers, even his whole hand. Lately his goal has been to fit his entire fist into his mouth. The problem is, he doesn’t keep his fist balled up. He’ll get past a certain point and then straighten out his fingers to fit them all in. The fingers of course, immediately go down his throat, gag him, and cause him to puke. The first time I saw this, it was funny. The second time, it was still funny, the third time, the novelty had worn off and I was tired of cleaning up puke. By the fourth, fifth and sixth time, I was wondering when Evan was going to catch on, but the whole cause and effect thing seems to be evading him. Right about the tenth time or so, I started wondering if perhaps Evan was a little slow, or there was something else going on. Was my son showing the first signs of some sort of mental disorder? Was he going to turn out to be a cutter? Or worse?

Of course, when I called my pediatrician and asked about it, he laughed and said there is no cause and effect for Evan. His esophageal flap – it’s actually called the esophageal sphincter – hasn’t fully developed, so puking doesn’t even phase him. There’s no adverse effect to sticking his fingers down his throat. So, for now, my son is a bulimic baby. We’re trying to teach him to stop at one knuckle when he’s putting his hand in his mouth, so far, it’s not working. He’s just determined to fit the whole darn thing in…