One of the most fantastic things to happen recently, with all of Theo’s recent refusal to submit to the indignity of lying down or otherwise remaining in one place for more than a minute or two at a time, is that his reflux symptoms have become radically better.  Sure, he still spits up all the time, and you’ll likely end up with curdy milk solids smushed into your shirt if you’re not careful, but it’s been weeks — weeks! — since he was regularly fountaining up entire feedings once or twice a day, waking himself up in a sad little puddle of his own stomach contents and choking, red-faced, as he’d start to convulse again.

As you can imagine, we are not sorry to have seemingly left those days behind.

I used this improvement to tentatively introduce a little bit of dairy back into my diet last week, and it seems to have not made a difference to him at all.  So, with the next trip to the grocery store, I am officially going back on the dairy.  And, you guys, you have no idea how excited I am about it.  I have created what is perhaps the world’s most ridiculously unhealthy grocery list as a result.

Mind you, there’s a lot of vegan food around here at the best of times.  I can often go a week without eating any animal products at all without noticing or thinking about it, and I eliminated a lot of lactose-containing food by simply avoiding the small amounts usually present in stuff like commercially-produced bread products and many kinds of chocolate.  But, once I took a sabbatical from dairy products, I started missing certain foods so very much.  Ergo, over the next few weeks, I anticipate a blissful honeymoon with:

• Pizza.  Pizza!  And various other types of cheesy flatbread.
• Crusty bread with a nice brie or chèvre.
• Homemade cake frosting with lots of butter and/or cream cheese.
• Buttermilk biscuits.
• Nutella.
• Ice cream.
• Homemade cookies, various types.  (Stick margarine just does not bake up in the same way.)
• Lasagna.
• Candy bars and most kinds of chocolate.
• Cream cheese brownies.
• Grilled cheese sandwiches.
• And the simplest of pleasures: crackers with a nice, sharp cheddar.

Stay tuned for next week’s post: “OMG, why is post-partum weightloss so hard?“

Growth spurts are one of those things that I was vaguely aware of before I had an actual live working infant, but failed to recognize the disruptive severity of.  The six-week growth spurt hit us hard: it took about a day or so to figure out what on earth was going on and to realize that I hadn’t broken the baby, since all of a sudden he couldn’t sleep because he was too hungry, apparently, yet no matter how much I kept feeding him he was still hungry.  After I finally figured out that it was a growth spurt and made myself a thoroughly spit-up-proofed (and lavishly be-pillowed and be-internet-deviced and be-remote-controled) feeding and sleeping station on the couch, however, it was rather luxurious.  When all your baby wants to do is eat, you don’t have to entertain him much and can get a whole lot of reading done and work your way through at least a couple of seasons of Breaking Bad.

Now, we just started the preamble to the four-month growth spurt, which is notorious for wreaking long-term havoc on sleep schedules by sending babies back into a prolonged period of waking up every two hours all night to eat.  Happily, we have not yet gotten to that point.  Less happily, all of the mysterious little physical and cognitive advances that are preparing themselves in Theo’s brain are manifesting themselves by making him suddenly, almost comically cranky.  (Lest ye think this is another post dripping with self-pity, though, I will note that this is a Recognizable Phase, and one that should be over within a few weeks, after he’s done growth spurting.)

It’s like having a little miniature toddler.  While I love that he now seems to actually have tiny little unintelligible opinions about things, this seems rather precocious behavior for a four-month-old.  Yesterday, every change of position or activity was met with initial approbation, then, only a few minutes later, a screwed-up red face of horror and inarticulate despair: “Nooooooooo!  This is not what I wanted at all!“  But, when you are both pre-verbal and pre-mobile, your options are limited.  And, when you are the caregiver of a bizarrely cranky four-month old without any adult backup, car, or ability to go outside (thanks for nothing, predicted thunderstorms), you’ll pick up the tiniest scraps to add to your bag of amusement tricks.

Lying on one’s back to play with toys?  Insufferable!

Sitting on one’s mother’s lap to play with toys?  An insult!

Tummy time?  How dare you!

Swedish bouncy chair?  Not so ba… aaaauuuugh!

Reading a book?  Its pages!  They burn!

Doing assisted baby crunches to reach a sitting position?  Undesirable!

Hanging out in the rocker?  You mean the rocker of hot lava?

Pulling up to a standing position?  Fun, but… why am I not moving?

Doing my best Robyn dance around the office?  We are not amused.

Awesomely, I seem to be responding to this developmental burst of inchoate toddleresque angst by channeling my inner (and, let’s face it, pretty easily accessible) teenager.  “Whatever, kid,” I’ll find myself muttering as I move him from whatever tortuous position he’s in into something marginally more acceptable, rolling my eyes hugely.  Frankly, it’s a relief to find myself not taking the temporary (… let’s hope) residence of Sir Cranksalot too personally.

Though I have found myself trolling Craigslist to see if anybody’s selling a baby jumper for cheapish.  Kid, that whole standing and walking thing just isn’t going to happen for a little while.

—

On this week’s Target list: “Size 9m 12m sleepsuit.”

I did a tiny bit of closet rearranging last weekend, which was enormously satisfying.  I’d estimate that a full 3/4 of my closet is out of commission at the moment.  Most pre-pregnancy pants and skirts can be laboriously wrestled on, but not zipped, which is an important part of the equation; most dresses are rendered enormously impractical by the fact that I’m nursing; most blazers and wool sweaters are both unseasonal and un-machine-washable, so I don’t wear them around the house; and many tops are out of rotation, due to changing styles (a growing penchant for drapey over tight) and, again, changing torso proportions.

After living for half a year with a very, very small maternity wardrobe, though, I’m not feeling the pinch too much.  I’ve got most of the above out-of-rotation stuff in the back parts of the closet, and a date to revisit it all in a year or so, when I figure I’ll have to be realistic about the future state of my post-baby figure.  Also, I seriously need to counterbalance the metric ton of coats and sweaters that I own with some clothing without sleeves or pant legs, as much as I love a good 30-degree winter morning that allows me to show the locals how it’s done.

Given my extended wardrobe separation — I’m looking at the better part of two years, here — the speed of Theo’s physical expansion is utterly ridiculous.  Yes, yes, “they grow up so fast!,” blah blah blah, but he’s less than four months old and we have a grand total of three gifted onesies left for him to grow into.  Last Monday I was getting him ready to go out on a bit of a coolish morning, and I realized that there was no way I could wrestle his little knit pants on over his big cloth-diapered bubble butt.  “Size 6m pants,” I wrote on the grocery list.  On Friday, I crossed that out: “Size 9m pants.”  The size 6m onesies that I put in the drawer a couple of weeks ago already require vigorous yanking and wrestling to snap closed, and I’m starting to research convertible car seats because his head just keeps growing closer and closer to the top of his baby bucket.

I’m saying: Theo goes through a complete wardrobe cycle about 50 times faster than me, assuming a two weeks to two years ratio.  Clearly, I am not the one who needs a walk-in closet in this family.

I’m finally experiencing one of the last physical changes caused by pregnancy: the much-lamented postpartum hair loss.

As I understand it, it’s not so much that all of your hair falls out postpartum, but that you start losing all of the hair that didn’t fall out while you were pregnant, since pregnancy hormones keep unusual amounts of it snugly growing in place.  When said hormones wear off about three months after delivery, however, awesome amounts of hair start falling from your head in drain-clogging masses.

I don’t really brush or comb my hair except when I’m washing it — it just makes it puffy — and I usually have enough product of some sort going on to stop random hairs from working their way apart from their wavy peers and depositing themselves on my clothing.  So these days, the shower drain is really impressive, and the bathtub — which has sat, sadly unused, since some initial post-delivery sitz baths — collects whorls and tumbleweeds of hair from God knows where, which eventually get so bad that I’m occasionally compelled to swipe them out with a damp washcloth.

In a way, though, I’m hoping that the overall effect of all these hairs fleeing my head is enough to put off the ongoing search for a simpatico hairstylist.

—

In cheerier dispatches from Babyville, Theo’s nighttime sleep has been awesome for the last week or two, and routinely affords me an hour — a whole hour! — in the evenings to do some writing.  Pete and I are even thinking about sitting on the couch and watching a DVD this weekend!  (I’m not taking this development for granted, because I’ve heard horror stories about the four month sleep regression and I want to mentally prepare myself for the worst just in case I spend a month feeding him every two hours ’round the clock.)  Theo’s also really into conversational babbling these days.  After he’s woken up and been dosed with his morning reflux meds, he’ll beam at you as you say something inane.

“Hooooow.  Whoooo.  Oooohhh.  Haaaaaah!  Haaaaooowww,” he’ll reply, carefully pursing his lips and raising his chin to articulate his vowels, and burst into a delighted grin when you reply in kind.

Considering that he’s the familial product of a ridiculous number of educators, it’s particularly encouraging to see that he’s entering into the spirit of respectful, back-and-forth exchange and intellectual inquiry at such a young age.

But we’ve been joking that we still need to train him to be able to handle conversation with Pete’s family, where all ideas are aired loudly, simultaneously, and with vigor.  I’m pretty sure he could get a handle on that technique before he learns social interaction as we do it in my family, where we all sit in the same room and silently read our respective books.

Or maybe we’ll just combine the two and sit in the same room, all reading aloud from our books, simultaneously and vigorously.

Part of our lease agreement requires agreeing to specific minimum amounts of yard maintenance, as well as adhering to all of the rules and requirements of our subdivision’s HOA.  Neither the lease nor the HOA are particularly forward-thinking in any respects, so instead of doing the sensible thing and turning our lawn into a .2-acre swath of reclaimed xeriscaped blackland prairie, we are instead honor-bound to not change anything and regularly pour (in our case, minimal and early-morning drip-hosed) water into the thirsty grass that should, by all rights, be left to mind its own business and go dormant in the summer heat.

I can already hear some of you urging me to fight the dominant lease- and HOA-imposed landscape paradigm, but, you guys, we have already ceded two security deposits in the past two years, due to Pete’s ability to find jobs at intervals that do not coincide with the duration of our leases.  I’d like to at least try and go legit for once before cheerfully jettisoning yet another thousand-plus dollars, you know?

I thought that we’d been doing pretty well on the HOA front, what with me scrupulously keeping the trash and recycling bins away from street view and all.  Several weeks ago, however, we got a nagging little email — routed, of course, via the leasing agency via the owner via the HOA — letting us know that we had unacceptable numbers of yard weeds and needed to mow the lawn.

This was, of course, two weeks after Pete took care of said weeds, then mowed down the resultant carnage.  (If “carnage” can be described as looking like a packet of prewashed mixed salad greens left in the fridge for one week too long, that is.)  They also mysteriously CC’d this email to my father, who, as a seventy-odd-year-old Ohio semi-retiree whose only presence on our lease is as an emergency contact, has really only the most perfunctory interest in our lawn maintenance.

Given this background, you can understand why our back neighbors are my new heroes.  I don’t know them, but I already think that they’re pretty great, based on what we can see over the backyard fence.

Behold: the perfect image of suburban defiance. They can regulate your front lawn, but they can never take your backyard!

A selected list of important questions entrusted to the minds of preliterate babies, toddlers, and preschoolers:

• Where is Baby’s Belly Button?
• Are You My Mother?
• Peek-a-WHO?
• What Color is It?
• What Makes a Rainbow?
• Where Does Maisy Live?
• Where is Maisy?
• Mr. Brown Can Moo!  Can You?
• Is Your Mama a Llama?
• Are You a Cow?
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
• Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

Why must we demand so much of them at such a tender age, I ask?  Surely we, as a nation, can afford to establish a Bear Sensory Experience Task Force or Baby Navel Location Task Detail instead of exploiting intellectual child labor to investigate so many vital questions!

I was sitting in the backseat at the end my weekly Friday Target run, strapping the kid into his bucket seat, when my peripheral vision caught a tall, sandy-haired man passing slowly behind the car.  As he went by, I noticed that he was wearing a cowboy hat, hand-painted cowboy boots, and riding a horse.

He clip-clopped lazily down the mostly empty row of cars through the parking lot, heading towards the frontage road to the freeway.  I craned my neck to follow him, but lost sight of him as he turned the corner around Fuddruckers.

Today is a grumbly day that is capping off a very grumbly week.  Three earlier drafts of this post were eaten by WordPress, and whenever I have a spare moment to jump on the computer, it’s been operating at the speed of a crawl, all open applications freezing and then three programs announcing simultaneously that they have very important updates to download and install immediately and then forcing two or three consecutive reboots.  My ancient version of Photoshop is now operating at a snail’s pace, so it looks like it’s time to start tucking away money for an eventual new computer, since this one’s RAM is maxed out and there aren’t many options for a replacement video card.  And, perversely enough, I will probably get another Windows machine, because apparently I am just a glutton for punishment.

I’m also grumbly because this has been yet another week of turning down and cancelling social engagements due to a certain someone’s wildly erratic sleep schedule, which makes me feel like I’ve officially become one of those horrible people who has a baby and then stops returning the calls of everybody she knows.  And, with a small child, going out of the house is generally one of the few surefire highlights of your day. On the other hand, it does stop me from having to have the following conversation over and over:

How’s Theo?

Oh, you know, doing well enough.  He’s getting pretty smiley and social these days.  He’s really into his hands.

Is he sleeping any better at night?

Nope!  Not at all!

Have you tried…

Yup!  You bet!

Is he napping during the day?

Ha!

What does the doctor say?

That he’s, you know, a baby.

How’s his reflux doing?

Well, he’s still fountaining forth entire feedings multiple times a week, but we’re pretty good at cleaning it up.

How’s your knitting / writing going?

[insert image of above-the-head stormcloud here]

…

(I think I need to take a cue from a friend and hang up a hand-written sign that says “ENOUGH WITH THE SELF-PITY, JEJUNE” somewhere prominent.  Because have I mentioned that this kid stays awake all night smiling and beaming?  And sometimes he wakes me up at 1:30 or 2 a.m. with the aggressiveness of his cooing?)

Here’s the thing: I already look back at photos of wee tiny newborn Theo and go awww, because he’s growing so fast and he was just so tiny only a few months back.  But you can sure as hell bet that, as he grows out of yet another clothing size and starts babbling in a conversational manner and holding his head up more and learning to laugh and otherwise flying through the the little developmental milestones that mark his oh-so-rapid progress into toddler-dom, I’m not going to be sighing sentimentally about how I’d wish he’d stop growing up so fast.

I’m relishing it.