Here We Go

Baby A has discovered the joy of rattles. He's been grabbing at things for weeks now but in the car yesterday (we don't own a car but rented one to visit LePapa's parents for the weekend) I put a rattle on his lap and observed. It was that classic plastic rattle with the three fruits hanging off of it. (Or maybe I just think it's a classic because D had one when she was little?) Anyhow, with much concentration he managed to pick it up and thrust it towards his mouth. This was the first time that I felt certain that he was using his hands with intention. It's amazing, really, to see this relatively helpless little creature learn how to use his body.

I remember when he was a newborn with limited newborn vision he would stare at the black-and-white Nikki McClure prints that we have on the wall, or at one of my brother's paintings that has a lot of black/white contrast, or out the window. Now he eyes the cat, his sister, and brightly-coloured toys - and one afternoon had a total fixation on D's doll, Chicken. Pretty soon he'll be sitting on the carpet playing with blocks, eh?

An Amusing Rebuttal

In an attempt to explain to D why we limit her screen time, I told her that although movies are really fun, they're not always a good choice because we just sit there watching, rather than playing or exercising. In response she was adamant:

"But movies IS exercise, okay Mama? Movies and running is exercise!"

I envision it as a new tagline for Netflix or something: Movies Is Exercise.

Mont Royal

My lovely cousin has been visiting from the USA. I decided that we should take her up to the look-out point on the mountain at the centre of our beloved metropolis. (Incidentally, this is also the spot where LePapa proposed to me way back in the year 2000!) It was a beautiful day to walk through the woods and then look out over the city. The air was crisp, the sky was cloudless, the sun was shining. As we sauntered toward the belvedere, A fell asleep in the sling and D was enchanted with the very tame squirrels. What a perfect morning outing, I thought.

Except.

Shortly thereafter and until we got back to the car, D had a huge freak-out. First she started whining that we hadn’t brought any toys. Then the whining escalated to tearful outrage because we didn’t have any snacks, we didn’t have any change for the vending machines, and the car was “tooooo faaarrrr awaaayyyy!” Yes, I admit that I made some fundamental parenting mistakes: I didn’t bring the stroller and I left the snacks in the car. Sigh. As if I haven’t already been at this gig for almost four years.

She refused to walk back to the car but wouldn’t allow my cousin to carry her. She screamed and cried and was totally irrational (“Yes you DO have a special treat for me!”). Strangers offered empathetic smiles (which, frankly, I find more distracting than helpful).

“I’m not being a very good co-parent,” said my cousin.

“There’s nothing you can do,” I replied.

Eventually baby A woke up and I handed him to my cousin and I put D on my back in the sling. She felt better immediately and was chipper again once she’d had some food. Back home later that afternoon, we processed what had happened and apologized. When her uncle came over for supper tonight she summed it up for him: “Guess what, Uncle D?! When we went out today I was extremely grumpy!”

Félicitations!

It was a tight race between Grand-maman Danielle and Larry M., but the winner is... A's grand-maman! Félicitations à toi - je t'envoie la photo sous peu. For the record, A weighed in at 13 pounds 12 ounces. He is 63.5 cm long and his head measures 42.4 cm.

Thanks for playing, commenters!

You Could Win!

I've decided to host a little guessing game contest on this here blog. It makes me feel like a real mommy-blogger geek to do this but whatever. So, yesterday we took baby A to get some shots* and he was weighed for the first time since our last midwife appointment in August. How much do you think he weighs? Here are the previous stats:

At birth (July 7) he weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces.
On July 25, he weighed 8 pounds 10 ounces.
On August 25, he weighed 10 pounds 8 ounces.
On November 17, he weighed...???

Leave your guess in the comments and I'll announce the winner on Monday night. The prize will be... ummm... a really cute photo of baby A delivered straight to your email inbox!

And if my mom ends up being the only participant then she'll still win fair and square and all my gazillion other readers will be jealous, so there!

* Baby A didn’t seem to have any adverse reactions to the shots but he was certainly upset about them when the needles first pierced his chubby little thighs. When the nurse administered the first vaccination, it seemed to A’s agonized parents that his cry was full of surprise, betrayal, pain and outrage! The second shot followed immediately and his indignation reached new decibel levels. Of course he was fine and calm within minutes. Still, it’s heart-breaking to witness. I found this so traumatic when D was little that I once paid fifty dollars (fifty dollars!) for an over-the-counter baby-friendly topical anesthetic meant to reduce the pain of needles. Financially speaking, I find that a rather embarrassing confession!

Wish List

The four of us were walking home before suppertime and D started listing gifts she'd like for her up-coming birthday:

1. "a Snow White Barbie and all the seven dwarf Barbies"

2. "a real hot air balloon"

3. "a real sword so that when I'm grown up and I go extremely far away in the ocean I can use it for mean guys or if I see a shark"

Vocabulary

I love it when D busts out a word that we didn't know she knew and I get a big kick out of figuring out where she picked it up. Example: walking home from the market the other day, we passed a parking lot full of yellow school buses. "A depot!" she exclaimed. Explanation: we have a book called Down at the Station that has a page about a bus depot.

I was similarly amused when D told me recently that she knew what "smoking" meant. (The subject came up when I closed the balconey door because a neighbour was smoking outside.) "It means dirty," she told me. When I asked her why she thought that, she referenced Sheila and Michael, who are characters in Robert Muncsh's The Fire Station. They hide in the firetruck and get all "smokey" at a fire so that they have to spend days in the bath when they get back home.

Here are two more anecdotes showcasing the way her words work: 

D thinks its funny when we pretend to mix up words. For instance, we were talking about her Wiggles DVD but I was saying "the Giggles" instead of "the Wiggles" and "chest" instead of "Jeff." When D recalled this joke the next day, she remembered me saying "suitcase" instead of "Jeff." She must have had an image of a treasure chest in her head when I said "chest" and that image morphed into a suitcase. (Sidenote: I love the Wiggles cuz they're just so unabashedly lo-fi. They're a barbershop quartet for preschoolers!)

Tonight at supper, D declared that she was done eating. Noting the amount of broccoli and perogies remaining on her plate, I said something like, "It seems like you didn't eat very much." Her reply? "You think I didn't but I really did." Ha!

Warning: This post is about vomit.

When D was quite small she came up with the term "uh-oh mouth" to describe nausea and vomit. It's a versatile phrase that can be a noun or a verb (i.e. "to have uh-oh mouth"). Readers, I invite you all to incorporate this fun new expression into your vocabulary!

This past weekend, uh-oh mouth was in the house bigtime. D had some kind of 24-hour flu bug, or else some flash food poisoning. She threw up 5 or 6 times and spent most of Saturday on the futon. Luckily, she was so articulate about how she was feeling that we were able to provide a garbage can receptacle in time for every incident of uh-oh mouth. In fact, she was quite reflective about the whole experience as it was happening. Case in point: at 4am, she asked, "Why I'm having uh-oh mouth all night long and we're not even in the car and I didn't turn around and around?" (Background info: she gets carsick and once threw up at daycare because she made herself dizzy spinning in circles.) She then talked about how we shouldn't have any visitors because she was sick, and she shouldn't go to daycare because she was sick, and she should watch lots of movies because she was sick.

It made for a very mellow weekend; fortunately, we didn't have much planned anyway. She and I left the house once on Saturday to go for a walk and once on Sunday to go to the pharmacie. It was dark outside when we walked to the drugstore and so D brought along this little light-up keychain thing, pretending it was a flashlight. She pointed it at me, saying, "Let me see if you're really my mom" and pointed it down at the ground as we crossed the park, saying, "Let me see if there are really leaves. Oh - yah."

At the Jean Coutu, she had some money to spend (actually a handful of pennies) and she chose to buy a new kind of toothpaste and some baby forks and spoons. She was disappointed that the cashier didn't actually take her money. I let her buy a trinket from a machine on the way out. She got a mini Snow White and that really made her day. Snow White broke in two shortly after we arrived back home but LePapa fixed her with crazy glue and she's been fine ever since. As has D.

4 Months

My maternal grandfather is 84 years old today, and baby A is 4 months. Hooray for November 7!

Baby A has started to drool quite a bit - so much so that he's often sporting a bib these days. He's also gnawing on his hands a lot. Over the weekend, both LePapa (did you see his guest appearance in the comments of my last post?!) and I remarked that A suddenly seems heavier. I think he may have had a growth spurt last week - which would explain how often he wanted to nurse. He's getting to be quite sturdy. He takes 3 or 4 naps a day and is awake for 2-hour-ish periods between them. He's definitely more emotionally fragile in the evenings and wants to be held, preferrably by his mama.

But he's still as smiley as ever!

Suburban Treats

Let's see...

Halloween 2008: Did we dress her up at 10 months? (Mom?)
Halloween 2009: Was this when she wore that cookie monster costume?
Halloween 2010: D wears a mouse costume to one party and a cat costume to another
Halloween 2011: She is Ariel the Little Mermaid, and goes trick-or-treating for the first time

It was a real TREAT spending Halloween in suburban Toronto. In the afternoon, we took D (and baby A too) to visit her Grammy's kindergarten class while they were having their Halloween party. If we lived in Ontario, she would have started school this year (the rules are different in our province) so it was interesting to see her mingle with the kindergarten crowd. They ate junk food and played freeze dance.

In the evening, the doorbell started to ring and D ran to the door to distribute treats. She took this very seriously. At one point I saw her pick up four treats in one hand and expertly drop one into each bag of the waiting trick-or-treaters.

There were lots of kids out, and lots of houses with fairly extensive Halloween decorations. Elaborate pumpkin-carvings are apparently en vogue. D held my hand as we rang doorbells. She said "Trick or treat" and held out her bag. We had to teach her some Halloween etiquette: to say "Thank you. Happy Halloween!" instead of "But I don't like Smarties!" We also had to teach her the logic of accumulating maximum treats for the future because as soon as she got some chips she was "ready to go home and eat my chips!"


I'm not sure how long we stayed out but we only covered a quarter of my parents' street and she had ample loot. It was the perfect spot for her first trick-or-treat experience. What a delight to watch her discover that yes, these neighbour/ strangers were really handing out free candy! One of the most precious elements of parenting is certainly to witness our children experience such joy and wonder.