milo the monkey, dolphin, etc.

milo has become more and more aware of his own body and what it can do. lately he's been using his feet as a second set of hands to help hold onto the larger toys.  he's also been repeatedly opening and closing his little hands, almost as if he's practicing a new kind of wave, which would be especially interesting as we have not been emphasizing waving or trying to teach him this basic way of greeting and farewell.

he has also started to explore the higher ranges of his vocal abilities... i believe it was either auntie katrina or uncle jonathan who compared him to a baby dolphin. within these high pitched babblings, he sometimes gets multiple tones in one breath; just the other day he gave ben an "i told you so!" melody. other vocal triumphs include repeatedly chanting "mum mum mum mum" which my mom believes he's intentionally calling out my name over and over.  he's also got Bob Loblaw's name down pat.  despite my mom's enthusiasm over milo "knowing" my name, he has yet to convince me that he understands how to use it, or what a name even is.

and for milo's last set of amazing new discoveries, he has begun the army crawl forward. backwards was getting to be no problem for him, pivots and turns he had figured out as well, but the forward function still wasn't fully operational. well he must have been practicing in his crib, because this morning milo surprised us with a very assertive forward scooch.

this next week my parents will be taking care of milo while i spend a girls' weekend with some of my dearest friends from college, and then ben comes out on monday just when they'll be leaving, so that he and i can get some vacation time together... i'm sure we'll see milo on monday, which will break up the 5 days and 4 nights that he'll be with my parents instead of me, but as his mother, that little worry bug starts to creep back in... what if he misses me? what if he's miserable? what if he won't sleep at night?

i know they'll take great care of him, and ben assured me that i'll probably have a harder time of it than milo will. this will be mine and milo's first night - let alone set of nights - apart from each other since he was born... 

but while i worry i should have started out smaller (maybe do one night apart and see how it goes and move forward from there), i know i won't mind when 5:30 rolls around and i'm still sleeping because i'm not the one with the monitor listening to him play in his crib and wondering if he'll go back to sleep for must 5 more minutes. (thanks mom.)

one, two, buckle my shoe...

well, the very next day after milo's first tooth sprouted, a second tooth began to emerge right next to it, and at this point has already started to cut through as well. on top of this, he's become quite the hungry, hungry hippo when it comes to those mushy solids - even green beans! carrots, peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, squash, he opens wide for all of it, sometimes chomping down repeatedly, like a mini-golf obstacle, and i have to practice my timing to make sure i get that spoon all the way in his mouth while it's wide open.

he's also trying to blow raspberries. so far this has consisted of accumulated drool gathering between his lips, and a little humming noise. sometimes his tongue tries to sneak through, but all it does is bring more drool with it.

and the pièce de résistence? today milo successfully scooched himself forward instead of backward! it was only a few knee shuffles, but it was in the right direction - our boy is officially figuring out how to crawl. we even got a repeat performance after ben got home so he could see it too.

pretty exciting stuff in the land of baby. :)

just another one for the books

awhile ago i bought a baby book so i could physically record all of milo's milestones, put in pictures, etc.... i've also thought of simply someday printing this blog out for him and binding it (or getting it bound at kinko's, or something like that...)

i still have the receipt in the book, though, just in case i change my mind and decide to return it. (at least i hope i've kept the receipt...)

the thing is, i think about it, and in the end, it's just a book, with pictures. i look at all our stuff, and i think, why do we hold on to this stuff? memories, i suppose. no one wants to be forgotten. but it seems very few people are remembered forever, and even within families, you could find an old photograph of someone (old as in, before digital cameras.... will milo even have a concept of film strips when he's older?), and it will probably be fun to look at for a minute or two, to feel the stiff paper, remember the warm sepia tones of pre-color photography, study the details contained within that tiny piece of paper: the expressions on their faces, the dated clothing and hair styles, the objects they chose to be photographed with...

now we live in the digital age, and everyone's a photographer, and we can all have our pictures taken, and no one will ever be forgotten, right? except that even when we find that photograph from way back when, and even if we could identify that in said photo is great aunt sally on my mother's father's cousin's wife's nephew's side (you get the idea...), i still didn't know her, nor do i know anything about her, and while i could probably find her birth and death records, whom she married (if she married), how many children she had, etc. etc., i still have no idea what kind of person she was. if she was kind, or impatient. if she sought out the best in other people or was cynical of everyone. if she wore her hair that way because her husband liked it, or because she liked it.

all this to say, milo is 7 months to the day, and he's cutting his first tooth. i can feel it. and see it. it's the bottom front tooth, i think a little to his right, but it's hard to tell. it feels sharp, and i can't imagine how it hurts, but i'm sure it does. overall, he's still a really happy baby, and while in the grand scheme of things, 10 generations from now, no one will really care that on may 9, 2011 my son milo was 7 months old and was cutting his first tooth, i figured i should still make note of it, just in case i decide to keep that baby book after all.

what's new, pusscat? whoa-whoa-whooooaaa!

milo has discovered the cat, and the cat doesn't seem too happy about it.

it probably doesn't help that the other night, ben was holding milo in a super-man pose as they chased the cat around the house, ben chuckling maniacally as milo laughed in pure delight at every lunge towards the furry feline. it was hard to tell what ben was enjoying more: getting milo to laugh or tormenting the poor cat (and i'm still not really sure, to be completely honest).

meanwhile, he'll probably grow up to believe that the cat's name is "be-gentle" as whenever the cat is nearby and milo is grabbing at her face, her tail, her ears, her fur, her many extra folds of skin, we help guide his fingers to avoid her eyes, her mouth, her butt, and we repeat the phrase over and over while helping him learn what it means to "be gentle" and giving the cat some much needed love and attention. the cat does seem to enjoy those moments with milo when we have him harnessed in our arms and under our control.

then there's the food. today he tried squash! he wasn't quite as enthusiastic about the orange-goop as he was about the pea-green-mush, but he also didn't refuse it as stubbornly as the rice-cereal-slop and the green-bean-gunk.

yesterday i didn't get around to feeding him any solids, and he woke up at 1 am angrier than a freshly-woken-previously-hibernating bear with its head stuck in a newly-established-void-of-any-honey, hornets' nest. probably hungrier too. despite my worries about introducing a middle-of-the-night-bottle after having weaned him from the habit so successfully, nothing was working to calm the little guy down, and i gave in. he guzzled down a whopping six and a half ounces.

lesson learned: make sure to feed milo at least one serving of solids, every. single. day.

he likes them! he *really* likes them!!!

today he finished off the peas - which means he had half a container yesterday, and half a container today. not only does he open his mouth wide for every bite, looking at me with pure contentment, but he even leans towards the spoon. it's so fantastic.

we also got him up on all fours today. i held his knees in place, and he propped himself up on his hands. we did this several times today, but even better was when i was showing ben by helping milo into this same hands and knees maneuver on the kitchen counter: he held himself up all on his own! usually his knees will slide out from under him, and he'll still be holding his top end up, but from the waist down he's practically connected to the floor.

ben told milo that he expects to see him crawling in a month or two... i'm not so sure on that one, as he's only just finally figured out how to keep his butt up and his knees under him, but milo has listened and adhered to ben's wishes so far... (from the very start, milo arrived the weekend ben told him to, so i guess ben has some pretty good pull with the kid.) so perhaps we'll see him crawling in a month or two after all?

AND - the case of the missing clippers has been resolved!

turns out they were in milo's duffel bag all along, at the very bottom of the side pocket, kind of hiding in the corner. i found them yesterday when i was tidying up his room, putting away all of his clean clothes and emptying the contents of the bag. we trimmed his little talons immediately, and it was a huge sigh of relief. with how long those little nails of his were getting, i was worried he was gonna freddy krueger my face.

just two peas in a pod...

and then a whole bunch more that milo gulped down his gullet this morning. it's a little bit funny (and perhaps a little bit sad) the things i get really excited about since becoming a mom. i just about cried tears of pure joy as i fed him, spoonful after spoonful of green pea mush that he readily ate.

so far rice cereal and green beans have been depressingly difficult. getting milo to eat them involved trickery of the most treacherous kind: silly songs and an unsuspecting open mouth. i would sing "old man by the window stood" (old man by the window stood, looking out into the wood, saw a bunny hopping by, knocking on his door. "help me! help me! help!" he said, "before the hunter shoots me dead!" "come inside and stay with me; oh how happy we will be!") including the most obnoxiously silly singing voice i could muster and accompanying hand motions.

he would look at me bewildered, but his mouth was open, and that's all i needed. in went the spoon, and then came the furrowed brow and a look of total disgust and betrayal, as if he were saying, "how could you. here i thought you were entertaining me, but no. just putting more of that nasty gunk you call 'food' into my mouth."

it worked most of the time, but we also often had to resort to prying the spoon into his mouth. he would turn away, or try and grab the spoon, or put his hand up in front of his face trying to stop us...

all this to say, green beans and rice cereal have been a struggle, and so far, milo has wanted nothing to do with them.

but peas? oh peas! glorious peas!

normally feeding milo in his highchair takes a minimum of half an hour. and for only maybe a tablespoon of food? (and that's before it gets derailed to his cheek, hand, bib, the floor.)

i gave him one spoonful of peas. he seemed a little unsure, but when i presented the second spoonful, he opened his mouth wide and readily accepted it. no singing or silly songs required. it took him maybe five minutes to eat what i had portioned out, so i decided to try for a second helping, and milo took in every bite.

like i said, it might be a little bit sad that i'd be so excited over peas, but these are the things my days consist of, and anything that'll make my job of feeding milo - helping him to learn and grow - easier is totally something worth getting excited over.

the case of the missing clippers

we used to have two sets of nail clippers for milo - one that i kept in the drawer of his changing table, and another that we kept in his diaper bag.

recently, those have not been getting put back after every use - perhaps because i could only get partway through and needed to finish the other hand when i had ben around to help me, or maybe because milo and i were playing, and it just didn't seem necessary to put them away when i knew where they were...

then we cleaned house. and then we went down to chicago to spend easter with my parents.

and now i can find neither the changing table nor the diaper bag set of nail clippers.

and the poor little guy's nails are getting so long. they definitely need to be trimmed.

it's very possible that i left one of the sets at my parents' house, but how is it that when i clean house is when i'm most likely to forget where things are?

i remember seeing them while i was cleaning, holding them, putting them down... somewhere - thinking "i should put these in his diaper bag/the changing table drawer" but not doing so. and trying to remember where i set them down last - on the table? the tray with all the miscellaneous papers and objects that seemed too important to stuff away in a cupboard? the playmat? my desk? a drawer?

i'm sure they'll turn up, i just hope i don't have to tear this beautifully organized home apart in order to find them.

(i can see it now, poor ben gets home after a long day of work to a house that was clean when he left only to find the zoe-tornado-monster went through and disheveled everything from every single nook and cranny imaginable. the floor is missing, doors ajar, clutter on every flat surface available for spreading out our accumulation of things - "zoe, what happened?" "oh nothing. i was just trying to find milo's nail clippers...")