10 months, spring is here!

Even though there are lots of new things happening each week, it’s sort of a relief that Toby’s growth is moderating – I have the sense we can really savor each new stage now.  It gives me space to look back and appreciate how far we’ve come in the last ten months.  There are things that have moved so slowly that I barely noticed them – his sensitive cheeks don’t require daily lotion anymore to be charmingly rosy instead of alarmingly rashy.  Bedtime isn’t peaceful massages, rocking, and lullabies anymore; now there is a quick rubdown while he crawls around the bed, loud protesting at a new diaper and pajamas (he outgrew his sweet sleepsack), and reading at least three books before being put down.  

So, what new things are happening?  In addition to pulling up and cruising a lot more since the last entry, he started crawling with his belly off the floor, standing without any support, and yesterday he even started clapping!

His first Easter was lots of fun.  First MamaSue and Grandpa Fred came to visit, along with poor, sickly Aunt Rachael (who came back from Guatemala with a stomach bug).  We ate lots of good food, including Toby’s first asparagus and hollandaise.  This is a springtime tradition in our family, and he loved it.  He obliged the audience by showing off his eating and babbling skills – thanks to Grandpa Fred for the great video.

Toby attended a birthday party for the first time last month – his “old” friend Benjamin turned 1!  These two fellas used to drive up to campus next to each other in the womb, so they go way back.  They’re also both locomotively precocious and hair-impaired, so they have a lot to not talk about.  Because they’re too busy crawling or running.  Kids were outnumbered 2:1 at the party, and Toby had a great time playing with all the grandmothers.  He also liked the enormous cardboard boxes. 

Maybe the confidence that crawling with your belly off the floor brings is what is making him more outgoing.  He was so good at getting around with the army crawl, we weren’t sure he’d ever go to the trouble to master the traditional hands-and-knees version… but apparently it’s still worth it.  He’s faster now that he’s thumping around on four limbs.  He’s also, believe it or not, even cuter.  (As his Noni would say, you’d better put your sunglasses on.)

As his world expands, we made the difficult decision to switch from having Joelyn take care of him at our house to sending him to daycare, where he can interact with other kids.  So far, we’re encouraged to see that he seems to be really enjoying it.  One of my friends from work takes her daughter (just a few months older than Toby) to the same place, so little Lillian and Toby get to spend extra time together.  Somehow this is much harder for me that keeping him home, but I take lots of deep breaths and keep on truckin’.  I was most anxious about the switch to one nap a day, but he made the transition over a few days and now it’s completely normal.  Tresha, the daycare provider, won me over by telling me how smart Toby is – she says he likes to figure things out and can focus on a single thing much longer than the average baby. (!)  Also that he’s a sweetie, but who’s surprised?

Another, smaller, shift with our growing boy is a new bathtub.  We were tired of working so hard to keep him from flinging himself out of the sink, and then he learned how to operate the squirting rubber ducky.  That was the final straw.  The video is mild – water was going EVERYWHERE.  I went shopping for a big plastic tub we could stick in the shower.  It turned out great – all the duckies fit in nicely, too!  Bath time is now fun for everyone (not just Toby) again.   

On the downside, we had only a couple of weeks of respite from Toby’s ambitious teething schedule.  His first molars and at least one bicuspid are already on their way, and this is a whole new kind of teething pain.  He wakes up in the middle of the night crying, his naps are cut short, and he is GRUMPY.  A dose of Tylenol usually does the trick.  No sign of them actually cutting yet.  Poor baby! The last week has been quiet, but they’ll probably be back at it again soon.

Luckily he’s easily distracted during his waking hours with lots of new activities.  He’s tried his hand at climbing, although it’s not yet a regular diversion, and he’s learning how to open cabinet doors.

 

He got this cute little fire truck from our friends the Wilkes; it’s a third-generation Biological Station hand-me-down, and Toby thinks the buttons are great.  He hasn’t quite figured out how to push it around yet.  I suspect it will feature heavily in outdoor play this summer.

The piano is a perennial favorite, and now he has added playing it from the ground to the usual joys of watching (or helping) Daddy play.

But probably his most-loved pastime currently is pulling his books off the shelf.  He can do this over and over again, as many times as a grownup is willing to put them back on.  He’ll also settle for having them read to him.

  The snow finally melted here.  The crocuses are up, and Matt has switched from cutting brush to doing prescribed burns.  It’s a fun change of pace for him, and I like it when he comes home smelling like smoke.  Last week he took Toby out to experience the grass for the first time.  Tobers wasn’t quite sure what to think.

 

Since then, he’s warmed up to the idea, and enjoys crawling around after the neighbors’ collie and trying to eat things he shouldn’t.  We’re looking forward to taking him birding soon.  This afternoon MamaSue and I warmed him up with his first wildflower hike, at the Kalamazoo Nature Center.

 

There are a few birds we can see from our window, including the annual wood-duck pair looking (in vain) for a nest site in the trees.  Ducks perched on tree branches?  Yes.

Cruising and other 9-month adventures

Toby is 9 months old!  This feels like a huge birthday to me - he's been out as long as he was cooking.  It was another few weeks of dizzying development here in Toberland.  It started on the last day of February, with Toby making his way to sitting and then pulling up to standing the same day.  Cruising followed just a few days later, with some coaching from Daddy (who seemed more excited than Mama to see this happen quickly).  I warmed up to the idea when I saw how happy it made the little guy.  We’re catching up with baby-proofing, and even Violet is adjusting well.

All these milestones in less than a week must have been exhausting, because soon after Toby got his second cold.  This one was thankfully much milder, but lingered for a good two weeks.  Before the sniffles were gone, he’d figured out how to stand in his crib and the mattress went down to the lowest level.  There’s something so cute about a baby holding himself up and peeking through the crib slats at you.  Unfortunately he also stopped wanting to go to bed after this – like flipping a switch, once he knew he could stand in the crib that was ALL he wanted to do.  Trying to get a grumpy, sleepy baby to go to sleep when he doesn’t think it’s a good idea is not my favorite thing.  We’re just starting to sort this out a week later.  He more than makes up for it in cuteness, luckily.

The other thing that happened before the cold was completely gone was the onset of his first stomach bug, the night after his 9-month birthday.  Personally, my worst memories of illnesses as a child are stomach cramps and vomiting, but Toby didn’t seem to mind this nearly as much as his first cold.  In fact, he quite cheerfully threw up all over our bed several times and had no trouble falling asleep almost immediately thereafter.  There were only a few hours of crying that made me suspect cramps.  Now he’s been well for two whole days (knock on wood).

This morning we went in for his 9-month checkup.  He definitely got the shorts from his mama (10^th percentile for height this checkup), and his weight ranking is coming down to meet his height, but his head is still at about the percentile you’d expect for such a brilliant baby.  To help us investigate the more subtle aspects of his growth, we got our first developmental survey to fill out for him last week.  It was fun going through the questions and testing things we’d never tried before.  (Will he try to grab a piece of food that is stuck inside a clear container?  Yes!  Will he hand us a toy if we ask?  No.)  As expected it showed he’s ahead in physical skills and a teensy bit behind in verbal skills.  The nurse practitioner assured us it’s normal to have uneven progress, and warned us he’ll probably be walking before he’s 1.  Watch out world! 

Although he may have gotten his stature from his mama, his toothiness seems to come from the other side of the family – Matt apparently had 7 teeth at 8 months.  Toby’s nearly that precocious, cutting his 8^th tooth right now (6 & 7 arrived last week, just after his 9-month birthday).  This will even him up to four on top, four on bottom.  Really helpful when you’re interested in gnawing the leather off the piano bench.  Seriously.  We spend a lot of our time trying to prevent it. 

Interesting oral and aural experiments seem to come along with new teeth.  He can occasionally be heard grinding them, and is babbling up a storm.  His favorite noise to make is now “dadada.” 

He usually says it right away when he wakes up, extra-sweetly.  This new excitement about making sound happened at the same time as a new fascination with hearing the funny ones we make.  He especially likes raspberries, chickie-chickie, and the sound “boo.”

In other milestones, he ripped his first page out of a book this weekend.  And almost ripped the second page out right after that.  I taped it up so you can hardly tell in the picture, but you CAN tell what was on my mind on Saturday morning…

Other interesting things going on at our house…  We’re working on teaching Toby sign language, and I think he understands “drink,” but he’s not using any signs himself yet.  He’s got limitless enthusiasm for taking his socks off.  He’s started eating some grownup food – roast potatoes from our fantastic chicken dinner was the start, followed by chunks of banana and some lentil stew.  Yesterday he even had scrambled egg, and LOVED it.  Thank goodness, because pureed beans were coming right back up, and he needed a protein source.

We’ve had a lovely winter and enjoyed the snow thoroughly.  It's even snowing tonight.

But since it’s mid-March, we’re starting to think about warmer weather ahead.  One of the best ways to celebrate the imminent spring in this part of Michigan is to visit the tropical butterfly exhibit at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids.  It was a fun family outing.  Toby liked the plants the best – they hold still while you try to convince your mama to let you eat them – but he liked the butterflies he glimpsed.

Illness and babbling strike

The biggest theme of the weeks since the last post is sickness.  After Toby cut his third tooth (a week after the second, also on the bottom!) he got sick for the first time.  We had wondered if he was sick before, but this time there was no wondering: a fever of 103ºF, a wicked drippy nose, one sad little boy.  It was hard for us to see him feeling so shabby and have such limited tools to help him feel better.  Then, just as he was starting to not need Tylenol CONSTANTLY, Matt got sick.  And then I got sick.  It was at least a week and a half before the three of us were smiling again.  But we survived!  There was a lot of nose-blowing for probably three weeks, but Toby is back to being a happy, active, (relatively) talkative baby. 

The weekend before he got sick, Toby and I went to our birth class reunion.  There were five babies, the noisiest gathering of that size I’ve ever taken part in.  Fun!  It was clear that Toby is advanced in crawling and grabbing, and has put comparatively little energy toward talking. 

He had also made impressive strides in eating before the mega-cold made him stop wanting to even nurse for a week.  Having started to master the pincer-grasp, he was ready to try feeding himself.  We’d been working with little rice puffs (similar to cheerios), but these big rice crackers are really more his style.

Since recovering from the cold and getting a fourth tooth (finally, one on top), he’s back to eating tons of solids, and has even tried Cheerios at a friend’s house!  We’ve presented him with enough foods that we finally found something he doesn’t like: lentils and rice.  At first I thought it was too chunky (he seemed to say that he COULD chew, but why should he have to?).  So I pureed it.  After eating one spoonful, he squeezes his lips together and turns his head sideways.  I even tried slipping it in between bites of delicious carrot.  That garnered deserved but inconvenient suspicion, so we’re giving up for now.  At least spinach was a hit.

Progress in ambulating has also been moving forward since the pitiful days of a limp and listless sick baby are behind us.  Lately he’s been hankering to crawl faster.  He’s getting pretty good at holding himself up on hands and knees, but still needs to drop down on his belly to move forward.  He’s also enthusiastic about moving UP, and living up to all those great monkey outfits Aunt Margo loaned us.  This earned him his first quality head bonk, courtesy of the futon frame.  And the best reason to crawl?  Kitties. 

Maybe it’s the extra drool and fun of feeling his teeth with his tongue… something has definitely got Toby talking.  The last few weeks he’s been making more vowels and seems to be really communicating.  I was quite sure he said “kitty” to Violet (okay, okay, it was more like k-k), although he only repeated it a few times.  Now he’s enthusiastically yelling “mamamamama!,” especially when he’s upset.  He even started saying just the two-syllable “mama” to me on Tuesday.  Although I’m 90% sure he doesn’t know what it means, of course it melts my heart.  We can’t wait to hear what comes out next. 

I know this blog is usually all baby, but I had to include one tidbit about myself.  I finally got fed up with dealing with the long hair and chopped it off.  As most of the readership knows, I do this every few years.  Over the last few months, I’d been noticing my hair looked a little straighter on top… I figured it was just that I don’t style it anymore since you-know-who arrived.  But once I cut most of it off, the change was clear – my hair is half as curly as it used to be!  Hormones.  No telling if it will ever change back, apparently.  My expression is coincidental, by the way – in fact, I was perfectly happy with my tight curls and am a little weirded out by new my hair.

Since Christmas we’ve had a proper winter here in Michigan, thanks partly to lake-effect snow.  Toby was curious about the white stuff, so I gave him some in a bowl – he thought it was 1) awesome 2) strangely ephemeral 3) after a few minutes, suddenly cold!  Waaah!  We also took him cross-country skiing (pic shows Matt bundled up to carry him).  This was boring bordering on lame, but we’re sure he’ll like it more when he can have his own little skis. 

In just the last few days, the babbling has gone up a notch to multi-syllabic phrases, e.g. “mamababamawa.”  He’s also trying REALLY hard to sit up by himself.  How can this be going so quickly?!

New teeth & first mohawk!

 

That’s right, PLURAL.  Toby sprouted not one but two teeth in less than a week – the first on January 14^th and the second on January 20^th, 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.

Holidays & on the move!

I thought this was a busy time of the year BEFORE we had a baby.  Wow.  I definitely learned to be more efficient this holiday season – although not so efficient that I could stay on top of the blog! 

Toby had another visit to the doctor just before Thanksgiving.  He weighed in at 17#10oz then, and they were very impressed with his standing and tummy-time skills.  We, of course, already know we have an amazing baby, so we weren’t surprised at all.  By his next visit, in mid December, he was already over 18#. 

Thanksgiving was a riot.  Toby started sticking his tongue out just before the holiday, and decided his Aunt Rachael is his FAVORITE person to stick his tongue out at – so much so that he stopped doing it altogether when we got home and she wasn’t around anymore.   

He was also thrilled to finally meet his legendary Uncle Craig, who makes funny faces and tells him what African children have to put up with.  Seriously.  Or maybe it was more like we were telling Craig what American children have to put up with.  (Craig was in the Peace Corps in Ghana, where apparently men are supposed to ignore children.  He wasn’t good at that.)  Being the only baby in a house full of grown-ups looked pretty fun, overall. 

We even got to get bundled up and go on our first family walk in the snow over that weekend.

The Roly-Poly One has been dutifully practicing giggles, and was ready for prime-time over Thanksgiving.  MamaSue turned out to be a great cinematographer.  Matt and I agree that this is the best sound in the entire world.

Things are moving forward on the solid food front, with yams (yum!), avocado, and rice (boring, but acceptable) added to the list by Thanksgiving.  He tried yam at Thanksgiving for the first time, and was able to eat in spite of the blinding flashes from the baby paparazzi.   

He still has days when most of it ends up on the bib, but that’s balanced by sessions when he practically throws himself at the spoon, or grabs it and pulls it into his mouth himself.  Peas are usually a throw-yourself-at-the-spoon event.  

 At Christmas he enjoyed oatmeal and mashed potatoes and has  since tried out the high chair (mixed reviews, but he likes having the tray to grab from) and gotten to know butternut squash (I think he ate too much of it first time, went through in record time…)

After Thanksgiving Toby got a visit from his Noni, who taught him how to play peek-a-boo.  This has since become one of his favorite games.  It’s part of a well-rounded bedtime, as a matter of fact. 

You’ll never guess what else is also part of a well-rounded bedtime: not getting your binky.  Toby was having trouble falling and staying asleep because the pacifier would fall out, so after extensive consideration we decided to go cold turkey about a week after Thanksgiving.  This resulted in a couple of no-fun naps followed by blissfully easy fallings asleep.  Stayings asleep are a work in progress, but we take it one step at a time.  Just a couple of days ago we finally solved the night waking (he’s only up once in the night for now, fingers crossed), but naps are still hit-or-miss – he’s super cheery if he can sleep for an hour and a half, but 30 or 45 minutes still happens way too often.

I’m about to take our Christmas tree down, with mixed feelings as usual.  I love Christmas decorations.  Toby came along to help pick out our tree this year, and showed some early signs of stranger anxiety at the sight of the very tall, skinny fella with the chainsaw who came out to help us.  We had a good time looking at all the trees, but when we found the perfect one and the chainsaw came out Toby was NOT a happy camper.  That was the first time I’ve ever really heard him scream.  He responded the same way to the electric drill a few days later.  Turns out he doesn’t like power tools, I guess.  We’ll work on that.  

 One of Toby's earliest gifts was this Rubiks cube from our friend Bill.  He hasn't solved it yet, but I eventually did - labeled for a 6-month old, but more my style than the grown-up version for sure.

Decorating the tree waited until he was in bed this year, but he’s loved having this big sparkly baby toy in the living room for the last month.  I kept a little corner of it free of lights and hung Toby-friendly ornaments for him to chew on and pull off repeatedly.  He also liked the presents, but we had to stop letting him chew on those because the paper disintegrates and the ribbon dyes his mouth… oops!  Just part of the general paper obsession we’re dealing with the last few weeks – paper is his FAVORITE thing, and he likes to drool it into tiny bits that he can try to asphyxiate on.  Or if it’s a board book, he’ll settle for just wetting it enough that the pages stick together.  Funfunfun.

His piano skills are possibly even more impressive than his insatiable appetite for books – those lessons from Joelyn (“One finger, Toby!  One finger, one key!”) have finally paid off.  (Thanks to Joelyn for getting this awesome video.)

 

Before actual Christmas, MamaSue and Aunt Rachael stopped by for a few days, and Toby got to open his first big present – a 4th generation rocking chair!  His great-grandmother Temme was the first baby to sit in this.

Just before Christmas stranger anxiety started to set in.  Now unpredictably when we’re with a friend of family member he used to find fascinating, he screams instead of cooing.   It’s a bummer, but reassuring since it’s supposed to happen.  Christmas went surprisingly well in spite of that – we spent three days each in two different houses (each of my parents), and Toby seemed to enjoy the activity.  Highlights of the holiday included Toby dominating a ~80lb Great Pyrenees (she ran with her tail between her legs), his first blizzard, baths in strange sinks, and hanging out with his two cousins and all the aunts and uncles on that side of the family.  

 We’ve felt so lucky to get our families together over the holidays!  Traveling is definitely not as easy as it used to be pre-baby, but it’s become even more satisfying to spend time with the people we love.

The really big news post-Christmas is that Toby is now on the move!  He’s been sitting better and better, although he still needs something soft behind him to fall back on, and launching forward from sitting was getting him a little mobility.  After we got back from Christmas he almost immediately started rolling over from back to front, a feat Noni witnessed in early December but refused to repeat for us.  Once he figured out he could get around by rolling, he was all over the living room within two days.  He can easily travel 8 feet in a few minutes when he’s in the mood.  This also inspired him to try army crawling – belly still on the floor, but he can spin around 360º and move forward a few inches.  Exciting!  We’re thinking more seriously about what it will take to baby-proof.  It’s already making diaper changes and bath time more exciting as he tries to explore the ENTIRE WORLD as quickly as possible.

Whew!  I know I’ve left a lot of special moments and precious pictures out of this post, but it’s already so mammoth I’m afraid no one will make it to the end.  So I’m signing off for now, and promising more soon.  Just need to take the tree back down and send a few more holiday cards…