Week 16 Day 1: Christmas every day

Toes are super fun. For babies, I mean (yes, yes, I know they are "super fun" for some grown-ups, too, but that's their business and this isn't that kind of blog). Specifically for Gavin. This might explain why we can never keep socks on him. Just about every time we go somewhere in the car, by the time we get there he only has one sock on. Today I could see him in the rearview mirror, fingers laced with his toes, kicking his foot up over and over. Even though we've lost lots of socks this way, I still think it's adorable. Although I hope it's something he'll grow out of because it won't be so cute when he's, say, 14. Or 30.

Speaking of Gavin's toes, we did a side-by-side comparison of Gavin's feet with another baby his age, Brenden, my best-friend Lisa's son. They are visiting from California and that fact makes me happier than I can even describe. In any case, it appears that Gavin's toenails are not normal. Either that or Brenden just has exceptionally well-formed nails. Gavin's are kind of, well, scaly, for lack of a better word. His big toenails are especially gnarly. In one of the myriad baby books I read before or soon after he was born, I remember something about how baby toenails were really thin and took longer than fingernails to start looking like real-people nails. And maybe that's all that's going on with Gavin, but I don't know. I Googled "scaly baby toenails" and the first thing that comes up says, "Down Syndrome." Perfect. Thank you, Internet. Thank you very much.

So yes, Lisa is here with her son and watching Brenden and Gavin play together has been awesome. "Play together" is maybe not exactly the right way to put it. I believe the baby books call it "parallel play," where the little dudes each do their own thing independent of one another. And they do a lot of that. But they also interact, like when Brenden reaches toward Gavin's mouth with his pointer finger and Gavin opens his mouth to allow Brenden dental access. Or when Brenden slaps Gavin upon the top of his bald head as if Gavin's strawberry birthmark were a bull's eye. Or when Gavin grabs the copious amount of hair on Brenden's head. Basically their BFFs now.

Today Gavin and I met Brenden, Lisa, and her mom at Babies R Us. It was fun, but it was clear that Brenden and Gavin do not have the amount of shopping stamina as the three grown-ups in their company. Since the babies were hungry, we headed over to Panera to eat. It was Gavin's first time eating at a restaurant. He's been to restaurants before, but never, like, put in a boxy wooden restaurant high chair and spoon fed as we eat. I've always tried to time our outtings in between brunch and lunch. I brought one jar of baby food (Earth's Best Summer Vegetables Dinner, in fact) intending to buy him a jar of fruit of some sort at Babies R Us, but I forgot.

Luckily for me, though less luckily for Lisa, Brenden would not eat the peach oatmeal baby food she'd brought for him because he wanted to eat Lisa's mac and cheese. Gavin ended up eating both jars of food as well as some bits of cantaloupe I tore up for him, a rather successful foray into chunky foods. I also gave him a couple of baby-spoonfuls of my mango smoothie, but don't tell Stacy (she'll have to learn it here like everyone else). Especially since yesterday she said to me, "Reading this book about what you should and should not feed your baby is stressing me out. I think I'll just nurse him until he's 15." Good luck with that, Honey.

Oh, and my dad showed up at Panera, too. It wasn't, like, a surprise visit or something. He'd called me earlier and said he was heading home from Detroit and wanted to stop by the house to give Gavin something. So I told him I'd be out and he said he was passing by there so he called and I told him where I was and... Never mind the rest. You get it. Everybody relax. In any case, Dad bought Gavin a muscle shirt with a bulldog on it that I believe is for a five-year-old toddler and some toys for the bathtub. My dad also wanted to see Lisa, as he hasn't seen her in years, and meet Brenden. And my dad told us that he now has five gold crowns in his mouth worth $4,000 each. I'm not sure why he felt the need to tell us that. And I probably shouldn't be posting it here lest he get mugged and have his teeth stolen. In any case, Grandpa Mike's got bling in his mouth.

On Saturday morning Gavin had us up bright and early (it actually wasn't bright at all) and I was really dragging ass having a hard time fully waking up. Gavin was in his Baby Fun Jail (a.k.a his play pen) standing up and looking out at us and talking to us and generally being super cute. Stacy said, "Having a baby is like having Christmas every day. You get up really early and you have this present. And you get to play with him and he's wonderful." It made being awake much less painful.