That’s right, PLURAL.
Toby sprouted not one but two teeth in less than a week – the first on
January 14th and the second on January 20th, visible (barely) in the picture above, right in the middle of the bottom gum. Now his top gums are starting to feel a
little pointy – I had no idea they could all come out so suddenly! Although I admit Matt had the
impression it worked that way.
After tremendous effort, I finally got Toby to show off his hard work
(along with the awesome hairstyle – his first – thanks to Joelyn).
With teeth comes biting, our first real discipline
issue. For a couple of days, he
really enjoyed sinking those razor-sharp fangs into mama. After some spontaneous yelling (me) and
sober reflection (both of us), we have mostly solved this. I thought it was bad when he broke
suction by whipping his head around to look at something across the room, but
it turns out that was not pain.
From now on, no more teething on my fingers or ANY other part of
me.
Another oral twist coincidentally fell in with the arrival
of teeth: the Return of the Binky!
I imagine more than one experienced parent reading this blog had a
little giggle when I declared our night-waking issues over in the last post. That lasted three days. I’ve since had to concede that Toby’s
need to suck has not diminished yet, and although he’s great at sucking his
thumb during the day, in the months since the pacifier disappeared he hasn’t
moved to replace it with any of his digits at night. He has gotten a lot better with his hands since then,
though, which means he can find and replace the binky on his own, leading to
longer naps and (fingers crossed) somewhat
longer stretches of sleep at night.
I am unabashedly obsessed with sleeping. Also with making the beginning and end of said sleep
happier, which the pacifier definitely does – now when he wakes up he rolls
around in the crib doing push-ups and slurping away, waiting more or less happily
for us to come and get him. It’s
sweet.
Progress on the crawling has been moving just as fast as the
teeth. Here’s a video of where he
was at just over a week ago, moving with passion and purpose…
… but now he’s already gotten so much more
efficient and faster!
He’s even
spending some time on hands and knees, although he flops back onto the belly
when he tries to move. We’ve accelerated
baby-proofing. Now we just have to
help Violet figure out that she can get over the 2-foot baby gate to reach the
litter box. As Matt says, spatial
reasoning isn’t her forte.
Toby’s enjoyment of literature has advanced from eating it
to asking for the same book again and again in clear baby language (whining and
waving of arms, mostly, followed by quiet contentment when the third or fourth
reading commences.) His current
favorites are 1) Barnyard Dance (complete with hopping and spinning), ClapHands (he can look at the pictures of babies all day), and Little Cricket’s Song (crickets with real working click-its.)
Overall, we’re amazed day-to-day with how purposeful and
engaged he is becoming. Bathtime
is now 75% escape attempts and only 25% rubber duckies, and when it’s time for
the bottle he can eat all by himself, thank you very much. (This also goes, less successfully, for
the spoon.)
And the heating grate has become a daily source of
pleasure….
As Toby enjoys being around new people and places more,
we’re making an effort to get him out.
The local public library has a weekly reading-and-singing program for
pre-toddlers that Toby found enchanting, if slightly overwhelming. He’s also had several more playdates,
and this weekend we’re getting together for the first time with several people
from our birth class. It will be
fun to see how all those massive pregnant bellies have now transformed into
mothers and a herd of charming babies.
Since Toby’s previous playdates have mostly involved him watching in
amazement as older babies do things he can’t, it will also be fun to see how he
interacts with kids his own age.
(At his last reunion with Benjamin, the kid who stole his binky, Ben
came awfully close to bonking him on the head with a wooden mallet. As a younger sibling, this all feels
terribly familiar – just when you think, “I could steal your
binky now!” the rascal has mastered a totally new tool.)
Luckily, Toby won’t always be the youngest. The weekend before last he had an
opportunity to someone who will hopefully be a frequent beneficiary of his
older-baby attentions: Eva Zarate, my old friend Christina Zarate-Kolp’s (then)
two-week old daughter. My mom and
I drove out to Cleveland for a few days to spend time with them and proud daddy
Martin. We enjoying holding and rocking Eva, and Toby enjoyed touching her head (below).
It was priceless being able to hold sweet little Eva. It’s hard to believe that Toby was that
tiny and dependent just seven months ago.
She’s snuggly and, as you can see, super cute. Sharing this time in our lives with Christina and Martin is
magical. We’re looking forward to
finding a weekend when Matt and I can both make it up, maybe when it’s warmer
and Eva is old enough to enjoy an outing or two!
Finally, we’d like to take a moment to honor the life of
Toby’s Great-grandma Marian Temme, who is now on the threshold between life and
death. He never got to meet her in
person, but we were lucky to share a long Skype call on her birthday earlier
this month – Toby showed off his rolling skills and his chub and made Grandma
Temme smile. She is a special
person, and although we’re glad that her suffering is ending, she will be
missed.
Part of what motivates me to write this blog when there is
so much other writing I could be doing is a sense of the precious, fleeting
nature of life, and a desire to capture the sweetness of its beginning. Somehow the full arc of life feels more
real, makes more sense, since Toby was born.
