Kid Amnesiac

Simon was 15 months old Wednesday, and we celebrated today by getting poked, prodded, and stuck at the pediatrician’s office. Cake would have probably been more fun…

Our little guy has had a growth spurt these last three months, one I had suspected due to the fact that his 6-12 month pajamas and pants quit fitting within the last 2-4 weeks. This spurt was no doubt fueled in part by the change from breast milk to whole cow’s milk. I’m hoping the regular ingestion of cereal bars is merely coincidental! His current stats are:

• Height: 31 ½ inches, 65^th percentile (up from 40^th last time)
• Weight: 23 pounds, 30^th percentile (way up from 15^th last time)
• Head Circumference: 19 3/8 inches, 92^nd percentile (holding steady)

Matt’s happy to see Simon get a little taller. I’m hoping a little extra weight might make him heartier as winter drags on. And we’ve both pretty much given up on head normalization. Few men buy many hats these days, so as long as we can find shirts that button at the neck or shoulder, we’ll be fine.

Simon was massively unhappy with today’s visit. The office was a little cold, we had a long wait between the doctor’s visit and the nurse’s follow-up, and he got four shots (Hep A, Measles/Mumps/Rubella, Flu part II, and Chicken Pox). Nearly all of these can cause various skin reactions, fever, and fussiness. Toss in the fact that he’s now cutting three molars (upping his tooth count to 11), and you have a recipe for one crabby, crabby baby.

At one point, Simon’s crying escalated from normal baby crying and hysterical baby crying all the way to sounds best described as animal. He was snotty, blotchy, and generally out of control. It reminded me of a time my mom took our cat Sidney to the vet, and the poor thing wailed so miserably that a woman in the same reception area asked her what kind of animal she had in her carrier. I suppose everyone knew today it was a baby making those awful noises, but that’s only because pediatricians don’t treat other species!

Finally, please cross your fingers that we see some major gross motor developments in the next three months. Simon’s verbal skills are slightly ahead of track. Ditto his fine motor skills. But his gross motor skills are “borderline”, which means we don’t have to intervene just yet, but we will this April if he doesn’t pull himself up and start walking by then. I am uncharacteristically calm about this, as I can see no physical or mental problems with Simon, and I was a late walker myself. Throw in the fact that he’s a boy, the first born, and generally mellow and content, and I think we have many non-worrisome reasons for his tardiness. He’ll walk when he’s ready, I just hope he’ll get himself ready before we have to start going to the occupational therapist.

Sometime last summer, my assistant began to send out emails with “singing out” in the subject line. It was just a simple typo; she was letting everyone know she was signing out for the day when no one was around to see her leave. My boss thought this typo was pretty funny, and I also enjoyed the image of a grown woman singing about her day as she shut down her computer, picked up her purse, and turned out the lights behind her. It was very Disney—or Mr. Rogers. Although, to be honest, I have sung a little song as I shut down my computer, picked up my bag, and turned the lights out behind me at the end of a work day before, so it didn’t ever seem that odd to me.

At the same time Romny was “singing out” on a regular basis, Simon began an interesting habit himself: When we’d put him down for naps or for bed, we’d hear him talk softly to himself. Usually, the talking was very sing-songy and featured lots of “da-da-da”s or “ooooooooh”s. Evie began to suspect Simon was singing to himself on occasions when his caretakers were not, and I began to think that my assistant and son were both “singing out” at the end of their days.

Flash forward about six months, and Simon still sings out pretty often. Only now it typically happens when he’s getting sleepy. We can tell it’s bedtime or naptime when he begins to nestle his head into our neck, when he quite literally folds himself over while sitting, and when he begins to make soft singing sounds to himself. It’s pretty adorable, and often leaves me in a mood to nap or snuggle under the covers myself.

At last we are are feeling pretty normal over here at 1642 Cowling. No one has thrown up in nearly 72 hours, everyone is peeing OK, I’m feeling bullish.

I also have three new theories as to the cause of our recent domestic distress. Theory 1 covers Tristan: As a Whitworth male (when we flew from SF to Louisville, Tristan was added to Matt’s ticket, thus making him an official Whitworth), it was his destiny to suffer stones. Don’t you think it suspicious that Percival, my Goldstein cat, is OK?

Theory 2 covers Simon: See picture at right. Don’t you think it suspicious he threw up the very next day?

And theory 3 covers me: Twenty-four hours before falling ill, I recklessly bragged to my mother that I had not been ill in nearly two years. She yelled “Don’t give it a getoich! Don’t give it a g’toich!” which is misspelled Yiddish for “Don’t tempt fate and curse yourself!” I normally discount such superstition, but don’t you think it suspicious I immediately got sick?

Whatever the causes of our misfortune, today we were all feeling much better. Even our piano is feeling better, as I finally realized it was not “broken” or “suffering a short” but just needed new batteries. Yes, I am a genius. Once we got it fixed up, Simon enjoyed listening to tunes and rocking out, getting especially enthused when “Mary Had a Little Lamb” played. If I squinted, I could just about imagine him dancing at a prom in 17 years.

Our Simon is quite the kidder, a development that delights and surprises me in equal measures.

His first game is scraping his nail across the pink, scratchy tongue of the kitten in the book Touch and Feel Kitten. This little DK book features pictures of kittens with tactile inserts for babies to explore. You can feel the kittens shiny metal tag, his hard plastic bowl, his woven straw basket, his soft fur, and—on page 2—his pink scratchy tongue. The material they used for the tongue insert is much like what you’d find on an Emory board, and it makes a nails-on-a-chalkboard noise when you scratch it.

Simon was drawn to this page from the get-go, and each time he’d scratch the tongue, Matt would yell and wince in an exaggerated fashion. That made the game even better. Now, any time we give him the book , he flips directly to page two, puts his nail on the kitten tongue, and then looks up at us with an impish smile to see our reaction before he gives it a good scrape.

His second game features the TV and digital cable controls. He’s been drawn to them for a while now and is amazingly successful at turning the audio or video off. Given the relative lack of TV going on in our house, his facility is amazing. Anyway, just as he lunges for the controls, I grab him and pull him back a few feet from the armoire.

Today is the day I realized that the dragging away is just as fun for Simon as the button pushing, because as soon as he got within striking distance of the controls, he put his finger on a dial and looked over at me with the same mischievous grin he sports when he’s getting ready to scratch the pink kitten tongue. And as soon as I leaned in to grab him, he threw back his head and started giggling like mad in anticipation.

We play games with Simon all the time: tub games, hand games, horsy games, and the like, but I never thought he’d reciprocate at such a tender age. It is totally unexpected, and all the more delicious for it.

They say you never know when the last time you nurse your baby will be, but I’m pretty sure that New Year’s Day was it for us.

Simon abruptly cut down to twice a day shortly after his first birthday. From around Thanksgiving, he further reduced his nursing to a single morning session. Lately, his enthusiasm for even that has faded. New Year’s day he hardly stayed on long enough to get more than few drops of milk, yesterday he may not have even done that, and today he turned his attention elsewhere almost immediately.

I think I’ll handle this much better than the original slowdown. For starters, the writing has been on the wall for over two months that the end was near. There’s also the fact that my hormones have adjusted to the change, so I’ve already dealt with the depression and temporary insanity resulting from alterations to my endocrine system. And the final factor is that I’m sufficiently busy worrying over Tristan* right now that I don’t have the energy to get worked up about weaning, too.

As I stated before, there are many benefits to weaning for me. I can travel for work now without taking the whole family with me. I can run errands and be gone longer than two hours. Matt and I can go out at night if we have a sitter. Evie and Jim can enjoy Simon at their house all day Thursday. That part is all good.

But there are also significant downsides. Simon isn’t getting an immunity boost from me any more, and I’m not getting a regular oxytocin rush. And to be less of a scientific reductionist, I’m not getting my regular quiet snuggle time with Simon, accompanied by long loving stares, my patting his back and bottom, and his patting my face. I have to say that, for me, nursing was a singularly sweet experience, and I know I’ll feel misty for what was every time I see a mother nursing her baby from now on.

It’s times like these that I think about the aphorism “All good things must come to an end” and lament its truth even as I am forced to acknowledge it.

* As of this morning, Tristan has been home about 36 hours, seems to be eating and drinking well, and has been resting comfortably, playing, and purring/demanding affection in the house. So far so good.

Twice in the past week, I’ve caught Simon and Percival colluding; I sense the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The first time resulted in an unholy mess. Simon had left half of his yogurt from lunch, and I hadn’t had a chance to put it back in the fridge. Percival got at the yogurt on the kitchen island and knocked it to the ground, and Simon decided it looked like a fabulous toy. By the time I caught up with him, he had yogurt on his hands and face, yogurt on his Christmas PJ’s, and had left yogurt trails on the hardwood floor from scooting over and through it. There was no wiping him off at this point–I dumped him straight in the bath. At least Percival can bathe himself…

The second time came today–again at lunchtime. He wrapped the meal with some goat cheese spread on crackers, and had gotten the cheese all over his face and hands. Matt was at the sink getting a washcloth ready when we heard some giggles coming from the high chair. We assumed this was Simon’s now standard pre-face washing giggle (see “Waterboarding”). But the giggling escalated to new heights, and when Matt and I turned around we saw Percival licking the cheese off of Simon’s fingers. It probably tickled. He loves Percival. And his favorite page in the “Touch and Feel Kitten” book is the “feel my pink scratchy tongue” one.

There may be germ issues to be concerned about, but at least this collusion left Simon cleaner than when he started.

P.S. Tristan comes home tonight at 9:00!