6 months old

 My baby is 6 months old.  These pictures make me want to cry, and brush the hair out of his eyes.

I got him to smile in this picture by making the "bleh" throw-up sound, which he loves for some reason.

I love these next few.  He's got his business face and his party legs.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen Tony make this exact same face (next picture).

"Mom, I need the camera."

"Fine.  I'll just lay here with my feet and look like daddy."

Pictures of him these days capture his quiet, inquisitive side that's coming out more and more, but what they don't capture is the constant wiggles and the gleeful squealing and the regular squealing and the silliness.  Trust me though, it's all there.

And now, to you my boy.

The word of the day is BIG.  You are just big.  You are tall and round and heavy and the bright spot of the universe.  You weigh 21 dang pounds and wear 12-dang-month-sized clothing with ease.  I honestly think I've pulled something in my shoulder from carrying you around.

You are sweet and sure of yourself.  We haven't had any episodes of stranger danger yet, although a few times you've been disconcerted by a crowd.  Chances are you are a comfortable-in-small-groups person like me and dad.  Usually though, you just smile at everyone, new and familiar.

*You're officially sleeping in your crib at night now, sometimes all night long and sometimes back in our bed by morning.  I don't feel the need to rigidly sleep train you yet, if ever.  I have the feeling we'll figure things out our way.

I don't mind getting up at night when you cry.  Usually when I enter your room I can see you smiling at me from the dark.  You're figuring out the sleep thing; you've never needed to be swaddled, and you're needing less and less me to position you just the right way.  

When we lay down for naptimes you wear yourself out by kicking and looking around.  You play with my hands and touch my face and look out the windows or at the ceiling fan, and then when you're ready to sleep you roll to face me still gripping my fingers.

In fact, you love holding my hands.  When we're nursing you're not settled until your free hand finds my fingers.

You also love your own hands.  Lately you sometimes stop whatever you're doing and just inspect them, turning them over and slowly wiggling your fingers.  It is exactly precious.

The other word of the day is rolling.  You are very good at it.  You roll to your stomach and push up with your hands.  Sometimes you stick your butt up in the air and smoosh your face into the floor.  I think before long you'll be crawling, which is completely ridiculous and you should stop it right now.

Last week you were sick for the first time, and it was hard.  I hated it.  You were restless and your nose ran and you coughed and you had a fever and you cried.  But while that was hard, it was also another reminder to be grateful to be dealing with only a cold.  So many other families have to deal with much, much worse.

We've started you on some solid foods now, and you've seemed to like just about everything we've tried so far.  Rice cereal and oatmeal, bananas, apples, pears.  Prunes, because you NEVER EVER POOP. (Edit: I retract this statement, definitely.)  Grandma even gave you cheerios.  This new 'big kid food' phase scares me because it means you're growing up, and I'm sad.  But at the same time, I'm excited and happy for you.  Motherhood is very confusing.

* I wrote this post on the 18th and didn't get the pictures taken until yesterday, and in that 10 day difference almost everything I said about never sleep training you have been voided.  Suddenly you were waking up crying multiple times a night and just would not stay asleep.  So we tried bringing you back in bed with us most of the night where you still never really settled down and so I would get no sleep.  And after just a few nights of that I sent Tony a text that said: "We're going to sleep train James."
And James is a perfect child.  Because I had decided to do a cry-it-out-with-checks version of sleep training and was prepared for some difficult nights of non-stop screaming, and instead it's like 2 days later and you're putting yourself to sleep in your crib (for nights AND naps) like a seasoned pro.  You're in bed by 6:30 and wake up at 3 to eat, and then sleep again until 6 when we have to wake up for work.  PERFECT.  I love you.  Please don't change again.

All-or-nothing bullhonkey

I've been feeling lately like our culture has this ridiculous all-or-nothing trend, and I don't like it.  Do you know what I'm talking about?  If you can't do, or have, or be something all the way, then don't even try.  Like, if you already know that you can't or won't commit to eating a 100% healthy diet, then resign yourself to eating nothing but junk food.  Isn't that ridiculous?  If you know you're not going to be a marathon runner, then don't bother even going for a jog now and again.  These are all coming out health and fitness, but I'm sure there are other examples you can think of. 

I refute this all-or-nothing notion.  I think it's silly.  You don't have to eat nothing but kale and flax and other healthy-sounding foods (spEE-nok!) all day every day.  But if you remember to eat it sometimes then you're that much healthier than you were before.  Keep your midnight bowls of ice cream, just have an avocado too.  Then maybe eventually you'll do it more and more.

I'm sure this is not a revolutionary idea, but it's been stuck in my brain the last few weeks.

I am not what experts would probably consider a "really healthy person".  I mean, I'm not obese or sickly, but I'm not fit in any sense.  The most exercise i usually give myself is going up and down stairs to do laundry a few times a day.  (Plus the wiggly 20-pound free weight I carry to and from the car.)  But lately I've been trying to be healthier; to think healthier, if you will.  Just small things.  I'm focusing on eating more fruits and vegetables - not necessarily trying to eliminate the crappy things I eat, but by focusing on the healthier foods I end up eliminating some of the less-healthy stuff anyway.  And a new friend is inviting me to go to Jazzercise at the community center once a week with her.  Yes, Jazzercise.  Yes, I've thought about wearing neon legwarmers.  It's fun, and it gets me moving, and I like it. 

And that's my rant.  The end.

Things that make you go aww

So I'm folding the laundry the other day, James is keeping me company on the bed and I get to the socks just as Tony comes in, and all his socks are inside out like usual, and I'm tired so I say, "If you want your socks right-side-out you're going to have to do it yourself, cause I just don't have it in me today," and he says "That's okay, you know you don't have to do that anyway," to which I reply "But it makes it easier when they're all paired and folded and right-side-out so you don't have to do that in the morning," and he says "I know, but it's not that big a deal, you don't have to do it," and I say "But I'm trying to make your life better!"  And then he says, "You already did, he's right there," and points to James happily grabbing his feet on the bed.

And then I melted and died of happiness.

My husband, my love

In case you were wondering about the level of wonderfulness my husband is, let me just tell you this: it's at least level 50.

He made me a grilled cheese sandwhich (yes, spellchecker, I know it's sandwich, I've made that mistake too many times to not know that), complete with tomato soup, and it's 8 p.m. and he even cut it into triangles when I asked him to.

And tonight I said "let's watch Arrested Development" and he said okay, only it was actually more like this:

"A or B?"

what, just choose between a or b?

"Yes"

b

"Okay"

what's b?

"Arrested Development"

what was a?

"The Office"


So that's one more reason I love him.

On an unrelated note, I am so uninspired by the design (lack thereof) of this blog, that I'm considering seeking out someone else to redesign it for me.  If you are a person who feels as though that sentence would apply to them, I beg you to offer me your services, only not in a creepy way like I just made it sound.

eat your food!

"Alright!" 

James at 4/5 months

Not four-fifths.  You know what I mean.

For the record, I'm a little sad at these.  Partly because the lighting in my room - where I've been taking all these - hasn't been good lately, which is honestly part of the reason why I had been putting off the 4 month photoshoot.  I think it's the position of the sun changing?  Or it's in my head, in which case I must have a really powerful head because I took these at the same time of day I'd been taking the other ones, and it's not overcast or anything, and these pictures are all dark dark dark.  And blurry.  SO FRUSTRATED WITH THE BLURRINESS.  Is it my lens, or is it me?  Hennyway.  The other reason I'm less than thrilled about this installment is because neither of us were really in the mood.  We were being silly and haphazard and particularly unprofessional.  Whatevs, we got them done and I still think he's cute.  So now let me introduce you to my son at 5 months old.

In this household we are entering the Age of the Feet because James found out he has them. 

They are remarkably satisfying to grab.

We are also continuing in the Age of the Chubby.  Poor guy wears the same shorts almost every day because all the pants I've been buying him are just too tight.  We're talking 9-month size!  We usually shop at Carter's because I always thought their clothes were cute, but I'm finding out they're made for the skinny kids, which this kid is not.  So if anyone knows of a chub-friendly clothing line, do let us know.

 James is also a happy boy, who is discovering more and more every day about how much fun giggling is.  

(Maybe some other photographer would move her boppy out of the background, but not this one.  Actually, I kind of like seeing bits and pieces of our regular life sneaking in; things I want to remember.)

(He was just about to sneeze.)

I don't know what he's doing here...

...or here, but he kept doing it.  Practicing his baby seal impression?

I consider this a definite outtake, but I just love that expression of unabashed joy.

These last two are my favorites from the whole set.  I think our new old duvet cover helps.

Sweet baby James makes our days shine.  I feel like a lucky girl, getting to spend my days with this boy and his daddy.  Before he was born, I was worried about how our life would change.  I was worried that I'd hate the change, that I'd hate the binkies everywhere, the baby smell, the constant caretaking, etc.  But I can say without hesitation that I've loved every minute of it.  Granted, I do have an easy baby and a good setup, so maybe it's no big deal that I love it.  But I feel that even if things changed and suddenly got really hard, I'd still love it.  I love every second of him.

My only complaint is that he grows too fast!   Some days I look at his face and I hardly recognize him.  I have to remind myself that he is an evolving person and not to get too comfortable with any one stage because it's all temporary.  I have to remind myself that James (and all of us, really) is not any one moment, but a never-ending collection of moments.  It's easy to assume things are what we see in a snapshot, but people are not that.  We move and grow and change.  My baby is not a baby, he's an eternal soul who happens to be in baby form right now.  It's hard for me to want to grasp the concept sometimes.  It's easy to want to make things hold still.

But we all just keep shufflin'.  

Here's one, two, and three.

This one feels like a lazy one

James and I are hanging out on my bed, folding towels.  He was helping.

And have I taken those 4 month pictures yet?  NO of course not.  In five days he'll officially be 5 months old, so...I guess that's that.

I've had this whole week off of work, even.  And what I've discovered is that my productive days vs my lazy days are a ratio of about 1:1.  What I've also learned is that I would so love to be a stay at home mom.  I mean, yesterday we found ourselves killing time waiting for the fabric store to open by walking to a little mexican restaurant we'd seen but never stopped at, where the owner lady let us in before they opened and made me horchata and chips & salsa and offered me no less than 3 employment opportunities, where James learned that he liked sucking on tortilla chips and DOES NOT like it when mom takes them away.  And before that we tried patroning the international market along the way, but the single and only store clerk was full-on napping.  Not just nodding off: he was stretched prone on a bench with his feet on a chair he had to pull over specifically so he could nap.  I mean, he's either got nothing figured out, or he's got it all figured out.

And how can we have adventures like that when we're at work, I ask you?

And now for something completely different.  I've been wondering what you all think about disclosing your children's names on the internet, in your blogs.  I've never seen what the big deal is - I can show you their pictures but not tell you their names? - but a lot of people seem to do the nickname thing and so maybe there's a good reason.  Or maybe it's just a fad.  I don't know.  What do you think?

Dear Shirt

Dear shirt,

The time has come,
My Friend.

Though you still contain all the basic properties
of a shirt,
I am not allowed to wear you
outside the house.
Holes where there shouldns't be,
paint, and
expanding foam -
(how does that even happen?)

We've been through it all,
me and you.
You and I,
we fought the college battles
together,
lucky shirt.
How could I have been expected to walk
all the way from my truck
to class
without you?

On those brutal days when
every other piece of clothing I owned
made me feel itchy and dead,
you were there.
You, who I could hide behind
proudly,
so everyone knew that I liked
The Doors.

I bought you at Wal-Mart.
And yet you are
irreplaceable, apparently.
How can it be I can't
find an exact replica of you?
How??

Anyway.
In your box you'll sit,
in our basement
for a while,
until maybe one day I decide to
make that quilt using old t-shirts
like I see on Pinterest
now and again.

Til then,
farewell,

Farewell.