Week 13 Day 3: Horsey Bear

Having Marilyn here was a definite help today as I feel like trash garbage. Granted, I didn't just sleep all day or anything. Though I probably should have. It's just difficult to be away from Gavin for too long, even if by "away" I mean in my bedroom with the door shut. Also, I feel guilty not taking care of him. I don't want to seem like I'm taking advantage or feel useless.

But I did take a brief nap and I could hear Marilyn and Gavin in his room playing. She was singing to him and he was laughing. She is a terrible singer. But Gavin thinks she's great. And so in a way she is. She also did this thing where she put Gavin on her knees while she was sitting on the couch and bounced him a little while singing, "Ride a little horsey, ride to town, whoa! little horsey, don't fall down." On the "don't fall down" part she'd move her knees apart so Gavin would drop down a bit. He loved this very much. I had never heard this little rhyme before but she said it's something her parents did to her and something she did to Stacy and David. My mom always did this little rhyme in French, which I sadly cannot reproduce here because I have no idea how to spell most of it. But there was a line that, in English, means, "The cat ate the cream." Helpful, I know.

Even though Gavin is still a snot-faced bear and is coughing like a mini-TB patient, he's still a pretty happy guy who loves to laugh and is quick to smile. I really hate that he's sick. The poor dude. I keep wondering if we should take him to the doctor but Stacy and her mom both think that he probably has the same virus that Stacy had -- and that I now have -- and he should be better by tomorrow night or at least the morning after.

This morning Marilyn said that she could hardly sleep last night because Gavin was coughing so much. It got to the point where she was afraid he'd somehow choked to death and then thought to herself, "Oh well, there's nothing I can do now." But then she felt terribly guilty and she'd decided that if he was dead then she wouldn't tell us that she'd heard him choking and did nothing, but then she said she started to feel so guilty about it she decided that if he was dead and she had, in fact, listened to him choke and did nothing, she would kill herself because she wouldn't be able to live with the guilt. So, you know, awesome night for her. Great story for us. Needless to say, Gavin did not choke and die.

Stacy and I were supposed to go to Parent Club tonight. Since Marilyn is here she was going to be at home with Gavin so we could actually both go (taking Gavin is still not on the table since not only is Parent Club after his bed time, but now he's sick). Unfortunately, that didn't happen with me being sick and all. I don't think the other folks there would be at all happy to have me there breathing on their babies. So I suggested Stacy and her mom go out to dinner instead. No sense in everyone being cooped up because of me. Plus I thought it would be nice to have some alone time. Just me and my thoughts. Ha. What I actually did while they were out to eat was clean up the terrible flooding mess Stacy made trying to change the filter to our under-sink water filter. It's a long story. It involved a lot of towels. I also learned that you should never assume your wife knows where the water shut off valve is in your basement because otherwise you'll spend a lot more time than you need to being sprayed in the face with water whilst under your kitchen sink.

Gavin, amazingly, slept through all of this. Thank God.

Week 13 Day 2: Action Gavin

A walk will do a sick baby a world of good. And by a walk I mean a stroller ride. Poor Gavin still feels super cruddy, and is producing super crud as well. I feel like I might be getting sick as well, so, AWESOME. My dream come true.

Gavin was really fussy when he woke up from his second nap so Marilyn and I decided to go for a walk. It was a nice enough day and we figured that it couldn't hurt and it might even help. Sure enough, as soon as we got moving Gavin was lulled and soothed. He babbled and cooed in his cold-induced husky baby voice. It seriously put him in a much better mood.

Gavin hates having his nose wiped. Hates it. You'd think we were trying to put a hot poker in his eye. Even worse, he hates being irrigated. I had to irrigate him once by myself today and he hated it but we got a lot of snot out. Marilyn helped the second time and it was less productive, but much easier with someone else's assistance. Because Gavin's a fighter.

He's a-movin' and a-shakin' these days. And I saw him crawl for the first time. Not that one kind of forward propulsion should be held superior to another, because each baby has his or her own ingenuity, but this was textbook left-knee-right-hand, right-knee-left-hand crawling. Not for a great distance, mind you, because the object of his desire (the cat) was only three knees away. But my heart literally did a flip when I saw him do it. It was just so exciting. Because I'd been watching him figure it out for the past 15 minutes or so. He's also stood by himself without holding onto anything for very brief moments. Marilyn saw him do it earlier today, and then this evening after his bath, Stacy saw him do it. In the nude, no less. He pulled himself up on the outside of tub to a standing position and then Stacy put his hooded towel on his head and he reached up with both hands and touched it like, "What's this on my head?" and for that brief time he was a free standing naked Bear.

All of this moving comes with a price, however, and he's knocked his head a couple of times today. He's got a red line on his forehead from hitting his head on the book case and a little rug burn on his face from a bombs away while Marilyn was watching him. It's amazing watching him get more and more physical. He doesn't like to be stationary if he can help it. We are definitely not baby-proofing fast enough.

Week 13 Day 1: Snot-nosed Bear

Alas, I spoke too soon. Gavin is, indeed, sick, and has been all weekend. He's a sad snot-nosed Bear. Last night I went to Meijer and bought a humidifier for his room. It's not exactly the humidifier of my dreams (an elephant-shaped one would have been nice), but I didn't have much to choose from. Also, if you go to Meijer after 9 p.m. on a Sunday, there is apparently no one there who can help you. There are people stocking shelves who can direct you to the place where they "think" something might be, and there are cashiers who can ring up whatever items you happen to find yourself in the great labyrinthian suckhole that is Meijer. Also, the Meijer Corporation is no friend to gays. But it is open 24 hours, and when you've got a baby plugged up with snot you pick your battles.

As Gavin was already in bed by the time I got home with the humidifier, I got it ready so that when he woke up for his night feeding I could go plug it in. My plan was to be all stealth and shit, but that didn't work out since the cord wasn't long enough and I ended up having to move his little dresser which of course got his attention which of course made him stop nursing. Mind you, I'm trying to set all of this up in the near-dark (the light from the bathroom is all I've got). Stacy was annoyed with me, though he slept super hard the rest of the night and Stacy even had to wake him up this morning to have him nurse before she left for work. And anyway, before she was even through nursing she came into our room with him and said we needed to irrigate him because he was so stuffy he couldn't breathe to nurse. Irrigating means squirting baby saline spray in his nose and sucking gunk out with a snob bulb. This is, surprise, not his favorite thing. But he was so good about it last night. He cried a little bit, but not much. And he did try turning his head and smacking the irrigation tools away, but Stacy was able to hold him while I did the dirty work. And Stacy reported that he had a much easier time nursing afterwards. The humidifier also seems to have really helped but I still do not understand how making the air wetter makes your nose run less.

Also at Meijer I bought a little onesie that says "I ♥ Grandma" on it since his grandma is currently visiting and staying with us. That would be Stacy's mom. I even did a late night load of laundry so that it would be clean for him to wear first thing this morning. She came in while I was getting him dressed and his "I ♥ Grandma" onesie was, in fact, all he had on since I was changing his diaper. Not exactly how I expected the reveal to go, but hey, she still thought it was sweet.

With Gavin being sick it was really nice to have someone else here to look after him. But it's also stressful to hang with my mother-in-law all day. So I am pretty tired out. But she adores Gavin and that really, really helps. Tomorrow Stacy has to work late because she has a meeting after school, so it will be an extra long day. The weather is supposed to be nice, so hopefully Gavin is feeling well enough to go for a walk. That would be good for all of us, I think.

Even with snot running down his face, Gavin is still the most beautiful boy in the world. Though chances are good he will be up at 4 again all crudded up, so I should really get my ass to bed so I can be of use when the time comes.

Week 12 Day 5: Water water everywhere

It's the end of a long week. At least it felt long. And technically it isn't the end since there's still Saturday and Sunday to go, but today is the last day this week that I'm on solo baby patrol.

Gavin was not as crabby today as he was yesterday and the day before, so I think it's safe to scratch the whole sick baby theory. Maybe he's just a brat. I'm kidding. Mostly. Stacy thinks that maybe he's not getting enough water during the day and thus is getting dehydrated which results in the crabbiness. I am not so sure about this since he's still peeing a good deal and his bowel movements aren't, like, rock hard or anything. (Who even writes something like that? My god, who have I become? A mom, that's what. I'm a mom now, damn it, and poo is a huge part of that, whether I like it or not).

But it's true that he probably should be drinking more water since he's not being breast fed as often or taking a bottle so much. The problem is, he is very resistant to this idea. We've tried two different kind of sippy cups. The ones with the stopper inside to prevent spills that require suction to extract water are a no-go. With the stopper in Gavin gets no water at all from it. Take the stopper out and it's like a watering can. You might as well just have him drink from a regular cup. Which we do, from time to time, and the results always include a wet shirt (his, usually, though mine is not ruled out) and coughing and "Mom, you're trying to drown me" sounds. The other sippy cups work better and he'll actually drink out of them. Unfortunately we only have one lid between the two cups as one is M.I.A. They're Green Sprouts cups, which I got at Big Lots before Gavin was even born for, like, $3 each. If I had only known then what I know now I would have bought all they had. I can't find them online anywhere for less than $5 each, which doesn't take into account shipping. Babies R Us sells them for $9.99 each. WTF?

Okay, I just found them at an online hippie vitamin store for a little over $5 each. In order to get free shipping I had to order myself a box of Tofurkey Jurky. Oh the things I do for love... Or, should I say, the things I do for my son's hydration.

Gavin and I went to Borders and Krogers today for our Big Outting. I wheeled him around Borders (in Birmingham) in his stroller, which means we never went upstairs, but there wasn't anything I wanted up there anyway besides books about raising vegetarian kids, but they didn't have what I wanted in stock. He seemed to dig Borders quite a bit and he got some new books to boot. He has this book called Baby's First Sounds. It consists of photographs pared with one or two word sounds that the object in the photo makes. For example, there's a dog and it says underneath, "Woof." When Stacy first brought it home I thought it was really dumb. But Gavin really digs it. In fact, he's dug the hell out of it -- broken the spine, chewed the edges, marred the cover. So I got him a couple more from the series, including Baby's First Colors, which has a pair of gay pride rainboots on the cover.

Marilyn is still not here. The plan is that she will arrive tomorrow in the afternoon. I hope Gavin is excited to see her and doesn't cry because that would hurt her feelings. The house is so messy. I have much to do tomorrow, which means I should get some sleep.

Week 12 Day 4: More quab!

Marilyn's arrival has been postponed again. She called today and said she was coming on Saturday morning.

We had another crabby day today. I felt pretty crummy yesterday, like I might be getting sick, too, and Stacy is still coughing like she has consumption. So with two crabby Bear days, I am wondering if he isn't coming down with something himself. His appetite was not great today. It was hard to get him to eat anything. He clamped his mouth shut and flailed at the spoon when I tried to feel him plain rice cereal made with breast milk. Rosemary had given us some rice cereal with mixed fruit and some oatmeal banana cereal and Gavin has clearly become accustomed to the taste of sweetness (something else he gets from me). So after barely getting a few spoonfuls of cereal down his hatch I gave up. He was clearly not having it. He ate his green beans, though not as eagerly as he usually does. And he ate his applesauce. But he still needed some protein, damn it, and right now he's getting that from breast milk. So Gavin and I headed off to Kroger to get him some new rice cereal with fruit. At the store I told him, "We need to find something you'll eat so you can keep growing at an alarming rate."

The next feeding the fruit rice cereal got a better reception, but not by much. Worried that he wasn't getting enough breast milk I decided to give him a bottle, something I haven't done for days because the last few times have not been pretty. He fusses, he fights, he cries. Bottle feeding is not something he's interested in now. But I thought maybe he'd be receptive to it since he was tired and hungry. Maybe it would be a good wind down. But I was wrong. It was a good wind up into sadness. He drank one ounce and one ounce only and wasn't going to drink the rest for anything. You can only explain nutrition to an 8 month old so many times before you give up, you know?

Tonight while Stacy and I were sitting on the couch together, me reading, she doing lesson plans, she mentioned how crabby he was today. "He was just really demanding," she said. "Just exhausting." So true. Today felt very long despite our Kroger outting. Oh, we also went to the credit union drive through ATM.

In baby development news, I saw Gavin go from a prone position on his tummy to sitting up all by himself. Also, Gavin wants to stand up constantly. The trouble is, he can't do it on his own since his balance is not his strong suit right now. His favorite thing is for one of us to hold his hands while he uses his legs to stand. But as you can imagine, this severely limits both of our mobility. But he's a very strong little dude. I suspect he might have thighs of steel, even if they look like thighs of pudding from the outside.

Week 12 Day 3: Crab attack

Stacy is sick. She even came home from work early today. Scheduled a doctor's appointment and everything. She has a hell of a cough. I'm hoping she can kick it quickly, but usually when she gets the coughs it stays around a long time. I remember once when she coughed like a smoker for almost a month. I told everybody she had TB.

And if a sick wife isn't bad enough, Gavin might also be getting sick. He was hella crabby today. Very demanding. Very "don't you dare try to put me down." Even though Stacy is sick, I couldn't wait for her to come home. Sometimes it really does get to a point where you're all, "Just shove a boob in his mouth, I'm going to the bar." Okay, the first part is accurate, the second part not so much. I'm not a bar person. If I need to escape I go to the store. Maybe the drug store (I've been told I go there "more than anyone I know"), maybe Target. I don't know. I live on the edge.

Having Stacy home was nice despite her being tubercular and all. Not only did I have backup with Mr. Crab, but we were even able to mend Gavin's play pen. See, Jasper and Gavin have a new game they've been playing. In fact, they were playing it yesterday morning, which is probably when the damage occurred. From the inside of Baby Fun Jail, Gavin likes to scratch his finger nails against the mesh sides. Interesting texture, interesting sounds. Gavin's scratching got Jasper's attention (perhaps he was surprised that other creatures besides cats are into scratching). So with Gavin on the inside scratching away, Jasper is on the outside trying to "catch" Gavin's hand through the mesh. Claws out, the whole deal. Gavin thinks this is hilarious. Either Jasper didn't ever "get" him or Jasper was playing extra nice, though claws were certainly in play as last night Stacy discovered holes in the mesh. There are three of them, two are large (and by large I mean about the side of my finger tip) and one is small. But of course the next day Gavin found them immediately and pried at them with his fingers. A mending was in order and my idea was to use iron-on patches, one on each side of the mesh so that ironing them caused them to stick together. But Stacy pointed out that it would be difficult to keep the patches in place since they weren't going to stay suspended in the air on a vertical surface. So we had to sew them on. I used two square patches that I bought awhile ago to sew on kids' clothing. The one on the inside of his pen says "I am shellfish" with a picture of a crab, and the one on the outside says "says, "cruisin'" with a girl on a scooter. With Stacy sitting inside Baby Fun Jail and me on the outside, we sewed these little patches together thwarting our son's prying fingers. While we were sewing I asked Stacy, "Do you know why we're doing this?" and she answered, "Because we love a Bear," which is exactly what I was thinking.

Do to Stacy's illness and Gavin's crabbiness, there was no big outting today. Alas.

On the mother-law-front, Marilyn is in Michigan but is currently with her friend whose husband passed away a short time ago. Stacy says her mom will get here on Friday.

Week 12 Day 2: Stinky poodle, crying baby

Gavin is crying. And crying. And crying. It's late. He went to bed very easily tonight. He should still be asleep. We want him to be asleep. He wants very desperately to be asleep. And yet despite everyone wanting the same thing here, sleeping is not coming easily to Bear right now.

I'm fairly certain I was the one who woke him up. Though in my defense, Stacy made me. She insisted I wash the dog tonight even though I was worried that such an action, with the bathroom being adjacent to Gavin's room and all, might wake the baby. But Stacy's mom is coming tomorrow and she didn't want Henri to be, well, stinky. And he was. He had a very distinctive poodle aroma with top notes of "I have rasty breath and I lick myself" and low notes of earthiness (i.e. dirt) and the Fritos smell of dog feet. So a bath was definitely in order. And Poodle is clean now. But Bear is awake. Stacy has been trying to soothe him for some time now. I'm on deck.

You'd think Gavin would be all worn out since we shopped 'til we dropped today. Okay, a slight exaggeration. But we did go to two stores today. And I pushed him past his point of tolerance, which was evident once we got home and I tried to feed him lunch. Poor dude. He was so tired he was trying to suck his thumb while I was trying to spoon oatmeal into his mouth. I managed to get some oatmeal and some green beans in him before he had a melt down and I rushed him off for his nap. He didn't wake up from his morning nap until a quarter after eleven, which is really late for him, but apparently that does not mean that his next nap can be pushed back. My mistake.

In any case, our first stop today was Bed Bath and Beyond because they had good prices on baby proofing stuff on their website and I had a coupon. Turns out, they don't actually sell baby proofing stuff in the store, only online. I did, however, find throw pillows for the couch on clearance, however, and with my coupon I got three pillows for $10. They are, incidentally, Roxy brand pillows, and were originally $35 each. I never in a million years would pay that much for a pillow. That is insane. Gavin and I are bargain shoppers. I really like shopping with him. He is so good at the store. He is getting more and more grabby, but I usually give him something he can hold onto while we shop. After Bed Bath and Beyond we went to TJ Maxx because I was looking for turquoise or lime green wash cloths since our white ones have seen better days. I found some but after I got home I realized they don't match at all. Alas. But mostly I just bought stuff for Gavin anyway. And a bread knife, which Gavin desperately wanted to hold, and though it was sealed in a hard plastic package, I thought it would be a bad precedent to set. Not only that, but I can only imagine how it would look to be strolling around the store with my baby sucking on a serrated blade. I'd probably get the same looks that Stacy got when she was 8 months pregnant in the liquor store buying triple sec. It was for a recipe, but still.

This afternoon after his nap Gavin met us as a stand-up baby for the first time. I don't mean that he was cracking jokes (though he does have a great sense of humor. He laughs a lot and thinks Stacy and I are hilarious. We are his clowns), but that he was standing up in his crib waiting for us. He has never done that before. Thankfully we lowered his crib mattress a long time ago and he has the crib tent which makes his a little more secure. Needless to say it was adorable and he looked very proud of himself.

As I mentioned, Stacy's mom is coming today. She lives in Florida and hasn't seen Gavin since Christmas. Needless to say, she is very excited about this. I am less excited, only because she is staying at our (very small) house (usually she would stay with David, Stacy's brother, but he is in the process of moving right now). And she is staying for two weeks. And I am home full time. Marilyn and I have a strained history to say the least. But we're on good terms now and she is crazy about Gavin so we have very common ground there.