Kid Amnesiac

Simon has hit a few interesting milestones in the past several weeks. And after a lot of same ole’ same ole’ around here, they seem to have all happened at once. He’s a busy, busy baby.

1. “Mama!” Yup, Simon knows I’m his mama and he now calls for me. At first he said “mama” indiscriminately, but now it’s reserved for me. This is my favorite milestone yet. By a long way. (Props to Matt for working on this one with Simon.)
2. Object Permanence. We noticed a couple of weeks ago that Simon was starting to get object permanence. He’d watch a car come up our street from the window across from the bed, and once it went out of his field of vision, he’d turn to look out the window next to our bed to watch it continue up the street. He also looks for me if he hears my steps coming up the stairs or when we play peekaboo. But the new development is that if you wave an object behind him, he’ll begin looking at it from one side. When it disappears, he looks over his other shoulder, and if it doesn’t re-emerge he grabs behind his back to get it. Cool stuff!
3. Face recognition. Certainly some faces have been familiar and favorites for a long time. These mostly belong to primary care givers. But last week Simon recognized someone from Highland Coffee Company at the same time I did. And it wasn’t Erin, the day manager he’s totally in love with and has seen the most often. Cuter still, two days ago he picked up his copy of “Who Loves Baby?” (a book with photos of family members inside) and giggled and smiled the minute he opened it up to a page with pictures. (props to Evie on this one for setting up the book. For the longest time it had but one photo in it, of Aunt Barb. In fact, Matt and I had a little running joke in the house. “Who loves baby?” one of us would ask. “Poor baby,” the other would respond. “Your Aunt Barb is the only one who loves you.”)
4. Hand-eye coordination. Simon still has problems with his release, but his hand-eye coordination is getting better all the time. He’s better with a cup. He can self-feed crackers and cheerios. And last night he managed to put a ball into a pretty small opening of a toy. He’s also got pretty good hand-foot coordination, as I watch him pick things up and hold them with his feet, too. I’m part monkey myself, so this trait seems perfectly natural to me.
5. Teeth! His lateral incisors are in far enough that Simon is now sporting a vampire smile. However, thankfully, the central incisors have broken through at last. So the vampire smile will be short lived at least. I’m still thinking he should go as baby Dracula for Halloween.
6. Finally, not all milestones are good. Simon used to love his diaper changing table, but now he positively RAGES against it. I was warned about this by What to Expect the First Year, which described babies developing “turtle on its back frustration” at the procedure. That sums it up well. I can live with this, but I sure hope he continues to like baths.

Matt and I have many silly songs for Simon. Some, like “Surf Champ”, are based on his clothing. Others, like “My Very Own Amazing Baby”, come from lines in books. But a few are from daily life, including “Simon Is a Baby Who Likes to Swing”. It goes like this:

Who is a baby that likes to swing?
Who is a baby that likes to swing?
Who is a baby that likes to swing?
Simon is a baby that likes to swing.

He likes to swing in his room. Cha, Cha, Cha.
He likes to swing on the porch. Cha, Cha, Cha.
He likes to swing in the park. Cha, Cha, Cha.
And anywhere else there’s a swing, he’ll swing

‘Cause Simon is a baby who likes to swing
Simon is a baby who likes to swing
Simon is a baby who likes to swing
Simon is a baby and he loves to swing
Simon is a baby
Simon is a baby
Simon is a baby and he loves…to swing.

It’s catchy as all get-out. Trust us.

The thing is, Simon is no longer a baby who swings in his room. While the official weight limit for the Graco Bounce ‘n’ Swing is 25 pounds, Simon has clearly outgrown it. He’s too active to hang out in the swing during the day now, and he no longer uses it to nap, either.

We got into the habit of having Simon nap in the swing when he was reflux-y and fussy in his younger days. Then, once we unswaddled him, the swing was our primary means of calming. It was our crutch. Long after Simon began falling asleep in bed-well, in our bed to be honest-he still napped in the swing.

About two weeks ago, Matt and I decided that it was time to begin proper sleep training before we had a baby who would only fall asleep in a swing or in our bed. At the same time, we noticed that Simon wasn’t sleeping as well in the swing as he used to. It took him longer to doze off, and he frequently woke up the minute a CD stopped playing or once he hit an active part of sleep and stirred a bit. Was it the music ending that disturbed him? Or was he simply too cramped?

There was only one way to find out. We decided to do two things right away. One was to put Simon down on our bed for naps. The other was to try putting him down in his crib at night. (Previously he’d fall asleep in our bed and we’d move him later on.) We figured the next phase would be putting him in his crib for all sleeping.

Night one, Simon cried for about ten minutes. He started out sounding pretty mad, but then settled into a weak, unconvincing whine. Then he passed out. When we put him down night two, he simply rolled over onto his side and went to sleep. Ditto night three.

Emboldened by our unlikely success, we decided to put him down in his crib for naps, too. We’d play with him until he seemed tired. Go into our room for some quiet play time. And once he rubbed an eye or was happy to lie down, off he’d go to the crib. And each time, he rolled over onto his side and passed out.

So that was easy! And cute. Simon consistently lets us know when he’s ready to sleep by flipping over on his side-usually facing away from us-while clutching dirty duck, dirty dog, or (poignantly) a water bottle. Within minutes of this flip, he’s off in dreamland.

It’s a lovely development all round, but I’m really going to miss our song!

As I mentioned once before, Matt and I have a disagreement over the nature of the image Simon admires when he sees his reflection in glass-particularly in the kitchen window every morning when he’s eating his breakfast.

Matt thinks it’s Ghost Baby, who choked on oatmeal years ago and is now trying to relive his baby life-or at least enjoy a nice bowl of oatmeal without being cut down in his prime.

I think this scenario is beyond morbid, and prefer to think we have Alternate Universe Baby going on. Once or twice a day, when the light is just right, Simon can see Alternate Universe Baby through an opening of the portal that separates our world from his.

Well, just in case Matt was right, I began wondering what Ghost Baby’s life might have looked like before breakfast tragedy struck. Here’s what I came up with….

Ghost Baby at Stinson Beach

About two weeks ago, Simon picked up a brand new disgusting habit just in time to take him to fancy restaurants in Las Vegas.

I first noticed it at dinner one night, when Simon opened wide for his first bite, scraped the food off the spoon, and then promptly shoved his left index finger in his mouth as he gummed and swallowed his food. I couldn’t decide if he was using that finger as a crude, spoon-like implement to get food to the back of his mouth faster, or if he was trying to binge and purge at the same time. All I knew is that he did this with every bite. And that it produced a disgusting mess when he subsequently rubbed his dirty hands over the highchair tray, his face, and his clothes.

The next morning at breakfast, I hoped/assumed that this new habit would be forgotten. Nope. For each bite of oatmeal, Simon opened wide, took the food off the spoon, and then shoved at least one finger in his mouth. Matt tried swatting his hand away a few times to no avail. It was the same series of events repeated countless times:

• Dad offers bite
• Simon opens mouth
• Simon inserts finger into mouth
• Dad swats away finger
• Dad offers bite
• Simon opens mouth
• Simon re-inserts finger into mouth

Over and over and over and over again. Sigh.

Every now and then, Simon would (briefly) forget his new trick, but never for more than a single meal.

So yesterday, I decided to test the theory that Simon was sick of only getting teething biscuits and a cup to play with and wanted to have a go at the spoon. (I stopped letting Simon have his own spoon a few weeks ago when he consistently threw it out of the high chair as part of his now favorite game: “Watch mommy pick up what I’ve tossed overboard.”) I was also prompted by an early morning delivery that required me to leave Simon alone in his highchair, something almost guaranteed to make him scream. Kiddo hates to be alone, even for a minute.

But there was DHL at my door, with a brand new keyboard for my laptop that I really needed. So, in a desperation move, I put some oatmeal on the spoon, laid the spoon on the highchair tray, and went to answer the front door. By the time I got back, Simon was holding the spoon, but the oatmeal was gone. He had managed to feed himself a bite. So I loaded up another spoon, and it was amazing to see how much better he had gotten in just a few weeks. Each time I laid the spoon on the tray, he picked it up, got it into his mouth (bowl down, perhaps, but still in his mouth), and ate a bite.

Now, I don’t think Simon did anything special here. At nearly 10 months, this is exactly what I’d expect him to be able to do. And yet, I can’t help be amazed. When I think that 9 months ago Simon had to be swaddled to keep from flailing and hitting himself in the face, and that now he can coordinate the use of his hands well enough to self feed with a spoon, it’s hard not to be amazed.

As he’s still not crawling or pulling up, it’s also reassuring to see fine motor skills staying on track. Yay Simon!

Simon is now in the thrall of himself and enjoys his own reflection whenever he sees it. For a long time I assumed he had no idea that he was looking at himself, but now I’m beginning to suspect otherwise. He loves all babies and small children, but he seems to have an especially soft spot for his own reflection.

Sadly, we encourage this behavior. In the morning, Simon is often distracted from eating breakfast by his dim reflection in the kitchen windows. He’ll pause between bites, caught up in the wonder of himself, and only intermittently focus on the task at hand. Matt calls this image “ghost baby”, has created a morbid story behind ghost baby’s demise, and has even written a little song about it (The baby, not his demise. And truthfully, he ripped off the song from Rancid.). Much as I like the song, I prefer to think of the window image as “alternate universe baby,” who is visible only once a day when a small portal opens in the firmament separating his universe from ours. But try getting that interpretation into a song lyric, I dare you!

As you can see, the sleep deprivation is really getting to us both.

Another time Simon enjoys his own reflection is before and after his bath. Matt almost always stands Simon on the sink and has him look at “the naked baby in the mirror”. (There’s a song for this, too.) Simon loves naked mirror baby and smiles for him every time. Once his bath is over, Simon gets a chance to smile at wet naked baby, who may be the funniest thing ever. Is it the wet lashes? The messed up hair? The cottage cheese tush? We’ll never know…

But today was the best of all. We hung up our new 20? X 30? wall portrait (and good lord that thing is huge. Didn’t look nearly so huge in the studio, but now is clearly the same size as, if not slightly bigger than, its subject) and brought Simon over to view it. Well, he just went nuts. He kicked it. He reached for it. He laughed and cooed and screeched at it. And then, finally, he gave it/himself a big round of applause. No dearth of self esteem this one.

Too cute. I just need to make sure I don’t let him turn into a little Narcissus.

Las Vegas is not my kind of town. I’ve been there at least once a year for business since 2001, and while I’ve more or less made my peace with it, I’m always relieved to get back home. The smoke, noise, and crowds on the strip and in the casinos take a physical toll on me, and philosophically, too, the place wears me down; I’ve always thought Vegas to be the ugly manifestation of American-style unchecked capitalism taken to its logical extreme.

Matt likes it even less than I do. I’ve learned to make the most of my time in Vegas by enjoying the great food, people watching, and shopping on offer when I’m not in business meetings. Once or twice I caught a show, too. There’s enough there for me to have a good time for a day or so until the aforementioned smoke, crowds, and noise make me long for home. Not so Matt. His Vegas strategy is to hole up in the nicest room his company will pay for, avail himself to television and room service, and never budge if at all possible. So far as I can tell, Matt’s best trip to Vegas was the time he stayed in the Venetian, whose elegant rooms afforded him a particularly luxurious and cocoon-like bunker.

It would seem that Simon takes after his old man where Vegas is concerned. He went with me to Black Hat this year, and it was a rough trip for him in many ways. He didn’t fly as well as he did on our last trip, he wasn’t as social as he was in San Francisco, and the general commotion of the place really upset him. Every time he went through a casino–which was every time he left the room to go somewhere else–he got fussy. Simon enjoyed the king size bed in our Caesar’s Palace room, several genuinely lovely and friendly members of the Caesar’s staff, the view from our room out the floor-to-ceiling windows, the giant bath tub, the fish tank in the Forum Shops, and not much else.

He was so-so at one dinner and downright miserable at another. He didn’t much enjoy being walked outside or inside the casino. He wasn’t nearly as social as he often is. And I truly think his several monster naps were, as with a depressed adult, an attempt to escape.

And speaking of escape, our options for getting away from it all were cut short right away. We rented a car on this trip so we could grocery shop upon arriving in Las Vegas and so that Matt could get around with Simon while I worked. I envisioned Matt using the car later to take Simon to one of the hotels with a baby pool and maybe to see some other kid friendly attractions, like the tigers at the Mirage or the gondolas in the Venetian.

Well, we were about halfway to the grocery–our first trip in the car–when Simon began to cry. As we continued on our way, the crying escalated into a terrible and uncharacteristic shriek. It turns out that the car seat we rented from Hertz was damaged. The shoulder harness portion was already suspiciously flimsy. We knew that. What we didn’t know was that the part that buckles him into the seat was completely broken. Our poor baby was left with his back and head pinned to the seat while his tush and legs remained unanchored and flailed out of it. By the time we reached Whole Foods, Simon’s entire torso was twisted and slumped. I literally held him in place on the trip to the hotel, and we didn’t use the car again until we left for the airport.

So much for having options. On the other hand, yesterday I’d swear Simon knew he was going home. He did better on his brief stroll in the Forum shops. He was great on the plane. He made many new friends and was his usual flirtatious self all along the way. He fussed much less than normal when we put him in his car seat. And, bless his little heart, when we reached the house at nearly midnight local time, he clapped. He was tired, somewhat underfed, and totally off his schedule, but the minute the car stopped at our back door, Simon woke up enough to clap. Coincidence? I think not.

Yesterday Simon went back to the pediatrician for his nine-month check-up. The relevant stats are:

• height-28 1/4 inches, putting him in the 50th percentile, same as last visit
• weight-18 pounds, 6 ounces, putting him in the 25th percentile , a slight drop from last visit
• head circumference-18 5/8 inches, putting him in the 95th percentile, a slight increase from our last visit

There is seemingly no end to Simon’s head growth. I wonder, can we go over 100%? I also wonder, what size shirt am I going to have to buy to fit over his giant head? Right now, his 12 month shirts are often tight-even those with buttons at the neck; the 18-month size is much better, but his body doesn’t fill those shirts in. If Simon keeps this up, we’ll be looking at bespoke baby clothes; his college fund will all go to Saville Row onesies.

The other thing we learned yesterday is that I am working too hard. According to the doctors, Simon does not need to be nursing seven times a day anymore. Drs. Owens and Newstadt think Simon is snacking more than eating and that I am needlessly wearing myself out. So we emerged with a prescription for stretching out our daily feedings and for adding more solid foods to Simon’s diet. The ultimate goal is to reduce the total number of nursing sessions per day and to get Simon to sleep longer at night.

I appreciate that better sleep will be great for us all, especially for Matt, who needs more sleep than I do and is dropping from fatigue these days. It is, however, a bittersweet realization that nursing is beginning to lose its primacy over solid food. It’s all part and parcel with Simon’s increasingly boyish-as opposed to babyish-appearance. I used to take Simon out and hear what a beautiful baby I had. Now I’m more likely to hear what a handsome boy he is. It’s that time panic thing again.

On an unrelated note, I noticed another baby named Simon on the sign-in sheet at the pediatrician’s office.  His mother was also named Jessica. Finding another Jessica on the list didn’t startle me at all, but finding a second Simon sure did. Here’s to hoping it was a fluke and that 2007 will not be the year Simon catches on as a popular name.

In what is widely regarded as the worst (and possibly most sexist) Star Trek episode ever, the crew of the Enterprise runs into a group of alien airhead women, the Eymorgs, who steal Spock’s brain to think for them and run their society’s infrastructure. It seems they have lost the ability to think for themselves.

About now, I feel like an airhead Eymorg myself and wish I could get my hands on a fully functional brain. Because mine is not what it used to be. I read about “mom brain” when I was pregnant and arrogantly thought it wouldn’t happen to me.

Well, here I am, 39 weeks post-partum and struggling each day with my recall. It’s not that I can’t think of new things or do decent work at my job. In many respects, I’m a better editor and employee than I was last year. But I’m afraid that improvement is due to improved time management skills and greater job satisfaction, not sharpened critical thinking skills.

In the past 24 hours or so I have struggled to remember the name of an Addison-Wesley author-I can’t now remember which one-I have struggled to come up with the word “diffuse”, and I finally recalled the word “portmanteau” approximately 48 hours after my dad asked me what a “blog” was and I tried to conjure it.

My recall of facts, names, and words used to be regular and unthinking, like breathing or having my heart beat. Now it’ s more like a 40-minute workout on the elliptical trainer; I practically sweat with the effort. And it’s so slow! My brain has gone from being a sprinter to a race-walker.

I sincerely appreciate my new-found efficiency and ability to multi-task, heaven knows. I love it when at the end of the day I realize I have handled email, taken author calls, worked on my annual budget, washed multiple loads of laundry, cooked for the whole family, and nursed Simon seven times. When I can tick off a long list of accomplishments like this, I get anI-am-woman-hear-me-roar charge. But I’ve gotta be honest: On any given day, I’d trade that in a heartbeat to get my old brain back, preferably before it begins to deteriorate from age.