Just look

I know, multiple posts in one week - don't hold your breath. Not much to say today except that Zander might be pushing up his second tooth - the first is a lot more visible. He's occasionally fussy over the tooth thing but nothing too horrible.

I'm still trying to sort out the ginormous number of pictures from December. I hope to have the December and January Zander pictures up on the gallery at the end of this month (next week). Watch this space!

While contemplating the new companion tooth waiting to burst forth, gaze upon these beautiful pictures of our happy family:

(Flash, what flash? It's art, people. Besides, the blur almost hides my crazy hair.)

Faster than a speeding bullet...

Zander is so fast...crawling...cruising...babbling. He's figuring lots of stuff out really fast. While he is the master of clearing all horizontal surfaces within his reach, a few days ago he grabbed a cup (thankfully empty and plastic) and tried to drink from it. He also, when shooed away from pushing keys on Matt's laptop, went over to the desktop computer and played with the keyboard there. If you pick up a remote, he immediately looks to the TV/stereo.

And then there's the Teletubbies. Brightly colored, baby-shaped, cooing, dancing, living in a hyper-paradisical world of grassy hills dotted with giant flowers and bunnies. Damn but he loves the Teletubbies. He loves the baby-sun best. Whenever the baby-sun appears, he laughs outloud. I have to say, as strange as they may seem to us adults, the creators (also adults? Is that possible?) really got a lot of things right. Genuises of developmental psychology.

Like Matt mentioned earlier, we've been working on saying da-da and ma-ma and waving. He suddenly started saying da-da the other night and so far it's a great game to him because he sees us get excited and happy. I haven't seen him waving and he's still working on ma-ma. He watches our mouths intently but has yet to try it out. One of our books said the da sound comes first and easier than the ma sound. Guess so.

Although it's nothing new, has been the case for several weeks or more, Zander gets very happy to see Matt when he gets home from work in the afternoon. He also enjoys his mornings getting dressed by daddy.

For the past week Zander has been the near-champion of the baby poop-wrestling olympics. Need I say more? Sometimes he is willing to let you take his diaper off but rarely will he let himself be distracted from rolling over and sitting or standing up on his changing table, poopy butt and all.

Ah, this is love, raw and uncensored.

Now I am not sure that he knew what he was doing, but last night Zander spent a lot of time saying Da-Da over and over. Now I just need to teach him what it means.

Also, he might have waved hello to me this morning.

Matt

A closer look

Just incase you couldn't find it from Carol's Picture... here is a closer look.

Matt

Can you see it?

(It's that little white sliver just left of center on his bottom gum.)

Zander sprouted a tooth on Sunday. His great-grandma Joan saw it. We were out on a walk and apparently he was screaming his fool-head off and the sun was shining just so. . . . It was all very sudden - Matt and I haven't been experiencing any unusual fussiness from Z or other teething symptoms. But when we got back and felt the tooth, we did notice that he was pink-cheeked and a little on the warm side. I think we gave him Tylenol that night to help all of us sleep. I guess baby Motrin would be better but in good conscience I would have to call the pediatrician's office, blah blah blah. He's had a dose or two of baby Orajel this week when having a screaming fit over tooth pain (my guesstimate since nothing else worked but the numbing gel).

Otherwise, he's a cruisin' kinda boy. He's getting into everything. He delights in clearing off our coffee table and the bottom shelf of DVDs. He is just tall enough to hang on to the knobs on the stereo - which of course he is having a love affair with. He knows that music comes out of it and the equilizer makes cool patterns...and he is drawn to it like a moth to a flame. He likes to pull things off the fridge. He likes to climb under furniture - from where it is more difficult to extract him!

The funniest part is the chasing. He knows there are certain areas we don't want him to get into like where the cat food is (which is also by the basement stairs) and under the computer desk (cords and dust) and I SWEAR he waits until my back is literally turned and then QUIETLY crawls to these forbidden lands. When I see him and give my reprimand so that he knows he's caught, he giggles and tries to crawl away fast. THIS is really funny. Because what actually happens is that he loses all coordination and ends up on his belly with his arms and legs madly flapping while he continues to giggle and tries to get his hands and feet under himself to crawl away.

Matt and Zander came up with a new game the other night which consists of back and forth stealing of a pacifier. The baby found this enormously funny and laughed everytime his father mercilessly snatched the binky every time he was JUST about to put it in his mouth. And he had no problem stealing it back. The next day I popped a binky in my mouth to give it a cursory cleaning and Zander stole it away from me before I realized what was happening. Heh.

That's my boy.

Running to stand still

Since last we met here in cyberspace, Zander has suffered and recovered from croup AND a head cold. He's still a little hoarse. Last week was rather a nightmare. Not because it was scary, not too much, but mostly because it was long, drawn out days of inconsolable crying (on the part of babe), fighting sleep (definitely Zander), a very snotty nose (still Z), and a mournful lack of groceries.

Since then we've bought some food, we're down to only 3 kleenex a day, Zander will finally go to sleep on his own . . . but we've entered a whole other territory of nightmare-land.

You perhaps recall us writing about how Zander is crawling really well now. And pulling himself to his feet. And standing. He is SO FAST at pulling himself to his feet, omigod.

Well on Sunday he started cruising. One end of the couch to the other. Sometimes other furniture will get involved. He got very good very fast at falling on his butt and not, say, his head. We have hardwood floors. He also likes to crawl OVER things. He embraces obstacles.

Zander's also made some attempts on the stairs and can climb a few (six is the high count) before that whining-frustrated cry gets his butt yanked. And this is unassisted (although not unattended) climbing. Generally I sit at the top and am the mommy-glittering-jewel-goal and Matt gets to be the catcher. Because Zander gets tired (did I mention the whining-frustrated cry?) and wants to take a break by sitting down. Er. He's small but he's not THAT small.

Finally, truly my favorite of all his new tricks: Yesterday he discovered his hair. He keeps reaching up to his head (and check out a baby next time you get a chance - their arms are only just long enough to reach the top of their head) to finger, twirl, and pull his hair.

(Yes, he's licking the glass.)

Croup de grace

It's been a whirlwind of a holiday season. Zander received many lovely things from his fans - er, family. Most of them make noise. Many of the noise making things don't have off switches. Yes, we are taking names and you will be remembered next year. Be afraid.

Zander's milestones over the past three weeks: He's sitting up solidly, don't remember if I mentioned that. It was sometime in early December that he got that down. Just before Christmas, he started to crawl using his hands AND knees. Actually, it started with one knee and one foot. Pretty funny looking! And when he wants to go FAST or something is impeding his progress, he'll fall back to using just his hands.

He's still pulling himself up on his feet and sometimes that's all he wants to do - get up and down, up and down, up and down. He falls a lot, but he's getting better at not hitting his head.

Zander likes to try and roll over and take off during his diaper changes. He's very cooperative (lifts his legs, holds onto his feet) until the old diaper is off. Then he twists and you grab him and he giggles and twists harder, trying to roll over. All a game to him. Wicked child.

We discovered how much he likes bells just before Christmas. A friend gave him a strand of jingle bells to play with and he went crazy shaking them and laughing and bouncing. Of course, he IS in the rattle phase right now. You know - everything is either a rattle or not-a-rattle. Everything must be picked up and shaken to see if it can make noise.

Last week, in his evening bath, Zander figured out how to splash and quite suddenly had a new-found love for bathtime. This from the baby who was suspicious of water and generally opposed to the idea of sitting or laying in his bath. This was the baby who had to be coaxed with perfect water temperatures and toys and songs. Now, NOW he loves his bath and spends the whole time smacking his toys into the water. Makes washing his hair easier. Of course now he cries when we take him out of the bath. Oh well.

A few days ago we added rice chex to his finger food repetoire. Tonight he tried avocado for the first time. Made a lot of faces but ate it all up without a problem. I found out the other day that he's eating about three times as much solid food as my girlfriend's daughter who's a month older than Zander.

Finally, the biggest and saddest news for last. Zander woke me up yesterday morning with a terrible cough. A croup cough. Luckily I had a good guess as to what it was and luckily the pediatrician's office was open for sick appointments that morning so we took him in. Of course we didn't get to see his usual doctor or even a nurse we knew and so the whole experience was a little surreal. The doctor let us say about three words, told us a lot about what symptoms to look for, gave us a flyer about croup, poured some steroid down Zander's throat to bring down the inflammation, gave us a "just-in-case-it-gets-worse-although-it-usually-doesn't" prescription to get us through the holiday weekend, and sent us on our not so merry way. The weird thing about croup is that most of the time the baby is totally normal and happy (well, Zander is normally a happy baby anyway), he just sounds like hell.

This morning it was hard to say if he was better. He wasn't worse. But after his afternoon nap, I think he might be getting worse. We're trying to figure out if he has stridor, which is the "musical" breathing noise babies with croup make as the trachia and larynx get more swollen. We'll probably give him one of those "just-in-case" doses before bedtime because it always gets worse while he sleeps.

Well I think it's time I go rejoin the family. I think they're putting together toys up in Zander's room.

Happy New Year!