scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

2.6.08

eight months.

You are two-thirds of a year old - and time has never gone so quickly. Soon people we know are going to start having first birthday parties.

You can slide over minor obstacles now: the edge of the futon, a pillow, Daddy. Still not crawling with your belly off the floor, though you get up and rock back and forth like you're just about to - and that's how you launch yourself over things from a sit, as well, rocking and rocking until you're ready and then slingshotting past your knees. This is rather uncomfortable on the floor, i think, as you don't always catch yourself before you faceplant, but it works well on the futon and bed. The poor dog keeps getting up and moving as you approach, but never far enough, and she hasn't quite learned yet that the couch is (for now) a completely insulated place, up, off the floor. You can't climb, yet - some of the other babies are climbers already. Already! Two of them can walk. Not far, and they're the oldest ones, but still.

We've been going swimming at the kinderfreibad nearby - it's nice that it's so close, just a block away, because it's sort of a silly place with the hordes of kids. It looks like a beehive, swarming with little squirming screaming browning bodies. But it's a nice pool all the same. Cold water in the mornings, so it takes you a long time to get used to it; and you like going in the afternoons because then you can watch the thousand other kids in the tiny pool, rushing all over with giant blow-up toys and big orange arm-bands (why are they always orange?) and in real swim-suits, some of them, or swim bottoms anyway, only you still have a swim diaper. And sometimes you are the smallest person there, but sometimes not. But then in the afternoons there are so many other kids doing so many other things and most of them splash you, which you very much object to, even though they're trying to splash each other or it's entirely accidental, except once a toddler who was barely larger than you (but could walk) came over with a watering can and watered you and that was really cute, and you didn't scream. You try to climb on top of my head, if you think the water is too cold, but you don't scream. Mornings are nicer: less busy, less splashing, even if the water is not quite so warm. And on the weekend we went swimming with Daddy too: and that was great fun, we could pass you back and forth and you went kick-kick-kick in the water. Daddy hadn't gone swimming with you before. And even though i am trying very hard to avoid it, i put sun-tan lotion all over you, every time, even on your fine little scalp, you're getting a tan. SPF Forty, and you're getting a tan. We live in the freaking Alps, far, far north in the world, and we're going to be all brown and smooth by the end of summer.

Also on your scalp: some small amount of hair, and still cradle cap. Mimi scrubbed your little head with baby oil and most of the cradle cap came off, credit where it's due, but i said it would come back, and since then it has been slowly coming back, and it's still there, a little bit, just getting harder and harder to see under the hair. The hair is very fine, very fine, and light brown. Probably will be blond, too, by the end of summer, if M and i are any example. And i expect we are.

You can eat twenty Cheerios in one sitting now, without dropping very many at all - this morning you got a whole handful, with only three around the safety-belt in the high chair afterwards. You are all over the feeding yourself, bread, schnitzel, more bread. Cheese. Mommy needs to go to the Billa and pick up some (or, rather, a very large quantity of) yogurt, too, and plain, again, at that, even though you like the fruity stuff or the vanilla stuff (which was this morning, vanilla) - because -

we have thrush. Or i have thrush. And it fucking hurts and i'm all shiny and pink and flaking, a bit, and i don't think it's ductal and it hurts a good bit less than yesterday already (also quite a bit less shiny and flaking than yesterday, which is a good sign - oy, it was nasty looking, and then i was doing my best to be airing it out all day) but at least you haven't got the candida diaper rash that apparently goes with it fairly often. Somebody said that grapefruit seed extract was antifungal and helpful - and so, instead, yesterday i ate, um, a grapefruit, but i ate the seeds too. Except for the big ones, but i ate all the little ones, and crunched them a bit. Meh. That or the air. People at the swimming pool sunbathe topless sometimes: i could (gulp) try that. When in Rome, what what.

Also: we are among the last few in the moms' group still breastfeeding. The Japanese mom is going to go until her baby is one year, in September. A lot of the English ones have quit entirely, or kept only the bedtime feed; quite a few of them are Gina Babies and kept on schedules, three tablespoons of porridge at seven, hour-long nap at nine, two tablespoon snack at ten-thirty, et c. And they are contented babies and there is nothing wrong with them and it is only fair to point that out, that the British-scheduled-weaned-Gina Babies are perfectly happy and healthy. But it's odd all the same - you're still so little! All of them are still so little. Any which way we now have direct, personal experience of breastfeeding rates in the UK being just barely above rock bottom, and of how horribly weird it would feel to live there and be trying to do this. Especially when it actively hurts, at the moment. And when you continue to be on the big side for your age. But i will nurse wherever i happen to be, anywhere that i can sit down: in the zoo, in the park, in the train station, whatevs. I do prefer benches to the ground, and not in moving vehicles as that couldn't possibly be safe, and somehow i think it's rude to feed you in a restaurant if i haven't ordered anything to eat ... somehow ... We'd have done it at the German rap concert yesterday if it hadn't started hailing. (Um, we'd also have stayed at the German rap concert much longer if it hadn't started hailing. But we had a long way to go to get home, and there was hail, so ... ) So i kind of - it would be so weird, then, to be breastfeeding a big happy eight month old baby, whenever she wanted, in, say, Kew. I think there would be many dirty looks, and people might even come up and say things, where here people mostly sort of look at you wistfully. Here breastfeeding you is not a political act in the slightest, nothing to even blink at, or look towards or away from. (Because, also, at the pool? Men, women, kids, everybody, they don't just sunbathe topless, they change right out in the open. Entirely. Yep. So there couldn't possibly be anything obscene about a little person having a snack.) And i like the stress-free-ness of it, that i don't have to worry about people being rude, but it's hard to be a lactivist if there's nothing to lagitate against. Right - because Momma needs more reasons to be Angry Militant Woman. Uh huh ...

Yeah, though, thrush, not pleasant. Also i am going to pieces obviously because i'm also getting a repeat performance of the cold sore on my lip - it never entirely went away. And what with the Sex and the City party i had a gigantic blister under my big toe. Some days, honey, some days you won't nap and you holler if i put you down and give you toys and if i am expecting M to be available and he's somehow not and if i just want ten minutes to have a cup of coffee while it's still warm, maybe i could take a shower, or maybe if i had a minute i could, god forbid, actually fix something to eat, and then i'd have eaten and imagine - just imagine how much less grouchy i'd be, if i could sit still and breathe for a moment. A moment. Please God can i just pause it all, and not have to schedule a dentist appointment or three, and not have to sign for the new computer delivery, and not have to clean up after the shedding-like-a-mad-thing dog, and not having thrush would be REALLY FUCKING NICE (even if, let's be honest, this is about as mild as thrush can possibly be and still be thrush, and i think it's almost over already), and actually now i'm at work and screw it all, i'm going to go have a cup of coffee and not do anything for a little while.

Labels: baby, mamadom, milestones

scrawled @ 08:57