Trouble

- with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Bear.


Gummy Bears to be exact.  Gummy Bear Vitamins to be uber precise.
I've scoured the ingredient label, and I can't find crack, but maybe it's hidden in amongst the fancy chemical names for things like vitamin E (alpha-tocopheryl, anyone?).  Nevertheless, Nathan has a powerful need for the gummy bear.  Every morning we come down to the kitchen, and thus begins a frantic pantomine of pointing, signing "more" and "please" and then the addition of vocal choruses of "more-more", "buh-beh" (gummy bear, for those fortunate enough to be uninitiated to this ritual), "peasss-peasss" (surely you recognize please-please - in baby talk).  I think the intensity of his hand motions, pathetic pleading, and unutterable cuteness is almost enough to levitate the bottle off the counter and into his grasping hands.
Almost, but not quite.  He remains dependent of his mother and her mean-spirited, unfair, doctory, ridiculous, one vitamin per day rule.
Two days ago he resorted to rolling around on the kitchen floor in indignation, howling "please more gummy bear", tearing his hair, and beating on the ground.  And when his mother, cold-hearted woman that she is, simply stepped around him as she emptied the dishwasher and asked him to please stop shouting and refused to hear reason, he sat up and with tear-stained face, turned on his 1000-watt smile and said "peass-peass, buh-beh" in the the most pitifully pathetic tone ever given voice.
And I'll admit it.  I almost caved.  Almost went the route of "one extra vitamin couldn't possibly hurt him".  But I didn't.
I gave him dried mango instead.

Yes, I bribed him with sweets, but apparently standing firm on the gummy bear issue was enough because while we continue to have protracted conversations about my refusal to dish out more of the good stuff, there has been no more wailing or rolling (at least about "buh-beh's").

The Golden Years?

So far second year of fellowship is awesome.  I don't have much weeknight call - none at all in July, and so last night, on what would traditionally have bee the night I would have come home from work late and been on call and getting paged all night, Dave and I celebrated.
We sat on the deck, enjoying our new patio furniture, listening to the planes overhead and watching the fireflies blink.  We talked about truly deep aspects of our lives like tiki torches and Nathan's delight in his pint sized deck chair.
It was wonderful.
I do have one complaint though.
This morning I have itchy mosquito bites. 
I never got mosquito bites as a first year fellow.

Something I Love

Every night at bedtime we read "Goodnight Moon".  Nathan requests it with an enthusiastic "moon, moon!".
We have little rituals as we go through the book.  The mouse squeaks, the kittens miaow, and for reasons I have never understood, Nathan always smells the picture of the three little bears sitting in chairs.  I lift his hand up to my mouth to "shush" against it and now he puts his little hand up as soon as the page appears, and giggles with delight when I tickle his palm.

The part I really love, though, the thing I know I'll miss the most as he gets older and wiser is "Good night Air".  When we turn to that page, speckled with stars across the top and a white void at the bottom, Nathan reaches up and wiggles his ears.

Good night ears.
What does he know of air, anyway?
Ears he knows, and every bedtime we tell them good night.

Fine Young Cannibals

I think of myself as a pretty relaxed parent. 
Nathan bounces around on the ground a lot.  He is, after all, perfecting his walking/running/climbing/exploring skills and a few head bumps/pinched fingers/little scrapes are just all part of the process.
I was, however, completely unrelaxed today when my son came home with teeth marks on his baby skin. 
It's not the first time.  On his second day in the toddler room we took off his shirt at bath time and there was a perfect dental imprint written in broken blood vessels in the middle of his back.  Today, apparently the same offender got out of control and bit my little guy's shoulder.
And drew blood.
When Dave arrived to pick him up, our tear-stained boy was surrounded by day care workers, ice packs, and incident reports.  The mother, an attending I have worked with on more than one occasion, was mortified and apologetic.  Nate's teachers were similarly distressed.  They are supposed to keep "the twins"  and their teeth separate from the other kids, but today there was a breakdown in the system.
I'm not OK with this.
I'm not OK with biting.
Nate has spent exactly 3 minutes in time out and all 3 of them were after the first and last 3 times he bit anyone in this house.
I am glad I wasn't there because I am not sure I would have settled for time out if I had actually seen the little boy nearly twice Nathan's size trying to make a meal out of my baby.  Caning is still legal, isn't it?

AKA

Do you ever think about what your mob name would be?  Or your child's?
We decided today that Nathan's would be Nate "the Pit".

When his eating was at its worst, before we knew what was wrong, when we were tyring to fix him with Pediasure (Nice cold glass of allergen, coming right up!) we had daily calorie counts where his breakfast numbered 13 raisins and we felt really, really good about that.  His breakfast today would have seemed like really really good intake for a whole day back then.

Today, at 5 am he drank 4 ounces of Elecare.
A few hours later, at breakfast with mommy, he ate: 3/4 of a slice of cinnamon sugar toast, about 20 blueberries, 2 1/2 slices of turkey bacon and 4 ounces of mango juice

Just about an hour later he sat with daddy and ate 1 1/2 whole mangoes

Lunch was 1 1/2 chicken nuggets, a couple hand fulls of cinnamon sugar Chex, 1/2 cup of cereal/raisin mix, and 8 ounces of 30 calorie per ounce Elecare

For dinner he ate 3 1/2 slices of chicken lunchmeat (no nitrates!), a piece of vegan rice cheese, 1/2 a mango, and 6 cherries
Bedtime snack of 4 ounces of Elecare

Either he's gearing up for a growth spurt or he's sprung a leak somewhere . . .

******

Nate "the Fruit Bat" has also come up as a mob name contender.

Why bother to peel the mango? - More fiber this way.

Counting down and Counting up

I don't know if anyone besides me actually looks at my countdown clock over there on the right side of my blog, but I am excited to note that I have less than 2 weeks left of my first year of fellowship.
Applause. Cheering. Whooping. Excited dancing.
I am tired and ready for a new challenge.
Even more ready for a dramatic reduction in my weeknight calls.

*****

Nathan weighed over 20 pounds tonight on our oh-so-scientific method of holding him and weighing ourselves on the bathroom scale. Official weigh in and measurement to follow next week.

*****

Nathan's current favorite thing is "sneaking". Mommy or Daddy hold him and run around "sneaking" up on the other parent and startling them. Of course the whole thing is very theatrical. Almost kabuki. And he loves it. Tonight, for the first time, he toddled around on his own feet, hiding around corners, giggling, and shouting "nee-nee"! We all laughed like loons.

*****

It gets to be more fun every day.

Pavlov's Baby

Nathan is a smart boy.

He had been a dog lover. One of his first words/sound was "Ooo-Ooo" which was quite obviously the bark of a dog. With arms outstretched, fingers grasping the air, he would bark at any dog passing at any distance, reaching with obvious need toward his 4-legged soon-to-be-friend. Faced with actually touching a dog he was usually a little more hesitant. they are, after all, larger than him and very frenetic. Still, he got to pet a few dogs.

After this encounter we noticed a few hives on his face and he was rubbing his eyes. By the time we got home from the park it was gone.

Then came the incident known as Nate versus poodle. Supposedly hypoallergenic dogs, but within about 5 minutes of being tasted by the friendly poodle, our boy was red, puffy, and his eyes were swollen almost shut. the hives on his face were so big and tight they almost looked like blisters. His skin was weeping.

After a bath, some time, and a large dose of benadryl he felt much better. But obviously, he can be taught. Dogs now elicit no excitement from him. He turns his head away and ignores them. Even the dog button on his animal noise toy gets a scrunched up face and a "bye-bye, bye-bye".

One picture per blog of a hive-y boy is enough, so here is a cute picture of our little man glowing with pride at his ability to motor around unassisted.

When we took Nate for his allergy testing this week he was tested for dog allergen. The doctor was hesitant because it is so rare for a child before age 2 years to be allergic to dogs. But because he had so many other allergies, and because we had the pictures I am not posting here, he consented, and sure enough a large wheal and flare ensued.

He recommended we keep him away from dogs. Nate seems ready to keep himself away.

Clever boy.