He has a first word, people. Are you ready for this??

Hi.

No, seriously, that's his first word. Hi. He says it all the time now that he figured it out. He's probably been saying it for months and I just didn't recognize it. This shouldn't be a surprise because for some ridiculous reason we have been saying it to him 794 times a day since he was born. Literally. I think I say it to him 14 times before he gets out of his crib in the morning.

It also should not be surprising considering that he has never met a stranger. He flirted with no less than 11 people today; 3 women and 2 men at the place we ate lunch, the welcome center grandma lady at the Brookgreen Gardens, the checkout chick and bagger dude at Piggly Wiggly, the front desk clerk at the hotel, and a little boy on the shuttle to the zoo. And Holly. He loves to watch people, meet people, play with people, and smile at people sideways so they coo at him. Of course he wants to say "Hi."

It almost makes me sad that he will have to learn "Goodbye."

Make it Work (or "How To Baby Proof With No Baby Proofing Stuff, and How To Have Fun When It Sucks")

So we're staying in this really new, really nice hotel at Murrels Inlet, SC for the week while Aron works. Holly is with us, and we made a family trip out of it. Of course, there have been a few obstacles to the easy-breezy trip I had imagined.

#1: Baby proofing a hotel room when your child is mobile
So, yeah, I know, I should have thought of that. I didn't. I also didn't pack my vitamin regimen. Obviously I am not as infallible as I once thought. But we get here, to this super cool hotel room, and my child only needs about 45 seconds to open the cabinet under the kitchen sink, smack his forehead on a dining room table, and fall face first on slippery wood floors. So I improvised. No more socks, we're walking barefoot. A hair tie wrapped around the cabinet pulls keeps him from opening under the sink. The table slides under the counter almost all the way, so...check! And if we keep the bathroom door closed and the outlets covered with a smidge of duct tape from Aron's first aid kit (umm, what first aid you do with duct tape I don't even want to know) we're in good shape. Kinda.

#2: Sickness
We got here with runny noses, head congestion, sneezing, and a cranky attitude. And Owen didn't feel good either ;)...First stop? Walgreen's!! I friggin' love that place, and let me tell you why. Not only do they have baby allergy meds and dye-free baby Tylenol stuff, Little Noses saline drops for Monkey's delicate schnoz and a heavy duty decongestant for mommy, but they have comfort food Fig Newtons and mini Oreos for the kiddies and navy blue nail polish to perk up my spirits!! In no time we're slightly less snotty, in much better moods, and ready to think of doing fun things. Until...

#3: Rain. Pouring deluges of rain.
And you know what? Fuck it! We went to the giant botanical garden/zoo/butterfly house thing anyway, got drenched, had a blast, saw river otters, an alligator and a huge spider, and came back to take hot baths and a nap. So it's not an afternoon at the ocean, but it was awesome, and sometimes you have to just make it work. Owen's first walk in a summer rain was pretty cool to him apparently, and it was fun spiking his wet hair into a mohawk. :D

Oh No You Didn't...

It happened today. My first experience with someone questioning my parenting choices, and the shocking but distinctly blinding rage that followed.

The apartment complex we just moved into has an annual pool party in July. We listened to the sounds of mingling neighbors and loud music all afternoon, and after O had dinner we decided to take him down, play in the pool for a little bit, and see if we could meet any new people. He loves the water (bath time is his favorite part of being alive, I think) and since he starts Water Babies class at the Y in a few weeks, I thought getting used to the big pool would be good.

We were in the shallowest part, with either Daddy or me holding him with both hands, keeping his head above water, and just wooshing around, letting him splash with his arms and kick with his feet. We would pass him back and forth, and he was giggling and excited. It was very cute, and for about ten minutes it was delightful and calm.

Enter drunk 20-something guy.

He walks over and says something to the effect of "You need to stop that. You need to stop that. Keep him out of the water, ok? Keep him out of the water." He gestures palms up in a raise-the-dead sort of way, and repeats himself. Aron started to say something like "He's ok," but I bristled. "Don't tell me what to do with my child." The guy looks plaintive for a second, and says, "Ok, I'm just asking. He's just an infant. He shouldn't be in the pool." Aron tries to tell him he likes that water and the guy says something about the pool being "scary as shit" for babies. I look at him like he's insane and say, "He's HAPPY. He's FINE." The guy gets the picture that I am not backing down, shakes his head at what terrible and stubborn parents we are, and ambles off to find another light beer and chat with a girl who has a tramp stamp tattoo under her belly button.

I was enraged at this guy. "Who the hell does he think he is?" etc, etc. Aron shrugs it off better than me, because obviously the guy is drunk as a skunk and you can't hold it against him for being worried, right?

Well I can.

I knew this would happen. I mean, it's almost happened before when people at Food Lion give me dirty looks for letting O crawl on the "filthy, dirty floor! He'll get germs!!" To which I reply, "Germs are good for him." But those people never made me mad like this did.

I remember conversations I used to have with my sisters, when I questioned some of their parenting choices about Gaelan, and disagreed with some things they chose to do. I remember feeling kind of baffled at how closed minded they were, how they weren't able to have a real conversation about the topic because they were too busy telling me I wasn't a parent, I didn't know what I was talking about, and they weren't going to defend their parenting to me. Now I know why they were like that. Now I get it.

I know there are going to be times when someone questions my choice, and they will be right. They will have a good point, or a good perspective, and their point will be a valid one. But I can't promise I will be able to hear them. I can't promise I will listen objectively and weigh the options carefully. I will probably shoot them down before they get off the ground. I will probably turn into raging defensive mom monster, like I did at the pool guy today.

It's interesting, the first twinges of that mom monster. I wonder what other things will set her off, and what it will take for her to unlatch her giant jaws and bite someone's head off in one massive chomp...

You learn by doing. Or in this case, by not doing...

So if you ever thought to yourself, "Those car seat buckles are too complicated. Surely you don't need to buckle more than the chest strap. That double-crotch-buckle is overkill, right?" you were wrong.

And let me tell you why.

In a sleep-deprived fog, I strapped a screaming O into his car seat and got behind the wheel. About 90 seconds later he is screaming in a much more adamant tone, but slightly muffled. I am alarmed, confused, and snap out of my haze to pull over, turn around fully in the front seat, and see what the problem is.

My child, the wiggly one who can't sit still for more than a nanosecond unless he is strapped down/in, had wiggled himself down and rolled over, with the chest strap of his car seat mushing his face into the seat of it, his legs all askew against the back seat of the actual car, and his arms crunched underneath him.

Oh horror of horrors!

It really was scary that he did that so fast, and that he could have easily suffocated himself if he'd been stuck like that for long. He was weepy and upset when I got him out (for good reason) and I was, too.

It was not fun.

So the next time you think those multi-buckle contraptions are being overly cautious, just remember that without all those things holding your kid in, they will find a way to get out.

Now if they would just ADD some more buckles to the high chairs at restaurants, maybe O would stop climbing out of them...

Toddling

My child is officially a toddler. I don't know about the age part, but he definitely toddles. He toddles all day long.

He has gone from cruising (which, for those of you who don't have kids, is when they "walk" by holding themselves up on furniture/walls/parents, etc.) to a few steps and then falling, to full-fledged walking around the apartment like he owns the place. Which, of course, he basically does.

He can stand from a sitting position without pulling up on anything, stand there for a while deciding on his direction, and then walk in chosen direction for 30 or 40 steps before deciding that walking is boring, and he'll sit down again. He can lean over and pick something up without falling down (sometimes), and he can almost always change direction without falling down.

Now I realize most of us do this every day without fanfare, but he's 10 months old. This is pretty quick for a baby. Most babies aren't doing this until they're 1 year old, or older. Some of his baby friends who are older than him are just now crawling proficiently. And it's all totally normal, because babies all develop in different ways and at their own speed. But it's still kind of crazy that he's doing this already.

It's also painful. For him. We are all aware of how accident prone he is (the bruises all over his face get questioning stares when we're in public...and NO, I DO NOT beat my child about the head and face. Jeez.) Well walking just makes it worse. He gets so intent on his feet he doesn't watch where he's going, and WHAM-O, face first into the table/wall/metal locker/arm of the chair. And he's getting rug burns from all the times he tries to run (RUN?! Are you kidding me?!?) and face plants on the carpet.

Is it time for the leash, yet? :)

Annnnnnnnnd, we're done.

No more nursing.

Period.

It makes me sad. I miss it already. I missed it the first day. I have had a hard time not giving in, snuggling him up in the glider and popping a boob in his mouth. I actually had a dream about it last night.

Owen, on the other hand, could care less.

I am pretty sure that the last month or so of him kicking me in the collarbone, smacking me in the face, and squirming to get out of my arms while we were nursing was a sign that he was over it. And I would have suffered through that for a long time, just to get him a few more weeks or months of that delightfully perfect breastmilk. But the last straw happened last week. He started biting me. Not just once, and not accidentally. He was biting me every time we nursed, on purpose, over and over. No amount of shrieking (he would just giggle) or reprimanding in a firm tone (his eyes would glaze over) made a difference. The fangs were out, and he was not giving up.

So we weaned. In a day, basically. He has been getting one or two bottles a day for some time now. Nursing was primarily a nap time/5 am activity. So losing it and getting an extra bottle or two hasn't seemed to phase him at all.

So Owen's fine, my nipples are healing, and I am a sad mommy.

Also my boobs hurt.

You win some, you lose some.

Size Matters

My very dear friend is pregnant with their first, and so of course I have passed along a veritable plethora of baby related items for them to use (or not use, depending!) for their new little man. We were talking last night, and she wants to show me the clothes they have gotten on their own (as opposed to coming in the mail in a random cardboard box from me!) and I remembered something that nobody told me, so I passed this tidbit on to her, and I will now pass it on to you.

The size on the tag of baby clothes is totally and ridiculously arbitrary.

When I got bags of hand-me-downs and boxes of thrift store and yard sale finds, I plopped my giant pregnant butt down on the floor and sorted them all neatly and accurately by the size that was listed on the tag. I boxed up the stuff he wouldn't be wearing for a while, put the rest in his closet, and, having soothed my organizational OCD, ate some ice cream and took a nap.

Then he was born. And I was quite unprepared to find that some of his newborn clothes were clearly several months too big for him. How odd, I thought. It says "Newborn" right there on the tag...he's a newborn baby...and yet it is falling off of him into a cotton puddle on the floor. Hmmm. What to do...?

I finally, after hours of pondering in a pregnancy-brain induced fog, discovered that if I re-sorted his clothes by their ACTUAL size, it was a much more accurate process. So I did this (it took a lot longer than the tag sorting, but was more efficient in the long run, obviously) and was supremely satisfied with my brilliance. So, in the end, problem solved.

But what sense does it make, really, for all these baby clothes to be such poorly labeled and incongruous sizes? As if moms don't have enough to worry about. As if we aren't already trying to muddle through the science of choosing the perfect diaper, and the catastrophe that is choosing a good baby monitor...now we have to realize this, formulate a plan, and resolve it. All on our own.

Well never fear, fellow mothers. I am here to help you.