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Dooh doh doh doo: I am playing cutely, and perhaps looking in the mirror as I do.

NaNAnanana: Blah blah: imitation of adult speech. See also Charlie Brown “wah wah wah wah.”

Stck: stick

Dah: dog

Mama: Mom

Dadada or Dadoh: Dad

Mii mii mii!: General expression of pleased surprise: “Well would you look at that! I’ll be darned!”

Nononononoo: Sometimes “no.” Sometimes simply commentary, i.e., “I just don’t know about that.”

Ahhpul: Apples. Also, any food. Also, rocks that look like they might be food.

The Bottle Wean-Off is…off. For today. He came up this morning with a fever and the sniffles, so we’ll wait till we’re done with that (and possibly till his father and I are also done with that). Still, even when he’s well, night-feeding is a giant pain, so that bottle’s days are numbered.

I just wish he had a lovey like all the baby books say he should. No favorie blanket or toy does it for him; he doesn’t attach to anything else but a bottle, not even a pacifier. Maybe he’ll find something when the bottle goes away but I’m not looking forward to the transition. Not at all.

My niece, who is only 12 years younger than me and has 3(!) children mentioned that she bought one of those cheap door mirrors and hung it horizontally next to her kids’ cribs. Gave them something to talk to. It’s narcissistic, but it works for her. Maybe we’ll try it. I try not to make Buying Something the automatic solution to Nathan’s problems, but maybe there does need to be some kind of new cool thing about bedtime* to take the bottle’s place.

*Things that have failed to make him like bedtime more: stories, blankets, music, songs, baths, toys of any kind, a pillow, white noise, darker window shades. We’re pretty much out of ideas here.

Friday is D-day for me; last night was IT. 4 times I got up with him…he’s getting worse, all of a sudden, with the night waking. He’s not sick, or teething, or even growing all that fast right now. He’s just addicted to the moo-sauce. I have, meanwhile, gone right past crabby to….whatever comes past crabby. I don’t know what that is because I’m SO FREAKING TIRED.

I think it’s time for Night Bottle Detox. Which means even more no sleep, but at least it will be no sleep with a cause. He’s ready. Lord knows, WE are ready. So Friday night, bye-bye baba. It will be sippy cup with water (which he will HATE) or nothing. We’ll still have daytime bottles for now, but eventually those will go too. He eats like a horse; the bottle’s just extra calories at this point.

If all this sounds like justification, it is. I don’t like listening to him cry, it puts a real damper on the evening, and after about 10 minutes, you start wondering Wow, he’s really crying hard! What if he’s hurt? What if he’s crying because he has just hurt himself in the crib? Better go check! And of course he’s not hurt, and going in to check just cranks him up again more.

I KNOW he can sleep through without the bottle. Now I just have to teach him that he knows it too.

(pictures to come later)

Things have slowed down for us, or maybe we’ve just adjusted to the swiftness of the current. Nathan is moving at his own pace, and right at this moment, we’re keeping up. His own pace being, grow all your teeth as soon as possible, but walk slower than other kids; be bright and attentive and love to “read” your books, but speak only a few words in English (the rest in Toddler). Grow a little slower, but still be a 17-month-old in a body as big as a big 2-year old’s.

I’ll miss the sweet baby babbling, when he does learn real words, though I’m eager to hear him talk. It seems miraculous to see him walk, still awkward and stumping, arms bent at the elbows and held close to his sides, but walking all the same. Soon he’ll be using real words, and running, and using spoons, and it will be the most natural thing in the world. Right now all those things seem impossible to imagine. I mean, he’s still struggling with the whole sippy cup thing, even though I long to get rid of the bottles. And potty-training might as well be a trip to Mars.

Bedtimes can be bad and cranky, but sometimes they’re when he’s his funniest; all but asleep, he giggles and grins at you and flops around like he has no bones, looking for a comfy spot. He loves the lightweight pillow we got him, and knows that he’s supposed to put his head on it, but usually wrestles with it all night instead, rolling around in his crib. Sometimes he howls in the night and you have to pick him up (ooh, my back…) and he hugs you and puts his head on your shoulder and is comforted. Unless you try to put him back down without a bit of something in a bottle. Then, more howling.

More and more, he’s only waking once a night, and so his sleep deprived parents do occasionally feel less than dead in the mornings now. But there are no guarantees; every 3 nights of sleep still means 2 nights or so of more waking. We blame those teeth, though we’re down to the molars, which are the worst. Once they come in, I have the fantasy that he’ll start sleeping all night, and I’ll be able to work at 80% of my brain capacity, instead of the 45% or so I think I’m at now.

I do have just enough brain cells to pay attention to what he’s doing, and try to write it down and remember it, because so much happens so fast that it’s impossible to keep it all in mind. Which is why I’m glad he’s not speeding through every bit of it, that he has his own sweet leisurely pace. I want him to be someone who enjoys life, who doesn’t see it as a rat race, who may like competition but isn’t consumed by it. I want him to be a kid who finds his talent but also plays, with long blocks of time of doing nothing in particular but digging in the dirt, or playing hide and seek, or running through the sprinklers.

So many parents get into the Developmental Milestones competition, worrying about if little Wendell starts doing something a day later than little Wendy down the block. And sure, if Nathan does show a real delay, we’ll definitely jump on it to help him. So far, though, he’s puttering along at a fine pace and, especially when it comes to food, refusing to let anyone tell him when it’s time to do something new. I see his little self awake in there, taking it all in, communicating, sometimes being overwhelmed and sometimes jumping into the middle of things. He’s doing fine.

The older moms at work all have grown kids, and they were talking about the rat race high school is for so many; friendships lost when one had a half point more on her GPA, trying to game the system by taking easy classes, parents pressuring teachers to get that A, raise that score.

I just…no. I want Nathan to try, and to learn, but I don’t really care what his grades are so long as he passes. And I don’t buy the whole 4.0-is-a-ticket-to-Harvard thing…I mean, yes, if he wants Harvard, I guess we’ll think about that. But life is so, so much bigger than all of that mess. I don’t want him to miss it, to pursue a score that honestly, won’t make all that much difference down the line. There are plenty of colleges. He can find one that works for him, or find a college alternative that does, and providing he’s got survival skills, I’ll be happy for him. I’m not going to let him be lazy; he’ll do his homework, study for tests, write papers, complete what he’s assigned. And maybe he’ll be driven to be number one, or maybe I’ll have to nag him to pull in a high C.

But the standard of how well your child is doing, I want to remember then as now, is not: what measurement have they achieved on such and such scale compared to other kids? Rather, it’s; how well is he moving up? Is he making progress? Is there growth? So long as the answer is “yes” it’ll be impossible for me to be too unhappy.

Being too big brings problems, as my 6′4″ husband will attest, and Nathan is running into some of them now.

97th percentile: that’s where Nathan is; bigger and longer and heavier than 97% of all other kids his age in the US, according to the chart the doctor used at his 15 month checkup.

Which is actually a downsizing from a few months ago, where he was off the chart…statistically speaking, bigger and longer and heavier than EVERY other child his age in the US. So I guess we’re getting a breather of sorts; he does seem to be going through new sizes of pants and footwear at a slower pace.

The doctor mentioned that if he were that much heavier than other kids his age at 3, she might recommend a diet, and this was odd. Wouldn’t his weight have to be correlated with his height…so if he was also that much taller, still, then a diet wouldn’t make sense? I don’t know. I don’t think we’re headed for obesity town yet. He’s a vegan, except for milk–won’t even take cheese or ice cream, much less meat. He would probably live exclusively on apple bits and cheerios if we didn’t insist he eat a jar of baby food now and then. He is uninterested in potatoes, fried, mashed, or baked, so far. He never gets sugar or fast food. He eats healthier than most people you know, and gets more exercise.

He’s just a big kid, which has weird repercussions. In addition to being big, for example, he has a lot of teeth and hair (on his head) for a kid his age, so much so that he needs haircuts fairly often. Most kids his age don’t need haircuts yet, or very much of one; in addition, most kids his age are much smaller and weaker than he is. So today we once again had to hold him down (he was on Matt’s lap and I had to help keep his head still) while the stylist tried desperately to cut his hair. If he were older, he might be bribed or distracted. If he were smaller, he’d be easier to restrain.

As it was, he screamed bloody murder, thrashed, wailed, poured rivers of snot and tears down his face, and nearly got his ear cut off several times while the stylist danced desperately around trying to get a cut in here and there. Short of a tranquilizer dart or straight jacket, there is no scenario in which he will tolerate scissors around his head. We’ve thought about letting his hair grow for a year, but it would be down his back, and it’s not really attractive when long…let’s just say he’d make an ugly girl. Maybe we’re just too vain, but honestly, it is not a good look for him.

He looks dapper, if still a bit straggly, now, and we tipped the stylist well for all the screaming and the snot that flew around and got on her hands. It was the least we could do.

Kids who look taller and older than they are have another problem; they get treated as if they’re older, and may not get as much babying as they really need. One of the things I realized early on about Nathan is that he has an older child’s body, but his mind is exactly average for his age. Meaning, he’s still my little baby boy no matter how tall he is, and he gets scared, and needs directions and play time and to feel cuddled and cherished just as much as if he were tiny. So we do that, even if he overflows our laps and knocks things off of high counters and clocks us with a giant baby fist.

In his mind, he IS tiny, and the world is a huge and confusing place, and we are the people there to protect him. And so we do, even as our backs creak and our knees twinge while we pick him up. Because we want him to have that feeling of safety for as long as he needs it.

I worked on a video shoot today, for my employer, doing a film for our clients. It was hard not to find it all terribly glamorous, low-budget and small market though it was. We rented out a local school and brought in a few kid actors and a bunch of extras, fed them pizza and Cokes, and filmed a scenario partially written and edited by yours truly!

Squee!

It was really very fun. The kid actors were such old pros, they’d been at it since they were wee tots. They brought extra wardrobe, knew their lines, got their expressions and gestures down with some coaching. Our director and a contractor had gone over my original script and made the dialogue workable, but really didn’t change all that much, which made me feel pretty good. The director, who, as one of our actors pointed out, looked like Alec Baldwin, was very good at getting the kids focused and emoting. I met and chatted with the grip and the lights guy and the audio guy (it was exactly like talking to roadies, by the way–big beefy guys with tattoos, knit caps, and interesting personal histories that may or may not include jail), and it was all just a kick.

Anyway, we got past the morning shoot, and brought in the extras, and then the fun started. One of our actors revealed his unbearable hamminess when faced with an audience, and had to be refocused a lot. I think that kid is a lot more likely to go into comedy than acting…he kept doing what sounded like Chris Rock bits. To be fair, he was pretty damn funny at it, which would be great except he kept cracking up our actor who was there to play “slightly depressed girl.”

It was so strange to sit there in a classroom looking at all these middle schoolers in their desks, knowing most of them probably feel deeply neurotic and hopeless a lot of the time, and just seeing how beautiful, for lack of a better word, they were. Even the ones who were “goofy” looking, there was just something about them that made me happy. All that energy and hope, maybe. All that potential, bottled up in one room, for them to do well and become interesting adults and do surprising things that I could never think of.

I’m sure it’s parenting making me think this way. Thinking of Nathan being one of those kids, slouched in a desk, wearing sloppy clothes to show his independence, full of equal parts great ideas and complete ignorance, bratty and sweet and wonderful and exasperating. What an interesting thing it will be to see him become that.

I know kids drive you crazy, teens more so, ok, we’ve all heard those jokes, I know it’s true. Not many people seem to talk about the good things about teenagers, how they can work so hard to understand, how they can hold on to their decency despite being in a constant swirl of hormones and aggression and drama, how much fun it is to talk to them when they’re figuring stuff out, to see them do something they love or learn something new. They have so much dignity, and so much goofiness at the same time.

It’s a long way off of course. Today, Nathan grabbed his flash card with the apples on it, and said “Ahhhhpulll, ahhhpull” to me, which he’s done before. But then he went to his highchair and banged on the tray; “AHHHHpullll, ahhhhpulll!” So I got him some apple bits, and he was happy, and I was amazed, because he’s surprised me again with how much he’s figuring stuff out. Today ahhpull; tomorrow, the car keys. That is SO awesome.

Nathan now has a tube in one tear duct that will hopefully clear up his constant gooey eye. The surgery went fine, and the pediatric surgery center was quite nice, with a big playroom and the Wiggles (shudder) on the overhead TV to distract your kids from the fact they’re about to be prodded in some painful way or other.

I was wondering how I would handle it when they took Nathan away to prep for surgery (which is just giving him the anesthetic and taking off his shoes for an IV; they don’t make them change clothes). Because he was already past Grumpy to I HATE YOU ALL mode after a night of no liquids and getting up at 4am to drive across town to the surgery. It was cold and raining too. I was braced for complete and total screaming hysterics when we had to hand him over.

But! Instead, they got him high first. They gave him some kind of nose drops, and within minutes his pupils were dialated and he was spacey and quiet. He went with the nurse without a peep.

30 minutes later, all was done. His nose is bloody from being intubated for oxygen, and he has some surgical tape goo on his ankle. He cried until the second we gave him a bottle, then it was lights out. He’s been napping on and off all day, and now I’m just waiting for him to stop making faces in the mirror in our room and get tired enough for bed.

Kind of a practice run for Big Scary surgery coming up, probably next month. Poor little Frankenbaby.

What a sucky day. I have pretty much worked nonstop every day for the last 2 weeks and haven’t really seen Nathan much except right before his bedtime. So today was our day, once I got up, except that he didn’t want much to do with me. Or his dad either. His teeth hurt. And then the construction crews outside made it impossible to get a nap, so I drove him around till he fell asleep, then parked the car and read in a quiet spot. But he couldn’t sleep long even then.

We got back and had a late lunch, but it was all-cranky all-day. Tylenol didn’t help. He bit me and I yelled and he cried. We went to the bookstore to get out of the house, and he was fine until I wouldn’t let him crawl into people’s paths, and he wouldn’t use his legs and walk, and threw a wall-eyed fit, and so I took him home. And he cried. And I simmered and thought horrible things but didn’t lose my temper. We got home and I put him in front of a DVD, and then he was ok, and then I put him to bed, which was the only thing that did go easy.

Neither one of us got dinner, now that I think about it. Oh well. Maybe I’ll just have a beer instead.

Neal has just released his book Alternadad, which probably is mildly funny in its hipster, if doomed to be dated, way. He previewed one bit on Salon.com a week or so ago called “The Unkindest Cut” about the decision to circumcise his son.

And revealed himself an utter tool.

Now I know this chapter was picked because of the furor and links it would generate, which is why I didn’t give you a direct link. If you want to see it, feel free to search, it won’t be hard to find on Salon’s site. No need to feed the monster by linking them directly, I say.

The gist of Pollack’s piece was that he, as an unobservant Jew, was not committed to circumcision, and his wife was horrified at the pain they’d be inflicting on their son. But Pollack’s equally-unobservant family were horrified that they WOULDN’T mutiliate their kid for some meaningless ritual that they no longer believed in. So they had it done. And the end is kind of a shrug “yeah, it looked like it hurt, but the kid won’t remember it, so…whatever.”

Let’s try this out, Neal. How about if we schedule you to undergo some other sort of “minor” scrotal mutilation (perhaps a few random slices and stitches in sensitive areas) but tell you the pain isn’t important because no matter how much it hurts, we’re going to wipe your memory afterward. You’ll never even know it was done. So…hop up on the table, then?

Yeah, I didn’t think so. Circumcised baby boys aren’t able to carry that painful memory into adulthood, but that says nothing about how much pain they go through at the time. Pain for absolutely no cause, against an innocent who cannot even tell you how much it hurts or ask why you are letting this be done to them. Somehow I think if they could, we might hesitate a bit more with the scapel.

I forgive the generations before us, by the way; their doctors told them, and probably believed, it was a health issue and had to be done. But it’s not, it doesn’t, and most insurance plans won’t even cover it anymore because there’s no measurable benefit, and lots of chances for something to go horribly wrong.

You remember: first, do no harm. It would be nice if more parents took that oath, too.