things i have strongly considered since becoming a mother:

• chopping all my hair off.
• baby straight jacket?
• covering everything in plastic.
• getting rid of any potential baby hazard. including the tv? yes everything. we could totally be those crazy people on the block who pretend they're from 10,000 years ago, but really they have no possessions other than food and loin cloths and maybe a bowl or two. milo can't choke/scratch himself/etc. with a bowl.
• finding the cat a home where she's loved and appreciated instead of chased around in terror by the squawking, scratching, pinching, tail-pulling baby-monster of the house.

so sweet, it'll give you a toothache.

this morning i sat in milo's room on the floor with him while he played by his bookshelf and i ate my bowl of cereal.

he had already pulled a few books from the middle shelf, and stuffed animal or two off the top shelf (that 30 inches of height has really come in handy for him).

on the floor was one of his favorite books, sandra boynton's Moo Baa La La La (his other favorite is donald crews' Freight Train... both of which are also my favorite to read to him, so i've read them to him a lot, which is probably why he likes them so much? but that's neither here nor there.)

anyhow, so he see's the moo, baa, la la la book, picks it up and then scoots back to sitting in front of me. it almost felt like a very deliberate interaction. "oh hey! it's that book i love! i'll pick it up! okay mom, i'm sitting in front of you, with my book, can you figure out what i want?"

and of course, i'll take any opportunity i can to have milo sitting peacefully in my lap. so i pulled him over and started reading, and he of course burst into a huge grin - although he usually does when we read the moo book and the freight train book, which is how i know they're his favorite.

time heals all wounds.

over 9 months since "the great PUSH" and i think i'm finally at the point where the thought of birthing another child doesn't totally petrify me.

stretch marks, swollen ankles, itty-bitty bladder, gargantuan belly, stretchy pants, preggo brain, nausea, food aversions, not to mention hot flashes, body parts expanding well beyond anything reasonable, the list goes on, but i think i could do it.

NOT that we are currently pursuing the option of getting me fertilized. figured i should probably clarify that one.

granted, it would be nice if i could fit into my summer shorts again before i'm reassigned to the land of stretch-panel waistbands and extra-long maternity shirts that still aren't long enough.

i'm currently still exiled on the island of skirts, and it's summer, so it works, but i miss wearing shorts.

40 weeks...

milo has been out of the womb a full week (minus 9 hours, 2 minutes) longer than he was in the womb.

today we tried using some of my hair mousse styling product and gave him a faux-hawk. it was pretty cute, but he was also in desperate need of a bath, so it didn't last long. (he still doesn't like the chicken noodle dinner mush... about 90% of it was on his face, belly, high chair tray, etc. he did however, absolutely love the mixed veggie and roast beef combo. ate that junk right up.)

after the successful trip to the lake, we've also graduated milo to the full size tub. of course we only fill it so it comes to about his bellybutton when he's sitting, but he loves to chase his toys around and splash about and have the extra room to move and play.

next thing you know, he'll be giving swim lessons to michael phelps.

A+

so for two days, milo slept from 8 pm - 7 am... that was an amazing treat! (especially since one of the days was ben's day off, so we both got to really sleep in.)

now he's back to 6 am, but we haven't had any more middle-of-the-night freak outs like the last post, and i can definitely sing praise for that.

i think we've finally got a pretty decent schedule going - three meals a day, two naps (a one hour little ditty in the morning, roughly 2 hours after he gets up, and usually a two hour stretch in the afternoon after he's had his lunch.) it seems to work, and yet there is still a little bit of flexibility with it, so i think we'll try and hold onto this one for awhile until he finally drops that morning nap.

today, milo has been on a standing streak. i've counted at least four times where he pulled himself up on something (the laundry basket, the rocking chair, the side of his crib), completely let go of that something, and stayed standing. i think 5 seconds was the max, but this boy is on a roll.

monday was also milo's 9 month check up.

he currently weighs 20 lbs 7 oz (48.75 percentile), and is 30.5 inches long, which puts him in the 97.04 percentile for height. meaning he's taller than 97% of the caucasian, male, 9 month olds measured in the 70's. yowza! NBA and ceiling painters, eat your heart out!

between a rock and a hard place... kinda.

last night milo woke up at 1 AM. for months now, if he even wakes up in the middle of the night at all, he'll let out a cry, and within minutes go right back to sleep. last night he was up for two and a half tortuous hours.

worried that maybe he was teething or sick or something was terribly wrong, since this is unusual for him, i rocked him and sang to him and cuddled him to calm him down. that took awhile to even work, and once he seemed calm enough, i would lay him back down in his crib, and he would just start wailing again.

finally, after we'd been at this for over an hour, ben came in to give it a try. when nothing was working for him either, i told him to go ahead and give him what was left of the bottle in the fridge. milo ate it, but he still wasn't happy.

at two hours, even though he didn't feel overly warm, i tried to check his temperature telling him, "sorry milo, but when you keep us up for two hours in the middle of the night, we're gonna stick you in the butt to make sure you don't have a sneaky fever." only to discover that the battery in our vick's baby anal thermometer is dead. so i used the forehead scanner one, which supposedly isn't as accurate, but several readings confirmed that he was in perfectly normal temperature range.

at two and a half hours, after one and a half bottles, we were done and frustrated and had no clue what the little man wanted, except maybe to play or be held and rocked all night - which, while i love him dearly, i'm not going to get him into that habit, and even last night i worried that all we were doing was reinforcing more bad habits.

we let him cry (on and off, he would stop for a moment, and then start back up again) for twenty minutes, i went in to check on him, laid him back down, as he was standing at the foot of his bed, and that made him even madder. i left the room, closed the door and told ben that this just confirms it for me, he needs to be on a more regular schedule/routine. (yesterday was completely out of loop for him, as we went to a friend's first birthday party. milo was over-tired and wired at best, excited with all the new people, but sorely in need of a nap, as he hadn't slept well that morning.) ben and others have reassured me that it's okay to not have a routine or schedule because that's not how life works. which is true...

after i had left the room, with milo still upset, he cried for maybe two more minutes, and then finally just stopped, and it was pure silence, except for the sleep-lamb sound-thingy. he slept until 7:30, and when he woke up, he just played in his crib and talked to himself. when i went in to get him, he was sitting at the other end of his crib, facing away from the door, but as soon as he heard my "goodmorning!" entrance, he let out a squeal and raced to the foot of the crib to meet me. it was encouraging to see that letting him cry last night didn't seem to have any ill effect on him.

but as i sit here typing this now, milo is still awake in his crib, mumbling to himself. he hasn't gotten a nap yet today either, and i'm debating whether or not to get him up in ten minutes to drive the half hour to church, for him to play in the nursery for an hour and fifteen minutes, to socialize for maybe fifteen more minutes, and then drive the half hour back home... which would mean he'd be up the whole morning without a nap...

if i don't go, he'll have a better chance of falling asleep and getting a nap in... maybe?

if i do go, it's a guaranteed no-nap (unless he falls asleep in the car, which i was hoping for with the 45 minute drive to the party yesterday... overtired, he screamed and cried for almost the entire ride there, and only slept for maybe twenty minutes on the way back... so suffice it to say, i no longer have any hope that he'll sleep in the car.)

he's been up for almost 3 hours now, and is fussing in his bed.

i hate missing church, but the lack of sleep from last night is starting to hit, and i'm hitting a wall.

this is my rock and a hard place...

do we live our lives and try to get milo to be flexible enough to sleep and eat around our schedules, or do i put my life on hold while i get him into a more predictable and set schedule.

or maybe there's some middle ground, but until we figure out what that is or how that works (or if it'll even work for the little guy), i'm ready to embark on the life of a hermit while we get the schedule thing ingrained in him.

aint no mountain high enough.

over the holiday weekend, we visited some of ben's family in red wing. they have stairs in their home, and while we do, too, ours are creepy gross icky-pooh basement stairs. i will not subject milo to our dungeon basement with creepy gross icky-pooh basement stairs.

but uncle john and aunt jodie's house is a split level, with beautifully finished basement. the stairs are this lovely wood, of even height, and not surrounded by spiders and other dungeon-esque qualities.

so ben sat at the top of the steps, while i brought milo to the bottom of the stairs, and in mere minutes, he had reached ben. seriously, it took him maybe a minute to figure out the first step, and once he had it figured out, he had the polished off those steps like he'd been doing it all day long.

he's also getting better at figuring out how to use his teeth for chewing things like the baby rice puffs so that they don't make him gag, which makes for happy entertainment for both of us. i put him in his high chair with a handful of rice puffs. he likes to double fist it, having a rice puff in each hand, and he eats them one by one. sometimes his finger gets in the way and he bites down a little too hard maybe? but for the most part, i can let him feed himself those puffs while i get other stuff done, like food in his bowl, or dishes put away, or going out for a movie. (ha! not quite...)

lastly, it has become a prerequisite for the changing table that we have an exciting toy to entertain him. otherwise (and even still) he flips over, and gets frustrated when i try to hold him down to finish attaching his diaper, this boy just wants to move, and he is ever so determined to do so.

with that, i'm learning to rotate his toys so he gets excited when he hasn't seen one in awhile and we bring it out again. speaking of which, i think it's time for another rotate.