It’s begun

I'm on the cusp of my life changing yet again. Soon to be gone are my carefree days of opening my drawers with ease or walking up and down my stairs without having to wrestle a baby gate. Evan has begun to explore, and what a Magellan he is.

He's certainly not walking, but Evan is mobile. I just haven't figured out how. He may teleport, he may fly, he may bend the space-time continuum. I don't know how he does it. All I know is I put him down, turn my back for a second, and he's moved three feet.

This morning I left him alone for one minute, no more, by the time I came back, he had moved from the bedroom floor to the bathroom floor, opened up the bottom drawer and pulled out my curlers. When I walked into the room, he turned around and held up what he had found, as if to say, "Hey, did you know these were in here?" He was so proud of himself.

9 Month Check Up and Bath Time Poop

Evan just had his 9 month check up. He now weighs 21 lbs, 6 oz. and is 30 ¼ inches tall. His head? 18.98 inches. In other words, BIG. So, he's a tall skinny baby with a big fat head. But that's okay. That giant brain needs plenty of room to grow!

In comparison to his peers, Evan measures up percentile wise:

Weight 63.75%

Height 95.47%

Head 98.67 %

So Evan is right on track developmentally except for his crawling, but some babies just skip crawling altogether. The phrase, "you gotta crawl before you can walk" may not apply to Evan.

In other news, Evan christened his bathtub last night with a giant liquid poo. I knew it was just a matter of time – the warm water, the relaxation, the perfect sitting position – but I certainly wasn't prepared for it to be so… watery. By the time Evan was done with his bathtub, he needed a shower and Brad and I needed Haz-Mat suits.

And then, of course, after we cleaned up Evan, cleaned his bathtub, and cleaned ourselves, one question remains: what do we do with the toys that were in the tub at the time of the H-Poo-Oh? If I throw them away and this becomes a habitual occurrence, this could get expensive.

Watching Evan in the bath, smiling, squirting the water from his toys, putting his toys in his mouth, drinking his bathwater, the decision to throw them away becomes a no-brainer; kind-of like the decision to stick with the cheap bath toys from now on…

Technological Genius

There are plenty of people who, by the time their children are Evan's age, report seeing an aptitude for certain talents in their babies. For some it's music, or a fascination with animals, some kids are walking by this age, some are even reading. At 9 months of age, Evan has shown himself to be a politically-minded technological genius.

The morning of Obama's Presidential Inauguration, I left Evan on the couch while I ran to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee. The second I set him down he began to fuss and cry but I ran into the kitchen anyway, because some corners just can't be cut, and coffee's one of them. I rushed through grabbing my coffee and getting us something to eat, all the while Evan's fussing fueling my haste. From the kitchen, I heard Evan momentarily calm, and then the sound of the TV turning on and warming up. I peeked around the corner to find him pushing the buttons on the Tivo remote until he cycled through the recorded programs and ended up on CNN's live coverage of the Inauguration. Once CNN was on, he put down the remote and reached over for one of his other toys and promptly stuck it in his mouth. He seemed like such a little prodigy until then.

One Word Makes a BIG Difference

During one of our nights while we were still desperately clinging to our resolve to exile Evan from our bed promptly and permanently, Brad was having a particularly tough night…

Evan woke up at about 2 am and refused to go back to sleep. After about an hour of bouncing, rocking, and walking, Brad returned to our bedroom frustrated and worn out. "I don't know what to do. Evan's just lying in his crib playing with himself," he said angrily.

"What?" My neurotic mother's mind immediately filled with visions of socially inappropriate behavior. Phone calls from Evan's school, therapy, medication – is there medication for that kind of problem?

"He's just lying in his crib blowing bubbles and clapping his hands and talking to himself," he said, throwing himself on our bed.

"You mean he's playing by himself?"

"Yeah."

One word makes a BIG difference.

Evan's Exile

Evan has staked his claim in our bed and he’s not giving it up without a fight…

Evan Exile: Day 1
Evan slept in his crib for the first time last night. It was a nightmare. All night I was up worrying if he was swallowing his tongue or if he was scared or lonely… It was horrible. At least I had the comfort of knowing that with the movement sensor monitor we have, if he was choking on his tongue, or something serious was happening, once he quit breathing the alarm would go off. But how much of a comfort is that? Knowing he was relatively safe from some bizarre medical phenomenon, I moved on to other things to worry about. Like every time I heard him move, I was afraid he had spontaneously learned how to pull himself up on his own and he was going to end up falling out of his crib and break his neck. I’m never letting him drive. I’m just going to hire a chauffeur for him. Or send him to school in a plastic bubble. With a helmet.


Evan Exile: Day 2
Last night was much better than the first. Evan went down pretty easily, slept for 3 hours, but then was up on and off for 3 hours, and then slept for another 3. So overall, he did pretty good.


Evan Exile: Day 3
It took forever to get Evan to go to sleep last night. He knows what’s up now and is fighting every second of being put to sleep.


P.S. I put Evan in his crib this morning, went to brush my teeth, and came back to find him halfway through pulling himself up into a standing position in the crib. If he had, with his gigantic noggin, he would have tumbled out head first. Our backs are going to hate us for it, but we’re lowering the crib tonight.


Evan Exile: Day 4
Brad needed sleep so badly he gave up and brought Evan into our bed for the second half of the night. Evan didn’t sleep very well even in bed with us. Every time Brad shifted Evan would wake up crying, presumably because he thought he was being put down in his crib.


Evan Exile: Day 7
We can’t go through another week like this. Brad and I are walking around in a sleep-deprivation fog. We’ve been bringing Evan in at night after he wakes up around 11 or 12 and letting him sleep with us, but we’ve both been feeling like failures because of it. Today we decided that we are amending the Exile Strategy and that for the first couple of weeks we’ll put him down in his crib and then when he wakes up he’ll come to bed with us. Meanwhile, we’ll be working on getting him to sleep for longer durations by weaning him off the bottle at night.


Evan Exile: Day 12
Evan is still in his crib for the first part of the night and with us for the second half. Translation: the battle lines were drawn and we retreated. We have been bested by a baby.

Poo-rogress

The poop strike is over. After 20 days, Evan is back pooping in full force. Literally.

Poop Happens - and Sometimes it Doesn't...

We have a Poop Strike on our hands. Ever since Poop-Xplotion 2.0, Evan has refused to poop. We’re going on day 16. Evan’s pediatrician has assured us he’s fine, it’s not uncommon and that the non-poop is usually a much bigger issue for the parents than it is for the child. How right he is.


Medical mysteries aside, the poop non-event can be quite nerve-racking. This strike Evan has succeeded in shattering his prior record, set in his 8th week of life when he decided to withhold a poop for 12 days. That poop became the bane of my existence. Every book and magazine article I read said it was perfectly normal for breast fed babies to go a week without pooping. It’s not even considered constipation. It’s called “infrequent stooling.” On about the eighth day I called the consulting nurse service to check in. I was told he was fine but to go ahead and come in anyway, since this was his first bout of “infrequent stooling.” When we were getting off the phone she casually mentioned that when he did actually go, it was going to be, in her words, “a doosy.” She actually used the phrase “in his hair and in his toes.” She then followed it up with, “you know you’re never getting it out of his clothes. I’ve tried. You might as well just throw them away."


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There are various forms of torture, but the anticipation of the event is a form of torture unto its own. The imagination can become crippling, the fear all consuming, the sense of impending doom becomes torture itself, and it can break you. And I broke. I became a complete freak. I had heard stories about these blow-outs. I had read Jenny McCarthy’s account of her own child “shitting up the back,” and my friend has a particularly horrible story of her own involving a restaurant, a Baby Bjorn, and out of town guests. But when the threat hit home, and the possibility became real, I became a head case. I began bundling Evan in two diapers in hopes of containment. I laid down old towels when he slept in our bed, and wrapped him in them when we walked around the house. I wore only the worst of my clothes and dressed him in the ugliest outfits we owned. I had towels and washcloths piled outside the shower so I would be ready when it hit. The longer he went without a poop, the more crazy I became.
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So obsessed with the emergence of this impending poo, I became afraid to leave the house; a prisoner to the phantom poop. By day 12, I was full-blown psychotic. I bought something called a “Piddle Pad” for the car seat for when we absolutely had to leave the house. I refrained from putting him in the Baby Bjorn or his swing. I kept us on the crappy leather couch downstairs as much as possible. And then it came; a poop about the size of a quarter. And then another poop about the size of a golf ball. And then another poop the same size. And another. And crisis averted, terror level was adjusted to green, and my sanity returned.

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This time around I’m trying to take it a bit more in stride. Having experienced my fair share of Poop-Xplosions, I realize that I can imagine the worst, but it’s going to happen anyway, and if I’m trying to protect myself from Pompeii, I just can’t. So life goes on, the Poop Strike continues, and Evan is getting sick of eating prunes at every meal.