Week 5 Day 3: Sicko

Stacy has a cold. Has had it for a few days now. And today Gavin had the beginnings of a runny nose. Alas. I hope I don't get sick. Not that I want Gavin to get sick, but I think that's a lost cause now. And it's a lot easier to take care of a sick baby if you, yourself, aren't also sick. We learned this as a family at Christmas when the three of us jetted down to Florida to see Stacy's family. Traveling when you've got a raging cold is the best. Traveling with an infant who also has said cold is even betterest. But even with his plugged up self Gavin was a remarkably good traveler. We are lucky for this.

I fed Gavin in his high chair today and it did make for a more parent-friendly feeding experience. I made him way too much cereal, though. These little baby insta-cereals are tricky. They absorb so much liquid! Baby oatmeal is nothing like grown up oatmeal. I am fairly certain that if you were to eat the dry mix by itself it would soak up all of your internal fluids and you would die. There should be a warning on the box. So I'm trying to find a balance between feeding him milk from a bottle and mixing milk with his cereal. So far he far prefers the bottle, second only to the actual hoot itself. Or, I guess I mean themselves, since Stacy has two. Oatmeal is far preferred over rice cereal. The rice cereal feeding did not go over well. To express his displeasure Gavin kept making raspberries with his mouth full of food showering both of us. So I am giving up on the rice cereal for now. Lisa says she uses it sometimes to thicken baby food that is too runny. I think it could also be used to stop leaks in our basement crawl space. Either way, it won't go to waste.

Gavin is a very wiggly guy. He's figured out that when I put him on the floor of his bed room to play he can roll over to the dresser and grab the handle and pull. And voila! The drawer opens. This is a fun game for him, and while I support his need and desire to learn cause and effect, there are too many stories of my twin sister and I pulling dressers down on ourselves when we were little for me to be down with his new game. Granted, he doesn't have a tall dresser in his room, so he chances of him pulling the dresser down are slim, but he could work the drawer out. Maybe not right now while he's prone on the floor, but eventually he'll be able to pull himself up to a standing position. He can already pull himself up to his knees in his crib and peek out over the railing. It won't be long before we have to lower the crib mattress yet again.

I realize that I seem to bitch quite a bit about things here and I would like to state for the record that not a day goes by that I don't marvel about how beautiful my son is. He's really amazing and this whole thing is going by so fast. He'll be seven months in a week. I can't even remember what it felt like to hold him when he weighed less than 10 pounds. We have photo evidence, but that's not the same thing. I'm not saying I want another baby (this is part of the great debate in our house: should we or shouldn't we? Needless to say, an answer has not been reached. More on that later). But he's less and less baby like every day.