Minutiae

I opened this new post window with the idea that perhaps I could start with one random piece of information and sort of stretch it into something worth reading. I mean, I do hold a degree in English Literature (i.e. take a small concept that can be covered in your standard five-paragraph essay, write till your fingers bleed and submit twenty pages of brilliance, thank you very much Professor Poosty-Pants). Not tonight friends. I can seriously only think of maybe one really cool new thing that Iris has done in the past few days: she uses a walker.

Of course now my mind goes straight to your standard, geriatric tennis-balls-for-wheels style walker (happens every time I tell someone about Iris in the walker), but I'm pretty sure everyone knows that I mean a baby walker. Is that what people call it? I've heard jumparoo or something, but I think that's the wheel-less alternative for folks with dangerous stairwells. ANYway, Lola's old walker has been recently exhumed, and I got to see Iris like, walking... in the walker. Her little socks were actually sort of grungy on the bottom from walking around today! What kind of person's feet get dirty on the bottom side? Oh yeah that's right, the sort of person who WALKS (ish).

Oh excellent, I just remembered something else! Iris is thisclose to being able to hold her own bottle. From almost exactly the time that she started staying home with Kyle during the summer she has enjoyed bottles with intense aplomb. There is always a bunch of bouncing and panting, and just wanting to get the bottle to her mouth so badly that she gets all worked up and can't eat. These little fits of love for the bottle have always included this crazy thwacking at her face for the first few minutes of bottle time. I always thought she was just really super stoked to be eating, but as the motor skills develop, I can see that she did have ulterior motives in mind. She's been doing it for so long I didn't catch on as fast as I might have, but she's been honing her ability to actually grab the bottle with her hands and hold it up. She's aaaalmost got it, and it's so cute.

On the honing of the motor skills note, Kelly and I watched Iris nearly pick up a bottle off of the table and bring it to her mouth. She was sitting in the bumbo seat (it's that little molded foam/plastic thing that looks like it's made out of roller coaster ride parts) on the kitchen table, and the half-empty bottle was sitting directly next to her. She reached down with her left hand and grasped it by the nipple, then hoisted it up off of the table just high enough to grab the body of the bottle with her right hand. Then she struggled for a few minutes to actually lift it higher than three inches off the table because it was a glass bottle, and full of liquid, and we can really only expect so much of the muscles of an infant. Still pretty cool to watch though.

I'm telling you, tomorrow she's going to ask me for something in a full sentence, perhaps even in another language, and I'm really not going to be that surprised. I'll be sure to let you know when she solves the formula for cold fusion though.

Six Monthiversary

Dear Iris,

You must have had some foresight that today was not going to be an ordinary Wednesday. We began this day together, just you and Mom, alone in the downstairs bedroom reading (me), and trying to shout down the house (you). About 45 minutes into this glorious August 26th, we finally decided that sleep is in fact, not for suckers, and fitfully rested till the sun came up and Dad came downstairs to figure out why he slept so well for the first time in six months.

As I am sure you remember, I wasn't terribly pleased with the fact that we had to get up and have a midnight party. I realize now though that it afforded us the opportunity to spend the first hours of the day alone together, and that I got to see you the first moment that you became a six month old baby. You must have known that I would carry this memory with me forever, like a gift, or why else would you have so vehemently kicked me in the gut for the hour preceding our departure to the downstairs? Good call, kiddo.

When you were very, very small, Dad and I used to walk miles through the house trying to help you to calm down, relax your tired little body, stop fighting long enough to sleep for longer than 20 minutes. One of those days, as I lapped the living room for the 7,083rd time, I caught our reflection in the big mirror and paused. In that brief pause I reminded myself that on that day, you were nearly three weeks old, you weighed eight little pounds and you smelled like the ocean. I felt in that moment more solidly than I ever knew to be possible that you would grow so fast, and someday I'd fuzzily recall our reflection there in the living room mirror and know what it means to watch time slip away without notice.

I saw you at four, seven, fifteen years old. I saw us living in a different house, a different state, you learning - everything- and moving to your own house, making your own choices, making your own mistakes. It should have affected me more, this realization, but then you were so new and it felt at the time as if nothing would ever change. It felt like time was speeding out of control and standing still at once, and I chose to believe that we would always be like that, snuggled together like we were still part of the same body. Even now, after half a year, I can feel you wiggling and nudging me behind my bellybutton. No matter how old you are, I will always look down to see if I can tell which extremity you're poking me with, even as I realize that no, there's no one there. It's heartbreaking for a tiny fraction of a second, but then, you're here:

Time is flying; has flown. You have now entered the second half of the first year of your life. You like carrots and books and bunnies. You have friends and you like to stick your hand in their mouths. Your are known as The Whiz, Jellybean, Lou, I, Luella (Druella/Truella/Cruella), and Baby Iris. You have one tooth and you don't crawl, but you do wiggle backwards in a crawling-esque fashion. You are ticklish everywhere, and from the first day that you found your voice, you have greeted every morning with a laugh and a song and a hearty wiggle session.

So grow if you must, but remember that to your Dad and me, you'll always be our baby, our Iris Luella, and no you may not wear that skirt out of the house.

The baby is big. No, like, BIG.

Welcome to yet another meandering post from your friendly neighborhood blogger over here. I'll get down to the important bits quickly: Iris had her six-month well baby visit yesterday so we got some updated stats.

Height (length?): 26 inches

Head Circumference: 17 inches

Weight: 18 lbs. 1 oz.

Honestly we're not sure on the ounces because she kept thrashing and kicking on the scale. It vacillated between 18 lbs. 1 oz. and 18 lbs. 5 oz. We just sort of guessed after a few minutes of trying. I don't have the print out with me, so I'm not sure on all the percentiles, but I do know that her weight is near the 90th. I'll get back to you on that one. She didn't get her final (for now) round of vaccinations because apparently there is some kind of shortage going on on the medical world, but I'm having Franzia anyway, as it's become somewhat of a ritual at this point, and I am nothing if not a sucker for tradition.

The doctor verified that there is definitely a tooth present, and its mate is soon to make an appearance (aside to Aunt Pittypat: TOLD you so! ok, ok, just joking. But seriously? One bite from that kid will make you a believer). I tried to get pictures, but the best I could do was a nice shiny view of the underside of her tongue. She consistently covers that freaking tooth with either her tongue or her bottom lip whenever we try to expose it.

I asked the doctor about how to get Iris to sleep better, and she sort of lamed out and explained that everybody likes to cuddle, so I should just try to be nice. Or something. I don't know. I mean, I know it's easy enough to peg me as the giant flaming hippie of the family, but if you met this woman, you'd completely reassess that stance, family or no. I mean, I just wanted someone who would understand our desire to practice attachment parenting, not condone nursing till the kid is 13. I do like her. I think she's a better fit than I ever could have asked for, but I guess you can never find the perfect doctor when it comes right down to it. She's just a little more...ah...hand-holdy than I am.

For example: Yesterday our appointment was at 4pm. We arrived about three minutes late, so I'll consider that on time for the sake of our story. There was one other family in the office, a Mom with two sons, aged eight and eleven, approximately. The older one was sort of wandering around the waiting area, chatting with Kyle and me, making faces at Iris, and intermittently checking on his brother, loudly wondering "what was TAKING so long!" We waited for over thirty minutes for some news of when we would be seen. At some point we heard a scream and some insanely frantic crying, followed by sounds of a struggle. Eight year old scurries out from the back with a huge puffy face, bellowing "I DON'T LIKE SHOTS. I DON'T LIKE THEM." We take this to mean that he was just the recipient of a shot, and wait for our turn. But then this kid goes back to the room and dithers around with Mom, Doc and nursing student in-training person for another ten or fifteen minutes while soothing voices and gentle pleading from the adults mumble out of the room. I can only assume they're gearing up for another shot.

A few minutes later, we're taken back, Iris has her check up, we are again reminded of how beautiful and advanced and perfect she is, as I am sure they tell all parents. The visit ends. As we walk back to the waiting area, we hear, "Okay, let's try again for that shot." As in, that kid NEVER GOT A SHOT. He was that freaked out about the prospect of having to get one. They made us wait for over 40 minutes because that kid is afraid of needles. I'm sorry, but that is the time when you hold that kid down, stab him in the arm and move along. I know that my situation was unusual, but at his age I was getting blood draws on a somewhat frequent basis. I might have cried about it, but I sat there and dealt with it.

I should be more understanding. I know it's scary. But they couldn't just see us first and then deal with little Mr. Whiney Pants later? Maybe it was the Mom's choice to try to cajole some sort of agreement out of him, but it seems to me that a stern enough presence on the side of the medical professional could have gotten the job done in a much more timely fashion.

Ok, rant over. Let's recap: Baby is huge. I now know that whatever modifiers are used to describe my parenting style, "indulgent" will never be one of them, but was anybody really surprised at that?

OMG, Y'ALL

(please pardon my slip into what can only be described as Britney Spears-ese in the title there. when I get worked up my inner pantsless redneck emerges.)

Iris has a tooth.

It's teeny and white and on the bottom, left-ish side. I don't know how I even saw it in the first place, because she maneuvers her mouth and tongue in every way possible to cover it at all costs. In fact, if I didn't know any better I'd say she was embarrassed of it. Kyle still hasn't even seen it, but I finally convinced him to just stick his finger in there and feel it out. It is definitely there. Finally.

Just Idle Prattle

Didn't the crazy octopus lady in The Little Mermaid sing a song about that? Ursula? Idle Prattle? No? In any event, it's fun to say, and you get the idea. I have things to say. They are not related.

• Haven't taken any more pictures, as I can never tell when The Sleep is coming, and I would really totally stab myself in the eye if I ruined it by screeching "Iiiiiirissss! Iris, look at Mama! Iris! Iris! Over heeeeere!" No wonder she avoids the camera.
• We are having unusually beautiful weather tonight so I thought I'd sit outside to compose this post, but then like eleventy flying beetle things dove down my shirt and attempted to build a nice community inside my bra, behind my armpit or something. It was gross. I retaliated by running inside to strip down and squeal like a little girl and smack at myself till I felt reasonably bug-free. I sincerely hope the cats step up their game on the whole creepy crawly hunting thing. Bring their A-Game, you know what I mean?
• I recently regaled my Mom with Iris' new anti-sleep strategy: Let's postpone afternoon nap juuuust late enough that it can't be called afternoon anymore, but it can't really be called bedtime either, then sleep for a couple of hours and wake up at 8pm all bright and effing bushy!

Mom: You were always a bad sleeper. It's just your personality.

Me: Huh. Yeah, I guess I was a bad sleeper. I remember being like ten

and still having trouble falling asleep.

Mom: No Meg, you are a bad sleeper. Think about it.

Me: Oh.

Me: ...

Me: oh.

(insert foul-mouthed rant here)

• So Iris inherited my awesomely hexagon-shaped toes, and the sleep skills of a ferret on trucker speed. Neat.
• Kyle goes back to work next week, which means Iris goes back to Kelly's house next week. Interesting caveat of that scenario is that I'll have to pick Iris up twice a week from the gym where Kelly works, since our schedules overlap a bit. The only way for Iris to attend the gym's play center, even with Kelly there, is if I am also a member of this gym. So you know where this is going. Now I have to work out and stuff. Let's all close our eyes and picture a reality wherein Megan works out on purpose. I'll give you a moment to compose yourselves.
• I think I'm finally going to cut off my superlong pregnancy hair. It was pretty when it wasn't shedding all over the place, but I've now lost so much of it to daily brushing that it's starting to resemble a poorly managed rat tail. Long hair, I barely knew ye...
• I still feel like there are bugs on me.

Okay, I'm off to bed. Speaking of bed though, have I told you guys about my rampant pregnancy dreams? Just to be clear here NO I AM NOT CURRENTLY PREGNANT IN ANY WAY. NOT EVEN A LITTE. But these dreams, guys. They are so realistic. Normally I can tell when I'm dreaming, but these are just eerie. In the last one, I was eight months along (Iris was still only six months old though. That probably should have tipped me off), and I hadn't told anyone in the family about the pregnancy. I also hadn't been to the doctor for any sort of prenatal care. I woke up in a panic that the baby would be taken from us because of my total negligence. Gah. It's got me thinking though: can I get some input on baby spacing? What are your thoughts here? Is it better to get all the diapering and not sleeping and ramming your head into a brick wall out of the way all at once, or is it better to give yourself a couple of years to recover before jumping back in? I'm very curious to hear your responses.

Now I really must scour my body for stowaway creepy demon beetle things and tuck myself in. Night All.

Crazed Baby Shuns Sleep, Attacks At Random

Iris went to bed at 4:30 tonight, and stayed asleep (intermittently) for like three hours. Then she woke up, attempted to remove Kyle's eyelids with her fingernails, then kicked me in the gut. What's neat is that she can do that while actively sleeping as well. Always knew we had a multi-tasker on our hands. We probably could have shushed and bounced and begged her back to sleep, but I didn't really want to find out what kind of morning wake up time follows a mid-afternoon sack time, so I didn't push it. Of course, now it's almost 9:00 and she's not really showing signs of slowing down. Please to enjoy our attempts at distracting her with Photo Booth (seriously, how did we live before the Mac?)

Heyyyyy! It's a Baybeee! I should grab it...

Crud. I missed. But SQUEEE! It's MY FOOT!

I see you over there old man. I'll cut you.

AAAHahahahaha! Wait. What's funny?

I'm looking at you, MacNevin.

I guess we could say this is Claire's fault. I'm pretty sure she's the reason the first book showed up at my house, so she definitely started this monstrosity of literary obsession in me. But Kelly. Kelly finished it (the jerk brought the remaining three books over when we got to a tie reading that trashy vampire smut).

I read the Twilight series in four days.