Week 6 Day 3: Holy snowly

Today was a snow day, which means Stacy was home with us all day. And a mighty fine day it was. I still had cramps so it was nice to have Stacy on baby patrol. I did shovel the driveway and walk and stuff, which made my back hurt. I am seriously out of shape. Laura and Jamie came over and we all went to Trader Joe's together where Gavin was so cute I could hardly stop looking at him. He wore his puppy dog winter hat the whole time in the store because he is bald and it is cold in Trader Joe's. He digs sitting in grocery carts. I want to get him one of those cart cover things because the carts are germ festivals. In fact, as soon as we put him in the cart at TJ's he leaned forward and wrapped his lips around the bar. Very cliche.

Today was Gavin's first taste of real bananas. He's had the baby food banana goo and he's had the oat-nana cereal, but today he had fresh banana. We didn't just give him a chunk of fruit, of course, he ate it through a banana hammock. At least that's what we call his little Baby Safe Feeder (I know. The Web site design doesn't exactly instill confidence in a company that manufactures something intended to go in your baby's mouth. The rotating apple .gifs are a bit much. Also the punctuation and grammar is problematic. For example, this sentence, which is a very good example of the site's overall tone: "Being conscientious and observing your child is and always will be extremely important so that if your loved one does choke, hopefully, you will know how to react fast enough to prevent a terrible tragedy." The comma after "hopefully" doesn't need to be there. In fact, putting a comma there kind of makes the sentence seen like it means, "If you're lucky your kid will choke so you can test out your choke-death prevention skills." Still, there is something very charming about the site's sincerity. It's clearly written by someone who cares a lot about this product, even if he could use a good copy editor). In any case, I can't remember who recommended these things to us, but we registered for them and some kind person whose identity has been lost to history gave them to us at our shower and they were only recently unearthed from the bottom of a drawer while Stacy was looking for something else. So when Stacy said we should give him some banana this evening, he got to have real banana sucked through a little mesh pocket. It sounds weird, but he loved it. I don't think he's enjoyed eating anything this much besides breast milk on tap. Lisa's son also loves his banana hammocks and, according to her, he will eat anything you put in there (bananas are his favorite, though also the hardest to clean out of the contraption she says). So we'll definitely be busting out the banana hammock again tomorrow.

I can't help but wish that we'll get another couple of feet of snow tonight so that Stacy is home with us tomorrow, too. Then she could go to Baby Time with us. And help us take Henri to the vet. He's getting his teeth cleaned tomorrow. Poor dude's mouth smells like a sewer. I admit that I haven't been the best canine dental hygiene mama since Gavin was born. For a while there I even thought he was missing a tooth in the bottom front, but now I can't decide if it's just a gap that has always been there or  what. He's definitely got some teeth that are loose. Poor dude.

And to think that the night before his surgery he's spent the bulk of the day spooked by the balloon Gavin got at Trader Joe's. Henri doesn't like helium balloons and all day today he was creeping around, hiding in the bedroom and under the crib instead of out in the living room where he usually sleeps all day like a drunk, wearing pajamas and curled under a down-filled blanket in his pet bed. I could not figure out why he was acting so weird. It even crossed my mind that maybe he sensed that tomorrow he was going to have to go to the vet. When Stacy put Gavin to bed tonight Henri was still in there under the crib (we have a pet bed in there, actually, because the cat spent so much time under the crib he was leaving massive amounts of cat hair and snot on top of whatever was being stored there that we wanted him to have a concentrated place to be). As soon as she realized Henri was still in the baby's room she looked up at the ceiling. "The balloon," she said. And, indeed, that's just what it was. We moved the balloon into the bedroom and I got Henri out of the nursery and he has stopped acting like a total weirdo. Problem solved.

Wow. Fun story. You're welcome, dear readers.