Uncle Tyler invented a new game that Miles enjoyed today.  We call it “Got your ears.”

Monthly Miles Memo #4

Dear Miles,

Today we celebrated your four-month birthday by…getting you shots. Sorry about that. You’re handling it remarkably well so far, though; after the requisite screaming immediately post-injection, you’ve been cheerful today. I’m going to be careful to keep up with your baby Tylenol dosing to try to stay ahead of any malaise; we got behind on the schedule last time and put ourselves (and, regretfully, you) in a world of hurt.

Yesterday morning I was all set to write a most triumphant memo to you. It would have said “MILES IS SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT.” One thing you should know about me is that I really value accuracy. I hate it when people tell stories and get the details wrong. Therefore, what I will say instead is “MILES HAS SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT.”

As it happened, two nights ago we put you down after your 11:30 feeding, and you didn’t stir until 6 a.m. Even then, you didn’t fully wake up when I took you out of the co-sleeper and fed you; you drifted right back off and slept until 9. It was all quite grand, except for the fact that I woke up about five times to make sure you were still breathing. Luckily I have perfected the art of checking your respiration without waking you.

Your dad and I were optimistic that this was the start of a new trend. Last night, though, you decided to throw a party at 2:45 and invite the two of us. Usually you’re so good about going right back to sleep after a feeding, but I wrestled with you for about half an hour, until I couldn’t take it anymore and your dad walked you for another thirty or forty minutes until you finally fell asleep. You slept for another hour and a half, and then it was party time again.

Why, Miles? It’s nice to know you enjoy our company so much, and it’s hard to be grumpy with you when you give us those huge gummy smiles by the dim light of the lamp on its lowest setting, but we really need more nights like the one you gave us two nights ago. Now that you’ve done it, there’s hope. Right? Right? I just keep telling myself you’re not going to be the only kid late to his high school graduation because he woke his mommy and daddy up too many times in the night.

Still, you’ve done so many other things this month that make you such a delight to have around: you’re smiling every day and laughing more and more often. The previously dreaded tummy time is now practically recreation—yesterday you even managed to roll over from your tummy to your back. It was an accident, I’m pretty sure, and you seemed just as surprised by it as your dad and I were. You’re enjoying a stuffed toy that looks like a creature caught in between the larval and butterfly stages. We call him Bob, and you like to chew on his wings and antennae.

You seem to finally be catching on to peek-a-boo; you still lose interest and look elsewhere as soon as I cover my face, but when I reemerge you give me a big smile, like you’re genuinely happy to see me. You love to sit up like a big boy (though you still need a little support) and listen to your dad read to you.

Earlier this month, your dad had to go away for a few days for work, so we spent most of the week at Mubby and Skittergramps’s house. I know they wish we lived next door so they could see you every day, because they had so much fun with you while we were there. Skittergramps invented a game called Superbaby, originally intended as a tummy time alternative, and you both enjoyed it greatly. It’s a perilous game considering your penchant for spitting up, but Skittergramps considers you worth the risk. You also got to spend time with both your uncles this month, including meeting your Uncle Michael for the first time.

This already-verbose letter would go on longer and longer if I listed every cute thing you’ve done this month. It’s really a wonderful time to be your mommy. Last weekend we were invited to attend a prenatal class to share our experiences with giving birth and having a newborn, and the one thing I wanted most to emphasize to the parents-to-be is that it gets easier. Gone are the days when an hour without crying was considered a triumph. The rewards are so much more tangible now, and they come so much more often. I loved you from minute one, but every minute day I love you more (some minutes are better than others). I bet you’ll start sleeping in consistently long stretches soon, now that you have the other night under your belt.
On that glorious morning, I turned my well-rested head toward your dad and whispered, “He slept through the night.”

Your dad replied, “It’s a moment to stay.”

I said, “What?”

He repeated it: “It’s a moment to stay.”

“It’s a moment to stay?”

“No,” he said. “It’s a momentous day.”

It’s not my fault. Your dad is getting over a cold and it was hard to understand him through his stuffy head. He was right, though; it was a momentous day, and while I was truly thrilled about it (and still am, based on hope springing eternal), I was also about 15% sad. You were wearing this really cute t-shirt we bought for you in Montreal back when you were still a fetus. I got the six-month size, thinking that would be about right for you once the weather warmed up, but I really had no concept of how that kicky little alien in my innards could fit into such a giant garment.

Even though you’re not quite six months old yet, the t-shirt fits fine, and as you lay there sleeping in it, you looked ready for kindergarten (and, eventually, high school graduation). I felt 15% sad because that night you needed me a little bit less, but I still need you just as much.

But hey, I didn’t get into this parenting job because I thought you’d stay dependent forever, and that would probably get old after a decade or two anyway. Every new accomplishment is a reason to celebrate. Thanks for all the smiles.

Love,

Mommy

Happy Monday, world.

The biggest event of the weekend occurred on Sunday, when Miles took part in his first panel discussion.  The woman who was our doula and the teacher of our childbirth education class invited us and other families with new babies to speak to the class she’s currently teaching.  We talked about how things went for our births, postpartum issues, and what it’s like to take care of a newborn.

Miles was very cute and well-behaved.  I’m not sure if he really knew what was going on, but it was fun to see my former classmates and their babies.  We have a brunch coming up in a couple of weeks, too.

It’s gotten really warm here.  Miles and I just got back from a walk, and I got kind of sweaty.  I stuck my armpit in his face to see if he thought I was too stinky, and he didn’t cry, so apparently I meet his standards.  Of course, he’s also happy to sit around in his own excrement, so there you go.

Approximately one minute of a baby, featuring laughter.

Giant congratulations to Kaspar and Sabine (pictured here at their wedding in Norway in 2006) on the birth of their beautiful new daughter.

• Target brand diapers are fine for daytime but not so hot for overnight.  It’s worth it to spend extra on Pampers because it saves a lot of laundry.
• gDiapers are better in theory than in practice, though we hope to get back to them at some point.
• A laughing baby is the cutest thing in the whole world.
• My wrist is much, much better.  It was interesting to hear how widespread de Quervain’s Syndrome is.
• I’m back in my pre-pregnancy jeans!  I have a bit of muffin-top now, which is sort of horrifying, but I’ll keep working at it.  Fortunately I almost never wear midriff-revealing tops.
• I dreamed last night that I was swimming in Great Salt Lake with people from high school, and it was really, really salty, and then afterwards everyone got a free snow-cone except me.  I blame the fact that I ate some salty chips before bed last night.
• Miles likes to be in weird positions.

After a stellar performance at a wedding shower on Saturday, Miles put on a grumpy act as he was introduced to many relatives on Denny’s side on Sunday (to be fair, there are a ton of them, and I find it a bit overwhelming myself).

In better news, he had a really good night last night.  He slept from midnight to 4:45 (which is so close to the mythical 5 hours that constitutes “sleeping through the night”), then went back to sleep immediately after eating and slept until almost eight.  What a good boy.

Of course, he’s been grumpy again today.  I blame the pizza I ate last night.  I’ve been avoiding large portions of dairy, in the thought that cow’s milk proteins might be hard for him to digest, but last night I was weak and ate some of the leftovers Denny brought home the other night.  Oh my lord, it was good.  But I’m not sure it was worth it.

Here’s about one minute of nothing more (or less) important than a baby smiling and making goo-goo noises.

…that it’s a lot harder to walk seven blocks with a baby strapped to one’s chest while carrying groceries than while not carrying groceries?

Miles looked cute in his little baseball cap (for sun protection), though.

Miles and I had a good time with Mubby and Skittergramps while Denny was at his training.  Miles learned some new tricks, I got to take a ten-minute shower every day, and MSG (my new abbreviation for Mubby and SkitterGramps) seemed to enjoy Miles’s company.

He celebrated being home by having a poo-fest at 4:30 this morning.  That crazy kid.

Miles and Mubby play

Miles and Skittergramps play

We fetched Denny with great enthusiasm at the airport.

Not really through the woods, but we’re going to my parents’ house this evening.  Denny is going to the Washington, D.C. area through Saturday for a training session, and, well…I really admire single parents who make it work.  I think I would go out of my skull.  So, we’re going to Mubby and Skittergramps’s house so they can help me out and have some fun time with Miles.

It will be nice, I think.  Miles is in a really cute developmental phase.  He’s crying less (at least during the day; he’s still a Grumplestiltzkin in the evening hours) and having lots of smiley times.  Here’s an example of one that happened yesterday:

Photo by Denny Crall

We were singing “Arroz con leche,” which is a song I used to sing in my Spanish classes when I was a little kid.  I incorporated some arm movements, and Miles got a kick out of them.  It goes a little something like this:

Arroz con leche, me quiero casar
Con una señorita de la capital.
Con ésta, sí.  Con ésta, no.
Con esta señorita me caso yo.

(Rice pudding, I want to marry
a girl from the capital.
This one, yes.  This one, no.
I will marry this girl.)

Then, not to be heterosexist, and also to teach him about how gendered pronouns work in Spanish, we do another variation.

Arroz con leche, me quiero casar
Con un caballero de la capital.
Con éste, sí.  Con éste, no.
Con este caballero me caso yo.

I’ve also heard variations in which one marries a viudita or viudito (widow or widower), but that seems a little advanced for a three-month-old.

The weather outside was downright frightful this morning.  I felt very lucky that I had nowhere to be except snuggling with my baby, who (blissfully) doesn’t usually get up at 6 anymore.  Some days he sleeps as late as 10, though usually it’s more like 8 or 9, but those are very decent hours too.  I told Denny to stay home with us, but he decided to go earn a living or whatever.

But at least he’s bringing home burritos.  We’re out of groceries and it’s too rumply-pumply to go to the store.

Dear Miles,

Today you are three months old.

Three months seems like both a long time and a short time. It’s just 1/3 of the amount of time I was pregnant with you. Now that it’s nicer outside, we’ve been going for walks around the neighborhood, and every time we pass the corner of Kenwood and Friendship, I remember the morning I took that pregnancy test. I had forced myself to wait until Saturday morning, because that was when I was confident the test would be accurate, and I woke up at 5 a.m. Once I saw the two lines, I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep. I woke your dad up to tell him, and he was excited too, but not so much that he didn’t wish I’d waited until 9 or so. I guess it’s different when you’re not the one with the rapidly-dividing ball of cells tucked into your ute.

Anyway, the reason I think of that morning is because we went out for a jog (several hours later; I could have hopped into my Nikes immediately and sprinted for miles, I think, but we were feeling romantic and decided to run together), and at the corner of Kenwood and Friendship, I did a complete SPLAT on the sidewalk. I knew the little proto-you was well protected and in all likelihood completely safe, and I mostly fell on my hands and knees and not my abdomen, but the first thing that flashed through my head was, “I am no longer just myself.”

I still feel that way. Sometimes, when I’m holding you against my belly as you eat, I hear a stomach rumble, and I don’t know which of ours it is. I look at the thousands of pictures we’ve taken of you, and I see little things you do that make me wonder how I got so tiny and somehow managed to photograph myself. Your dad teases me for holding my pinky out when I hold a glass; I don’t do it on purpose and I don’t even think about it, and the proof is the many photos of you in the same posture. I recently found out your Skittergramps does it too. We are a dainty people, apparently.

It’s easy to tell that you’re half your father, too. You guys are the wiggliest people I’ve ever met. At an earlier phase in my life, back when I sometimes had trouble falling asleep, it drove me crazy that your dad could not freaking lie still. I’d be right on the brink of sleep, and he’d pick that moment to do a full-body jostle. You do the same thing. Lately we’ve been doing what I call Snuggle Nap. You’re getting much closer to sleeping through the night, but you’re not quite there yet, and I’ve found that everybody gets more sleep if we spend a couple of hours in the morning taking a Snuggle Nap.

What happens is that after your 5 a.m. (or so) feeding, I pull you into bed with us, and I put your head on the crook of my elbow so it’s well-free of pillows and blankets and other possible respiratory blockers. You usually thrash around for a few minutes (and you’ve given some choice elbow hits to the food sources, I might add), but you settle down pretty quickly, and we all snooze for a while longer. My tolerance for wiggling has gone way up, probably due to sheer exhaustion.

It would probably be nice turnabout if I put you in the middle of the bed rather than the outside, because that way your dad could experience the joy of sleeping with an enthusiastic wiggler, but I generally put you on the outside, again because it’s easier to keep you clear of pillows and blankets that way. The only problem is that you like to cuddle up. You do this position we call the S, with your chest thrust forward and your head and butt thrust back, and you scootch ever-closer to me. That makes me need to back up and rearrange the pillows and blankets to guarantee your airspace. Then you cuddle up again, and the next thing you know, your dad is pushed to the edge of the bed.

He doesn’t complain, though, because that’s a lot better than hearing screaming from the living room as I try to calm you down, which is what used to happen. Some of the screaming was even yours. By the way, did you know that in baby calculations, 5 hours counts as sleeping through the night? That is weird math, I tell you what. But you can pretty consistently go 4 or 4.5 now, so you’re getting darn close.

This was the month of the mobile. Your favorite mobile is made of a set of art cards from Wee Gallery, which hang from a metal frame. I put one over your changing table, and you can smile and kick at that thing for many consecutive minutes. Who knew that diaper changes would become your favorite time of day? You used to throw a fit every time we got your drawers off; now we just let you hang out on there for an extra while because you enjoy it so much.

I bought two more of the mobiles, and I set up a little activity station in the corner of the dining room for you with your bouncy seat and a mobile dangling above it. The other night, your dad and I had, for quite literally the first time in three months, an unhurried dinner during which we chatted about our days, used actual utensils, and indulged in condiments. This is quite a contrast from the usual M.O. we’d adopted, in which we sit down in the living room with dinner dishes in our lap, you in your swing, blatantly denying every smiling-faced endorser of the baby-swing-as-magic-bullet as you shout for attention. I would cram my dinner in my mouth as fast as possible while your dad tried to entertain you, and then when I was done, he would eat while I tried to keep you calm.

The mobile activity station hasn’t worked every single time, but it’s a start, and we’re beginning to see glimpses of you as an actual companion and family member rather than a (the word that comes to mind is parasite, but that seems too harsh. If you were ever a parasite, you were the most adorable parasite that ever lived, and you got more kisses and goo-goo talk and cuddles than any tick I’ve met; perhaps a better phrase is taker more than a giver). Every day now, you have at least a few long smiling spells, and yesterday, you laughed for the first time.

Your dad was holding you, and I came up and did one of the thousand goofy things I do every day, probably some kind of silly talk and kisses. That got you smiling, and during one particularly big smile, you gave a bona fide peal of laughter.

And you know what? I don’t even care so much that you can’t sleep the so-called magical five hours. When I’m up with you in the night, and you’re eating so happily, and you drowse off in my arms, I think about how much you’ve changed since you were that tiny speck I worried that I’d dislodged when I fell on the sidewalk. Every day, you’re my baby a bit less. I would be crazy not to want to spend an extra hour with my sweet little you.

Love,

Mommy

Because I owe the title of this blog to him, and in part because I think he got the shaft in Bowling for Columbine (I do generally like Michael Moore, but I think he can sometimes be a bully and was in the case of this particular segment), I will say

QEPD Charlton Heston.

You did a lot for our culture, in your own weird way.

Again, a brief video of cuteness.

It’s a gloomy day out, which means no walk for Miles and me.  This is too bad; I’ve really come to enjoy our walks now that the weather is getting nicer, and I think it’s good for my weight loss efforts too.  Miles is neutral on the topic; he usually sleeps through the whole thing.  I think the clickclickclick of the stroller going over the cracks in the sidewalk is hypnotic to him.

Often, when I’m trying to fall asleep at night (doesn’t take too much effort these days, generally), I think about all these things I want to blog about.  I think about odd things in language, stuff from movies or TV, things about people I know.  And yet, when I sit down to write, all I can come up with to discuss is Miles’s most recent bowel movement.

(Speaking of which, he hasn’t had one today.  I hope he gets that done, because the last time he skipped a day, the next day was truly outrageous.  I’m talking Jem-levels of outrageousness.)

Okay, here’s something:  I think I want to reassess the way I grocery shop.  I want to do it more European style.  That is, rather than buying a whole week’s worth of groceries at once, which is my current M.O., I want to go to the store four or five times a week and get supplies for just a day or two.  That way things stay fresher, and I’m less likely to forget I bought something and have it go bad.  Also, the grocery store is only about seven blocks from our house, so it would be an easy stroller-based adventure as long as I don’t buy too much at once.

The only problem is that I am currently fixated on these cherry-pomegranate frozen superfruit bars (haha!  Check out the note at the bottom of the page.  People are stupid.).  They might melt on the way home, especially once the summer weather kicks in.  I guess I could take the car now and then.

Hey guys, guess what. I think I have De Quervain’s syndrome. This is much less exciting than it sounds. Really it just means my thumb and wrist hurt from picking up a baby a lot. It sounds exotic to have it be a syndrome, though.

You can have surgery for it, or else you can just wait for it to go away. It has no long-term effect, and there is no problem with ignoring it. If you want, you can wear a wrist brace (which is what I’m doing).

There’s this test described on the wikipedia entry linked to above: you make a fist, tuck your thumb in, and bend your wrist sideways (like, moving your pinkie toward the base of your wrist). If it hurts, you might have De Quervain’s Syndrome.

I should really stop doing it, because…it hurts. I can’t stop.

2:30 a.m.: Wake up, feed the baby. Note that baby has escaped swaddle, but don’t want to wake Denny, so ignore it and hope for the best.

3:30 a.m.: Wake up; baby is making noises and thrashing around in his terrible, terrible freedom. Roll over and hope the problem fixes itself. Problem does not fix itself. Hold baby for a while. Know that it is too soon to feed, but lacking any other ideas that don’t involve waking Denny, give baby a snack.

4:30 a.m.: Wake up; baby is grumping. Again, ignore and hope baby goes back to sleep. Baby makes audible noise that indicates a diaper change is necessary (hint: this noise does not come out of baby’s mouth). Get up, change diaper. While baby is still on changing table, baby makes same noise. Change diaper again. While snapping up baby’s outfit, baby makes same noise for a third time. Laugh a little, cry a little, change diaper again. Remove baby from changing table and out of view of his favorite mobile. Baby shouts actively. Decide the 3:30 snack didn’t count and the baby might be hungry. Feed baby. Baby is still grumpy and flailing. Wake Denny, who swaddles baby and carries him around for a few minutes. Put baby in bed with us.

9:00 a.m.: Wake up to a wiggly (but happy) baby. Rejoice in the fact that four+ hours of sleep have been acquired (minus a couple of non-baby wakeups surrounding Denny’s work preparation). Feed baby. Change baby’s diaper. Grab laptop and try to do some work while baby enjoys mobile/changing table. Hear the noise AGAIN. This time, have the good sense to wait until three such noises have been heard before changing the diaper.

And here we are.

I was just thinking about the song Mentirosa.  In general I enjoy bilingual music (I will even confess some affection for Rico Suave), and I do like this song, but I just realized that it contains perhaps the worst rhyme in the history of hip-hop.

Él quería tu dirección, yeah, just your address
y antes que colgaste I heard you say “I’ll wear a dress.”

What?  He rhymed “address” with “a dress.”  It’s the same sounds.  He is silly.

I still like it, though.  Emborrachada de Bacardi, yo.

Hi.  It’s my birthday.

I woke up this morning snuggled up with my husband and son, which seems like a pretty good way to start a birthday.

Things went rapidly downhill; Denny and I got automated alerts through the Hawk Alert system that a shooter was at large in Iowa City.  Of course what I thought of immediately was the recent campus shootings, like Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois, and the Gang Lu massacre from here at the University of Iowa.  It was very scary at first, because there were no details for what felt like a long time.  Our office got locked down, as did the schools in the area.  Soon the story became public; it wasn’t a lunatic opening fire on campus.  Rather, it was a recently-disgraced local businessman who killed his wife and four kids in their home about a mile from my house.  He then (it seems—none of this is confirmed yet) crashed his van on the interstate and died.

It’s all just horrifying.  A couple of my friends and friend-of-friends knew the family.

Eventually I felt okay enough to send Denny off to work, but it took a while.

It’s hard to imagine how a person could become desperate enough to do something that awful.  Normally I avoid the phrase “there are no words to describe…” because, you know, that’s the purpose of words.  But words like horrifying and awful just seem too weak under the circumstances.  I don’t know what kind of mental illness would lead someone to destroy his family, but in some ways that’s even worse than a random killing spree.  If you can’t trust your daddy, what do you have in life?

Denny reassured me that he would never do such a thing.  I already knew that, but it was good to hear.

Hug your families, and if you ever feel the need to commit a murder/suicide, do the suicide part first.