Monday, December 31, 2012

We survived and returned from Christmas and suddenly I'm pretty sure that my baby is now a little boy. He is walking better than ever, can make a handful of animal sounds ("baaa" has been his favorite over the past week, but today he pulled a wolf figuring from the Lincoln Logs set and said "meow"), when he wakes up in the morning he puts his hand to his mouth to signal that he is hungry and not up for any of this lounging around in bed stuff! He can now talk about his shoes, "shhhh", also. He also knows where all sorts of body parts are: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, head, and piggies, and in the last week, he started to be able to point them out on himself or on you.

We had a wonderful Christmas and got to see everyone which was really nice. Even Grandma Ruth Ann and Grandpa Mike came to New Jersey for a visit! Micah got lots and lots of time with Grandma Michelle which they both loved. It's so nice to visit with family too because I think Micah learns so much from having a change of scenery and a change of faces. Different people just expect different things from him and work to teach him different things and those are the times when he seems to grow up overnight.

He was wonderful on the car ride home. He slept for an hour and a half and made it through the first 3.5 hours before he really needed a break (by which time is pants were completely soaked with pee as it turns out, oops!)! I had to break out all the new electronic toys to keep him entertained for the last 1.5 hours or so but who can blame him on a 6 hour car ride! When he got home, he walked straight into the living room, picked up his little rolling popping toy, rolled it into the kitchen, walked back to the living room, dug through his building blocks, and just continued from there to take all the toys out that had been left behind over the holidays.

I am looking forward to a wonderful 2013 with this little guy!

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

An additional noteworthy event... Micah suddenly knows all sorts of animal sounds. We discovered this on Friday. I have certainly told him what sounds all sorts of animals make but I have a feeling this is more a result of daycare/babysitting than it is of my personal influence. He knows if you ask him what a Cow, Dog, Sheep, or Owl says. He's learning what a Pig says. I'm working on teaching him what a Rooster says. It's pretty amazing how well he can distinguish when I didn't even realize he understood language until this past week! He also says "Banana" clear as a bell. He clearly asks for "Water" when he's thirsty. And of course, he is pretty good with "down" and "good girl" in reference to Kaya, although you have to know what he's saying in order to understand those two. Despite this weekend's illness, this baby is about to explode, it's really remarkable to experience!

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

It looks like we have survived the first "major" illness. On Friday night, Micah had a completely normal evening, went to bed at his normal time, and woke up crying a little after an hour in bed. I let him put himself back to sleep, but he woke up every ten or fifteen minutes for the next hour and so I finally decided to go give him a hand going back to sleep (Michael was at a bar to see some live music that evening). The minute I walked in his room, I smelled it and it only took a minute to realize that what I smelled was vomit. My poor baby was soaking wet, I turned on the light and saw two significant piles of puke in the crib. I felt so bad. I cleaned him up and sent Michael a message to let him know what was going on. In the meantime, I put Micah in the baby carrier on my chest while I changed his sheets, wiped down the slats of the crib, and moved all the dirty stuff into a pile in the other room.
Then he threw up again, this time on me. At that point I lost it, I did not know what to do, I couldn't keep changing his clothes (or mine) and I felt so so bad for him. I called my dad who calmed me down, then Michael called and I calmed him down. While I was on the phone with Michael, Micah puked for a fourth time and I hung up, took his pajamas off, took my disgusting shirt off and just grabbed a baby blanket to cover us while I rocked him in the rocking chair until Michael came home.
Of course, as usual, Michael is amazing and he immediately grabbed my robe to cover me up, gathered up the dirty laundry, checked to make sure the puke looked "normal" (assuming either one of us would know what abnormal looks like), and got me a glass of water. In the meantime, I decided to lay on the floor with the baby, so Michael got pillows, and our comforter, and all the towels in our closet. And that's where we slept Friday night. Micah probably puked on me at least another six times over the course of the night but it stopped around 2am and at 3am, I snuck some pajamas on him while he was sleeping and laid him down in his crib. He woke up a few times asking for water, but I was afraid to give him anything so I just comforted him back to sleep and we made it through the night. It was horrible but I think we managed it well.
Of course, he spent all weekend recovering, didn't really eat much, slept like a maniac, and then he passed it to both of us. So I spent Sunday with my head in a bucket and had to call in sick to my brand new job yesterday. I guess it isn't coincidence that he got sick right after I started my new job, it's totally normal for him to get sick after starting daycare and being exposed to other little kids and all their germs. Ah well, it's actually kind of nice to have that under our belt.  

Growing Up (December 7, 2012)

My baby is not a baby anymore. I realized this when I brought him home from daycare last night. I can exactly pinpoint the shift but there are several things that I think contribute to the realization. First, he cried this morning when Michael dropped him off. That was the first time he's done that. When I picked him up, he started crying again, seemingly out of relief that I came back for him. And I think that he hit his stride on walking yesterday like never before. For the first time, he doesn't look unbalanced at all, and he was running everywhere he went. Also, he was all over the place. I was trying to cook dinner and he was just circulating from room to room on foot. And he was frustrating the heck out of me because he seemed to clearly have his own agenda for the evening! Another thing is that I think he understands most of what we say at this point. Michael was giving him instructions last night ("get the ball for me" or "stack your blocks") and he knew exactly what was being asked of him. Similarly, when Michael was around the corner on his way home from work, I asked Micah, "Do you know who is coming home?" and he clicked his tongue like he does when Michael plays the drums. Then I asked where daddy was and he started laughing and cheering and made a bee-line for the door. It was pretty adorable. But not the actions of a baby. My baby is not a baby.

November 30, 2012

Week 1 of two working parents with baby in daycare and everything is wonderful! The first day Michael brought Micah to daycare, the babysitter (a neighbor) said he didn't cry even for a second, he took two long naps, and when he woke up from them, he was singing. She said that none of her (seven) children would have ever been able to do that, especially at a stranger's house. I have to say, that was definitely a relief. A new job is stressful enough, I am glad not to worry about how my baby is doing at the babysitter's. It's rather surprising too because it's the first time ever that he's regularly skipping nursing before going down for a nap and he seems to not have a problem with that at all. It sounds like he's doing well with the other kids, he's sleeping at home like never before since he's so worn out from playing all day, and everything just seems wonderful!