Jenny: May 2008 Archives

1) I have taught Ollie to bounce in place and smack his butt when we chant "Butt, butt, butt... Baby butt."

2) Lest you think I am a total heathen, I have also taught Ollie how to say please.

Last night Eric and I went through clothes that Ollie had outgrown and sorted them into keep and discard piles. It made me so sad to put away these clothes that I loved to see Ollie in. Honestly, I'm not even sure what we're keeping them for, other than we can't bear to get rid of them. When we were done we'd filled up a big plastic container. There were so many things Ollie looked adorable in, and its all a reminder that time is linear and we keep moving forward as he gets bigger and bigger. How do I reconcile my desire to see him grow up, to see him start reading, to see what kind of man he becomes, with my desire to snuggle little tiny baby him to my chest forever? Both things cannot be. Instead we march uninterrupted towards the inevitable day that he will be a grown-up. Parenting is hard sometimes.

This morning Eric was packing up Ollie's and my lunch for the day while we assembled all of our stuff to go. Ollie calmly walked over, grabbed a fox, bluebird, and bunny finger puppet, walked to my backpack, insisted the front pocket be unzipped and carefully, one by one reached high above his head and packed me finger puppets.

They are sitting on my desk keeping me company right now.

Yesterday he carried a bag of tortilla chips from the car to the kitchen for me, setting them down to crawl up the step to the porch. He also carried a box of Veat from the laundry room (I retrieved it from the freezer in the garage) to Eric in the kitchen. And, last night he helped me bake chocolate cake. He wanted me to hold him while I did it, but he was too heavy, so I pulled a chair up to the counter from the dining room table and then I would hand him the measuring spoons and he would dump the ingredients into the bowl and then whisk for me.

He is a very helpful and sweet boy. 

So Ollie is sixteen months now. Of late I've been bad about mama blogging because I've been blogging about our fun with food. Ollie has been joining us on these adventures. After a brief spell of pickiness, he's gone back to eating all kinds of things again. He especially likes beets and goat cheese. And of course crackers, sun butter, jam, and bread.

He is of course doing new things. He gave me a backrub the other day. We had been doing baby massage with him for a long time, usually while saying "massage the baby" in a funny voice. Well, the other night I was having a bad and frustrating night and while taking a bath with him he pushed behind me and started giving me a backrub. He kept at it for like, four minutes, which is a very long time for a baby (and frankly, about as long as I could get my spouse to massage me either). It was very sweet. He's also still big into kisses and snuggles, which I appreciate. Sadly, unlike Henry he has not said he loves us, but some day.

We are still trying to figure out the language thing. We are supposed to check in with our pediatrician about it today, so Eric is going to talk to her. Lately he's big into saying "bubble." He says it all the time. Over and over. But, he's doing what he normally does, which is to say it for everything all the time and to not use his other words. He's still not accumulating them, he's using and discarding them. Or if he is accumulating them he's not busting them out. I am still not terribly worried because he understands all of our words. I don't know. We have also decided to go ahead and get him vaccinated for MMR, but not to get the MMR shot, to get them all separate. There has been a lot of news recently about measles outbreaks all over, including places like Belgium, and so we don't feel comfortable leaving him not vaccinated. So spliting them up seems the compromise. It also seems like a pain, but we are willing to do that.

Thanks to our friend Steph's book recommendation, Good Night, Sleep Tight, Ollie is sleeping through the night now, pretty much every night, even when his molars (three coming in!) hurt him. It's amazing. He's also fat enough finally that the small Fuzzi Buns are not fitting and we had to go buy some new diapers. We got Kanga Pockets, which are nice. If we knew what we know now, we would have bought all expandables and not messed around with the Fuzzi Buns (which come small, medium, large, etc, as opposed to growing with your child).

Not much else going on. Ollie still loves to read books with us, play in his sand box and water table, he's growing ever more confident walking around and doesn't get upset when he stumbles as much. He knows what an "O" is and how to say it (but can't draw it yet). He still likes to dance, dance, boogie, boogie, and he still seems like a pretty inquisitive boy. He was concentrating on something at the grocery store and the vegetable man was like, "He needs to smile more." And I thought, hey, he's thinking, leave him alone. 

Having him in day care three days a week sucks, but I have so much to get done. I need to get my dis revised, I need to get my cover letter and CV put together, I need to turn a chapter or two into articles. I need to write abstracts for ASTR. Obviously all of this could not get done on a Tuesday and Thursday. But I miss him. A lot. Two days a week was better. It was just right.

The other thing is that I have not gotten to hang out with my mama friends and their babies very much. We have started going to the Farmer's market at the Triangle on Wednesdays and get to see more of them there, but it seems like many of the playdates have died off and that is sad. Luckily Magda and Yuri are coming over today to talk vegetarian cooking, so that will be fun. But, mama friends who read this blog, Ollie and I miss you all.