12 months and counting, continued

the sixth month
~daddy dates~ i'm just going to be blunt. leaving blake alone with marcus worried me. from day one, i had been b's sole caregiver, forever at his disposal. and on the off chance that i wasn't the one "care-giving," i was looming in the background, micro-managing. it's not that i was worried that marcus couldn't handle blake or figure things out. i just really felt like i knew what he needed, when he needed it. giving up that control was almost beyond my control. i can't really explain it. but it happened. daily. much to marc's annoyance, i'm positive. in the first five months, i had only left the two of them alone for a few hours on two occasions. for both, blake cried for a ridiculous portion of the time, leaving dad and baby incredibly frustrated with one another. (now that i am reflecting on this, it seems clear to me that this only occurred because i was always taking over at home instead of letting marc figure it out! shaking my head again.) needless to say, i had a fear of going out for more than 30 minutes at a time. so we lived that way. but when the new year rolled around, i was in desperate need of a haircut, some new clothes that would actually fit, and a some overdue molly time. and by molly time, i meant a long, consecutive amount. marcus was incredibly understanding of all of this, somewhat to my amazement. and so we made a plan.... marcus and blake would drop me off at the mall in order to meet said needs. meanwhile, they would make a long drive out to bass pro and enjoy a little male bonding. :) we planned according to blake napping on the car ride and prepared his future bottles and diaper bag. if it wasn't for the "plan," who knows how much i could have actually enjoyed myself away from them. but since we did have one, i set in my heart that i was not going to micro-manage from my cell phone once they dropped me off. if marcus needed me, he would ask. and he never did. before long, i was basking in the solitude of my day. after five glorious hours alone, i headed to the exit. when the boys pulled up, i half expected to hear screaming from the back seat and be snapped back to reality. but quite the opposite. both were practically glowing. it was then that it hit me that this day away was not just for me, it was for all of us. giving them room to learn about and from one another proved to be a priceless experience. he did go on to tell me the details of their afternoon together, and i actually felt a great deal of pride in my boys. so capable! who knew? :) nowadays, one of my most favorite things is hearing about moments from daddy/blake days. they are the kind of precious moments that all three of us can cherish.
~free "classes"~ in december, some good friends invited us to a christmas sing-along for families. i was intrigued, because it took place in the music classroom of their daughter, who was just over a year old. a baby music class! i went fully expecting to be enlightened about how these people can actually teach babies! of course, it was great to see our friends, and the experience was cheery and spirited, but by the time it was over, i was feeling enlightened in a totally different sense. for years i had been hearing about baby classes...swim lessons, gym, yoga, sign language, music.....the list goes on. it's enough to leave parents stressed about what their child is potentially missing out on by not attending this long list by the time they're three months old. but the gift of this classroom experience was that i left saying what everyone, deep down, already knows......this is something i can do at home. for free. sure, i wanted blake to have experience with music and rhythm and motion and rhymes....but would it ruin him if the music came from pandora? the rhythm was from bouncing on my lap? the motion and rhymes were from things like patty-cake? of course not. i left the music classroom with the gift of letting myself off the hook. would i be doing my child a disservice by preventing him from going to these kinds of classes? up until this point, i was pretty nervous about the prospect of this. and pretty nervous about broaching the subject with my penny-pinching husband. but there are other ways. my mom didn't take me to any baby classes. she took me to the library every week. and, lo and behold, i was reading before i went to kindergarten. she let me wear floaties until i was 4 and then started proper swim lessons. and, miracle of miracles, i was on a swim team for the next 7 years. i didn't touch a musical instrument until i started piano lessons at 5, yet somehow i managed to learn the skill. my mom didn't prep me with infant-toddler classes. she just did what every great parent innately does...she gave me experiences. and life is often a better teacher than any class will ever be. so i went home that day, put on my teacher hat, and started planning a life of experiences for blake. cds, radio and impromptu a cappella singing; check. daily reading and weekly library story time; check. park visits, sand box digging, playing chase, and homemade obstacles courses; check. baby sign language books, websites, dvds, and a little old-fashioned perseverance; check. bouncing in the swimming pool and blowing bubbles in the bath tub; check. the reality is, the older he gets, the more creative i become and the more fun we have. :) and all for the price of.....zero.

(disclaimer: while i do see the value of baby classes for child socialization and [more likely] parent socialization, i am a tight-wad. so there's your real reason.)

the seventh month
~becoming blake~ it is right about this time that we began to really meet blake. by this i mean that we started to see tiny glimmers of a personality coming out. he was no longer a little butterball blob of skin, but was slowly showing intrigue, sadness, and frustration in his eyes. his eyebrows became a lot more active. he giggled at silly noises or faces, and expressed curiosity with new textures, foods, objects. he tried to mimic us. he started to make his preferences known. a real individual was starting to take shape. two things of note as this change was occurring....first, a recurring statement in our house had always been, "this is a little human!" we both said it as though we had to remind ourselves, out loud, that he was actually a real person. babies seem deceivingly similar to pets the first several months. they don't react to you much, but you sure better react to them. you kind of just feed them and clean up after them and make sure they have a place to sleep. but for the first time, we found our "little human" revealing himself to us, without having to remind ourselves. there was a person in there! second, we had kind of been mulling over the name blake for the first few months....we weren't second guessing it, but kind of wondering if he really seemed like a "blake." in all honesty, it was hard to tell. i mean, what is a blake anyway? my mom then made the valid point that our precious baby would become blake to us. all prior notions of what other blakes were and looked like would be overshadowed by who our blake evolved into. she couldn't have been more right. thinking about who he is now, with all of his personality just bubbling out of him, there is no mistaking that he is blake. our blake. exactly the blake he is supposed to be.
~blame it on teething~ our friends had a baby about a week before we did. it has been fabulous to "compare notes" with them and share stories as our boys grow older. when their son started teething at three months, i prepared myself for blake starting soon. i knew that he might get cranky or restless or drooly or snotty. but since he had never teethed before, i didn't know what combination to expect from him. so when he was about three and a half months, i began to look for signs of emerging teeth. if he had an off night, i felt pity for him....maybe he was teething. let's slap on some orajel and rock for a little longer. if he was cranky for an afternoon.....maybe he was teething. let's get out the chew toys from the freezer. if he seemed exceptionally drooly (which was literally every day).....maybe he was teething. let's bust out the drool bibs and gum stimulator. this was a weekly occurrence. little did i know that he would not bud his first tooth until he was nine months old. yes, that's right. i spent over five months looking for teething solutions when they had absolutely no relevance. it seems even more silly when i realized that he isn't that "bad" of a teether anyhow. when i actually saw the first tiny tooth just starting to crater its way up, he had only one "rough" afternoon. the rest was cake. not a care in the world. he now has 7 teeth and you would never know that teething is even an issue for babies. mr. carefree. i'm counting myself blessed on this one.

the eighth month
~he won't remember~ during the first year, i had been feverishly trying to capture every "first" that blake experienced. it is amazing to think about how i get to witness everything this tiny human sees and does for the first time. everything is new. i remember when he was only a month or two, he would be so captivated and calmed by being outside. and it dawned on me, everything is so bright and big and colorful and....new. what must it be like to have never done or seen anything and then be suddenly overwhelmed by everything? surely you don't remember. nor can i. which i suppose is most of the joy of having children: seeing things through them because we have no possible way of remembering it all. and neither will they. which leads me to this story....
the rodeo was in town. marcus' family had recently given blake a cowboy hat, and i was trying to coordinate our schedule to include a trip to reliant...mostly just get a picture at his "first rodeo." as the weeks passed and the rodeo started coming to a close, i began to worry that we weren't going to make it there at all. i was lamenting this fact to my mom when she said, "why? he won't remember it anyway." well what a fine point. why does everything we do for our children when they're babies seem to be self-indulgent? we dress them up in veritable costumes, drag them all over the place, and take a bajillion pictures of them sitting next to something cute....all for our own enjoyment. i practically do it every day. well, maybe not the dressing up part, but the pictures and places can be relentless. but my (always) wise mother really put things into perspective. why not save some of his "firsts" for when he can actually enjoy and remember them himself? in the thousands of "new" experiences he is going to have in his life, there are so few that he will remember. by the time he's old enough to remember how much fun he has playing in the sprinkler, he will have been doing it for years. by the time he remembers going to the children's museum, he will have been there a dozen times. so yes, i do think the bigger experiences are the ones well worth waiting for. i would love for him to remember his first rodeo. remember the cows scrambling around, remember the smells of greasy carnival food, remember riding on his dad's shoulders so he can see the horses over the fence....rather than just seeing that mom took a picture of him wearing a cowboy hat and sitting next to a hay bale when he was 7 months old, just so she could remember. don't get me wrong. i'll keep taking the pictures. but i'm willing to wait for the memory-making moments too. it'll be worth it. thanks, mom :)

the ninth month
~taking off~ marcus will hate me for admitting this, but he used to be a great baby-comparer. we knew all of about three babies outside of blake, but every one of them seemed to be faster, smarter, more advanced when it came to milestones. meanwhile, our little boy was just kind of stuck. he had no teeth. he couldn't crawl. he didn't talk. he was just barely starting to have a day when he didn't spit up. it was a dreaded waiting game for a father. is my boy going to be able to keep up? i tried my best to remind him that 1) all babies develop differently. 2) blake was a month early, so he might be a little behind in some things. 3) he had only been in the outside world for 8 months. a pinprick of time. learning motor/language/cognitive skills from scratch takes a lot of effort. and practice.....lots of practice. so the two of us assumed roles of coach and cheerleader. with daily reminders that those roles required a large dose of patience. he would get it when he was ready. and he would get it. i think it was only when marcus came with us to blake's monthly checkup and the doctor explained the normal window for crawling and walking, that he finally understood. no amount of pushing for it would help. it will happen eventually. and it did, of course. this month was the beginning of it all. first rocking on his hands and knees. then inching. then crawling. then cruising. then standing. then walking. then running. and now there's no stopping him. oh, marcus. be careful what you wish for. :)

the tenth month
~the uninterrupted meal~ as blake became more mobile and we transitioned him more and more to solid foods, i made a sad discovery. my ability to sit down and enjoy a meal from start to finish was rapidly disappearing, like a great vanishing act from a magician, never to be seen again. for starters, preparing 5 mini meals for a mini person each day takes time. so my breakfast and lunch suddenly started to happen in the midst of preparing/feeding/helping him eat/cleaning up. it is a grab-what-you-can, when-you-can. for dinner, i tried a different approach. i am a firm believer in family dinners around the table. so i figured, why not start now? that way it will always just be. i envisioned it going something like this: i prepare the meal. i announce that it is ready. we all fix our plates. we sit down in unison. we converse lightly as we enjoy the food (blake babble included). we clear the table and clean up. sigh. in a perfect world, i guess. around this month, it started to go something a little bit more like this: i get what i need out of the pantry and fridge for dinner. i begin to THINK about preparing the meal and then blake needs a snack. after his snack, he bangs on the pantry door and wants more of something else. he then clambers at my leg(s) and moans for me to pick him up the entire time i am trying to stir a pot and chop an onion and clean up raw chicken juice. then he's thirsty. i manage to distract him for five seconds with a piece of wax paper and scramble to finish the vegetables before he notices i've walked two feet from him. when i turn around, he's digging in the ALWAYS OFF LIMITS trash can and i have to whisk him away, screaming, before he eats potato peels or throws his stuffed animal on top of an empty tomato can. when i finally have everything thrown together an hour and half later, i summon for marcus. he makes his plate. i start making mine and blake's. b instantly needs a diaper change. when we return, marcus is on his last bite. blake and i begin our meal, but now he's only interested in rubbing greasy fingers all over his face and hair. he eats four bites of random chunks and then signs "all done." meanwhile, i am cramming my own bites in between scooping corn off the floor, holding his plate down, getting him more water, getting myself a napkin, and squishing potato out of his nose. i attempt to clean him up and ignore the horror on the ground below while he gets down to play in the living room. this human parasite from the kitchen earlier now wants nothing to do with me. by now i also have indigestion and barely want the rest of my food. i take a deep breath and try to finish my plate at the table alone before heading to the kitchen to wash up. yes, the days of uninterrupted meals are long gone. i know they'll get better as he gets older, but for now i'm riding the waves of hurricane dinnertime. the messy cleanup is perhaps the worst part, but i have become best friends with my dust buster. i never knew that a tiny vacuum could bring me such joy. thank you, charlotte gilder, for the wedding gift that keeps on giving!

the eleventh month
~my little janitor~ speaking of vacuums, i think my child might be destined to become a custodian. i'm sure it is because he sees me cleaning things around the house, but he has an absolute fascination for cleaning tools. with each passing month, i catch him more and more engaged in janitorial tasks. he loves to dive into piles of laundry, both dirty and clean. he's great at loading the dryer....and unloading the dishwasher. trash cans are like a magnet. whenever i have the swiffer out, he has to give it a try. he growls at the vacuum cleaners in the closet and implores me to turn them on. he can dust with the best of them. we've even caught him using the plunger in the toilet! it's admirable really. i wish i had the same zeal for cleaning. he's going to be one of those kids who begs for chores, i have a feeling. maybe i need to get him a little bucket of cleaning supplies for his next birthday. he'd love it.
~the rear-view mirror~ one day i was thinking about what baby items i would definitely recommend to a first-time mom. a few things came up here and there, but all i could really focus on was my absolute favorite....the car mirror. for those unfamiliar, it is a mirror you place on a back seat headrest so that you can look in your rear-view mirror and still see your tiny tot in his/her rear-facing car seat. for the first many months, this item proved to be invaluable in determining whether he was catching a nap or not. but the older he got, the more i realized what a joy the mirror is. it is a chance for me to stare at my child when he is totally unaware. i catch the delight on his face whenever a favorite song starts up. i remember watching him discover how to use his munchkin snack catcher all by himself for the first time. he figured out how to blow raspberries in that mirror. i see him chasing shadows when we drive down a tree-lined street. i love his little eyes darting all around when i talk to him as he looks for my voice. many times we'll play "what does the _____ say?" and i can stare at him while he raises his elephant trunk or crinkles up his duck nose. recently, i captured him in a situation that truly tickled me. it was perfectly silent, and he suddenly started giggling, squealing, and raising his hands high up into the air over and over. maybe it was merely dust particles streaming in the sunlight through the window....but i'd like to think he was talking to angels :) i guess what i love most about the mirror is that he is forced to sit still. he loves the car (thankfully!) and it is truly the only time he is in one place for an extended period of time....which gives me many, many minutes to just gaze and enjoy the face of my very own angel. my heaven on earth.

twelve months old
well. we made it to a year. everyone in the family kept saying, "it went so fast!" but i don't feel the same way. i literally spent almost every second of that first year with blake. i saw and did everything he did. so i caught every passing moment and cherished it. it seemed exactly as fast as it was supposed to be. just life, in real time. i am so blessed to be able to stay home with him and to live each day as his mom. we are a unit. a unit i have always longed to be a part of. God knew what he was doing when he gave me this particular baby in this particular year of my life. it has been an incredible beginning to an incredible journey to come.