1. What's an unfinished project that you should really get to finishing?
Nate's nursery. For. Freaking. Real. It's been like 90% done since the month before he was born, but we have two pictures to hang and a wall to repair and it drives me CRAZY that it's still not done.
Also grading these papers. I've been sick all week and they've been sitting here staring at me sadly, ungraded.
2. What's something you want to finish in the next six months?
Mostly small stuff. The semester. Re-mulching the flower beds and possibly moving some plants. Planting a garden. Printing and framing and sending out pictures from Nate's one year photo shoot.
3. What's something you've done in the last year or so that you're proud to have accomplished?
Kept a kid alive! Breastfed for a year (and still going). I've also done a lot of big projects at work of the sort that get little recognition, but which I feel very proud of - rewrote our for-credit research class, taught it for the first time, created a plan for the shelving of our books, etc.
4. How do you make yourself do something that you don't feel like doing?
Ug. Sometimes I don't. Other times... IDK. I make lists? I like lists. Checking things off makes me feel accomplished. But it's rare that I have a 'project' that I need to do and just don't want to. I (mostly) like the work of my job, and I generally don't mind housework and organizational work.
I sometimes sit around bored and annoyed at myself for being bored (this usually involves refreshing reddit a lot), and I'm trying to keep a list of 'things I could do instead of being annoyed and bored', which helps. If I find myself in that mood, a list helps me actually motivate myself to get up and do something else.
5. Is there anyone around you who's great at staying motivated, who gives you inspiration to be productive?
My former coworker was super motivated and organized, and she gave me a lot of energy. It's one of the things that I miss about her. Most of the time, I'm the organized, productive one in a group, and it was really great to have someone else like that in my life, both to help take the weight off, and to enthuse with me about progress and change.
I have some virtual friends (HELLO teza) who are similarly motivated and organized and productive, and projects with them are likewise usually awesome.
When I work with those people, I feel like being productive actually gives me energy rather than draining it. It's like-- the introvert/extrovert thing, but with productivity. There should be a word for that.
I'm not usually one for nonfiction books, but I've been reading The Power of Habit, and it is seriously fascinating. If you've read that story about Target figuring out a teen was pregnant before she told her family, or about how they learned to market Febreze, this is the book it comes from.
I find myself analyzing my routines now - my cues, my routine, my reward. I have some hope that it might help me set some better habits (it hasn't yet - I'm weak of will) - but also, it's really interesting to start recognizing these things in myself, and in my family.
The second half of the book talks about institutional habits, and how good ones lead to prosperity and poor ones can lead to disaster.
So here we are, three weeks short of a first birthday. WHAT.
Nate has been pretty delightful this last week. His clinginess is mellowing out, and his fourth tooth broke through on Saturday. He spends a lot of his time exploring and playing with things. Favorite toy is still the flyswatter, followed closely by the remote control. I've got to find him a good 'push buttons' toy for his birthday.
He's cuddlier, too, which I enjoy the hell out of. Sitting with him on my lap and pressing my cheek against his soft baby hair is one of my favorite things, and he barely fits anymore. This is totally how people end up with more babies.
He's really into mimicking right now, which is fun. He loves to have you pat something and then he'll pat it. He's started playing that game where I put my hand on his and he pulls it out and puts his on top of mine. He'll do high-fives about 75% of the time at home (and never when out - too many distractions). He'll mimic sounds, too.
No real signs of words yet, but he's pretty verbal. He spends a lot of his time moving, a lot of time on his feet. He can balance for several seconds without holding onto anything, but rarely does. I feel like we've got a month or so before walking, but who knows. The kid surprises me constantly.
He's laughing more at things that are 'funny' instead of just 'fun' - like being tickled or flipped upside down (he LOVES being flipped upside down). Sometimes Rob will make a face and he'll start to crack up. It's adorable.
He's very focused and slow to frustrate, which for some reason I find hilarious. Rob will play 'keep the pacifier away' with him for a good 5 or 10 minutes, and the kid just keeps trying, adjusting his angle or his hand or whatever. I watched him spend five minutes stretching up through the bars on his crib in an effort to reach his snuggie, perfectly patient while he worked on it.
My aunt keeps telling me he's such a serious baby, because when we're out, he spends all his time watching things very carefully. At home, though, he's got tons of smiles and laughs.
I've started sorting through pictures for his birthday party, and the contrast is insane. I mean, a YEAR. It doesn't feel that long, right? The pair of pants I'm wearing is older than that. And yet.
I've got 75 pictures in the folder and I haven't touched my phone yet. So uh. There's some trimming to be done. We'll get there. Eventually. I'm sure.
Clearly my count is off somewhere, because we hit an official 11 months on Sunday. I think just by a week though. This is really 48? That's not too bad, all things considered.
ANYWAY.
Nate's third tooth, which he's been working on for a while, popped out yesterday, so now we've got two on bottom and one on top. His teeth are super slow moving - from the time they pop through the gum to the time they're fully in is anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks, and I'd say it's nearly that long from when I think one is coming to when it pops through. I think this is probably a good thing - he's honestly a fairly pleasant teether and at worst we seem to get a day or two of crankiness. Just lots of gnawing and drooling.
His new thing this week is rocking back and forth, which is pretty adorable. He's also really picked up shaking his head 'no' at me again, though he thinks it's a game - interestingly, one he plays with me all the time, and with Rob rarely. He loves to do it on the changing table and right after nursing.
We had a little bout with constipation recently. My mom offered (out of nowhere! bless grandmothers.) to take him all night Friday and let us sleep in and have the morning off. It was glorious - and then I learned that he'd slept 8-11:30, then 3:00-5:00. AM. He has NEVER done that for me. Ever. He was fine the next night, but Sunday night he woke up a few times and was inconsolable (fortunately, all before 1 AM), and then he writhed and screamed to push out the tiniest little poop. TMI?
Anyway. Tylenol and gas drops got him through the night, and we have been working to up his water intake. I suspect that he's a little dehydrated, because we've been cutting back on breastmilk in anticipation of my no longer pumping at work when he turns one (HALLELUJAH), and I'm not sure we've been great about making sure he's getting enough other liquids.
He drinks like a champ, though, when we remember to offer. We have one of those great 360 sippy cups, and he can handle it entirely on his own and drink a good half a cup per meal. We probably need to work on the sign for 'drink' more so he can ask for it.
Cause he sure can ask for milk these days! If he REALLY wants it, he'll start to whine and just frantically clench and unclench both fists in this little adorable ball of MILK NOW MOM. It's the only sign he's great with, probably because it's the only one we're really consistent with. He'll do 'more' sporadically. We do 'more', 'all done', 'eat', and 'drink' sporadically. I also do 'bath time' with him, which he seems to know, but doesn't do.
Rob told me last night that he realized that Nate is more pleasant when I'm not there - which is true! Some of it is that I come home in time for the dinner-bath-bedtime routine, which often includes 'I'm tired and hungry' mild crankiness. Some of it is that I'm an anomaly to his routine and he wants to be on me a lot when I'm there. Both frustrating and endearing.
Most the time this kid is a hoot, though. He's (usually) pleasant and fun to be around and loves to play games. He's thrilled to pull all the rings off his stacker, he loves to be flipped upside down and thrown onto the bed, last night he was learning to high-five, he can pet the cat gently, and he loves to climb all over everything. He's pretty into books, too, and adores turning the pages.
Yesterday Nate was hugging onto his snuggie while nursing - he's started to get REALLY attached to that thing and will drag it all over the house if we let him - and out of nowhere, he starts covering and uncovering his face with it. PEEKABOO!
This morning I went in to his room to grab him after getting dressed, and instead of his usual morning routine of digging out a basket or pulling all the books off his shelves, he was laying on the floor with a book open in front of him, looking at pictures and kicking his little feet in the air.
Moments like these remind me that this kid is a person doing person-like things. Toddlerhood is so close we can taste it.
I'm pretty sure he's working on one or two top teeth, but I've decided that his teeth just move slow. His bottom two still aren't fully in, and they broke ground about Christmastime. I can feel the bumps, but they're still below the surface. I'm bracing myself for a couple nasty days near the end, but he's usually quite happy after they break through, so there's that.
Nate's pretty into books these days. He loves turning the pages and gets annoyed that he can't manage it on his own. He prefers books with pictures of real things instead of drawings. In general he just loves to look at stuff. If I have him on my lap on the couch, he often scrambles up to stare out the window, which he can do for a good 15 minutes at a time. We went out to eat Monday and he spent the whole time hanging sideways watching the waitresses walk back and forth.
PS, this kid can eat a whole Denny's kids meal and then some now.
Also PS, taking him out to eat makes me realize how freaking terrible kids meals are and how few places even have sides I want to feed him. Denny's is actually pretty great - for $3 I can get him an egg, some toast, and half a banana or an order of broccoli.
He's in a blowing mood lately, so he crawls around with his little mouth in an 'o'. He's started clucking his tongue. He'll often repeat babbling back to you, especially if you sing it. And he's started bouncing to music when it plays.
Generally almost-eleven-months is a pretty fun time with him. He gets clingy in the evenings, which I could do without, but is a lot of fun to play with, and much snugglier than he used to be. Sometimes he'll even deign to lay his head on my shoulder.
I'm pretty excited for this spring, when he'll be able to go down slides and on swings. It's gonna be wild.
I'm in the mood for a good love story, preferably with a solid plot to go with. Must have good, fully-developed characters. My usual fare is genre stuff (sci fi, fantasy, horror, etc), but I'm open to other options.
I THINK THIS KID IS FINALLY SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!
For the longest time, we were down to two wake-ups for him, one for me - a feeding at 11, and one at 3 or 4. Over Christmas break, I had a solid week off, and I decided to cut back the 11 PM feeding and go down to one. He'd done it a few times randomly and it felt like a sign he was ready.
And our sleep WENT TO SHIT. We were up two, three, once even four times at night. No pacifier or rocking would console him. We MUST EAT. For a week and a half, life was terrible. And just as I was about to give in and add the 11 PM feeding back in...
Lo and behold, our first tooth! Once it pushed through the gum, things got slowly better, and we have had FOUR nights now where we have not fed him at all - in fact, I have not even gotten out of bed to give him his pacifier. I have only heard him awake once, and I decided to let him fuss until he actually cried - but he never did! Put himself back to sleep!
There are no words for the feeling of getting a full night's uninterrupted sleep after a year and a half of interruptions.
Just now Nate has found a piece of stiff paper which makes a pleasing sound when he waves it in the air. He's been waving it back and forth and cackling while kicking both legs and waving both arms for 15 minutes now. Every once in a while he pauses to explore the texture of the thing, then decides to go back to waving it and laughing.
Kids, man. I mean seriously. Who knew it'd be this much fun?
Good grief, I'm behind. And the further I let myself get the worse it is. SO MUCH HAPPENING.
When last I left you, I had a child with a runny nose and clingy fussiness. The nose cleared up, the fussiness lingered through the weekend before Thanksgiving. He just wanted attention, attention, to be held, held.
I was really concerned about the 4.5 hour drive we had for the holiday and how he'd do away from home, since the last big trip we took with him - to Texas - turned into a nightmare. It coincided with the 4 month sleep regression. I strongly suspected that this one would coincide with the 8 month one. That weekend we also went back to two feeds a night, which we hadn't done in AGES.
Fortunately, my fears were for naught. We drove about an hour and a half, and Nate slept for about an hour of it. Then we did some shopping and let him crawl around a bit in the 'husband chair' section of the stores, had lunch, did some more shopping, got back in the car just in time for another nap. We stopped by my grandparents' house and they met Nate for the first time. He was lovely for them - full of smiles and happy to show off crawling and laughing and sitting and other various baby milestones.
We rented a house about 45 minutes south with my parents and brother & family for $82/night, and it was enormous. Rob and I took the master bedroom, which had a bathroom the size of our living room, because PAST the bathroom was a giant walk-in closet big enough for Nate's pack 'n play. The place had three sitting areas, 2.5 baths, four bedrooms, two flat screen tvs, a lovely kitchen with an island, and a table that seats 8. It was really great for everyone to hang out in. Eight of us stayed full-time, and another 5, including my grandparents, came for Thanksgiving.
I'm gonna pretend I posted this two day ago when I started writing it, okay? Okay.
I had a three and a half day weekend last week, which was lovely, because I got to spend a lot of time with Nate, and not so lovely, because he spent most of it being a fussy whiny pants.
His runny nose has mostly cleared up, with no other symptoms of a cold and no actual teeth, so I'm still up in the air as to the cause. I THINK I can see teeth below the gum, but nothing's poked through yet. I've read that it can take weeks, though, so who knows. Maybe this is part of his fussiness - the more I though about it, the more horrifying teething sounds to go through. I mean, your teeth come UP FROM YOUR JAW and PUNCH THROUGH YOUR GUMS. Ow, right?
Part of the fussiness also seems to stem from the onset of separation anxiety. He's had bits of it before - a few weeks ago he clearly started noticing when we left him in a room. But it's sort of cranked to eleven lately, where he wants to not only be in the room with us, but RIGHT NEXT TO US with us, preferably with us paying attention to him. On the plus side, he's gotten happier about sitting in your lap. On the downside, he wants to sit in our laps a LOT, and also to be doing things like pulling on the pages of my books. I've been grateful for our Mei Tei a few evenings, because I've put him in it and done some things around the house and it really seems to calm him down.
Today I put him down for a nap and he spent fifteen minutes just HOWLING, which he's never really done. I went in eventually and picked him up, held him for about a minute, then put him back down and patted his chest, then left, and he was fine.
The neat part of this though is that he shows real preference for wanting this person or that person (usually Rob or I), which warms your heart a little. He's also started raising his arms to be picked up. It's funny, that seems like such a usual baby thing to do, but it took almost 8 months for it to appear.
He is SUPER ticklish in his good moods. Today I could basically tickle anywhere on his body and have him in giggles. His feet and inner thighs are almost always sure bets, but his ribs and up and down his back also often work. If I sit him up after his bath (all naked) and run his fingers up and down his spine, he gets this huge grin and hunches over like it's ticklish but he loves it and then starts laughing. It's pretty ridiculous.
We've started feeding him more things that we're cooking. I gave him rice and beans and chicken when we did enchiladas this week. Last night he got some marinated chicken from our chicken chili rice bowls and some warmed pear, as well as some sauce-covered rice on a spoon. He seems to like flavorful things, even with a little spice. He'll also suck on lemons at a restaurant and seems to enjoy it! I don't even know.
He's really into playing with our digital clock and X-box controllers (and anything else with a cord), as well as pulling the books off the bottom bookshelf. I guess I need to pack that stuff up somewhere until he's old enough to learn 'no'. We also need to get a fence/gate for our giant fireplace this winter. It's gonna be hard enough keeping the floor clean so he doesn't shove bits of wood in his mouth.
Last night I went to bad (too) late and had long passed his normal 11:00 feed (I'd given him his pacifier when he woke at about 11:45), so I decided to skip it and see what happened. What happened? He slept til 2:30, 7 and a half hours after his last feed and maybe 30 minutes earlier than his usual feed, then went back to sleep. Then up for the day at 6:30, which is usual these days.
So basically I think he's ready to drop that, and I suspect he may be ready to drop the middle of the night feeding if I pushed it. I'll start with one and maybe work on the next over Christmas break, when he'll be 9 months. WE'LL SEE.
thefridayfive:
teza) who are similarly motivated and organized and productive, and projects with them are likewise usually awesome.