The Peanut Tracker

“Kids say the darndest things”, they say. Yeah, well, we the parents end up saying the darndest things to our kids. Here are some of the things we’ve found ourselves telling our 15 month-old son. (It’s funnier if you visualize a rambunctious, 25-pound, 32-inch little stinker perpetrating the shenanigans.)

“Elliot…Son! Noooo, don’t put the vitamin bottle in your oatmeal.” (After he put the vitamin bottle in his bowl of oatmeal.)

“I don’t think your <insert name of stuffed animal or toy> wants to smell your feet, Pal.” (Everything must be subjected to his toe-funk.)

“Elliot! You do not kick daddy in the face!” (He also thinks its hilarious to make his parents smell his feet, with a forceful kick at the end.)

“Elliot, eat your beef.” (I dunno why, but saying this always cracks me up.)

“Son, nooooo. Take your hand out of your butt.” (During diaper changing time, he’s been exploring the undiscovered country of his backside.)

“Son, we do not climb the bookshelves.” (He climbs everything. We’re just trying to keep him alive around here. A sufficiently ‘child-proof’ (read: “Elliot-proof”) house would be a 1,000,000 square-foot space with nothing in it except thick, berber carpet, no walls, and the kid in the center–with a football helmet on, just in case.)

“No, no licking the walls.” (What can I say. He was licking the wall.)

“Son, no, no eating your books. Books are for reading, not for eating. If you want your books to last, you can’t eat them.” (Looking at his books is his favorite thing to do. But that doesn’t keep his books safe from the perilous grip of his seven not-so-little teeth.)

-T

• I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this yet, but Elliot has 4 teeth on top in addition to the two on the bottom. Cute kid. He’s got a big-boy smile now.
• Elliot will be 13 months old in about a week!
• Elliot thinks the difference between his nose and his nostril is hilarious.
• Wow. I’ve been too busy. Work, busy. School, busy.
• Tania is awesome. She’s got Elliot learning daily lessons from this book called Slow and Steady Get Me Ready. Good stuff.
• For those of you who knew I was in the hospital, as far as I know I’m fine. For those of you who didn’t know, as far as I know I’m fine.
• Elliot is a good traveler. When he wasn’t sleeping on the planes to and from California, he was socializing with everyone around. He did cry once or twice, though I think it was due to some ear pain. Oh, and lesson learned: no more scheduling night flights with a baby; no one will sleep well for days.
• I’ve sort of fallen off the blogging wagon this last several weeks, but I’ll try to load some pictures really soon and write more.

-T

As any of you who are parents know, parenthood is packed with pains and pleasures, joys and sorrows. Seemingly paradoxically, the sorrows seem to sweeten the joys and make the pleasures more pleasurable. One of these sorrows, for me, comes in the early mornings.

Now that the spring semester is upon me, I leave for work early every day to make up the time I spend going to class during work hours twice per week. But some mornings that means I leave before Elliot wakes up. And this breaks my heart. It hits me hard when I’m looking for my wallet and keys, after I’ve showered and dressed. It hits me hardest as I’m opening the front door to leave, walking out of my home and away from my son who I didn’t say goodbye to, who I didn’t hug, who I didn’t tell “See you later!” Walking to my car, eyes blankly scanning the never-swept concrete-floored hall, my mind shows me what I was robbed of seeing: Elliot’s toothy, ear-to-ear grin; his seemingly always-combed chocolate-brown hair, seen from above as I hug him tightly; his little arm, flailing up and down furiously as he waves “bye-bye” to his daddy. Only they’re cheap copies, illusory counterfeits, lies of the mind. And then blinking even robs me of those, of my son, forcing the gravely asphalt into my vision.

Worse still are the days when I miss him in the morning and get trapped working late at night. Nothing so guarantees the wrenching of tears from my eyes than missing my son in the morning followed by coming home too late and missing him again.

Time forces me to cut this short. But I’m remembering this week that some small sorrows, if I let them, will make the joys all the more sweet, all the more worth waiting for.

-T

Mobility. Sweet, blessed mobility.

Elliot loves it, loves to walk, to move freely, to (sort of) run. Crawling was yesterday. Today–well, today Elliot moves about as man was intended: on two legs.

And so also do his parents. Quickly, too, since the boy is finding new areas to explore, new shelves he couldn’t see before, new nooks and crannies to search for treasures inside of. We’ve even bought him a pair of big-boy shoes now, so he can with victorious steps conquer the world outside his home.

Elliot isn’t the only one picking up new things to say, either; we’re learning new phrases too. “No, son, that’s not for you.” “Elliot? Where are you?” “Son, what are you doing in there?” “Be careful!” “Come on back, son. Come back to Daddy.” “I can’t hear you, son. What are you up to?”

-T

P.s. And here’s a few more photos. Y’know. Just ’cause I like ya.

Yay for big-boy foods!

Stopping for Cheerios at an ol' Texas ranch.

Another time-deprived, buckshot-style this ‘n’ that…

• Elliot is walking all over the place now. He’d been sort of partially walking since about 9 1/2 months, but he got really mobile about a week before his 10-month mark. Since then he’s just gone bonkers. He’s learned to hold stuff in both hands while he walks, and he’s currently working on increasing his speed so as to acquire larger bruises on his face from falling. He picked up a tiny shiner today from face-planting himself onto his toy car… Ouch.
• The apartment management company thought it prudent to put hardwood flooring in the upstairs apartments. We’re downstairs. And evidently the new upstairs neighbors hold high-heels parties every night. Superb.
• Tough start, but the Spurs still rule.
• We took Elliot to a little cowboy farm-ranch type deal. He waved at all the longhorn cows during the wagon ride and almost cried when the wagon drove away from them. He’s a social one, our boy.
• A couple weeks ago Elliot started saying “Dog!”. Well, sorta. It sounds more like “uh’daw”. At first, I couldn’t figure out where the vowel on the front came from. But then I realized I’d been pointing at dogs and saying, “Look, Elliot! A dog!”
• Oh yeah, he’d also been saying “‘at” (cat) and “buh” (ball).
• Tania is my favorite person. Ever.
• We’re sleeping now. For the past few weeks, Elliot has been sleeping straight through the night. There’s an occasional wake-up, but it’s usually easy. He’s pretty good at this now. Tip: bedtime routines, even simple ones, seem to really help (see the next point for part of ours). (Of course, I still don’t get any sleep, due to classes. Bah.)
• Elliot’s current favorite book, and the last one we read to him every night before bed: Pajama Time! Highly recommended. But you have to sorta sing it. (Thank you, Grill family!)

-T

Some popcorn thoughts ‘n’ happenings:

• Elliot is saying “Da-da” now. Well, pretty much; he’s still working on his pronunciation. But he totally knows who Da-da is. Heck yes. Tania will have me on speaker phone and Elliot will laugh and usually say “Da-da” somewhere during the beginning of the call. It’s awesome! (He’d already been saying “Ma-ma” for quite a while now. He loves his Mama!)
• His second tooth on the bottom is threatening to poke through any day now. It’s been hard to get a decent picture of the one exposed tooth, though; it’s not really big enough yet to see easily. Soon enough.
• Elliot had his first nasty cold. (Well, minus the one when he was only a month or so.) And he did not much enjoy it. No sir. Poor kid wasn’t sure what was wrong with his nose. All that snot sloshing around in his sinuses and blocking his breathing, disrupting his (already oft disrupted) sleep–yeah, not so high a fun factor there. Nor did Elliot love the cold “maintenance”. Many snot-extraction missions were completed, using the dreaded B.A.D. (Booger Annihlation Device).
• For the first time, Elliot waved bye-bye to me this morning when I left for work. We do the same waving bye-bye routine every morning, but today he laughed and swung his little arm up and down when I said “Bye bye, son” and waved. That was awesome, too.
• It’s interesting; we’re starting to see little pieces of Elliot’s personality coming out now. For instance, Elliot isn’t usually much interested in the whole mimicking thing. It’s not that he doesn’t get it, either. He just doesn’t care to mimick; he’d rather be doing his own thing. He’d rather learn on his own. He prefers to uncover new abilities by himself. Often, when we try to get him to mimick something, he’ll put on this dry expression, as if to say, “Uh, what am I? Your little monkey?” Then he’ll laugh and try to climb up my shirt. I love it.
• Balance is starting to happen; standing unassisted is getting closer (though still a ways off). Although, for now, he climbs up anything and everything, getting himself easily into a standing position. He’s even walking along things a bit, like the sofa, chairs, etc.
• Leaving for work every morning stinks. Saying goodbye to my little boy and my wonderful wife, after only seeing them for a few minutes during the morning scramble–well, it just stinks. Sigh. Such is life; such is the double-edged sword of blessedness.

-T

No, I’m not a new mom. I’m not even an old mom. Heck, I’m not even a potential mom.

So, now that we’ve got that squared away…

Caitlin’s latest discoveries were just too good not to share:

1. I become completely incompetent at changing diapers in the middle of the night. (The other night I put the diaper on inside out, but it was after I fixed it that Cash and I were covered in pee. Figure that one out?!)

2. When you’re carrying around a baby in one arm, your foot automatically becomes another hand. (Quite handy when loading the washing machine, I might add.)

3. Why is it when I start to sing my son a song, it turns out to be either 80’s rock or the Star-Spangled Banner?

4. I am terrified of the bulb syringe. You could suck his brain out with that thing!

5. While a poopy diaper makes me proud, I was totally grossed out by the umbilical cord and eye boogers.

6. If I don’t burp Cash after he’s fallen asleep nursing, and instead hope to put him in his bassinet still sleeping so I can get some shut eye, those darn hiccups will wake him up every time!

7. It’s totally unfair that Mick has to go to work all day while I get to spend my day with the most handsome little boy ever. We miss you, Daddy!

-T

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been close to 8 months since Elliot entered this world! My, how time flies!

Well, this is the very first time I have had the time and energy together to be able to write a post since Elliot arrived on the scene.

So life has been great–lots of ups and downs, but overall great. I love San Antonio, TX. The people here are great and there is just an overall great feeling here. YES, it is hot here, but it’s not too bad.  Soon the weather will cool off and I am soooo looking forward to it.

Our good friends had their first baby 10 days ago, and we’ve been really exciting for them. Now, being parents, we are really able to appreciate babies, parenthood, and all that comes with it. As we awaited news about their new baby, Tobias and I started talking about how much our love has grown for our little Stinky Toes. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve loved Elliot from the minute he was conceived, but our emotions of love have grown and will continue to grow with each passing day. For me, the “feelings” of love were not instantaneous the moment Elliot was born (they were there, of course, but not like they are now). I had no frame of reference from which to imagine having and loving my own child. (From all accounts it seems to be the same when one adopts.) It’s amazing how with each passing day my “feelings” of love grow. It’s been really neat to get to experience this type of love–a selfless and deliberate type of love. I am a better person because of getting to love Elliot. Thanks to our little Stinky Toes, I now know what it is like to love a child, and I know that with our next one the feelings of love will be there even before he or she makes a first appearance.

Elliot is a really great kid and we are so enjoying seeing him grow and develop into his personality.  We are so sad that we are not able to share that–in person, anyway–with all of our friends and family.

Tania

Some updates a la quick:

• Elliot is crawling. Yep, full-on mobility. He turned pro overnight. No more scooching or fish-out-of-watering. Needless to say, Tania and I are out of breath half the time…
• Elliot has passed the 20 pound mark.
• Some sleep is actually taking place is our household. However, it’s too late; we’re already scarred: sleeplessness is torture, and sleep is merely a prelude to torture.
• Evidently a thoughtful citizen of San Antonio considered it awesome to remove the catalytic converter from our CR-V during the wee hours of the night last week. What a nice surprise that was. As was the cost of parts and labor that forced me to fall back on insurance. Hooray for pathetic metal thieves.
• I’m trying to learn life-ninjitsu. Two classes, a full-time job, and a family create one heck of a juggling act. So maybe I’m actually just a clown. Hmm. Anyway, of course it’s a two-person/parent job, so Tania is a ninja too. (Undoubtedly even more so.)
• Arrrrr! There be teeth in them thar gums! In non-pirate speak, that means two lower teeth are pushing up in Elliot’s chomper. Should break through in a couple weeks or so.

-T

So here’s the latest on our family sleep situation: we’re all getting a bit now, thank God.

Turns out, as we had been beginning to suspect, Elliot’s arch-nemesis from his early weeks, though we’d thought vanquished by the muscles of maturity, has “lived to fight another day”–yes, the evil Infant Reflux.

However, thankfully, Elliot’s new pediatrician, who we’d selected pretty much at random from the pediatricians in our vicinity, just so happens to be concerned about and studied up on reflux in babies (which isn’t as common among doctors as you might think). She even knows the pediatrician who wrote the book about reflux we’d bought months ago, Colic Solved. What are the chances of that? Of getting a pediatrician, in our (very close) vicinity, who is both concerned about and studied up on infant reflux? And who even knows the author of the book about infant reflux we’d purchased? Weird. And cool.

Anyhow, she was concerned about Elliot from our very first appointment with her, having heard a few of the more subtle symptoms of reflux. After a week of monitoring the symptoms, and those symtpoms continuing–including his sleeping worsening–she had us start him on some medicine to help fight his reflux. And a day or two later, whaddya know, Elliot was sleeping straight through the night. (Not to mention his parents getting some much-needed rest!) Since then it’s been sort of two steps forward, one step back, so we do think it’s improving. In several months, the damage done to his little esophagus should be fully healed, and by then we hope he’ll have outgrown his reflux.

So, as of now, our little guy is much more rested, lively, much happier, and much healthier now!

-T