scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

12.2.08

nineteen weeks

It has been established that you like the tagesmutter: you have conversations with her. Eeee! Oooooo! Eeee! I think you only chat with people you trust; you don't with new people, even when you're very friendly. You do like making new friends - i took you to my work, and to my german class, and everybody got to hold you and cuddle you and see your shiny happy grin. And then the next day talk about how beautiful you are and how they already have lots of kids and really don't need more, really, but if we ever need a babysitter in Hungary, we know who to call.

You are now taking bottles without a problem, though we're only using the Doctor Browns anti-colic ones (and, to be honest, haven't even tried the Avent, the only other bottles we have, in months). However one of these days - you have so far only had breastmilk, expressed or au naturel. But last Wednesday at the sitters, and again yesterday, you downed all three bottles of milk I sent along (the last one, sure, only forty-five minutes before i was picking you up, but still, all gone) and so the tagesmutter wants me to bring along formula, too, for just in case. You haven't had formula yet and i'm not sure how well that's going to go over, but i'll send you with extra ounces tomorrow, and my freezer stash will start to get depleted. Well, that's what it's there for. We can start using the bigger bottles instead, so that more milk can fit in the insulated pocket in the diaper bag that goes with you. Eighteen ounces, tomorrow. Or fifteen? Eighteen. Better to be on the safe side: i want to get you to six months with no formula. And with our upcoming american vacation, that's only thirteen more days of daycare ... maybe sixteen ounces? Two sixes and a four. 208 oz, then, for the remainder. And i have some hundred odd oz in the fridge, which means my stash is ... on its way out. But if i can pump enough for six months, that's good. I'm happy with that. I can keep it going that long. And it's not like it's an all or nothing operation afterwards.

We've also started deliberately putting you to bed when you are just barely a little bit awake, instead of limp-limbed deeply slumbering, so you can learn to go to sleep by yourself. This is probably all going to get shot to hell when we go back to the States for three weeks and are sleeping in different new places every, like, four days or so, but for now, you can go to sleep by yourself if (IF) you are well fed (by which i mean, completely turkey-stuffed) and sleepy (which is rubbing your eyes, and being a little pink in the face). And if you have had sufficient cuddles, of course, though that might have more to do with me. But not too sleepy - if you are overtired, then you're fussy, and fussy means not sleeping alone. Anyway. We've started that.

Still no bumpers in your crib, though if we remind you how to roll over - that is, if we roll you over and back once - then you can kinda roll over, sometimes, belly to back. You almost roll back to belly, but not really. At least now you are enjoying your tummy time much more, so it is easy to give you a lot of it, and that's better for everybody, i guess. And if i am honest with myself then i can't say that you're rolling over, because you're not doing it with a great deal of consistency (the best day we had, you were naked on a towel on a portable changing pad on a blanket on the floor, so it was a very padded surface, and the dogs were sleeping somewhere else and not being distracting or trying to kiss you) - and i think doing things on a regular basis is when one can really say that you've learned it. So you're kind of rolling. Not sure if we'll put the bumpers on or not - we'll see how stuck you get once you do learn. You're pretty smart, so you may not get so stuck.

And we have now gotten past our first, and possibly second, illness-as-a-family. Poor M did not have anybody to take care of him and when he gets a fever he is pretty funny - you'll notice this at some point - he never shuts up, and wants lots of attention, and will make you get up and come into the other room so he can look at you and moan, but that's all he wanted, to look at you and moan - so it was a new experience for him, being sick and not having anyone pay a lick of attention. But you didn't do so bad. Mama milk kicks butt.

Reading about solids. The earliest people start them at four months, these days; most decent references say that six is better. So when we get back from the US you'll be six and a half, and we can start then, maybe, with maybe letting you play with other people's food in the interim. We tried giving you a green bean the other day but you didn't put it in your mouth. Ditto the small non-crusty bit of baguette. Probably giving you soft-melty-brie-from-a-cow is not recommended, though, so we didn't attempt that one ... exciting. And scary - all this stuff is so loaded. If someone finds out we do something according to Reference X, where they went by Reference Y, then that's a big deal, automatically either a judgment upon them as a person - and as a parent - or something that we obviously didn't do enough research on, rather than it being reality: every book, every pediatrician, every specialist has a different idea of the One True Way. And they're all probably right for some babies and wrong for others, and so when we are doing what works for us - like, right now, putting you in a crib and pumping and sending you to daycare twice a week and planning on starting solids at six months - somebody somewhere is getting all affronted and taking it personal. We met somebody who took our brand of stroller personally. We don't even have a designer stroller (half the city is in a Bugaboo) so this was weird, that our (while not cheap) bog-standard Italian model was some message to the world. It's a bog-standard stroller. Slightly narrow for our altbau door, convenient reversible handle, but even so, really nothing special. Nothing to feel all unworthy about. (Especially when she was driving a Bebe Confort! Weirdo.) Anyway. It's an odd dance, doing our thing without stepping on toes.

Gotta get used to that, i guess.

Labels: baby, milestones

scrawled @ 20:58