DemonChild is 10 months old today (well, it was today when I started this post. Now it’s yesterday…). Wasn’t he just born a couple of months ago? Sometimes it seems I blink, and a month has gone by (observe the pathetic state of this blog, for example).
How can time go by so fast, and yet I don’t remember when things happened anymore? DemonChild will start walking soon. I try to remember when he first smiled, rolled over, sat up, crawled, pulled himself up, babbled, stood up, got his first tooth, clapped his hands, picked up two toys at once; these things happened, and I thought I would remember the day forever, or at least would write it down soon. These “firsts†have happened, and I don’t remember when any more.
And then there were “lasts,†too. At some point, DemonChild’s cries stopped sounding like “mama†and started to sound like the cries of all babies. Sometime in his first month or two, he stopped sticking out his tongue at us. He used to make a little moue of surprise at unfamiliar foods. While nursing, he would fall asleep, lose the boob, wake up, re-attach, suckle a few times, fall asleep again, lose the boob, and start over again – BelovedSpouse and I would get a chuckle out of it every time. When he first started crawling, he did it low to the ground, as if he was on recon, and would drag one foot, wounded soldier style. And then, one day, he stopped. And I wish I could remember when, but I do not.
And so, a snapshot in time, a reference point for the future and the past. As DemonChild sleeps in his room, and BelovedSpouse plays WoW next to me, I am trying to put right down the way things are, so that a few months from now I would remember.
He is mostly on solid foods now. I have stopped pumping this week – the milk just was not there any more. So DemonChild gets to drink formula during the day, and nurse at the breast at night – purely for comfort, I think. It is odd not to be pumping; for the last 6 months, I would pump three times a day at work. In September, my Mom introduced DemonChild to the wonders of solid foods. He went through Gerber 1st foods in October, and started 2nd foods in November. When I nursed him, he was more interested in trying to twist off the nipples than in suckling. Then one day he bit the nipple and drew blood, so we switched to feeding him my milk from a bottle, seeing as silicone can take a lot more abuse than I. I stilled nursed him at night, when he was not in the mood to take my breasts apart, but the milk supply started to go down. When two pumpings a day started to yield less than 4 oz total, I knew it was time to stop. So now DemonChild only nurses at night, and I think that is more for comfort than anything else. I guess I can find my old regular bras – have no idea where they are, because we have not had a chance to really unpack yet.
At his 9-month check up, DemonChild was 29 inches long and weighed 17 pounds. Our pediatrician told us his weight curve is going down (from 75% at birth to 50% to 25%) because he is such an active little guy and is just burning off all the calories he is getting, so we have to fatten him up a little. At his almost-10-months weigh-in (had to go in because he had a fever) he was 17 pounds 10 ounces, so I don’t think we are doing too good on the fattening-up thing, though DemonChild does not seem to complain. And to be honest, as long as he is getting the nutrients he needs, we are not too concerned, either. We’ll see how things go at his one-year appointment at the end of January…
He is crawling around like there is no tomorrow. My Dad taught him how to climb stairs when we were in Russia in September, so now DemonChild loves to climb up our staircase. It took him a while to figure out that we have whimpy narrow stairs (unlike my parents’ uber staircase) and that he should not sit down on them, but now he can happily go all the way to the second floor. BelovedSpouse is teaching him how to go down the steps properly, because right now his approach is to dive in head-first, which is not a good idea, generally, especially since we still haven’t got a baby gate.
He is getting ready to walk. If BelovedSpouse or I are holding his little hands, he can walk down the hallway or around the house. Now he sometimes only lets us hold one hand. Pretty soon, he will figure out he does not need our support at all (and here’s hoping we will have a baby gate by then).
He can clap his hands – something they taught him at his new daycare. (We had to change daycares when we moved to the new hosue – the new one is nice, and highly recommended, and DemonChild likes it, but I still miss his old one sometimes. We went to visit there at the beginning of October, and when DemonChild heard the bumblebees mobile, he smiled. I think he remembered some of the ladies there; at any rate, he crawled around and snuggled and had a good time. I am grateful to that first daycare – they have done a wonderful job, and DemonChild is a lot more advanced than many babies his age, in part I think due to that. He was the youngest baby in his room, so he was always trying to catch up. Now he is the oldest one, and without competition he is not progressing as fast, though perhaps that is just the natural progression of things.) He is starting to figure out how to wave bye-bye, though that needs a lot of work. He is still not into reading books – he would rather eat them. He loves the printed word, especially if that word is glossy – the kid can tear out pages from magazines and catalogs like a pro. It is funny watching him chew on a Fredericks of Hollywood model.
He has 4 teeth (two upper, two lower). His hair has two swirls at the top, and still stands up. It looks very cute, and is somewhat of a trademark DemonChild look. He sucks his fingers – two on his left hand, palm-up. Many a parent has remarked they have not seen this particular approach to finger-sucking, so it seems to be a unique little DemonChild thing. When he does not like something, he blows raspberries (very funny when food is involved, though can get messy; not so funny when it’s medication, and he is screaming his little head off).
He is currently wearing size 6-9 months clothes (though the 6-9 pants are too long, so he wears 3-6 instead). He rarely wears socks (our little white trash baby, as I fondly refer to him). We just got a special car seat that converts into a stroller (from Hammacher Schlemmer) because his old one is for up to 26 inches tall baby, and with the weather getting colder, we were having trouble fitting him into the seat.
Here’s how our day usually goes: DemonChild wakes up anywhere between 5:30 am and 7:30 am. Sometimes, BelovedSpouse would go in his room and nap on the floor, and DemonChild would play for an hour or so, content because somebody is there. Once the little guy is fully awake, one of us changes and dresses him while the other one gets ready for work, or catches up on sleep. Often BelovedSpouse would walk from DemonChild’s room to ours, and DemonChild would crawl right after him. He then sits by the door and plays with it (a favorite toy of his, the doors – he loves to open and close them. One of these days he is going to pinch his fingers, and things will be NOT GOOD then), or crawls onto the air mattress (bed is at the old house, making it look nice) to say good morning to me (which is to say, to grab my hair or try to gouge my eyes out – we are still working on that whole being gentle thing). Then he would sit on his little butt and wave his arms and smile and babble. V. cute.
He does not enjoy being put into the car seat. He complains, loudly. Sometimes he cries. Mommy and Daddy are cruel that way, though, and into the car seat he goes. Around 8:00 am it is off to daycare, only a 5 minute drive from home. 99% of the time, BelovedSpouse is the one dropping DemonChild off. I pick him up around 5:30 pm, after I am done with work. We go home, have some dinner, play with the little guy (usually, he just wants to have one of us in his room). Every couple of days BelovedSpouse gives him a bath (I have a major project at work, so am working from home in the evenings whenever I can) and puts him to bed. This involves BelovedSpouse laying down on the floor, with the light turned off. DemonChild then crawls around, looking for just the right spot to fall asleep at (the child is part-dog, I swear). Once he is asleep, BelovedSpouse transfers him to the crib. DemonChild still wakes up once or twice a night, and I go and breast-feed him, and more often than not fall asleep in the chair, holding him. I don’t think I had an uninterrupted 6 hours of sleep since DemonChild was born. We have friends whose kids sleep for 12-14 hours a night. DemonChild apparently missed the meeting where that memo was handed out. *grins*
Ugh, it is almost 1 am. I still need to go and wash the formula bottles, so we can give the little guy his amoxycillin cocktail in the morning (he does NOT like taking his medicine. I have not had any trouble with tylenol until now, after we tried to give DemonChild amoxycillin by mouth twice. The first time he knocked the spoon on the floor and spit everything out, the second time most of the syringe went in but he hated BelovedSpouse for a couple of hours afterwards. Now we mix it with the formula, and this stealthy approach has worked so far. Unfortunately, now DemonChild thinks that everything we try to give him by mouth is amoxycillin, which does not bode well for the future.
