Sweet Potatoes are not his Thing, Apparently (Edited!)

We've been feeding Will again.  I mean, we've been feeding him since he was born (because we're good parents like that.  It's a low bar, but we're clearing it in two and a half of our three cases.*), but now we're feeding him food that is recognizable as food and not just a beverage.

He's on board with carrots and apples, and he's fine with an apple-blueberry mix.  He turned his nose up at pears the first time, which I don't understand, because what is the difference between pears and apples in their mushed forms?  None.  But if kids made sense, where would the fun be?

Last night, for the fourth or fifth time, I tried to feed him sweet potatoes.  He's not a fan.  Not even a little bit.

He's a fan of food, mind you, so when I started feeding him, he was excited.

(I don't have a picture of the first bite, but it was joy then tempered by disgust).

By the second bite, he was suspicious. Still hopeful that what was in the spoon was going to be something he liked, but wary.

Then he thought about it.

And decided that he was not impressed by sweet potatoes.

The funny thing is that he has all the memory of your average housecoat, so he doesn't recall that he didn't like sweet potatoes the next time you bring the spoon to his mouth.  He kept eating them with grimaces for quite a while until he realized that if one blew a raspberry with a mouthful of sweet potatoes, the sweet potatoes became someone else's problem.


*We're feeding Ellie, so that's good, but she's not particularly keen on eating.  We've gotten some fruits onto her list of foods that she's occasionally willing to eat, but nothing is displacing beige carbohydrates.  We're taking steps.  Slow steps.  They involve stickers and praise and sending her to bed hungry.

In the Middle of the Night

Last night was another one of those nights where my job requires me to go and walk around campus until 10:30 at night to make sure that all the children are neatly tucked into bed.  This is a tedious task, and I hate it.  It was made particularly miserable last night by the snowstorm.

This also meant that it took an unconscionably long time to drive home, and then I had to pump and wind down and what have you, so I didn't get to bed until just before midnight.  I had just drifted off to sleep when the baby awoke.

So I dragged myself out of bed, muttering grumpily to myself.

And I went in and picked him up and snuggled him, all the while imagining the warm fluffiness of my bed, and being irritated that I was not in bed.

And then I looked at him.

It's not a good picture, because it was dark in the room and so I had to use a flash, and then the light made him flinch, but he was very, very sweet.

And then I wasn't so annoyed.  We're going to leave aside the gushing about how this is a fleeting phase, and that someday I will miss snuggling my face into the back of his head, and just note that I got less irritated.

I mean, I didn't get enough sleep, because at 5 am people started calling and texting about school closures (Margaret's was closed, mine wasn't, Ellie's wasn't, but she decided that if Margaret didn't have to go to school she didn't either), and so I'm annoyed about that, but my annoyance is directed away from Will.

The Importance of Traffic Safety

This weekend, Will and the girls and I went on the longest, most extended outing possible, taking in several grocery stores, lunch, and a number of scenic parking lots.

Will was quite helpful about all of this, sitting in carts and doing a great job of not being bored.*  So as a treat, I let him sit in the front seat.

He was initially fine with it, if a little confused.

But then he remembered that it wasn't safe for him up there, what with the lack of car seat, and the airbag, and whatnot.

So I assured him that he didn't have to sit there anymore, but could go back to his seat in the back, and he was much, much happier.

It's also possible that the story behind these pictures are that I needed to feed him out on this long outing, and so brought him up into the front of the car, and then needed to put him down while I removed some of the eleventh-billion layers that I had on.  This made him angry, but after he had eaten, and I put him down again while I put the eleventh-billion layers back on, he was smiley.

Possible, but it's not as good a story, is it?  So I wouldn't say that.  I'd just come up with the good story.

*From this, you might get that some of his sisters may have been bored, and may have chosen to show their boredom by lying full-length in the aisles of stores while screaming about not wanting to be there.  This didn't happen, of course, because my children are lovely little beings of light and wonderfulness who never, ever misbehave.  Not ever.

The Upside to Global Climate Change

I'm against climate change.  The flooding we just had in Missouri was terrifying, and I'm not particularly a fan of the large storms that seem to happen because of the rise in temperature worldwide.  Besides, think of the penguins.  But (and I will admit that when balanced against global catastrophe it isn't much) it is nice when the weather is warm enough in the middle of January to spend the late afternoon at a park.*

I stuck Will in the swing for the first time.  And so I'm going to subject you to a series of pictures of him in various levels of enjoyment because they're all so cute.  His first impression was that he didn't much care for the swing.

He was interested in the kids in the next swings, though.

Ellie didn't think that Will completely understood the joy of swinging, so she came to explain.  And then give him a kiss, which made all the other mothers googly about how cute she was.

And then he paid attention to what was going on, and realized that swinging was the best thing ever.

The first joy wore off, and he settled down into placid enjoyment.

So then, of course, I pushed him a little harder.  He liked it.

After Will had finished with swinging (or actually, when I decided that he had monopolized the swings long enough) I retired to a corner of the playground to feed him.  Ellie wanted to swing, but can't get up on the swing or pump her legs to get going.  So Margaret helped her out.

Apparently Margaret told another mother that "My mom is busy with the baby, so it's my responsibility to help my sister.  She's littler than me."

So that sounds like I'm a good parent.

*I'm usually working at that time as well, but I had to be out at school until 10:30 last night to make sure that all the little children went to bed on time, so I stole some time in the afternoon to see me children.  I'm horrible like that.

Delusions of Grandeur

William can tell that there are things that people do that he can't do.  He can see these two sisters of his walking around on their legs, jumping, sitting, looking out of windows, bouncing off the walls and you can see that he wants to try too.

The other day, Ellie was looking out the front window at the lovely view of the trucks going down the freeway*.  Will decided that he needed to be propped up to see out as well.  He made this clear by a series of lunges and screams, and the odd bit of grabbing my hair and moving me where he wanted me to go.

 

He's so excited to be there that all of him is wide-awake, including his hair.



And then I got distracted trying to take pictures of his eyelashes, which are beautiful.



*Come spring, of course, it'll be nice and leafy, so that's something to look forward to, isn't it?

Gender Roles

My children are insane.

Actually, that's not fair.  I'm not sure whether Will is nuts or not.  He seems to be behaving more or less as one would expect a baby to behave, with no signs of mania.  Although his antics when it comes to eating are odd, and his stubborn resistance to learning to roll over and move in the proper order is perhaps evidence of something oddly wired in his little brain.  But I digress.

My children are insane.

The oldest two refuse to wear pants because they are convinced that pants are somehow inherently masculine and that in wearing pants they will be mistaken for boys.  This is, apparently, a fate worse than death.

I've suggested that pink pants are less likely to be open to this misapprehension, but they can't see it.

Anyway, this last weekend, Ellie was going to go around with Leo to hardware stores and whatnot to get some materials for the continued transformation of our basement.  It was under 20 degrees outside, which I feel is a temperature that leggings or tights just can't deal with.  So I said she had to wear jeans.  With tights underneath.

The weeping, the wailing, and the gnashing of teeth was amazing.  I'm surprised that you all didn't hear it from where you were.  And when she was dressed, she was still convinced that people would think she was a boy.

Completely reasonable fear.

Physical Attainments

Will has been working on his physical capabilities.  This morning when I got out of the shower, Leo announced that he had found the reverse gear.  Apparently he scooted himself backwards across the room until he ran into a wall.  Besides that, he is up on his hands and occasionally knees, and he's getting better control of his hands.

He's also working on sitting up.  He's pretty good at it, and can lean over and pick things up.  But he's not particularly trustworthy about it.

The other day, he was sitting in front of me and having a grand old time.  I was holding his hands, but he wanted to grab the strings of my sweatshirt, and so he let go.  I was very impressed with him, and spent some time making impressed googly faces at him until I realized that he was liable to go over backwards.  I chucked a pillow behind him and started taking pictures.

He tried to grab the camera (which is his usual plan in these situations) and it turned out not quite the way he had expected.

I'm sure that he will treat this as a learning experience.

Which is actually more than can be said for me.  Last night, he was standing up holding onto my hands, and he got interested in the strings of my sweatshirt and let go, and I just let him stand there for about 10 seconds before he started getting wobbly and recalled me to a sense of my responsibilities.  I hope that he develops some sense about bodily self-preservation, because apparently I have none for him.

The Mechanics of Eating

So one of the things that I had somewhat forgotten about the baby stage was the period where the baby is supposed to be eating solids, but it's really just for practice and not nutrition, and so the end result is a lot of mess and not a lot of gain on the nursing front.*

For the record, Will is fine with carrots and applesauce, and not that excited by sweet potatoes and pears.  I personally don't see what the difference is between pureed apples and pureed pears, but apparently he finds one.

Anyway, last night he tried self-feeding, and I'm afraid that we may need to do a little work before it really gets there.

You've got to give him credit for trying. And anyway, it's all of a piece with his previous behavior.  For his entire life, he has had a habit of eating whatever happened to waft in front of his face.  He chewed Leo's hand nearly off in the delivery room.  When he's hungry, he'll sample passing chins or elbows until he finds what he's looking for.  And anyway, there may have been some applesauce on that bib.  He has many fine qualities, but he's not yet a tidy eater.

*You may notice a certain amount of ambivalence to this stage of development.  It's tedious, and it means that I have to simultaneously eat my dinner and feed him his, which is a juggling match I don't enjoy that much.

Helping

Will can sit in the basket at the grocery store now, and this is thrilling both for me and for him.  He likes to be able to see what is going on.  I imagine that an endless succession of industrial ceilings and fluorescent lights must be awfully boring.  I like it because it frees up important bottom of the cart real estate for things like groceries.  I realize that wanting to put groceries in the grocery cart shows that I am boring and pedestrian at heart, but there it is.

Anyway, he went with me on Saturday evening to do some much-needed grocery shopping.  We had snow Saturday morning, so everyone had gone out and frantically looted the stores of milk, eggs, and bread.  Apparently in St. Louis it is traditional to make French toast during snow storms.  Or perhaps not, but the grocery buying patterns seem to indicate that.  By Saturday afternoon, the snow had stopped, but the people had all done their shopping.  It was brilliant.  Very calm and soothing.  No one to bother us, lots of space to dither in the aisles.  This feeling may perhaps have been somewhat aided by the fact that Margaret and Ellie stayed home, but I'm sure that was negligible.*

I think Will enjoyed it too.  He seemed to want something in his fat little paws, so I gave him some parmesan cheese to chew on hold.  He began furtively.

As he realized that I was just the sort of permissive parent that would let this sort of thing go on, he became more obvious about his depredations.

He found it somewhat hard going, I think, but it kept him interested.


*I'm not.  Grocery shopping with one preverbal, non-ambulatory child was AMAZING.  It might be even better than grocery shopping alone, because then my stream of inconsequential nonsense could be assumed to be directed at the baby, and I didn't look like a crazy woman.

New Year's Resolutions

I know, I know, it's starting to seem like I only update occasionally as a sort of a teaser, and then I lapse again, and you're feeling strung along and lied to and it's all terrible.

Trust me, I know.

And I'm imagining Will's complaints 10 years from now when he finds that all of Margaret's and Ellie's milestones and what have you are painstakingly recorded and he's got nothing.

Well, not nothing.  Evidence that I did try, but just couldn't maintain interest.  And I see his point, I really do, but I'm mentally reminding him that he's going to get three years at home after his sisters have left, and since I'm currently employed (which is what's causing this lack of blogging) we will have more income and he will benefit from that.  Better vacations and all.

When not having imaginary future arguments with my children, I decide that I must do better.

So here is Will's 6-month check-in.

He had a doctor's appointment this morning, and the doctor wanted to know if he was grasping at things.  He's just spent 10 minutes while she was there doing this to the exam table.

He's also, she says, "long and lean," which I suppose he is by numbers -- 50th percentile for head circumference, 75th for weight and 90th for height -- but no one looking at that baby would say "lean."

Chubby.  Chubby is the word for those thighs.

He's not babbling (even though I gave him a hard deadline of today), and he won't roll from his front to his back, even though he can do this.

I think it's just stubbornness.

In other exciting news, we convinced him to sleep without his arms tied down, and that has begun (slowly, very slowly) to lead to better sleeping at night.  Now he sleeps like a zen baby.  It's adorable.

Fabulous, Darling, Fabulous

Ellie's path to superstardom has started small; she was in a local tv spot about a gift shop and candy store which is owned by people our nanny knows.  They thought that Ellie was adorable, and asked if she would be a kid looking at toys in this program.

So here's the link.  It won't let me embed the video, so you'll have to go to the page and look at it.  She doesn't appear for long, but it's adorable.

She had a great time doing it, and was paid in toys.  The cutest thing about the whole arrangement was that although she has retained exclusive title to the stuffed giraffe she acquired, she brought home another toy that she decided to share with Margaret because, as she explained, "that's what nice sisters do, isn't it Margaret?"  Margaret agreed, but looked as if she might want to further explain that that was what nice younger sisters do.

Must Have Been Something She Et

Margaret was sick this weekend.  Well, she was sick Thursday, and so didn't go to school (and was quite adorably worried that she might have missed something that she needed to make up).  Friday, she seemed better so we sent her.  All was well.  Saturday she did fine, and then we left her with a babysitter and went out to dinner.  Leo went back to hang out with his brother (who was visiting) and I went home.  The babysitter left, and I settled in for some peace and quiet.  Five minutes later, a vomit-covered Margaret came downstairs.  I washed her, remade her bed, started laundry, and disinfected the house.  It was not soothing.  She's been fine since, but we've been wondering what might have caused it.  

Then this morning, I snapped this picture.

I found myself muttering "Spend all of my life raising children to feed ruddy Margarets?  Not me."

Anyway, she seemed fine.

Irony

So I have been bad about posting things here.  Very bad.  Part of this was because the time that I am sitting at my computer without people on top of me occurs when I am at work, and I have only been at work for 5 hours a day (while still doing my entire job), so things have been a little hectic.

Luckily, at this very hour and minute and second, I'm proctoring a standardized test, so I can write a lot of things without interruption.  Even if I would very much like to be interrupted.

Look, here's a picture that proves how busy I was just a few weeks ago.

At the end of every quarter, we write comments for every student so that their parents can understand exactly why they got the grade they got.  First quarter is a problem, because there's no break attached to it, so people have to teach the next week while they're trying to get comments done.  I was particularly slammed, because I was working this part-time thing.  So here I am trying to type my comments with Will.  He wasn't helpful.

Anyway, on Monday I start back full time, and although I won't have as much time to take pictures with my children, I will have a lot more time to write about them, so that's something, anyway.

Before I go and plan my classes for the next month, I'd like to leave you with a family picture.  It's about a month old, but is all of the kids on their great-grandparents' bench at the zoo.

Kindergarten Baby*

So, Margaret started kindergarten.

It doesn't seem like much of a change -- she's actually going to less school per day than she was last year -- but it's emotionally different.  She looks so big when she goes into the big brick building with her oversize backpack.  I think I can see her growing every day.

Ellie misses her something terrible, and her school doesn't start until September 9, so things are a little rough at the moment.  But Margaret is having the best time ever, and Ellie is slowly coming to terms with the fact that she isn't five, and she doesn't get to go to kindergarten.  It's been a tough transition for her, though.  We went to the playground the first day Margaret was in school, and Ellie lay under the bench I was sitting on and moaned about how she didn't know what she could do, and none of my suggestions were interesting to her.  It was very sad.

But Margaret likes kindergarten, so that's good.

*We've been reading Ramona the Pest as a cautionary tale, so the "kindergarten baby" insult is on my mind.

The Agony

Ellie went to the zoo yesterday, and as a special treat, she got her face painted.  She wanted me to take a picture of it, so I was so involved when we began to discuss her need for a bath.  The penny dropped that a bath might remove her face-painting as I took the pictures.  You can see this realization skittering across her face.

The point should be made that I agreed to give her a bath without washing her face, but she rubbed a wet hand across her cheeks and destroyed the butterfly all on her own.  So I'm not a cruel, face-painting-destroying person.  Nor do I take pictures of children who are suffering.  I mean, I do, but only because I was already taking pictures when I apparently shattered her world.

She recovered, eventually.

She's THAT child

So Margaret started playing soccer this week, and because I am a good mother who reads the guidelines about equipment requirements, we went and bought cleats and socks and shinguards.

She wanted pink.

Pink.

Pink.

Ugh.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with pink, but it is a bit much to have to buy pink shinguards that no one is going to see because of the mandatory socks (pink, in this case) over them.

But I got them, because she should get to pick what she wants, within reason, and the pink is just barely within the bounds of reason.

Isn't she cute?

Anyway, practice yesterday was canceled because of the rain (there was rain, lots of rain), but on Saturday, she had her first practice, and it was interesting.

She picked flowers off the field and came over to bring them to me.  She hugged me.  She stopped playing to yell that she loved me.  She was, in other words, that kid.  I have failed as a soccer mom.  I will do better with Ellie, I promise.

Dianthus Barbatus

We have not suddenly become a botany blog,* but dianthus barbatus is the official name of the Sweet William plant, and I have a habit (which I need to break) of calling him Sweet William.

Because he is sweet.  Look at this.

See?  Very sweet.  And also William.

*Though here is a very cute picture of William in the garden, which is like being a garden blog, right?

I am a bad mother

It's been four weeks since my last blog post.  I feel bad, but also part of the reason that it has been so long is that I have not had time to sit with my computer and both hands in the last four weeks.

Will continues to grow and sleep well; he's big on eating as well, which is part of the reason my lap has not been unoccupied at any point recently.

He's also spending some time bonding with his father, learning to watch the Cardinals games whenever possible.  Sometimes he even watches with his father.

Another exciting innovation is that he is taking bottles.  Honestly, he likes food no matter how he gets it, so there was no trouble introducing it.  But it does mean that I can get a little more done.  After I've pumped.  Which takes longer than feeding the baby.  This is a highly inefficient system, but it is facilitating my being at work right now blogging about being at home.*

Anyway, things are going well.  I'm back at work(ish), and so this space should have more going up in it, because I'll have some time alone with my computer.

Will continues to do well.  We had his 2 week checkup, and it turns out that he has grown 2 inches since birth (in length, not girth; they didn't measure girth, and it might have grown 2 inches as well).  He's gained a pound as well.  We need not worry about him.

He spends most of his evenings eating constantly.

During the days, he sleeps, eats, or is mauled by his sisters.

Great fun is had by all.

The Sleepy Baby

Perhaps I didn't record it on this blog at the time, because I tend to try to present a carefully curated and rosy view of parenthood that doesn't involve admitting that I'm about to have a nervous breakdown, but Margaret's first few weeks of life were very stressful and sleep-deprived, and I was pretty certain that I wasn't going to be able to hack this parenting thing.  She didn't like being put down, and she didn't like being swaddled, but she really didn't like not being swaddled.  I went to bed at 7 and left Leo holding her on the couch until she grudgingly gave up and went to sleep, and then she was up every 2 hours or so to eat.

When Ellie was a week old, I asked the pediatrician if there was something wrong with her, because she slept so much.  When she told me that that was normal, I thought that I should have a retroactive discussion about Margaret's lack of sleep.

Will, it appears, is more to Ellie's way of thinking than Margaret's.  He's a good little sleeper, both at night (I've gotten at least a 4-hour stretch out of him every night since he was a week old, and he's pushing 5 and a half some nights), and during the day.  He seems to have decided to have two alert periods, one in the morning and one in the evening, with a lot of high-quality napping in between.  Of course, during both of his awake periods, he seems to feel the need to graze, so there are a couple of hours at each end of the day when I am pinned to the couch.  We will see how that works out.  I feel that other people may think they need things from me from here on out.

One of the nice things about Will is how good he is at relaxing.  It's like we have a boneless baby sometimes.