flea

Dillo is two and 4.5 months now - almost exactly the age I weaned Casper. I've been ready to be done with nursing for at least 6 months now, but he is so not ready. He LOVES nursing. He doesn't ask for it a lot during the day, and if he does he generally accepts the explanation that we nurse at bedtime. (If he does nap during the day, I do usually nurse him down for that.) But he expects to nurse at bedtime, and if he wakes during the night (he increasingly doesn't), and at wake-up. (We have a terrible thing going on right now where he sleeps through until 4:30 or 5, then nurses for as long as I'll let him, then is awake for an hour. If I can wait out the hour he'll go back to sleep for an hour or two; occasionally we get up for the day. The timing is sucky for work schedules, though - this morning he was up from 5-6, then fell asleep, so I had to wake him at 7 and he was a disaster to get ready.)

After I weaned Casper she spent the next six months unable to fall asleep except with her finger in my belly button. Dillo's apparent ready replacement for nursing is going to be putting a hand on my breast and going to sleep that way - sometimes when I make him stop nursing he'll ask for that. I am SO NOT going to have him falling asleep with a hand on my breast for the next six months.

I'm not sure how I'm going to manage this, but it needs to end soon. He's just not going to like it.

Seventh tooth is through - a lower incisor (right). He's not biting me per se when nursing, but the big old front teeth and poor latch mean some discomfort for me, weirdly only on the one side (my right). I have about six weeks (give or take) less to pump for him and I am SO ready to stop pumping. I think I've been more impatient with the pumping this time around; it just gets so OLD. Note to self: next time at grocery store, buy baby sippy cup so we can start teaching Dillo how to drink. And we *just* threw away the last of the Casper sippy cups. Sigh.

He's old enough that I begin to see the brain-wheels turning now. He understands "no," not that he obeys it necessarily. Will crawl to me if asked to. Responds when asked if he wants food, or more food. (I do the sign language things for these, because they are all I can remember, really.) He just seems like he is attentive to what is going on and wants to be involved in a new way. Happiest participating by riding on my hip. I have been looking at Ergo carriers on ebay since he is too heavy for the Bjorn but the sling doesn't really give me two free hands with him. $$, though, and this is probably a short phase.

Video from this weekend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmmsjP1rlDk When he puts his head to the side towards the end he reminds me of a photo we have of Casper at about this age.

In light of the truly bad things happening to various friends lately, I feel guilty that we're in a state of mild suckiness around here, and especially that I'm complaining about it. But here we go:

Dillo is aging up into a crankypants phase. I prepared mentally for this kid to be so different from the other kid, but nearly everything about the Dillo is so similar to Casper it's a little freaky (and also, let's say it, tedious). First week stressful and jaundice-y? Check. Breastfeeding pattern of Too Much Milk, leading to swift gulpy nursing sessions, only on one side at a time? Check. (With Casper, this pattern developed spontaneously and got my mother yelling at me that I was starving the kid because I wasn't nursing 10 minutes on each side - long-distance, natch. Turns out the pattern is a LLL-approved solution to Too Much Milk: http://www.lalecheleague.org/FAQ/oversupply.html). Placid start, followed by increasing crankiness and unwillingness to sleep unless being held? Check. Dillo has already started to have evening meltdowns of uncontrollable crying; Casper spent a few weeks right around 6 weeks screaming her head off like clockwork from 10-11 pm nightly. Curse the bad human design that means they're born with immature digestive and nervous systems. (IMO, "colicky" behavior in both my kids has been more from nervous system immaturity than digestive issues.)

My darling mother managed to sabotage any confidence I have in myself yesterday by phone, simply by commenting that the reason the Dillo slept badly Friday night, which I stupidly mentioned, was because he was picking up on my stress about the visit of the in-laws. God knows I get stressed out about shit, not least the crankiness of the baby. I find it incredibly stressful to hold a hot sweaty arching crying baby and be unable to comfort him. But does Mother think it will help me be LESS stressed to tell me that my stress makes the baby act up? Even if she's right, it's not very helpful. Of course, this is the woman who continually blamed (and blames) me for Casper's poor sleeping. Note to self: lie to mother more. "Yes, Dillo slept for 6 hours in a row last night! He has the temperment of an angel!!"

Tired because sleep deprivation is cumulative, and we didn't get naps this weekend due to houseguests, and I seem to be in a state of being too tired - really, too stressed out - to sleep lately.

mr. flea has put his back out, badly.

I dropped Casper off at school this morning, and it just reinforced my concern that her current classroom is not managed well. They are still without a lead teacher (have been since she started in June) and it being summer there are frequently substitutes due to vacations. The class isn't well structured; every time we are there (which includes unusual hours, such as today's 9:45, not just drop-off and pickup times which are scheduled as free play) they are just having free play, although their activity sheets do suggest there are structured activities. What really bothers me is how little the teachers seem to be paying attention to the kids - this morning, Jasleen was crying for her father, which she habitually does in the AMs, but nobody was paying attention to her, which they DID do in the old classroom. Nobody welcomed Casper when she arrived. The teachers just have an air of sitting around and chatting while nominally keeping an eye on the kids. The two teachers actually assigned to this classroom are nice women, but I think they just don't have the educational and/or experiential chops to really manage a classroom of 18 kids; I assume the ex-lead teacher was the one who kept things in line. I guess I should email the center director with my concerns. Ugh. I am sure they are trying to hire someone.

Back to work in 4 weeks, and can't imagine how it will all come together (sleep, feeding the kid, child care). Even though it's only back to work for 2 hours a day (plus 2 at home) for the first 2 weeks.

On the plus side, I am just stunned by how beautiful my daughter is:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/casperflea/209151396/

Well, there's a lot going on:

1. So. Tired. I've had maybe 3 hours of sleep each of the past two nights, in non-continuous segments.
2. Yet, cannot sleep, due to being stressed out about:
3. Is baby okay (having exact same latching issues I had with Casper at first - it is hard to get tiny ones to open their mouths far enough to get a good latch, plus 24 hour bilirubin is on the high side so they'll test again at the ped tomorrow, so I fear we'll also repeat the Casper jaundice not bad enough to treat but resulting in sleepiness and forced waking to nurse and cold washcloth on the feet).
4. Also, it's hot and humid again so I get to be sweaty and worry that the baby is dehydrated. Why wasn't the human body designed so that the milk comes in faster???
5. Casper's a bit of a wreck, and it's stressful and sad-making. A lot of the time she seems fine, but then she'll have a breakdown. And of course she suggested we leave the baby at the hospital.
6. Did I mention I hate being in the hospital? They don't let you fucking sleep, they keep taking away your fucking baby, the food sucks and it's a gigantic paperworky pain in the ass. I was very happy with my care from admittance to an hour after delivery, and then rolled my eyes and huffed in impatience for the next 26 hours until we got to go home. On the plus side, their air conditioning is better than ours. Redoubling the negative, there's no wifi in the entire damned place.
7. Another positive: except for the so tired I have a headache and could die, I feel really great for having had a baby 36 hours ago.
8. My mother's also stressing me out a bit. Such is life.

I want to write up about the amazing speed and intensity but easiness of Dillo's birth, and how he cried a lot at first (unlike Casper) and was all puffy and Winston-Churchill-y (unlike Casper) but after a first big nap spent most of last evening and night awake and alert and all about his fingers, which are slim and looong and hyperextend and he rubs his face and successfully gets one in his mouth and sucks it like a mad thing. (See, if they'd had wifi I would have been writing this at 12am instead of annoyedly waiting for them to return my kid.)

Instead you get tired sweaty worried sleepy baby cranky toddler worries. Sorry. But, there are pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/casperflea/

As is obvious to a regular reader of this journal, Casper is a voluminous and expressive talker. What I find interesting are the things she still has no grasp of whatsoever, such as personal pronouns, especially the 3rd person singular. First of all, she gets the gender of pronouns wrong all the time. She knows our cat is a girl, but refers to her as "him." This happens to people, too. Secondly, while she has a firm grasp of case in the first person singular (was there ever a talkative 2 year old who wasn't clear about me, my, I, mine?), she's lost in the 3rd person. Possessives are often "hims coat" and she often will say something like "what is him doing?"

She has an incredible memory, especially for verse and songs. Rather a while ago she came back at me with "Cinderella, dressed in yellow, went upstairs to kiss a fellow; by mistake she kissed a snake. How many doctors did it take?" I had recited this to her a total of once, and it seems unlikely she'd heard it repeatedly at school or among friends, as they are too young for jumprope rhymes, this is an obscure one, and it's probably not on the records they listen to. (Those of you who know the family flea's overall linguistic facility, and especially memory for doggerel, will not find this trait a surprise in Casper.) Before eating her breakfast banana today she gave me several verses of "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

In pre-reading news, she can recognize whole words in a few places, but it's clearly contextual only. That is, she knows that picture has a big sign saying "milk," but she doesn't recognize "milk" in other places. She doesn't really know the alphabet, which we haven't pushed aside from having fridge letter magnets. She sometimes recognizes the first letter of her name, but other times not. She will ask me to write my, or her, or daddy's name when we're drawing pictures, and she'll look at a sign and say "There's words on there," but aside from that, no steps towards reading.

Numeracy is also not a big feather in her cap. She can rattle off the numbers to 20 accurately, but actually attaching them to the concept of the numbers is a stretch. She gets one, and two, and sometimes three, but point to a picture of six cats and ask how many there are and you'll get "One two three four fixe six seven eight nine ten." For a couple of weeks she was interested in reading the same book about numbers and math every night, and I showed her over and over how to put her finger on the thing she was counting and say each number in turn as she did it, but she still hasn't gotten there conceptually.

ION, we've had remarkably little trouble about ceasing nursing. She still asks a few times a day, and I say "remember, we stopped nursing," and at most I get one protesting wail, and then we move on. This is a relief. Dinnertime, on the other hand, has developed into guerilla warfare. Last night we had deliberate spitting out of food onto the floor for the first time. Also, if I never see another thrown sippy cup I will be happy. It's always something.

Against all odds, we have had an excellent afternoon, by which I mean that Casper fell asleep on me on the couch a little after 1, and is still sleeping (I wiggled out from under her at about 3:40). mr. flea is also doing his walrus impression in the bedroom, and I am preparing to make chicken and wild rice soup from the Whole Foods cookbook - it has mushrooms and sherry and a little cream and is excellent.

I think Casper came back wrong from her cold; at any rate, she came back 2, and it's driving me bananas. Lots of whining, lots of testing: paint on the wall, on a chair, marker on the table, all in front of me and with full knowledge that this is not how we behave; rmeote into the VCR twice immediately after I told her that was not allowed. Also the begging for TV or videos. And the not eating, plus whining. I think partly she's still in the recovery phase, and partly stir-crazy from being housebound with only Mommy and Daddy to play with for 5 days. I want my non-obstreperous kid back please! Did learn a useful new phrase: "on the tip of your nose" i.e. bugging me to no end, which mr. flea picked up from the Sri Lankan boys in his office.

Have acquired and am wearing drawstring waist corduroys from J. Jill (courtesy of gift card) and I love them. They are like corduroy sweatpants you can wear to work. Also useful for those of fluctuating waistline. We also exchanged our gift of a $50 popcorn popper (we like popcorn, but make it in a pan on the stovetop very happily) at Williams-Sonoma for a nice little 5-inch sankotu knife. Now we just need a big chef's knife (and to get all of our existing knives sharpened, since the new one makes them all magically dull). Were does one go to sharpen knives? We have a mix of stainless and old-fashioned.

Partly as a result of this week's cold, the weaning of Casper seems to be proceeding. Her regular nursing habits (usually 2 of these times: 4am, 4:30pm, 8:30pm) have not reappeared, and many times lately she has asked to nurse, tried very briefly, and said, "There's no nursie in there," and either pitched a fit or happily asked for juice. We still rely on the big guns for serious freakouts, though, like last night's 1am full-bodied screaming kicking freakout, which occurred spontaneously while we were all sleeping.

Since we found a piece of cheese on our driveway last night, presumably a gift from the Frat Boys Next Door (we have sanely concluded that they dropped a piece on the deck while making burgers, and tossed it like a frisbee, and it got lucky and made it through the hedge to our yard) I have been pondering the next step. I should buy a pack of Kraft singles and leave one every few days in some odd location about their property: on the front door mat, on a car hood, pressed to the window in the kitchen. (Since they seem not to lock their house - mr. flea went over at 2 to ask them to turn down the TV and found nobody was watching it and the door was unlocked - I could creep in and leave one on the DVD player!)