I was brushing my teeth one morning, having secured Ander in his room to play with his toys, and heard a loud "whump!" followed by that piercing silence and then a long, high-pitched wail of pain. I rushed to his door, tongue thick with minty suds, and found my poor baby barricaded in his room somehow (he likes to pile things up in front of his door), and through the crack I could see that he had a mouth full of blood that was streaming down his chin.
I, of course, panicked and basically kicked the door in (the door's fine) and scooped Ander up, bringing him close to the window so I could try and see where the bleeding was stemming from. Best I can figure he had been chewing on some plastic tubing while testing out his newly found walking legs, fell forward and hit his face on his toy barn, causing the edge of the tubing to rough up the gums right above his front teeth.
He's fine. Mom's nerves are
I am increasingly curious as to how our second child will behave. Whether we get another boy, or our first girl, I cannot wait to over-analyze their personalities and make half-decent conclusions as to why they are like that.
Will they be just as rambunctious and full of gumption and vigor? Is mischievousness just a Douglass family trait? Or will we get a cautious, reserved, content baby? Does such a baby exist?
I'm voting for twins next, a boy and a girl. But if they turn out to be half as Spider-baby as Ander is, I will literally look like Kari trying to take care of Jack-Jack.
"The baby was EXPLODING! Have you ever seen an exploding baby before??!"
Basically anytime I think, "Oh, no way can he get into trouble here," Ander just goes CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, MOTHER DEAREST and does the impossible.
"No way can he climb up the straight back of this couch."
Gets halfway up like a literal rock wall climber.
"No way do I need to worry about this candle shoved all the way to the back-middle of his dresser while I'm sitting here in the room with him."
Grabs onto the bottom ledge with his tiny toesies, pulls the candle towards him, plops it off the edge of the dresser and splats hot wax all over the carpet. (Much rather the carpet than his body.)
"No way can he get to this."
Gets the thing.
"No way can he do this yet."
Does the thing.
I can't help the feeling that this kid will be breaking barriers in the none too distant future.
Speaking of bleeding.../sigh.
He bled from his mouth twice after that event I just recounted, and then from his nose after a particularly nasty bump on the edge of his crib.
Watching my baby bleed is not my favorite feeling thus far in parenting.
--Remember what I said about adventures? Never ceasing?
I suppose that is par for the course in Mom-Land. We were sitting in the movie room, Ander playing with his toys on the floor, and under the protective cloak of youtube he managed to snatch the box of caramel pecan turtles and dump them out on the floor, double fisting the chocolate like he was the happiest kid that ever was.
I let him keep one of 'em, since the two he had in his hands were long gone and unsalvageable (and I ate the other one), and promptly stuck him in his chair where he couldn't lay his sticky hands on everything and took a bunch of photos cuz he's JUST TOO CUTE FOR WORDS.
More importantly, we got word back from the neurologist as to Ander's weird twitch. It's definitely not seizures, thankfully. Andy doesn't have another check-up appointment for another couple of months, so I suppose I'll have to make more phone calls to get further evaluation. You'd think people would be more forthcoming with information.
--A screencap of the type of conversations Mark and I have over gmail chat on a daily basis...basically.
This kid is a monster. What am I even going to do. He can't even adequately use his body to it's full potential and I am on "constant suicide watch," as a good friend put it recently.
I wanted to eat lunch without him hanging on my leg, grabbing fistfuls of skin and whining at me for not sharing my completely-not-appropriate-for-babies food, so I just shut his bedroom door to let him play with his toys. I fully acknowledge that the fact that I have the ability to do that and it's not the end of the world, my baby will in fact just play by himself for a good amount of time, is probably the biggest blessing of parenthood.
Granted, the only reason this is even a possibility is because rather than buying a regular baby monitor, we instead got regular audio monitors and then a fancy home security camera for visuals. And I love it.
So I'm eating my sandwich and soup (shoutout to my estranged lover Zuppa's, I miss you baby) and trying to pull up the video feed from the monitor on my laptop. Our wireless is sketchy, so it was taking forever but the first thing I notice is that I can't see Ander. I'm scouring the floor, impatiently clicking the button to get the camera to move around so I can view more of the room and then all I see is his little feet up ON the seat of the recliner.
I knew he could get onto the chairs if there was stuff for him to climb up on.
The internet finally catches up and he's climbing up the back of the chair, ready to tip over the top where a normal adult's head would be, stretching out, reaching for the window blinds.
I, naturally, run to his room, gently knock and open the door slowly so I don't scare him and cause him to startle and fall off the chair, and get him down.
I cleared the area around the chair of all objects, then had to let him play by himself again so I could know the extent of his abilities. Is he carrying things over to step on top of? Or am I royally screwed and he can just straight up climb on the chair unassisted?
No, he's pulling some full-on Velociraptor level shenanigans and walks the swivelly chair around until it's facing the corner of the wall, and then basically parkours onto the chair.
So now we have to figure out what to do with that chair, what we can bring in to sit on in that room, and my life is basically over.
Tune in next week for the story of how I find my 10 month old on top of the fridge. It's fine. I'm fine.
--For the last couple of months I've been really wishing to take Ander to an aquarium of some sort. He's always harbored (eh? eh?) a fondness for Finding Nemo since he was a wee, tiny newborn, and loves to get his grimy paws all over windows and sliding glass doors as he gazes intently outside.
And we finally did it!
We spent a delightful afternoon at the Sea Life Aquarium and I totally called it. Ander was obsessed. This kid was a merfolk in another life.
His look of wonder reflected in the side of the tube. Gah. This kid gives me LIFE, people.
On the way in we were already excitedly jabbering about how much we can't wait to take him to the Science Center and watch him just go nuts trying to learn everything and figure it all out. He's already got his dad's tinkering soul and that spark of creativity that gets him into all kinds of mischief.
We love our little family.
--You still here? How you doin'? Need a breather, get a drink of water, a snack maybe? Longest blog post in the history of EVER, way to go champ, I believe in you.
Lastly! We have Ander's 10 month photoshoot. We walked to Riverview Park, one of our favorite activities that gets us out of the house for a nice FREE outing, and it was such a glorious day we extended our walk to complete some errands at Walmart across the way. That's one way to blast out your daily movement goal before noon.
Ander is still topping the charts, he eats anything and everything. We went to Souper Salad a couple weeks ago and he ate a bit of everything off my plate. Mac 'n Cheese, tiny salad bits, mashed baked potato, ground beef, pizza, chocolate pudding, it was heaven. For all parties involved. He averages around 5 meals a day plus bottles of juice throughout the day and formula (and sometimes old frozen breastmilk) at bedtime.
He's getting faster and more steady at walking. He can catch himself when he stumbles. He climbs on top of everything, regardless of how impossible it may seem. And he's strong. He lifts things, carries stuff around with him, pushes tables around with his legs, etc.
He's not even a year old and I'm anxious to get the kid into gymnastics or something. Oye.
I hope you enjoy these posts as much as I enjoy making them. He is everything I've ever worked towards. Thank you for sharing in my pride and joy.
