First Birthday!

Is it really possible that an entire year has passed since our bundle of joy arrived?  With such cool weather compared to last year, I might have believed we hadn’t made it to June yet, but the inexorable growth of our almost-toddler is clear.  We’ve been through so much in the first 12 months of Toby’s life, we were happy to pause and celebrate together.

In the time leading up to the big day, we were very busy.  I was teaching my first class as lead instructor, a field-based Ecology Lab.  A wonderful experience, but time-consuming, it finished up the day after his birthday.  I was also pushing hard to get a new analysis done for a conference in late June – more on that in the next post.  Matt (the hero) picked up a lot of my slack around the house.  Including playing “open & close,” one of Toby’s favorite games.

In spite of the business, we did take time for pleasure – including Toby’s craziest playdate yet, which involved a sandbox and a water table.  Toby loved them both.  This action shot shows him getting the splashes he'd been recently handing out. 

In the middle of teaching the class, Toby and I took an exciting solo trip to Oberlin for my 10-year reunion.  I wasn’t sure about doing this by myself, but Matt had to work and I knew we could just drive the four hours home if it didn’t work out well.  So, we packed up the car and off I went.  I snuck in a visit with Christina, Eva, and Martin in Cleveland on the way there.  Toby decided to charm his ever-cuter lady-friend by showing off his sock-removing skills.  I think she was wowed. 

At Oberlin, it was wonderful to introduce the little guy to so many people and places that are special to me from my formative college years.  He enjoyed learning how to play banjo with Chad, singing with Mel, falling asleep in a stroller (for the first time) during the venerable Illumination tradition with Cat, playing with other fresh Oberlin babies, and eating falafel with Caroline.  He got his pants FILTHY with his first extensive foray into lawn-crawling.  Several of my old friends proved indispensable once again, helping me juggle a baby in a tiny dorm room on my own.  It turns out the only way to manage without Matt is to replace him with three other people.  

Falafel isn’t the only new thing Toby has been eating; with the help of his fancy new molar, he eats almost everything we do now.  At least, on adventurous days.  Those are the kinds of days when he steals my toast out of my hand or enthusiastically pops lima beans in his mouth.  There are still times when we go back to the old faithful squishies: yogurt, applesauce, and oatmeal.  Yogurt is the most reliable; plain, organic, whole-milk yogurt always seems to hit the spot.  Other than that, changeability is the rule.  There are hungry days when he’s a bottomless pit for spinach and lentil stew, and picky days when a rice cracker and a cup of yogurt is all that goes down.  Today he may turn his nose up at the peas he prized yesterday.  On the other hand, he may decide he wants to eat raw onions like apples.  Really.  I took it away once I realized he was serious.

In spite of the challenges of consistently pleasing the tot, I have found the “food is love” mantra of my childhood feeling more and more true.  I’ve started a Sunday pancake tradition, even though he can only eat one.  Every time we share a treasured recipe with him for the first time, I’m tempted to take a picture.  (We have a lot of treasured recipes).  Even though I'm sure he would be fine without it, we go out of our way to prepare homemade applesauce and send our own food along with him to daycare – because especially when he’s away from us, we want him to be surrounded by our love.  As he gets older and can enjoy more complex foods and remember the stories, we look forward to sharing more of these culinary embraces from both sides of his family.  He’s already making moves toward participating by developing his passion for cookware.  (Note my stealth-video skills, developed to outwit a camcorder-wary baby).

In the lead up to his birthday, he’d been talking a bit more, but still not very many clear sounds.  “Mama” and “Dada” definitely featured often in the babbling, and were starting to seem associated with us, but not enough to call the first word.  He did go through a brief phase of saying “Dadoooo!” which we found nearly too charming to bear.  I decided then that I was switching Matt from Daddy to Daddoo, but then Toby stopped saying it.  Bummer.  His friend Lillian at daycare calls him “Bobo” now… Bobo and Daddoo seems like the title of a hit children’s book to me.  I’m taking plot suggestions.

He did make some ambulatory progress right before his birthday, including getting off the bed all by himself for the first time on June 5^th.  We’d been working on this for weeks, ever since he threw himself off headfirst (scaring me witless yet somehow escaping without even a bruise).  Now he’s a real pro at this handy skill, also using it for couches and stairs.  Sometimes he still gets stalled halfway off the bed, with his feet dangling, and has to be encouraged to push, but he always manages.  The video is shaky because I’m also trying to be sure he doesn’t go boom – he’s so steady now I let him do it all by himself. 

He’s been cruising around pushing his fire truck quite handily as well, even making three circuits around the loop in our house with MommaSue just before he turned 1.

Celebrating Toby’s birthday was a two-step affair this year.  His actual birthday was on a Thursday, and we kept it small with just the three of us and MommaSue.  As is traditional in my family, I started the day by telling Toby about his birth.  This could have been boring to a one-year-old, but I used lots of inflection.  Matt and I headed off to work, leaving Toby and MommaSue to enjoy each other’s company.  I’d fantasized about making the little man an angel food cake for his first birthday, but there was no way I could make it happen.  Sue saw that coming, and brought everything she needed to make the cake with her from Ligonier!  That’s how she spent Toby’s birthday naptime.  This felt like a fantastic present for ME.  Joelyn and Mridul stopped by in the evening to give Toby a present – he loves the Dr. Seuss books that came in the package, but opening the box was still probably the best part.

We had a meal of macaroni with tomato sauce and peas, since those are all things Toby enjoys.  I decorated the cake and lit the candle.  Matt and Toby blew it out.  By dessert, he was so full and tired, he mostly enjoyed his piece by squishing rather than eating it.  Nobody minded.  We were all peacefully in bed before the time Toby had actually arrived the year before.

The little man has been enjoying his presents very much, even the ones he’s technically not quite developmentally ready for.

The following Sunday was Matt’s second father’s day, and we invited over all the local friends who helped us grow and thrive through our first year as parents to celebrate with strawberry shortcake in the yard.  It was our first garden party, and included a spread that I hope would make my Aunt Jean proud (it included lemonade and used her card tables and many of her dishes, so it can’t have been that far from perfection.)  Toby enjoyed himself and it felt like just the right way to mark the beginning of a year of walking and talking.

More on our more recent adventures, as well as Toby’s considerable post-birthday progress, in the next post (very soon!).  I’ll close with this sweet fawn Matt spotted while he was out at work in late May – one of those amazing moments he gets in his wonderful job.

Bouncing Baby Boy

 

Here’s the short update: Toby is awesome.  He is growing and eating, moving faster all the time.  He laughs and smiles a lot, turning his eyes into little half-moons and melting our hearts.  The long update follows.

 

The Toblerone got his first haircut shortly after the last post.  He was working on a serious mullet and I just couldn’t take it any more, so I trimmed maybe an inch off the back, plus a tiny bit from the middle of his cowlick.  No one else really noticed – including Toby; I gave him my cell phone to play with and he had no idea anything else was going on.  (This is also how we cut his fingernails, he’s a VERY focused technophile.)

At the end of last month Toby and I drove down to Richmond to visit with my side of the family.  The weekend was packed with visits, but the little fellow handled it wonderfully.  He ate everything off my plate at Nana’s – notably getting his first taste of her famous fried chicken – and even helped Uncle Dan and Uncle Kenny polish Nana’s kitchen table.

There was also a fun visit with Aunt Jean, a tour of Aunt Cathy’s livestock (Seymour Boar!  Noisy Rooster!), quality time with Grammie and Grandpa Royer, and photo ops with the cousins.  We felt quite spoiled. 

Toby’s latest language development is the glottal stop.  I had previously appreciated this as something common in other languages, like Hawaiian (or Cheyenne!).  When I looked up more about it, I discovered that’s how we do our mid-word “t” in English.  Anyway, Toby got it down on our trip south.  For about a week he would say “hah!” when he was considering crying and not sure whether to commit, but we also used it as a fun play phrase to toss back and forth.  It was obvious he recognized the coolness of this little trick the rest of us have learned to take for granted.  Now it’s old hat and he’s returned to mostly saying “mamama” and trying to walk.  Oh, but he does use his fist to make cute “bababa” sounds.

He may not say a lot of words, but we notice that he’s understanding more and more.  We watch the birdfeeder together a lot, and if he’s playing on the floor and I say “there’s a bird” he’ll look up at the feeder to see what’s visiting.  The first time it happened he looked back at me with a big grin that clearly said, “Mama, we’re having a conversation!!”  Here he is with the kitty, watching a bird that is just out of the frame.

He will also clap on request, including when it comes up in Barnyard Dance.  In fact, clapping continues to be one of his favorite things – he often claps first thing in the morning, as soon as his eyes open.  

 

Books are still a favorite thing too.  He’s getting better at turning pages, and can even handle the paper pages of Green Eggs and Ham, which he insists on having read to him daily.  It’s clear now that he recognizes things in the illustrations.  Every time we get to the kitty in I Love You Because You’re You he has to stop and pet it (this makes sense), and he also gets really excited about the bowl full of mush in Goodnight Moon (no idea what that’s about).  Sometimes, though, enjoying books is just a variation of enjoying paper.  Here he is opening his handmade penguin from our friend Raffica…

A few weeks ago Noni accompanied Toby and me on a lovely day trip to Saugatuck Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan, one of my favorite places.  Noni carried Toby up and down the dunes and was rewarded with at least three hearty bites.  Stalled on eight teeth, the tot has been resolutely working on the molars.  Sometimes this makes him a little chompy.  I managed to teach him (for the second or third time) not to bite ME, so the nursing relationship is intact.  When those teeth start to move, he can’t seem to resist.  He’s lucky to have so many forgiving women in his life.  Noni and Toby also picked up their first ticks of the year (Toby’s first ever, a dubious milestone).

Although he hasn’t taken any independent steps yet, our little dude is definitely closer to walking.  He can stand unsupported for much longer periods.  His knees and the tops of his feet have gotten rough from all the crawling.  One of our favorite games now is “chase.”  When he follows me, I go into the next room and hide behind the furniture.  He comes thumping and giggling to find me.  When I follow him, he crawls four steps, sits up, and waits for me to catch up.  Zerberts and giggles follow, and then he crawls another four steps.  I love it.  He also loves crawling to the bathroom to watch Daddy fill the tub or brush his teeth.  And he’s just gotten so bouncy lately – I suppose baby girls are bouncy too, but the alliteration is too fun.  He bounces on the bed.  He bounces in our arms.  He rocks back and forth on hands and knees, and pulls up on the furniture to bounce on two legs.  It seems like he is never still.

 

It’s probably not surprising then that he’s become noticeably less interested in being carried around.  He still asks to be picked up regularly, as if to be reassured that he can, but he wants to be put down again soon.  I took him to a science fair I was judging thinking that he would love seeing all the bright posters and interesting people, but he yelled the whole time I was visiting displays.  Once I finally put him down, he cheered up immediately and scooted straight for the soapbox car (not the nearest exhibit).  He hung out with the middle school boys without even a glance back at his mama.  They were charmed.  We should probably add “wheels” to the list of things Toby really likes.

Something else new is his deeper experience of the possibilities the kitchen has to offer.  He advanced from opening and closing doors over and over again to checking out what is behind them.  This is truly the next frontier; just yesterday he opened the tupperware cabinet all by himself and started taking things out for the first time.  Watch out kitchen cabinets everywhere.

With the warming weather, going out to play in the lawn is now one of his favorite pastimes.  He particularly likes plucking and shredding dandelion flowers, walking behind his fire truck, grubbing in the dirt, and climbing the stairs (he first did that with Matt just this Friday).  He even got to pull garlic mustard on a workday with Matt (okay, I pulled the mustard; he only ate some of it.)  The mosquitoes are horrible right now, but luckily they seem more interested in us than in Toby.  And every time we go outside I’m thankful for the new research showing that exposure to germs makes healthier kids, because I can’t imagine how I would keep him clean.

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?!