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.