Freeing the Hostages

We sent Nate to bed last night essentially without dinner.
If that doesn't shock you, you haven't been paying attention.  The earnest care and angst with which we coax every possible calorie into our son is exhausting.  Moreover, I think he understands on some level that we'll do just about anything to get him to eat - bribery, silly dances, games, reverse psychology.  Now, he's in the heart of the twos, looking for a way to assert himself and be independent, and the struggles about food have been escalating.  We coax, he refuses, then sweetly acquiesces, then refuses, then agrees to some new point of negotiation.
Last night he was overtired, Dave was sick, I was recovering from the fever-virus-from-hades, and the second time he pushed his nearly untouched dinner plate away and said he didn't want it, I did not push it back.  I took it into the kitchen and took him out of his seat and declared dinner over.
It's fair to say he never did really calm down again.  He cried and wailed about wanting his food, wanting to be held, wanting to eat dinner.  Most of it was incoherent but we did manage to determine that if the price of eating was sitting in his chair like a big boy, he was not interested.
We bathed and pajama-ed a weeping boy and put him to bed almost an hour early.  He was out like a light and was more pleasant though still "two" this morning.

Dave and I have agreed to let him go without eating if necessary.  He's on the growth chart, respectably chubby, and except for the "ice cream incident" at the fair, he hasn't thrown up in months.  It seems that at this point not eating is more likely to be a behavioral symptom than a medical one.
Sometimes toddlers eat and sometimes they don't.  They all seem to get by without their own personal short order cook. Nate is loosing his.

June: A summary

1. Gardening - After lovingly and laboriously planting, watering, and watching over our garden, it was discovered by the bunnies and completely deforested.  Well, except the cilantro and the basil.  But tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, carrots, dill - all gone.  We were left with two small patches of herbs, two watermelon plants, and some straggly green onions.

We, however, refused to be as decimated as our garden.  We persevered with the help of Lowe's and the farmer's market.  We bought some small plants and built a fence.  The tomatoes are flowering and we seem to be back in business.

2. Health - I have been sick for what is starting to feel like years.  A progression of stubborn colds and a general malaise, and a lymph node in my neck that just wouldn't go away.  Finally, the oncologist within me on red alert, I had a biopsy of the offending node.  The diagnosis is Kikuchi disease, a self-limited autoimmune condition that should resolve within 6 months at the most.  As the name might imply, this is found most commonly among the Japanese.  Since I am decidedly caucasian, this diagnosis confirms my general classification as unusual.  I feel pretty confident that my PCP and I know exactly the same amount about this disease because we read the same E-medicine article.  In any case, I am slowly getting better.  I have had laryngitis for almost two weeks, but even that is getting better and I am loosing my husky, sexy baritone.

3. Running - Because of the above mentioned malaise, I have not been as consistent in my gym attendance as previously, but I am still eking along, genuinely loosing weight and  . . . drumroll please . . . I jogged for a full 20 minutes for the first time since I was in med school.  I went back this morning and it wasn't exactly a skip through the tulips.  More like roses.  Really thorny roses.  But I made it.  And really my biggest problem was this cough so I am confident I'll be back to three times a week this week.

4. Work - Dave started a new job - he is now a trainee in the financial planning program for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.  Starting in November he will be available for all your financial planning needs.  This is a big exciting change for him and one that he has needed to make for a while.  But it is also throwing our household into chaos.  He actually has a schedule and work hours and an immense lack of flexibility.  We're getting up earlier which makes EVERYONE, even the little one, cranky.  But it's good and he's studying like he's back in school.  This will be his "first year of fellowship".

5. Research - July first starts what was going to be my last year at Pitt but that may be changing slightly.  I just found out I won a grant from the St. Baldrick's Foundation - remember the folks Dave shaved his head for? - and it is a two year grant.  So, between Dave's training program and the awe-inspiring fact that someone wants to pay me real money to do what I am loving doing, we may be here a titch longer than originally planned.  Things are going along swimmingly and I even presented my data at a local research symposium.  Seeing that this was my first real research presentation ever and that most of the other presenters had PhD's and had clearly done this before, I was shocked to win an "Outstanding Presentation" Award. (And thrilled by the cash.)

6. School - Nate graduated to the "Toddler" program at school.  Complete with certificate and room change.  He LOVES his new teachers and talks nonstop about all the fun he had at school when he comes home.  I think he had really outgrown the stimulation available in the Tot room which pretty much consisted of looking at picture books and listening to the same CD.  Now there is s train table and a "kitchen" and shopping carts and "babies" to feed.  Plus dress up clothes and playing in the little pool two times a week.  Plus, wait for it, a pretend vacuum cleaner.  He is playing with this almost every time I pick him up.  This morning, clutching a kiss a la "The Kissing Hand" he sat down to eat his breakfast "like a big boy" and did not cry when I dropped him off.  I have all fingers and toes crossed and a braid in my hair in hopes that this will continue.

7. Growth - Nate is firmly over 25 pounds and tall enough to climb whatever he wants and to harvest any item of his choice from all but the very center of the dining table.  I am proud of him, so happy that he feels well, and unabashedly acknowledge that there were advantages to a pee wee boy.

Overall June has been a good month for our family.  I am sorry I was away so long.  I can't promise that it will never happen again, but I have a lot swirling around in my mind to write about so it may be more consistent for a while.

The Perils of Summer

Nate is asleep in his bed.
This may seem like an obvious statement but this morning it seemed like an unlikely outcome for tonight.
It starts last night when we ran around outside planting flowers and watering our garden.  Nate ran around like a wild man, and proving that he is my child, he refused to wear shoes for about half the time.
There were no accidents, no drama, and a fine time was had by all.
This morning, when I pulled him out of bed, I noticed an angry red spot on the bottom of his foot with a large splinter in the middle of it.
When he took is first steps of the morning he put his foot down, picked it back up and looked at me, his mouth formed into a little "O" of confusion.  "What happened, Mommy?" he asked.
I tried to explain about splinters but finally settled for explaining that when he was walking around with no shoes on he got a boo-boo on his foot.
Needless to say, this was an inauspicious beginning to his day.  While newly-bactrim-allergic-benadryl-snowed-Dave held him, I tried to get it out.  There was a big piece sticking out so I grabbed, and pulled, and  . . . half of it stayed firmly anchored in his skin.
After some time futilely trying to hold him still enough to fish it out, we gave up, covered it in Neosporin and a Band-Aid ("to keep it safe" says Nate) and sent him to school.
On the way to school, Nate piped up "That Nate bed get boo-boo on Nate foot.  Nate not sleep in that bed anymore"
I thought I'd done a good job with the explanation about the bare feet, but he had been fixated on the boo-boo so I tried again.
He listened, but then just shook his head.  "No, Mommy Dactyl.  That Nate bed put boo-boo on Nate foot. That's right! Nate not sleep in that bed anymore."
At this point I actually did get a little anxious because he can be a little strong willed (understatement of the year) and we really have just gotten him to sleep well again.

This evening, however, we tried again to remove the aforementioned festering piece of wood, and after that spot of misery, he wanted to retreat to the safety of his bed.
After he laid down, he was awake for a while, chatting with his stuffed dog.  "Nate keep that Band-Aid on.  That Band-Aid keep Nate boo-boo safe.  Feel Nate's foot all better."

From his mouth . . .

Jekyll and Hyde

Nate was unbelievably charming this weekend.  It started with Shabbat dinner on Friday night and never seemed to end.  He ate well.  He was energetic, playful, and even walked when we asked him to and rode in the cart (dum dum DUM) when he didn't want to walk.  He took his medicine, cooperated in tooth brushing, and occupied himself while Dave and I did some cleaning.
So why did Dave and I come to Monday morning feeling like roadkill?
Because for reasons we can't exactly explain, Nate had a pair of really bad nights.  Saturday night, moments after Dave and I fell asleep (literally) we were yanked from sleep by a screaming Nate.  I scooped him out of bed and what ensued was "Exorcist" minus spinning head.  He threw up more and more forcefully than he has in a really long time.  When he, and I, and the floor, and the nursery chair, and a bath towel were all covered, he settled back in my arms and said "Yellow spill make Nate's tummy all better."
After the clean-up and the debate over the culprit (white buns made in a facility that also processes sesame seeds or Olive Garden noodles which we had previously confirmed to be safe - It's really the only reason we go there) we all manged to sleep through the night.
Sunday, the case against the noodles became firmer when he developed a hive on his cheek while eating his leftovers.  Sunday night he didn't throw up.  He just cried and writhed in my lap for 30+ minutes crying about having a yellow spill and heaving but not actually succeeding in making his tummy all better.
We're blaming Olive Garden and now that the gift card is gone, we are unlikely to go back - ever, but it's just a guess.  I hate when he is sick.  I think it's almost harder now that he can tell us what is wrong and I still can't fix it.  He cries "Mommy hold you" over and over again, but I am holding him.  It's just not making things any better, and that breaks my heart.
Maybe there's no food to blame.  Maybe after a 6 week honeymoon, he's just having an EE flair.  Sure he takes the medicine and seems to be so much better, but it can't be just that easy, can it?  (If it was, when you decided to start a running program you wouldn't skip and entire week because of a bad cold, a bad call, and a grant deadline and then have to drag your tired self through a Monday morning run wondering why you let yourself backslide - but more on that later.)  Kids who take their controller meds still get asthma flairs.  Maybe when we kept him home from school last week for an almost identical pattern on Monday/Tuesday, we weren't preventing the spread of disease, but just missing the obvious.
Maybe it is just a reminder that even when things seem to be going smoothly, parenting was never meant to be easy and we were never meant to sleep through the night.

Nate-ism's

A few Nate-isms to start your day with a smile.

1. Eyewater = tears (ie. Nate make eyewater.)

2. Jingle Bears = the current name for his gummy bear vitamins (I have no idea where this came from)

3. Mommy hold you, right now = what he mutters over and over and over as a mantra until he falls asleep

4. yellow spill = throw up or a particularly wet burp

5. do beans = scoop the coffee with daddy and start the grinder

******

Nate doesn't like carrots.  It's one of the only vegetables he's not allergic to so we'd love for him to eat them, but they are "yucky, yucky".  Cooked, raw, with honey and butter, or in soup/stew, it doesn't matter.  He can find a tiny fragment of carrot and discard it.  Enter "Runaway Bunny", a delightful book about a baby bunny who wants to run away and whose mommy chases after him.  It is one of Nate's current top 3 favorite books, and he keeps telling me his is a "Runway Bubby" and taking off so I will chase him.  In the book, the mommy bunny lures the baby back with a carrot, so last night at dinner I asked him if he wanted to eat carrots like the Runaway Bunny.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, opening his mouth for a bite of carrot.

I put a piece on his tongue.

He spit it out.

"Yucky, Yucky" he said with indescribably adorable face.

He was quiet for just a second, plotting, and then announced with a very serious expression, "Runway Bubby like chocolate cake"

Dave and I laughed until we cried.  And yes, we gave him some chocolate brownie for dessert.

Big Two

It happened on Sunday.

Our boy turned two.

In anticipation of the big day, Papa Ken and Grammy Nancy (Papa Ten and Ninny), taught him to "make two" which he does with two hands and a clear flush of pride.

He uses roughly a million words, makes them into complex sentences, sings nearly non-stop, and knows his favorite books by heart (making it a tad difficult to shorten things up when bedtime is over due :P  )

Currently we have been dubbed the "Dactyl" family.  Mommy dactyl, Daddy dactyl, and Nate dactyl.  We live in the cave under our dining room table and make squawking noises while Nate dactyl barks out directions.  "Mommy dactyl sit down on blue!  Daddy dactyl rest now!  Mommy dactyl read book! Nate dactyl go through tunnel!"

He loves dinosaurs and chocolate cake.

He says please and thank you and sorry (yorry mommy, yorry Nate bonk mommy head, Nate kiss mommy head) and excuse me.  He also says "Nate hear that" with a decidedly mischievous twinkle in his eye when he burps or has gas.

He loves to build with blocks, make music on ANYTHING, paint, draw, cut with scissors, and help mommy cook.

He's frankly amazing.  And yes, he's two.

My Little Mynah Man

I've been counting while my two boys sleep.  I'm up over 200 and I know I'm forgetting some.  The list includes yellow and bulldozer and stinkbug and please.  Also walk and ride and astronaut and biplane.  Wine, milk, chocolate, and guitar.  My favorite right now may be "pilgrim" (pronounced "bum")
I'm not counting numbers, letters of the alphabet, or animal sounds.  Just words.  Words that Nate says reliably and frequently.

And yes, I'm bragging.  I'm amazed by my little boy who is expected to say 50ish words at this age but instead puts together 3-4 word sentences.  If you give him an opening he'll tell you the story of the two stinkbugs who were walking on his wall but daddy took them away in a tissue. To go pee pee in the potty.  Or he might tell you about airplanes and helicopters flying up, up, in the sky.  He may even tell you about rolling the yellow ball to Kent in gym class right before they crawled through a blue tunnel.

Of course, chances are also good that as an uninitiated person you may not understand a lot of it.  But if he told you "Nate please ice water, right now!" I think that one would come through loud and clear.  If he sees someone give you something or do something for you and you don't say thank you, he'll  say it over and over until you acknowledge him and thank the individual in question.

He uses a new word every day.  None of them, yet, things he has overheard that we would rather him not say.  All of them bringing joy into this house one precious syllable at a time.

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.
My mom had 3 siblings, and when I was little Thanksgiving was "our" holiday, the one everyone came to us for.  Back then I liked the smells, the home made candy, the house full of cousins, and the shenanigans at the kids table.
Since coming to Pittsburgh I have adopted Thanksgiving for my own.  I love to cook and I love to eat the things I cook.  Thanksgiving is a gluttony of both.  Since being together, Dave and I have usually been joined by family and always by some friends.  Being cozied up in the warm house when it is cold outside adds another dimension to the celebration.
I remember the year when Dave's friend Chuck was here and it was too cold to do anything but lay around in our pajamas and drink champagne and watch TV documentaries the whole weekend.
There was the year my dad and Nancy came to visit and we played Dance Dance Revolution so aggressively and with such focus that we almost burned the turkey.
And of course Dave proposed to me on Thanksgiving.  To this day I am surprised I didn't vomit my meal all over him.
We have traditions.  Mimosas and bagels while I cook in the morning.  Pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin.  Chinese 5 spice turkey.  Mashed potatoes with enough dairy products to justify my own cow for the holiday.
This year things are going to be a little different.
This year Nate is old enough to eat with us.
This year the table will be dairy and egg free.

I have been struggling with the temptation to make "mommy food" and "nate food", a concept which he is already familiar with.  This weekend, however, Dave and I had a rude surprise.  Putting lotion on Nathan with a hand that had held a hard boiled egg resulted in a whole body rash.  Thankfully vomiting did not ensue.  It did clear up this mystery from earlier in the week:   We ate eggs.  Nathan did not.  Nathan got a rash, got hoarse, vomited.  None of us slept.  In retrospect, I am sure I touched his food with some invisible trace of incredible inedible egg on my fingers.
It's made me think about what is valuable about Thanksgiving.  And the answer is "time with the ones I love".  There will be only Nate food with the candles on the table.  He'll "cheers" with sparkling cider like I did when I was little.  Dave and I will be able to relax and forget about partitioning food.
The recipes will be new, and except for the turkey, vegan.
The house will be warm.  The friends will be good.
I will be deeply thankful, as always, for my boys.

Hands

Sometimes, when we walk together, Nathan will hold my hand.
Sometimes he waves his arms around like an indignant octopus in an often successful attempt to escape restraint.
But sometimes he will hold my hand.
There is something about that little hand wrapped firmly around my index finger that just melts my heart.
I look down and see my tousel-haired little boy walking beside me, occasionally looking up at me, eyes shining with excitement at a truck, or, even better, a purple bus.
But just under the skin of that reality is my dark eyed baby, blinking sleepy milk drunk eyes at me, soft fingers curled reflexively around mine.
And behind that? The picture I carry in my heart of my fetus, thumb in mouth, holding onto the umbilical cord for security.  He is anchored no less firmly in my heart now than he was then, but he is less often attached to my side.

Whether it is two spoons at dinner or not holding my hand in a parking lot "Na-Na", as he calls himself, has his own ideas about how things should be done.

It makes me happy. And quite frankly, it makes me sad.  My sometimes baby, sometimes boy will too soon be always boy.

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").

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.

Otitis Media + Gastroenteritis = Misery

Nate's had ear infections and a sinus infections, but Dave and I agree that until now, he's never really been sick.

I think he's finally getting better.

It started on Thursday with a fever of 102F at day care. Fever came 2 days into a course of antibiotics for a yicky sinus infection that Dave and I finally got tired of wiping off our own clothes and hands. Back to the pediatrician for shiny new antibiotics for his not-so-shiny new ear infection (his fifth in 6 months and the final clue that myrigotomy tubes are in his future). He started to throw up Thursday night. We first attributed it to choking/gagging on the copious snot in his head, but the diarrhea started Friday morning, blowing away that fantasy. He had a fever of 102F or higher from Thursday afternoon to Saturday evening. Tylenol. Motrin. Tylenol. Motrin. Tylenol. Stopped the Motrin 'cause he wasn't peeing and Dr. Mom wanted to save his kidneys.

I'd be ashamed to write down how little he drank, how little he kept in, how few times he peed, and how much came out of every other opening between Friday and Sunday.

On Friday night we were woken by a pitiful mewling. My sweet baby was laying in a little pool of vomit, clothes wet with diarrhea, and nearly smoking with fever. The thermometer confirmed eminent spontaneous combustion - 104.6F. When I did the conversion to Celsius the next morning (40.3C) I realized I had never taken care of someone with a higher fever. I sat in the rocker tired, sweaty, with a naked, stinky, nearly limp baby on my chest and murmured, like a mantra, the "fever talk" I had given to so many other parents in the Emergency Room. It is less reassuring when the child is your own. The fever dropped to 102F and he dropped into restful sleep right before I dropped into panic.

He kept drinking just enough to stay above my IV fluid threshold but never enough that I felt 100% comfortable.

Last night he seemed a lot better. He had no fever. He drank a whole 6 ounces at once and ate his first solid food in days. He motored around the living room smiling and babbling like normal. Still, his ongoing poops made him a day care pariah.

Today, instead of being at the hospital with a floor full of sick oncology patients, I am at home with a borderline febrile, gagging, pooping, fluid refusing, whining baby with the saddest butt in creation. He cries when he poops and he cries when I clean his butt. He cries 'cause he's thirsty and cries when he swallows things into his roiling stomach. He cries when we wipe his wet Rudolph nose. Being at the hospital would be easier.

Still, I do think he's getting better. His last temperature was normal. His last poop stayed in his diaper. he ate and retained a graham cracker and some yogurt.

The drinking and the peeing?

I still don't want to talk about it.

I WILL persevere and he WILL take some liquid. - One teaspoon at a time.

End of an Era

I took a ticker off the bottom of my page tonight. Likely no one will notice but it makes me a little sad. Before I deleted it, it said "Proud Mommy, Happy Baby - I've been breastfeeding for 9 months, 4 weeks and 2 days". That wasn't completely true. I just deleted it tonight, but Nathan hasn't nursed in about 2 weeks. His teeth were the deciding factor. He stopped biting almost as quick as he started, but those little top teeth just kept causing inadvertent damage. Plus, the supply was way, way down.
He finally started taking formula without much of a fight, but I stubbornly kept pumping my 4-6 ounces per day until his nine month birthday. Then, with a huge sigh of relief, I left the pump behind. I loved feeding my baby but I never loved the pump. I don't believe anyone who says they do.
I gave up the pump and kept the bedtime feedings until he seemed to want volume more than comfort and then, even bedtime became bottle time.
Now, he's learning how to drink out of a cup and he's stopped pulling my shirt down when he's tired or thirsty. Big steps forward in my little man's life. I honestly miss my tiny baby curled up on my chest but I my active explorer doesn't give me much time to look backwards. Gotta keep looking one step ahead of him to keep him out of harms way.

His Four Front Teeth

To the tune of "Come out and play with me" (click for original words and music)

Oh, Mr. Toothbrush, come out and play with me
and brush my little teeth
and make them so shiny.

We brush the front sides,
we brush the back sides too,
and we'll have shiny teeth, forevermore
One, two, three, four.

Over the last four months I have taken care of two children, one 7 years old and one 3 years old, who had to have almost all of their teeth removed prior to starting chemotherapy because the horrifying contents of their mouth posed too large an infection risk to an immunocompromised patient.
Neither family felt too strongly about oral hygiene.
One father sort of shrugged and said he figured she'd get new teeth anyway.
The other father told me he just felt it wasn't worth the fight. He did seem embarrassed that a pair of college educated medical professionals had let their child get into this state.
I also watched an infant with hemophilia spend time in the ICU with bleeding complications after having all his rotten baby teeth removed.

So, I wrote Nathan a toothbrushing song.
Twice a day, in the morning and at bedtime, I brush his teeth.
Nathan likes the song and doesn't mind the brushing at all.
Dave had to learn the words because he garnered some furrowed brow confusion from Nathan when he tried to make up his own version.

It's just a little fingerbrush, but it's setting a precedent and forming a routine. When he's one and two and beyond this will just be something he's always done. I don't pretend that we will never argue about it, that he'll never refuse or pout or moan, or that we'll never a skip a night 'cause we're late or a morning 'cause we're late for school. Still, I will not have a baby/toddler/child with rotten teeth or a mouthful of silver when a little parental attention can go so far to prevent it.

His teeth, though troublemakers, are so darn cute now, and I am looking forward to playing tooth fairy and tucking those tiny pearly whites away in a keepsake box. I have to polish my future jewels and keep them blemish free.

Gimme, gimme

Nathan is talking to us.
Sort of.

The last two days have been the best of the last 2 weeks because I have been able to leave the hospital at 5pm, pick my boy up from day care and spend the evening with him. Last night I watched him swim with his dad and fed him a huge and varied dinner. (Who doesn't like roasted butternut squash with cinnamon sugar? And Cheerios?!?) Tonight we played and sang and snuggled.

And he talked to me.

At first I didn't realize he was doing it. I was carrying him around getting his dinner ready and he was waving his right hand. Fist closed. Hand going up and down and up and down and up and down. Pediatrician-mommy was starting to think he was having a partial seizure. I fed him some dinner and cleaned him up and palyed on the floor with him. The whole time he was intermittently waving that little fist.
Fist wave. Food in mouth.
Fist wave. Crawl into Mommy's lap.
Fist wave. Rubber duck into mouth.
Fist wave. Belly scoot over to music cube.

And I still didn't get it.
But finally, I wised up.
Dave and I were sitting on the floor eating dinner and to distract Nathan from our oh-so-attractive bowls of pasta I brought out a bag of Cheerios.
Wave, wave, wave went the fist as he lunged at the bag with mouth open.

Light bulb above Mommy's head.
Ah Hah! He's trying to tell me something!

The path through Mommyhood is paved with good intentions, but I never have managed to buy that book on baby sign. I have made an earnest effort to teach him "more" and "all done", the signs I know, but the fist wave was new to me. It was also news to me that the ladies at day care try to teach them baby sign, a fact that Dave confirmed.

We had to look it up, but we found out it's the sign for "milk". To Nathan, however, it seems to be the sign for "give me that please". Or just "gimme".

I am thrilled that my boy is talking to me.

He's so smart!!!

His Two Front Teeth

Nathan has four front teeth. He cut his two bottom teeth simultaneously at 5 months old. At 7 months the bottom two popped through on the same day. He took teething with the same equanimity he takes everything else. He didn't fuss or sleep badly. He chewed like mad on his rubber ducks. And fingers. But that was about it.

****

I was looking at Nathan's little teeth and it struck me that they seem awfully small. He will have these teeth until he is in elementary school. They have to chew up all the food he needs to nourish his little growing body and brain. They have to shine in his charming little smile for years. No doubt they'll be tools in fiendish 4 year old projects. He already uses them to balance himself when he is pulling up on his cruising toy. They've been used to scrape onion and crack Cheerios. All that work for such tiny little teeth in my big boy's jaw.

****

He has the "Lamb space" - a largish gap between the top two teeth, passed from my Dad through me and into my little Beaver-Bunny.

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The top two teeth may prove to be the end of breastfeeding. It is physiologically impossible for a nursing baby to bite with bottom teeth while actually eating. The tongue forms a nice little barrier. When the top ones come in, however, all bets are off. He bit me once, experimentally, when he had only bottom teeth. He didn't do it again until he had two top teeth so he could trap my tender tissue between two razor-sharp, steel-hard, crushing-cutting implements. There were two problems. One was the bleeding lesion. The other, more egregious, problem was that my loud, fierce, soul-rending "NO" caused my little darling to start, stare at me for an instant, and then giggle. After all, the "make-a-funny-loud-noise" game is one he loves, being an adrenaline junkie. It seems I will have to find another biting deterrent, but it's hard to think rationally when I am suppressing the urge to toss him away and whimper. So far, I am perservering, but I am a little nervous every time I bare flesh for the newly minted vampire I am raising.

****

Looks like he could be getting molars for Christmas.

I've been busy this last month, but so has Nathan.

He has:

- become an expert commando crawler, scooting around at shocking speed

- cut his two front top teeth, simultaneously, allowing Mommy to see an eruption hematoma in real life

- learned how to put balls on his ramp

- pulled himself to stand on something other than parental fingers

- proved that he will eat anything: peas and wild rice (blech-gag), banana, watermelon, grapes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, apple, carrots, toast, avocado, waffles, tomato, and even raw onion

- started swim lessons