Jammie J's Quest

Dear William,

This week on 10/18/2012, you turn 45 weeks or 10.3 months old.

You currently weigh 27 pounds 6.5 ounces-ish.  I say “ish” because you kept putting your foot on the ground when I weighed you this morning, and then would lift it up and grin at me.  Smartypants!  You have quite the sense of humor these days.   You are primarily in 18 month sized clothing, and we are starting to size you up to 24 months in some things, too.  Diaper stuffing strategy remains the same, although if you get more than one middle of the night nursing, you soak and leak out of your overnight diaper.

This past weekend I was struggling with a clogged duct and I was so grateful that lately you’ve been wanting to snuggle and linger while nursing.  I started taking lecithin (an herb) awhile back and haven’t had a clogged duct stick around for long since then, so this one being so stubborn was quite a surprise to me. In fact, for the first time in a good long while, I let you take a couple of naps on me in the hopes that letting you pacify nurse would help clear it up.  It finally, gradually broke free on Sunday.

I took you back to the pumpkin patch on Saturday afternoon.  We had previously gone the first weekend it opened and felt rather conspicuous that we were just taking pictures and not making any purchases. This weekend, I had hoped to meet up with our mom group, but since you opted for a nap (as usual) during the meeting time, I decided to just go anyway even though I knew it was likely we would miss them.  You loved looking around at all the people (so many people!!) and rather than attempt a militant photo session, I just let you look around and acclimate yourself to your surroundings.  I’m a huge fan of natural, candid pictures (rather than posed) and I got some great ones by just letting you be yourself!  I had brought along your pumpkin outfit, that I bought just for this, and put you in it and then set you next to a bunch of pumpkins for the pictures.  One lady came around the corner with her two kids and was so focused on getting them posed that she totally missed that you were standing there and very nearly tripped over you!  It was hilarious!

Who knew a tractor going by could glean such a myriad of expressions!

This week you have added pointing to your repertoire of skills.  You’re not really pointing at things you want (yet), so much as you’re just kind of pointing where you’re looking.  Your love for bananas is becoming more and more of a demand than it is a request, you know where they are kept and will reach for them and SQUEAL when we hand you one.

You have added the words “This?” and “That?” to your vocabulary, along with the hilarious sound effect of hissing whenever you see a cat, or a picture of a cat (we can thank Snug for that).

Hissing: 

We purchased you some rubber bibs this past week and they have a collection area in the bottom.  It took you two seconds to figure out that’s where all the good stuff ends up. So now you spend a good portion of your meal time fishing stuff out from your bib and re-eating it.

Crawling continues to be your main mode of transportation these days.  We attended your Music Together class on Monday and afterward you kept trying to go out the door with all the grown ups. We were finally ready to go and we let you go with us under your own power. So there you went, crawling down the hall, and people were laughing as they passed you.   Yet you were pleased as could be because you were “walking” along with us.  Clearly, strollers are for babies!

Olympic crawler:

Things I’m not thrilled about this week?  Another middle of the nighter last Thursday night and nap avoidance two days last week, perhaps related to the flu shot?  Things seem to have settled down for you over the weekend.  Also, when you get bored you like to distract yourself with a motorboat sound or by grinding your teeth.

Things I want to remember about you this week:  The way you pull Froggy over your eyes when nursing and I feel you smiling… so I say, “Where’s William?  Where IS William?”  And you pull Froggy off, still smiling, still nursing and bust a gut laughing when I exclaim “THERE YOU ARE!!”  You are so clever and are apparently truly talented to be able to do that and not bite.  I say that because I shared with our neighbor lady how much I love this game and she said she can’t do that with her son because he bites.  Yikes!  You also moan and groan and growl when you’re going for another letdown, which isn’t very relaxing for me, so I started mimicking you… and that, of course, makes you laugh.   I love the way you hold tight to your crib rail and jump up and down in the morning, smiling hugely, to greet me.  The way you’ve started to push your little silver car around, all while it says “Honk Honk, pump it up, pump the jam, pump it up!”  How you’ve really embraced the Book Nook in your room, and will pull books off the shelves and look through them as if you’re really reading.  You love the interactive books and, in particular, the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse book with the light switch that turns off and on.  How you will shut your bedroom door and, although you’re not tall enough yet, you will then reach up for the handle to open it again.  How going into the house from the garage has become a crazy dance because of your extended arm demonstrating your single minded focus on PUSHING THAT GARAGE DOOR BUTTON.

In the mornings on weekends, I take you for a stroller ride around our neighborhood. You enjoy going out of the neighborhood to the main street because you really love watching the wheels go round on the cars going by and get really upset if we turn around before then. So sometimes when we go out there, I turn your stroller sideways on the sidewalk and I sit down next to you and we just sit there, together, watching cars go by.

You grin at me, as you turn your head back and forth to watch the cars go this way and that way, the entire time. Moments like these, the simple ones, are the ones I’m forever trying to capture with my heart camera.

Love, Momma

Dear William,

This week on 10/04/12, you turned 43 weeks or 9.8 months old.

Yet another date has been filled in your baby book… your first cold. Last Thursday night/Friday morning, you were running a fever of 100.7 and had a snotty nose and I felt like such a mom wiping your boogers away and comforting you when you couldn’t breathe out of your cute little nose. As germaphobic as I am, and I tell everyone not to HAAAA on me when they’re sick, I was surprised to find myself laughing at you when you popped up right in front of my face, opened your mouth and HAAAAAed, right in my nose… oh, how being a mom changes someone. Since it was Thursday night when you came down with it, and facing a weekend ahead, for peace of mind we took you to the doctor on Friday, just to make sure your ears, throat and lungs were OK. They were, and it was a fast moving thing, because by Saturday you were acting like the whole thing was gone. Oh, and to stick with tradition, you pooped for the doctor. You ALWAYS poop for the doctor. I blame your father.

Another development: You’ve been standing independently more and more. On Monday night you were banging on the closed toilet seat as if it were a drum and when you stopped, you just stood there with your hands in the air… for about three seconds, then you plopped down on your butt. Your Grandma D. claims you took your first step this week. She brought over an activity table that she’s had at her condo for when you visit her. The first day she brought that over, you started pushing it (looking as if you’re about to fall on your face the whole time) and using it as a makeshift walker. You pushed it over to the couch and saw something on the coffee table you wanted, she said, so you let go of it, took one step over to the coffee table. I haven’t seen it yet, so I’m waiting to document it…

Just when we had a routine worked out for your naps and night time, you’ve started screwing with things again. STOP SCREWING WITH THINGS! Refusing to take one of your naps, which all things considered, if you’re going to refuse a nap, I would rather it be your morning nap. What I think is going on, even though all the experts say it’s too soon, is that you’re trying to go to just one nap a day. So now we’re reworking your schedule to try and make things work again. The thing is, your afternoon nap is way too important to miss. So we moved your bedtime up to 7pm to compensate for the sleep you’re losing during the day. Just as it’s important to look at the amount of milk I pump on a big picture basis (i.e., am I freezing some at the end of the week?), I’ve learned it’s also important to look at the amount of sleep you’re getting in a 24 hour period — I like to make sure you’re getting a minimum of 13 hours in a 24 hour period, I don’t really care how you dice it, with the exception of I prefer you to sleep until at least 6:30 AM in the morning.

Food you’re enjoying this week:
Plums, banana, steamed broccoli, steamed onion, banana/oatmeal bars, carnitas (pork).

Development at a glance:
Diapers — double stuffing inserts for first 3 morning diapers.
Clothing — size 18 month, some 24 month.
Speed crawling is your main mode of transportation
Standing for long periods of time holding on to things and standing seconds at a time without holding on to anything at all.
Using your activity table as a makeshift walker, and pushing it around the room.
Mimic sounds — if we drop something, we say “Uh ohhh!” You now say it, too, but the first time you said it was on 10/02, “uhhh uh uh uh… Uh Oh!”

Things I want to remember about you this week: When you poke your hand between my breasts when nursing, your little elbow sticks up and I tell you “I’m gonna get that little chicken wing!” and then you laugh and laugh, all while nursing. It is the best thing when we reconnect at the end of the day. The way you sneezed while nursing yesterday, and then kept nursing as if nothing had happened. The heat of your body, the heat of this summer, the overwhelming heat of those two things together (I will be grateful for cooler weather). If you are upset, the way you instantly calm when I start singing You are my sunshine. The way you roll over when I put you in your crib at night and stick your butt in the air and babble “Mamamama.” The way you twist your hips when you crawl, and your little butt bobbles along. The way you belly laugh when I try to clean under your chin. How quick you are to go up the single stair out of the living room. How pleased you were with yourself when I let you climb the stairs all the way to the first landing (with me right behind you). That you have figured out how to slide off of the la-z-boy in your room, belly first, and take off crawling when your feet hit the floor. How your face lights up when we go for a morning walk and round the corner and you spot the little community playground. How you laugh and squeal when you see the pool. How ridiculous it is when we change your diaper after swimming and you cry your head off. How you know when we pull your feeding chair out that means FOOD and you come crawling across the floor as fast as you can. How cute you were when I let you try plums for the first time and you LOVED them.

P1420860 from Jammie J. on Vimeo.

Cleaning under his chin

When your Godmother’s daughter was small, she put her tiny little hand on a window above their dining room table, and for the longest time her mom left that handprint there, unapologetic to any who might see, glaringly visible in the evening lamplight. It might still be there, for all I know. I remember that because she commented on it to me that she liked it there. Motherhood has brought out uncharacteristic nostalgia and a desire to hold onto the younger version of my baby in me, and I assume that was what she was doing. In my own way, I try to do the same, I suppose, by drawing your hand print every month, writing these letters to you, taking weekly pictures to document your growth… all of these tangibles. But the intangibles, the things I can’t see with my eyes — the feelings you evoke in me when you do these things that make me smile or laugh days or weeks after you’ve done them, or when my heart is just full to overflowing and I find myself crying when I hold you in those early morning hours because I love you so much, those are the things that I desperately try to capture and hold near to my heart. Your father and I joke that our home is now called “William’s house” and if every joke contains a bit of truth, then there’s more truth in that than humor. Because really, it’s not just our home that you’ve captured and now own, it’s our hearts, too.

Love, Momma

Dear William,

This week on 09/27/2012, you turned 42 weeks or 9.6 months old.

I would like to share with you how much you love music. Any music at all makes you SO happy, and you “sing” along in a monotone voice with lots of passion behind it. I’m not sure at what age children start to sing in tune, but you definitely have the emotion of music down pat! Your second Music Together class was this past Monday, and your teacher was impressed that you were holding the tune… and you did SO good following along and participating in the class. Sometimes I feel silly spending money on something you won’t remember, but … you really seem to enjoy participating, interacting with other kids, and crawling around, and while you may not remember the class itself, maybe you will remember the emotions of it.

We took you to mass this past Sunday for the first time in a while. We haven’t been taking you because the 9:00am mass jacks with your nap schedule, but we made it to the 730 AM mass this past Sunday. Anyway, my point in mentioning that was because you were participating in the service by “singing” along to the worship music.

On Sunday afternoon, I took you to watch your father’s basketball game. In a word, love. You LOVED being there and watching everyone run back and forth, the drumming noise of the basketball to you was like a favorite TV show would be to someone else, you couldn’t take your eyes off the game. You lost the ball you were playing with and chased after it in a turbo crawl, babbling in concern the whole way.

You love anything with bananas in it, so I foresee that going forward, much of my cooking will have banana as an ingredient. It’s a good thing it’s such a healthy, versatile fruit and can be substituted for a lot of unhealthier items in recipes! I had made some blueberry banana yogurt popsicles last year while pregnant with you, and I pulled one out to let you try it. Once you got over how freezing cold it was, you went to town with it! You love that popsicle, and the next time I got it out of the freezer, you knew what it was and were ready for it! Oh, and you get mad when I take it away.

This past weekend, your father hung a red swing in our backyard that our former neighbors (who moved to Texas) gave you. Oh my goodness, you love that thing. The giggles, grins and laughter you render upon being placed in it is all the reward and thank you that your father needs for the time and work it took to hang that thing up!

I discovered this week that the hissing sound makes you laugh… which would explain why you would smile after you bit while nursing. All this time, I thought you thought that biting was funny, but then I realized that I was hissing in pain when you bite. You think that sound is funny, so you thought I was playing with you and then didn’t understand why I was disciplining you. Now that we’re in sync, things seem to be going much better in that arena. Lately, you’ve had a latch like a clamp that if we were back in your newborn days, would make me cry… and I shake my head in awe when I realize just how far we’ve come. Speaking of your teeth, apparently they’ve grown enough that you can now not only click them together, but also grind them. It’s very strange to be carrying you and hear clicking noises coming from your head.

Foods you’ve been enjoying this week: Banana, steamed broccoli, blueberries, steamed onions, plain Greek yogurt. A popsicle made from blueberries, banana and plain Greek yogurt. Granola bars made from banana and oatmeal.
Foods you’ve been unimpressed with this week: Potatoes, carrots.

Crawling is still your main mode of mobility, although you’re working on your confidence to stand by yourself. You stand (holding onto things) for long periods of time and will “walk” while holding on to things, especially if you spot your Froggy hanging on your crib.

You are weighing in at 26 pounds 12 ounces. Clothing sizing is the same as last week (18 month). For diapers, we’ve taken to double stuffing your covers for your morning diapers.

Things I want to remember about you this week: The way you love to “talk” or “sing” to me when we’re driving around, sometimes even yelling at each other and then we laugh and laugh about our silliness… I love this pre-talking phase. How you’ve started to associate sounds to things, like if a loud motorcycle goes by, you look around searching for the source of the noise. The way you crawl SO FAST up and down the hallway before bath time, when released from the restrictions your clothes and diaper, your mouth in a wide open grin. How you search for your ladybug bath toy to play with while I dry you off and put lotion on you after your bath. The way your hair has this cowlick at the top, and it just kind of curls its way upward on the top of your head. The way you close your eyes when I stroke your hair while you’re nursing. How you love balls to distraction, even more than books, and will chase them across the floor.

Sometimes when I hold you, you will lean your head against my shoulder for a few seconds. For those few seconds, in my mind’s eye I remember seeing other babies do that to their moms, and now I’m on the other side of the mind picture. I sometimes wonder if I’m too serious, too regimented, too… whatever, self doubts that I suppose every mom has, but then am reminded in those quiet moments when you lean on me that I am your mom, the only mom you’ll ever have. You trust me completely to meet all of your needs, to be an example of how a mom should be, a role model of how a wife should act as you watch me with your father, how a woman should act, and I realize that imperfect though am, in your eyes, I am perfection. It won’t always be so, this I know, age has a way of gaining knowledge and changing perceptions. But I hope that you’ll always know that guidance and discipline are the tools and love is the motivation I use as a foundation to help you gain your “perfection” for your future spouse and children.

Love,
Momma

Dear William,

This week, on 09/20/2012, you turn 41 weeks or 9.3 months old.

The highlight of this week for you was attending your first music class. Let’s just rewind a bit, did you see that? You attended your first class! Your father was able to take you, which made it all the more special, and you did great, he said. You roamed a bit at first, but the teacher was understanding, you are the youngest in the class after all. You loved the music and were so interested to watch all the other children. You are also a bit of a teacher’s pet, because you crawled right up to her, put your hand on her knee and watched her intently. She smiled at you and reached over, waved the handkerchief over your head and then gently touched you under your chin. It was so sweet.

If there were any doubt in my mind as to whether you recognized me as your mom, it would have been alleviated that day. I walked in the room 15 minutes late, after leaving work early and hustling through rush hour traffic. You spotted me the second I came in the room and lost interest in everything but me. I attempted to refocus you on the class, but it didn’t work all that well… in the future, I’ll try to slip in a little more discreetly so that doesn’t happen again!

Also this week was the first time you drank from a straw. It was so hot and we were out and about, and for months now you’ve been fascinated with water bottles and watching us drink from them. So I put a straw in it and held it up for you. Your eyes met mine, you closed your little lips around it and, voila, you drank water from a straw. It was so anti-climatic, and now I’m wondering if we have managed to bypass the sippy cup phase altogether.

You are such a little scientist and are so curious about how everything works. Nothing escapes your notice. We have a rug in front of the back sliding door and every time you go to stand up, the rug slides under your feet and you’re desperately hanging on to the glass door while your feet are going faster and faster and then the rug has moved to the middle of the room thanks to you. So I bought an anti-slip mat and put it under the rug. You weren’t watching me when I did it, but the next time you went over there and the rug stayed where it was, you decided to sit down and investigate why … so there you sat, lifting the rug to see what was under there. I’m not much on secrets but, in this instance, darling, some things need to STAY under the rug.

You are weighing in at 26 pounds 5.5 ounces. We’re still in that same weird zone of eighteen month size onesies becoming too small on you, I’m thinking we’ll be going to 24 month sizes here pretty soon. Of course I keep saying that and then keep cramming your clothes on you. Probably not the best of strategies because then when you do finally move up a size, you’re not in the new size for very long before I have to start stretching them again. I think your torso is much longer than your legs are, because when I put 24 month size shorts around you, they fit you around the waist but the length of them are nearly to your ankles. This is kind of surprising, because both your father and I have legs that are seemingly 5 feet long!

We went to Costco last night, one of your favorite stores for people watching. They had a ride-on Lightning McQueen toy and I thought, “How cute! I wonder what William will think of this?” So, I shrugged and put you on it. You were entranced. You didn’t even look up the entire time you were on it. After 5 minutes or so, I finally decided it was time to move on and I asked you if you wanted up… no response, you just kept playing with it. I reached under your arms and lifted you and you started crying and reaching for it. You cried all the way down the aisle. I was so shocked — I let you “test drive” toys ALL THE TIME at Children’s Orchard and you never respond that way when it’s time to go. I walked back by the ride-on toy on our way out and you remembered it, started making noise and reaching for it. Since you liked it so much AND remembered it on the second pass by, I decided to buy it for you… and give it to you, maybe for your birthday? Or Christmas? It’s rated for children 12-36 months old, so you’ll probably enjoy it even more by then.

Your nap schedule is going so much better. It’s wonderful to have a plan in place and, I admit, it is weird to go from having a baby led sleep schedule to a parental controlled sleep schedule, and yet it’s working, when we’re consistent about it. It’s remarkable that your awake times are so predictable to the point that we can lay you down at the right time and you will go to sleep once you talk it over with yourself and get comfortable. If you refuse your nap (40 minute nap window), then we keep you up until the next nap window and then you’re out like a light. It’s also amazing how the length of the nap affects the next nap or even your night sleep… we let you lengthen your morning nap to see what would happen, won’t be doing that again because you then awoke at 4:30 AM the next day.

Things I want to remember about you this week: When I’m holding you and you hear music, you kick your legs in time to the rhythm — it’s very funny when we’re walking through the grocery store. The way you turn with a half smile on your face and look at me sometimes, as if you’re waiting for a joke. The way your eyes meet mine when we’re standing in front of a mirror and you grin at me. The way you reach for me in the morning when I go to get you out of your crib. Your sweet sleepy weight as I put you in your crib after you’ve nursed yourself to sleep. The way you reach for and grab Froggy if you spot him. How if you accidentally drop Froggy when you’re nursing, you cry out and are very upset about it. The way you shove your hands into the armholes of your shirt and help with getting dressed. How when you eat a food you like you make this “Hmmmm” sound, as if you’re really pondering the taste of this new delicacy that you’re eating. When I wash your face in the bathtub, how you open your mouth really wide to try and catch the washcloth so you can suck and bite on it. How you SPLASH the bath water or the pool water as hard as you can with your mouth wide open and stick your tongue out to try and catch drops of water — you even did that when we stopped at a statue fountain! How sometimes when you sit on the floor, you will cross your feet and sit Indian style.

When we started this journey of your life together, I wasn’t sure of anything except that you were finally here. Now I’m looking down the road and your birthday is in the cross hairs and I’m in the idea stage of planning for that. Also, even though we’re doing baby led weaning (BLW), I’m planning ahead for the eventual weaning process and how I will wean from the pump during day time hours. I’m also in the process of registering to be a milk donor, as I would really like to provide human milk for premature babies whose moms cannot. So I need to figure out which pumping session(s) I want to keep in my schedule for that and because milk banks won’t take milk from moms who are supplementing their diets with Fenugreek and Flaxseed, I will also need to wean myself from them.

A friend of ours had a baby this week and I find myself looking at her baby’s newborn pictures and then I look at pictures of you today and … well, everyone said that children grow so quickly, but I had no idea when they told me that, they meant in 9 months you would already look like a toddler! Or that already, today, I see in your sweet face the shape of the man-face you will eventually have. As your teeth grow like a self-erected white picket fence on unmarked territory, so do we tick off the markers of your growth and development and pages of your baby book seem to complete themselves of their own volition.

Love, Momma