Sparkle butt.
When I put him to bed the other night, his jammies glowed in the dark. He had stars and other twinkly things all over his chubby little baby body. He had no idea how cute this was. After nursing him, I held him in front of the crib and he put his head on my shoulder, which means he is tired and will not fight sleep. I enjoyed the cuddle for about 3 seconds, and then he pushed me away and dove toward his bed. So I put him down and watched his glowy baby butt for another second.

The boy likes boobs.
I might feel embarassed later about posting this one, but I also don't want to forget it.

Lately when he is breastfeeding, he will pull away, see the nipple that feeds him, flick it with his finger, and then giggle. Sometimes he will go back to feeding, other times he just wants to flick it, and I have to distract him.

Let's hope no one was watching.
He is obsessed with mouths. Early this morning, he took a ball and shoved it at my mouth. A sucker for cute Will moments even when they promote germ sharing and look very weird, I bit down on the ball and pretended to be chewing on it, shaking my head back and forth like a golden retriever. He cackled. My mouth dropped the ball, he reinserted it.

Whenever he sees our new little daycare baby, he tries to stick his finger into her open, wet mouth.

Mouths - fascinating.

Tiny violin.
Previously I wrote about how Will is lacking the things his brother got -- cafe visits, swim lessons, stroller rides on city streets. And it sounded like I was feeling typical motherly guilt for not giving him the perks Mr. Firsborn had.

But I know Will is happy. In fact, he is less needy than Charlie was and is now, and often pushes me away to play near the big kids. He loves to help open the front door for them (while being held by me) and to wave out the window at them. He sits in his clip-on chair at the toddler table and eats with them, imitating their noises. When they color, he stabs paper with his crayon.

So it is not Will I am sad for, but myself. (Waaa, I know. My blog.) When I let myself really think of it, I am regretful that I didn't savor all his baby moments -- or even half of them -- as I did his brother's. When I did savor a moment, it was cut short by a screaming kid or my realization that I needed to start lunch or the smell of a nasty diaper. There are millions of cute things he did that I know I missed -- though I'm not sure what they were. Cuz I missed them.

Which is why every day this month, I am going to savor at least one baby moment.

The end of babyhood, part 3.
When Will was a baby, I would sing "one little, two little, three little baby boys" while bouncing him on my hip to the rhythm, and then put him down to sleep. But I stopped doing it awhile back because every time I started to sing, he would shake his head no.

Today I went to put him down for his nap, and as I stood in front of his crib, he started to bend and then straighten his knees, causing his body to bounce up and down, while saying "ahhhhh." I realized he was asking me to sing for him, so I did. Every time I stopped, he bounced and said "ahhh" for me again, and he got a good 5 minutes of singing. When I finally put him down, he cried like his little heart was broken. Ten seconds later, he was out cold.

The end of babyhood, part 2.
The stuff I'll always remember.
Today when he was nursing, he looked up at me, made my eye contact, and then tried to stick his chubby little index finger into my mouth. I shut my mouth tightly. He made great attempts to force it in.

Later, while still nursing, he put his baby foot in my face. I kissed it. He let it fall, and then raised it to my mouth again.

The end of his babyhood
Today Will is 11 months old. He has one month left of being a baby, and I am sad. So, every day for the next month, I will post something babyish that he did that day, and that I am going to fully appreciate.

Today I handed him a yellow school bus and let him watch me put a Little People in its driver's seat. Then I added another Little People, and then two more until the bus was full. I pushed the bus in his direction one inch. He picked up a Little People and used it to bang the other People until they were all lying on their sides.

Baby number six.

Sometimes I wonder how my career choice will affect Will, or rather, my relationship with him. I don’t regret starting a home daycare because it allows me to stay home with him and Charlie. But Will’s upbringing is already so different than Charlie’s was, and I can't help but feel that this time around is a bit inferior.

I stayed home with Charlie for a year while I went to school at night. I look back on those days with giddiness. They were truly some of the happiest days of my life. Every morning, we went to the same city park where I pushed him in the stroller, we played on the swings and fed the ducks. We took swim lessons and went to moms’ groups. We regularly went to a cafe where he got all the “cute” compliments and pulled coffee bags off the shelves while I sipped my lattes. I didn’t miss anything with him and have never had one regret.

I have these little memory snippets of his babyhood. Like how, when I was standing in line for my coffee, I had his little butt propped up on my chest, so he could be high and look forward. I made a kissing noise at his cheek, and, with his thumb still in his mouth and looking straight ahead, and without missing a beat, he very deliberately leaned his cheek into my lips so that he could more fully receive my kiss.

So many times, when Will is doing cute things, my mind is racing with all the things I need to do. Refill Lucy’s milk cup, finish grating cheese, get whatever it was I put in the microwave out of the microwave so that microwave stops beeping, tend to Charlie in the bathroom while he screams for me, give cat his milk or at least kindly shove him outside the kitchen, take a few bites of food before I faint, and clean as I go so it is not a sty tonight. While I am thinking all this, I realize Will is doing his native American “ah ah ah” sound whereby he puts his fist to his mouth and with the back and forth motion, gets my attention. I look at him and realize he has been screaming/fussing for the last 10 minutes, but I have been tuning him out. And with a cute smile on his face, he has learned that by making this noise, I will stop and look at him. He is literally leaning out of his chair smiling at me, so happy to have grabbed my attention. I stop and smile back. Still, I wonder how many times he wants my attention but is not successful.

What am I missing?

How many times did he figure something out while I was tending to someone else? What clues did he exhibit on his face that told how he felt about Lucy and Nova and Mikey? Is he awestruck? Annoyed? Oblivious? How many times did he try to sign or talk but I was too busy wiping a butt or giving a time-out to notice?

It’s like I went from having one child to having six, except the second baby never really had a chance to be a baby by himself, or even sorta by himself.

At the end of this week, he will be 11 months old. I am stunned. I cannot believe his babyhood is almost over. Charlie’s babyhood went on forever. I took in every detail and made each week last a month. Will’s has flown by as I have thought about how to make ends meet, how to turn this into a preschool atmosphere, how to fill remaining spots and then keep them filled, how to get everyone to take decent naps so I can recharge. So many outside details that have nothing to do with him, that I wonder what I have missed. And I wonder what details of his life I will remember that have to do only with him.

Christmas

My memories of Chrismas are from age 8 and up. I really don't remember being a toddler or preschooler on the holidays, even though I have a lot of memories from this age. So I never really know what to expect on the holidays with little kids of my own.

Skip the next few sections if traditional, domestic bliss bothers you.

I remember waking up early on Christmas morning and kneeling - no, lying - down at the top of the stairs so that I could peek and see what Santa had brought. No matter what it looked like downstairs, it was always glorious and festive and the best thing in the world. I loved Christmas.

We would tear open presents before eating breakfast. Then we would leave the paper mess in the middle of the floor and eat pancakes or waffles, famished. Everyone in the family loved Christmas; I think that is what made it so great.

My mom would play the piano and we'd sing Christmas carols, even though she was the only one who could really sing. My dad would read the Christmas story from the Bible. My sister and brother would come home from college and stay for the day, bringing me huge Bert and Ernie cookies or an oversized stuffed animal or something along those lines. My mom would cook a huge, delicious feast while the rest of us sacked out on the couch, watched TV, and played board games all day. I loved everyone being there together.

* * *

Our Christmas this year was different in so many ways. We had to wake Charlie up at 8:30 so that we could open presents together before Will's first nap. He came down the steps sleepy and out of it. He was happy to see his new bike, but also a little clingy and uncertain.

Charlie quickly got into the spirit of tearing open presents, and often said, "is that one mine? is this one mine? is it mine? is it? is it?" And I cringed just a tiny bit because I hate the idea of Christmas being all commercial and raising a kid who just expects stuff. So we gently reminded him that other people have turns, and that we can stop and slow down to enjoy the present most recently received.

There was no Christmas story - the boys are too young and I don't know where to begin.

My family is all out-of-state, so that made me a little sad. No Scrabble or Monopoly or Balderdash. (Just wait until the boys are old enough. I am totally raising them to be game guys. Take that, hubby.)

But still, it was a happy day. The four of us were all together, there was snow on the ground outside and it was peaceful and warm inside, we all had days off and time to cuddle and do nothing. And, Jerry was so thoughtful - he got me my first pair of sexy pajamas, that both revealed the lovelies while concealing the mom belly. I felt spoiled, but in a good way.

And then Charlie started acting extremely sassy, apparently thinking that Christmas means the children are kings for a day. And with all the excitement and overstimulation, Will would not go down for his second nap, so he fussed and arched his back, and it took forever to get him down.

Then we made a huge dinner (my part: homemade croutons. Hubby's: everything else. Hey, I was in charge of naps.)

All in all, a wonderful day.

Done whining now.
All right. Two posts of whining, and I am officially snapping myself out of it. Sorry for that.

I am looking straight into ten uninterrupted days off with my kids, hubby, and kitty. Days to rejuvinate and celebrate Christmas. So on a positive note:

Quotables
Jerry: Charlie, why don't you go play in the other room?
Charlie: No, mommy is in there. I don't like her.
Jerry: That was mean.
Charlie (walking over to me): Oh mommy, I sorry. I love you. I love you all my heart.

Later:
Will crawls over to me, uses my arms as handles and pulls himself to a standing position, and gives me a big, wet, open-mouth kiss on my cheek. Aw, sweet stuff.

Putting myself into a time-out

Will has been opening all the kitchen cabinets lately, so I moved two Costco-size containers of Cascade up onto the counter until I could buy some cabinet locks. It was just a matter of time until he found them and poisoned himself, I thought.

Then I turned to help the kids put away their Play-Doh. Out of the side of my eye, I saw Will put something into his mouth, and I was certain it was another Cheerio. After all, every single time I pull what I think is some horrible, poisonous choking hazard from his mouth, it ends up being a Cheerio.

This time it was not a Cheerio. I could not tell what it was at first. Then I reognized the yellow, plastic cap. It was a Cascade top, half-full of the dishwasher detergent. And I smelled his breath, which was lemony fresh and void of the usual milky smell.

After rinsing his mouth with so much water that his shirt became soaked, I ran to the fridge to find my emergency list, but it was missing. So I called 911. Except I accidentally dialed 411. Then I hung up and called 911, and they forwarded me to poison control. And in the background the kids were asking me to get them stuff. I turned on Backup Babysitter and heard Curious George.

As I waited to talk to a live person, I read the ingredient list. Sodium Silicate. Complex Sodium Phosphates. And Chlorine Bleach. Bleach - as in the corrosive stuff that burns holes in things.

I started cup-feeding him water, which he drank.

A woman came on the line and told me he was probably OK, but to look for signs of a burning mouth -- like excessive salivation, vomiting, and crying, which would happen within the hour. She said to get 6 ounces of liquid into him and to call back if he started having these symptoms.

So after his 3 measely sips of water from a cup, he was done. I took him into a quiet room to breastfeed him, but he wasn't interested. I then tried water from a new cup. Two sips. I tried milk in a more interesting cup. No sips. Finally, I tried water from a straw (where I let go of the straw and water flows into his mouth). He took maybe 8 strawfulls, then started using it as a teething device, shooting the water out the other side.

He then started to let out huge burps. I waited for him to vomit. It never came, but I started to feel extremely naeseous myself.

It was a long hour, but he appears to be fine. No vomiting, no foaming at the mouth. He finally breastfed a lot, about an hour after eating his bleach breakfast, and then fell asleep.

Meanwhile, I can't stop thinking about that bleach working its way through his tender little system and cleansing areas that should be left alone.

Mischief.
I just don't like what is going on here. Eight months old and he thinks the world is his to explore.


Which of these buttons makes the cool noise?


This is SO much better than lying down and cooing.


Can I lie down in there?


Only the big kids watch Baby Einstein while standing.


Oooohhh, a sink stopper.