12/12/2015

The Callum Chronicle #11

Filed under: — Aprille @ 2:59 pm

My sweet Callum,

As much as I want you to stay my baby, my last baby, for whom every first is a last first for me, I’m pretty excited about your birthday next month.  With two big brothers, you see a lot of things happening that you aren’t allowed to do.  While I still don’t plan to let you take a bath by yourself or climb onto the highest reaches of the playground equipment, I’m finally going to be able to say yes when you really, really want a bite of ice cream.  That’s going to be pretty big.  We always get Dairy Queen during the half-hour we have to kill between picking Miles up from school and his Thursday-afternoon piano lesson, and as of yet, none has passed through your lips.  You actually haven’t been too upset about that.  What’s harder for you is watching Tobin eat one of the free cookies at HyVee right next to you in the shopping cart.  I don’t know if you will be able to deal with a whole cookie right away, but next month, you’ll be allowed to try a little nibble.

Speaking of little nibbles, you still have just four teeth.  I was reading your brothers’ eleven-month updates, and Tobin had six at this stage.  Maybe it’s a summer versus winter baby thing, but you still chug along with your two on top and two on bottom.  You do fine, though.   You like to eat all kinds of different things, including rotisserie chicken, vegetable beef soup, oranges, apples, rice, plain Cheerios, and SnaPeas.   SnaPeas (these crunchy, salty snacks that may contain some actual pea) are your favorites.  After you eat a few, you always want a drink of water.  I’ve tried both sippy cups and traditional open cups with you, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference in terms of mess.  You don’t usually spill them straight from the cup; rather, you get a mouth full of water, and rather than swallow it, you just let it dribble out of your mouth onto your shirt.

We’ll keep practicing.

Photo by Gary Clarke

You’ve become an honorary member of Family Folk Machine.  You’ve been to lots of rehearsals, because it’s easier for your dad to sit there and let you play with all the kids who think you’re so cute than to handle you at home.  You’ve especially made friends with Liam, the son of Miles’s piano teacher.  He loves little kids and gets along really well with you.  He likes to dictate your thoughts.

You were well-behaved through three concerts:  our two regular ones and the Festival of Carols at the Englert.  You even made your debut on the Englert stage during sound check.  You dad hadn’t come from work yet, so as Miles and Tobin and I sang, you scrabbled around the stage.  I don’t think you’re quite ready to be a FFM member yet, since you can’t stand up unassisted.  Of course, some of the older members of the choir can’t stand for long either, and we let them stay.

Our family is just now recovering from a nasty (but fortunately short-lived) bout of a stomach bug.  I blame a recent trip to the library during which you wouldn’t keep the nasty plastic fruit out of your mouth in the play kitchen area.  I kept telling you to stop, and you wouldn’t stop.  No more trips to the library for us during the sick season.  This illness reminded me of the last time I vomited, which was when I was in my third trimester of pregnancy with you.  My morning sickness had long since faded by then, but it was an entirely new and terrible sensation to be wracked with nausea while someone is kicking you in the actual physical stomach from the inside.  This time was not quite so bad, though the timing was tricky.  You had it first, then you gave it to your dad and me, and the two big boys got it right after that.

One tip I give any new parent who asks for it:  seal every mattress in your house with a waterproof (and pee-proof and breastmilk-proof and vomit-proof) mattress cover.  Middle-of-the-night laundry is no fun, but it’s even less fun to have to buy a new mattress because yours got soaked in last night’s spaghetti.

You can crawl like a fast little crawling maniac.  You don’t show much interest in solo walking, or even walking while holding someone’s hands.  You do like to cruise around furniture, and you’ll pull up on anything that seems even remotely stable enough to support you.  Sometimes, like in the case of empty laundry baskets, it’s not.  You enjoy reorganizing the shoe cabinet, pulling open drawers in the kitchen, and chewing on your brothers’ toys.  You thoroughly liquified a little board book at the concert the other night.  Your dad and I decided it was worth the sacrifice.

You’ve been in a clingy stage lately, upset whenever I’m not holding you or nursing you or both.  This makes it pretty difficult to do things like exercise and shower.  You had to wear mismatched shoes the other day, because you opened the shower curtain on me and soaked yourself, including the shoes I’d put on you to wear for the day.  They’re your only pair, so I had to scramble around your brothers’ old baby shoes.  I found two.  You wore two.  One had a dinosaur and one had a turtle.

You haven’t said any for-sure words yet, but you’ve been making mama and dada noises.  I’ve probably mentioned it here before, but I would really be happy if your first real word was mama.  I truly don’t mind the scar I’ll carry for the rest of my life due to your difficult birth (I think scars are kind of cool), but the memory of the day(s) remains a traumatic one.  I say this in no way to diminish the horrible pain of those whose babies don’t make it through difficult births or who suffer long-term issues.  I am so, so grateful to have had three pregnancies that resulted in three healthy kids.  It’s sadly, scarily common not to be able to say something like that.  Nonetheless, I’m very glad to never do it again.  And if you could just say mama and reach your fat little arms to me, that would be pretty great.

Enjoy your last month of infancy, my sweet puppy.  I love you so much.

Love,

Mommy

 

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