santa came

Santa Claus came to our house over the weekend and left quite a lot of presents for little Gavin. On Christmas Eve, we braved the icey roads and went to Jason's grandmother's, where they have a huge party every year, complete with a Santa. Gavin got to sit on Santa's lap and got a present - he was not upset at all about Santa, as I expected him to be. In fact he seemed rather happy about it.

Saturday, we had the morning to ourselves. We ate the cinammon rolls I had made the day before (yummiest recipe ever - just like Cinnabon!) and opened presents. Gavin got bored pretty quickly and soon he just wanted to eat wrapping paper and pull ornaments off the tree, but before that happened he tugged at the paper on one or two presents.

In the afternoon, my grandparents, mom, and Aileen came over for Christmas dinner, then we all went to Shannon's house for yummy snacks and more present exchanging in the evening. It was a lovely day and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Jason and I got gift certificates for two dinners and two movies from my mom - "babysitting assurance" she calls it. Assurance indeed. We cannot wait to go out!

snow and ice

Wednesday and Thursday we had ourselves (and the rest of Ohio, too) quite a litte snowstorm, followed by a fun bout of ice. Some people are still without power, making for a Christmas they will surely never forget. Fortunately, we did not lose power. In fact, we were able to be holed up together at home - the first serious work-week snowstorm in our married lives we were both home for; all the others, Jason always had to go to work. This time, though his office closed and he was home with me. We had a good time, too. Gavin slept for a long time in the afternoon, which gave us time to cook ramen for lunch and pretend like we were still back in college playing hooky when it was too cold or snowy to go tromping across campus. It was just like the good ol' days, almost.

the white that bites

Gavin experienced his first snow today.

Hmm. This is peculiar.

Ewww. Doesn't taste good. Bites back!

Moooommmmm.... I'm not so sure about all this.

Oh what's this? What did you make for me, Mom?

It wouldn't bite me twice in a row would it?

It did! Mom! Mommy! It bit me again!

the little known corollary to Newton's third law

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction," reads Newton's third law of motion. But did you know that there is more to it? It goes on, "and for ever good night of sleep, there is an equal and opposite bad night of sleep."

Gavin had a great night the night before last. He slept for three hours, then four hours, then three hours again. Each time he woke, he slipped back to sleep easily and I was probably up no more than 20 minutes each time.

Last night was payback. He was up every 45 minutes to an hour from the time he fell asleep and I put him in bed at 9:00 until 12:30, when I asked Jason to just bring him to bed with us. From then he slept better, but only because he had my boob in his mouth the entire time. But at least I was sleeping - or dozing at the very least - the whole time. Unfortunately, although we got a little sleep, he was awake at 5:00 this morning and wouldn't go to sleep again, even though he was rubbing eyes and squawking tiredly.

Now, to be fair, Gavin waking every 45 minutes or hour is not new, nor is it unusual. I think we have a night like that at least every week or so. But coming on the heels of such a fantastic night, it felt worse than normal.

This time, I think it's teething pain that's making him wake so much. He's been working on teeth number 7 and 8 for a good six weeks, but I think one of them is finally coming through. He was rubbing furiously at his face and tugging on his ears everytime he was awake last night, and his cries sounded pained instead of just crabby-from-no-sleep. And for the past couple of days, my nipples have been a little sore, and I have learned that when they feel like this, Gavin gets a tooth within a few days. Perhaps that is some consolation, but not much, not right now. Curse you, Newton!

we are treed

The last two years, Jason and I didn't get a Christmas tree. Two years ago, we had every intention of it, but then while visiting my dad the week before Christmas, I came down with a horrid virus that left me weak and "oozing from all sorts of various places" (to paraphrase a Buffy episode I watched today). Just as I was recovering, Jason came down with it. Needless to say, not only did we not have a tree that year, we didn't have much of a Christmas, with no family (we quarantined ourselves just in case), no special food (Jason didn't feel much like eating), and no church (see the first item in this list). (Well, to say we didn't have a tree is a bit of a lie. We decorated our little palm tree with a string of lights and three ornaments. Deck the Halls!)

Last year, a tree seemed like a bit too much work. I was pregnant, tired, and emotional, and the work involved in rearranging our living room to make room for a tree seemed like too much. Plus, we weren't sure that we actually could rearrange our living room to make room. It was a very small living room.

This year, in our new house with all its glorious space, I was looking forward to a Christmas tree. Looking forward to the piney smell and the lights and seeing all the ornaments that have been packed away for three years. Looking forward to Gavin's reaction to the tree and the lights and the ornaments. I've struggled a bit with the Christmas "spirit" this year, and have tended toward grinchyness, but I kept forcing myself to think about Gavin and how it's his first Christmas and how grinchyness is not, not, not how I want to remember his first Christmas.

So on Sunday, yesterday, we went out to buy a tree. We drove to the place up the street, which advertises trees from $25. That is entirely too much for a tree, we agreed, but we decided to stop and see if they had marked anything down, since it was now less than a week until Christmas. No markdowns. Still mucho moolah. Moving on.

We went to Lowes, where my sister had told me they bought a tree the week before for $13. What luck! They had a sign out advertising $5 trees. Five Dollars! But sadly, the trees were worth only that much. You get what you pay for: skinny, scrawny, small, ugly. Charlie Brown trees. Charlie Brown have their place, but since we had other options (we hoped!), we decided to keep looking. Moving on.

The next place was advertising trees from $19.99 to $75. We couldn't imagine how (or why!) someone would pay $75 for a Christmas tree, but after finding out the place charged by the foot ($6-8/ft), it wasn't so hard to imagine. They had some tall trees there. The cheaper trees were under four feet, though, and would have looked rinky-dinky in our living room with the tall cathedral ceiling. Moving on.

The Andersons was next. The cheapest was $29, and again, they were small, short trees that just weren't worth that much money. We got to see an old friend from our Blockbuster days, though. He works in the wine department, and we stop by once a year or so to visit him. So it made the trip there worth it. Moving on.

After that I was pretty grouchy indeed. It didn't appear that we were going to find a tree that was within our budget (under $20 - we've never paid more than that for a tree!) and nice enough to be worth the money. I decided unilaterally that we just wouldn't have a tree this year. Better no tree at all than an ugly one that looked dumb in the house. Very grinchy of me, I know. But as I said, I've struggled with that this year.

So we went grocery shopping next. On the way home, we decided to stop (read: Jason decided to stop, as I had already decided no tree for us) at the place by our house. The first place we stopped at that day. He just wanted to see what the $25 trees were like. Surprisingly, they were nice. Tall. Full. Pretty. Piney. We found one we liked and we bought it. (Because I don't have enough parentheticals in this entry, I want to add that it was bitter cold out yesterday. At one point one of the tree lot attendants told us it was around 1 F with the wind chill. If I wanted, I could blame my bad mood and grinchy behavior on the cold. I could. But I won't.)

We came home and I made chili, improvising the recipe because I found we didn't have as much ground beef as I thought we did, and we ate dinner. Later we put up the tree and decorated it. We strung on the lights and opened up the boxes and made friends again with all our old familiar ornaments from years past. It turned out to be a nice evening - a nice day - despite my attack of the grinches. And the tree is nice too.

On the left you can see the palm tree that stood in as a Christmas tree two years ago.

Gavin did well overall while we decorated the tree. He sat in his high chair and feasted on cheerios and biter biscuits. Afterward, however, he set to the presents with gusto!

happy birthday to me!

Yesterday was my birthday, so happy birthday to me! I had lunch with some friends from a mom's group, although it was a Christmasy kind of function and not a celebrate Allie's birthday type function. We had a lot of fun at lunch. It was a lovely tea room, with delicious food and such beautiful decor inside. Perhaps not surprisingly, there wasn't a single male person in the restaurant the entire time we were there. After lunch, I stopped and bought Jason's Christmas present, then went home and had birthday cake with Jason and Gavin. Gavin didn't actually have any cake, but he had Cheerios and seemed almost happy with that (he is starting to want what we're eating and not to be satisfied with what we give him - normal at this stage?). When we had eaten cake we left and went shopping, then met my sisters and mom for ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery - yummy! it's the second time we'd been there, and I have absolutely loved it both times. some of the best ice cream around. When we came home, Gavin was asleep, sacked out from not having a nap all day. He was so out we were able to carry him from the car up to his crib without his waking - triumph! Then I did some sewing and we enjoyed the rest of our evening in quiet until, naturally, we went to bed, at which time Gavin woke. It was a great day though. Hurrah.

coffee mug

Watching Gavin is fascinating. He's seeing this world for the first time with fresh eyes. Everything is new to him. Everything is worth his time to touch and explore and learn from.

This morning I watched him with my coffee mug. Earlier, while it was filled with hot coffee, he watched me sipping from it and crawled over to me, reaching for it excitedly, only to wail in frustration when I held it up away from him. So when I saw him crawling for it again later, after it was empty, I let him have it. And I watched.

He knocked it over trying to pick it up, then grasped it by the handle and dragged it away a little and sat up with it landing in his lap, open side up. He touched it, exploring it, learning about the smooth texture, the feel of the lip of the mug, the curve of the handle, and the roundness of the mug's outside surface.

Peering inside the mug, he saw the little bit of coffee that remained in the mug that had pooled there after I set it down for the last time. He reached his tiny hand down inside the mug and tried to pick up the coffee. Several times he put his hand into the mug and pulled it out, examining his fingers. They were wet, but surprisingly he didn't put them into his mouth (probably a good thing). Instead, the coffee rubbed off onto his pajamas as he excitedly bounced his arms up and down.

After a while, the inside of the mug no longer amused him, so he picked it up by the handle and brought it to his mouth, not so much chewing on it as feeling it - yet another layer of exploration of the smoothness, the roundness, the curviness. He flipped and turned the mug this way and that, , bringing it to his mouth again and again. The mug landed in his lap and he pounded on it with his hands, then picked it up agin. And then he started trying to pound on other things with the mug, which is when Mommy stepped in and ended playtime. Gavin doesn't need to add a trip to the emergency room to his list of experiences this week.

falling

If you're reading this, you have successfully navigated the latest anti-spam measure. I'm like a one-woman rampage against comment spam, except of course, I'm not actively doing anything to stop the losers who do it. I only wish there was something that could be done. I hate to keep inconveniencing you all because of my hatred of the spam, but it really is bad. The spam that is. I suppose my hatred is, as well, I suppose. My friends who have Movable Type don't have this problem, but for some reason on this journal and my pregnancy one, I would get a spam on every single entry every few days. When you have a couple hundred entries (and more all the time), that's a lot of spam, and Movable Type doesn't provide a convenient way to delete multiple comments so I have to do it one by one. Maybe someday I'll switch to a different content management program, but for now, this is it.

Gavin fell down the stairs yesterday. It wasn't as a result of his climbing up them. Up until yesterday morning, I had assumed that if he ever fell down the stairs, it would be because he was climbing up and slipped. But no, instead it was because he crawled too close to the edge of the stairs on the landing and I got there a hair too late to catch him.

So I stood there and watched, helpless, as my baby tumbled down the stairs in slow motion - thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Head over heels, he went and finally landed at the bottom. He cried, oh, how he cried. And I leapt down the stairs. I honestly think my feet didn't touch a step between the top and bottom of the flight of stairs. In fact, flight is exactly what I believe I attained. And then I was there, crouched over him, my desire to scoop him up and cuddle him and stop his crying warring with wanting to let him start moving on his own just in case something was seriously wrong with him. So I kind of half cuddled him while he lay on the ground until I could bear it no longer, then I swept him up into my arms. For a long while, we sat there on the floor, both of us crying, both of us scared, and both of us, I imagine, shaking. Eventually we calmed down and it was clear that we were both okay.

It was scary, scary, scary. I don't think I'll ever forget that moment, that eternity as I stood watching him tumble down the stairs. Now, a full day later, recalling it makes me laugh, but in that way that you often recall a frightening event, where the laughter bubbles up from inside almost hysterically and the humor is the kind you can't define or explain, since it really isn't funny at all.

pardon our dust

Please pardon the ugliness while I change the look. Ideally I'd have created a test page and left the old one up so it looked okay, but I'm a dunce and thought this would be an easy-peasy quick thing. Just copy in the new code and voila! Right? Wrong. Sigh. A measure of my day, this is.

bock bock

There are some days when I am home all day and I'm perfectly happy with it. I like being home all day, getting Gavin into bed for a nap when he's tired - if I should be so lucky to get him to fall asleep, that is - and letting him play and maybe getting a few little things done around the house. There are other days when I am restless and can't stand being in the house and cast about desperately for some reason, no matter how insignificant, to leave for an hour or two. Days like today, though, are rare. Today, regardless of whether I want to be or not, I am stuck in the house.

When I first noticed the small red spots on Gavin's face a day or so ago, I paid them no notice. He's always falling and bumping his head, and often has red marks on his head and face from that. The red spots in his diaper didn't bother me either. Diaper rash, while he doesn't suffer from it often, is nothing to be concerned about. But last night I began noticing red spots like pimples on his scalp beneath his hair. And on his arm. And belly. And leg. And then I began to feel, in a very maternal-instincty sort of way, that something was not right.

I thought back to when the spots first appeared, tried to figure out if he'd eaten something funny, or if I'd eaten something funny, or if there was any other event to which I could attribute the presence of these spots on my son's body. (Interrupting myself to describe the goings on happening behind me. You cannot imagine (or maybe you can!) the happiness in Gavin's voice as he stands at the shelf where our videos are stored and pulls them off one by one. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. Bang. Plunk. All the while, he's singing happily and grunting in the way he does when he is engaged in some physically exerting task, which naturally pulling videos off a shelf must be.) Try as I might, I couldn't think of anything that may have caused the spots. He had pears for the first time a couple days ago, but pears aren't exactly high on the list of possible allergens.

So this morning, just to reassure myself that it was nothing, I called the nurse's line at our pediatrician's office and described the situation. She asked a few questions and then said that it sounded like nothing terrible, but the only way to be sure was to come in. As it happened, our pediatrician was in the office today for a couple of other sick patients, and had an open spot. Just to be safe, she asked that we come in the back entrance to avoid other patients in case it was something contagious.

We dutifully went around to the back entrance, climbed the stairs, and rang the buzzer. A nurse let us in and put us into a small exam room right by the door. Dr. P 's nurse came in and took Gavin's temperature (was normal) and asked to see the spots, then left. After a time, Dr. P came in and looked Gavin over, checking his ears and nose and throat. Then he examined the spots. It only took a minute for him to look at me and say, "Well, some of these look for all the world like chicken pox."

I was stunned and asked if it could be chicken pox even though Gavin had no fever. Dr. P said that yes, it was odd that he wasn't more sick, but there wasn't much doubt in his mind.

Huh.

Well then.

So we paid (nothing like having a receptionist come to us and getting instant service upon checkout, instead of having to wait in line and then wait while the receptionist answers the phone and searches through files and whatnot) and left to come home to our quarantine. And here we are, Gavin with his spotty botty and me with my spotty boy.

I am thankful that he is not sicker, and hope he doesn't get any worse. He slept for about three hours after we got home, a fact I'm not sure whether to attribute to him being ill or the less than ideal night he had last night. Maybe both, who knows. I am also thankful that I didn't make the playgroup I had intended to go to yesterday afternoon. It would have been the first time I made it to that particular playgroup; what a fabulous first impression that would have made. "Hi, I'm Allison and this is Gavin, and by the way my boy is contagious and all your small children are at risk just by our being here. Nice to meet you all!" Unfortunately, all the small four year old girls who swarmed all over Gavin at the play area at the mall on Tuesday - women of all ages can't help but coo and coddle all over him, it seems - are not as lucky. I just hope they've had it or been vaccinated or their Christmas is likely not to be much fun.

It's hard to believe he's got this horrid disease. In fact, the word disease is one I'm having a hard time pairing up with my baby boy. He's only ever been sick once before this, and that was a very mild cold when he was only a couple of months old. Okay, twice, but the second time was the high fever he had after his six month shots and so doesn't exactly qualify as being sick. The fact that he isn't acting very sick now makes it all the harder. I'm sure if he was hot and feverish and restless, I'd have settled right into the notion that he's sick. But little boys who impishly pull an entire collection of videos from the shelf do not a convincing sick person make. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I'll gladly take a not-acting-sick baby over one who acts as sick as a baby with chicken pox ought to be acting. If only I'm so lucky that he continues to be this un-sick for the duration of the illness; otherwise a week of being stuck in the house when I really don't want to be will be much less tolerable.

One bit of housekeeping - someone let me know the other day that the comment security function is broken. I've tried fixing it, but I don't know what the problem is. Nothing I've tried has worked so far. I'm tempted to abandon it entirely and just password protect the journal. I really don't want to do that, but if it's what it takes, I suppose I'll do it. Stay tuned for updates.

awake

I'm sitting on the couch downstairs, typing on the laptop that we are still borrowing from Jason's work. Gavin has been asleep upstairs for the past hour. I talked on the phone for a while, finished some sewing on the tree skirt I'm making for our Christmas tree, and watched some Felicity, which is my show of choice for renting from the library now that I'm nearly finished with Buffy ("nearly" because it's taking forever to get through season 7 because of having to wait for my name to come up to the top of the reserve list for each disc).

I can hear Gavin babbling away upstairs through the monitor. He's saying "mum momomom aaaahhhhhhhhh mmmmum mum mummyom bah baba aaahhh dadada yah-mum mum-mum ohyah," which is terribly cute and makes me want to scoop him up and kiss him. But he's happy up there so for the moment I'm enjoying his sounds. I had hoped he would sleep longer, but as usual, he only slept an hour or so. Actually, an hour is a good nap for him.

I feel as if I'm not adequately recording my experiences as a new mom here. That I'm not writing down enough about what we do and what I think and feel and what I experience. I write periodically about what Gavin's up to, but that really is it. I don't know when I lost the ability to write on a deeper level, but I have. Or maybe I haven't really lost it, but rather lost touch with it. Whatever the case, I have wanted for a long time to write on that level.

Years from now, if and when I look back and read what I've written here, I want to remember how it makes me feel when Gavin cries and cries, but his tears instantly stop when I pick him up. I want to remember the way it feel when he lays his head on my chest and relaxes into my arms. I want to remember the joy I feel when I walk into the room and his attention is suddenly all on me, as he leans from his daddy's arms toward me. I want to remember the warm glow in my heart when he looks at me and smiles and babbles "mamama" and even though I know he doesn't mean me when he says "mama," I know he will mean it someday and until then, I can pretend.

I want to remember the sweetness of his voice as he lays in his crib and babbles away, practicing his vowels and consonants and making raspberry noises. I never want to forget the dimple in his cheek that you can see when he grins at something he finds funny. I want to remember that he has an amazing sense of humor and finds the silliest things riotously hilaroious - like when I talk on the phone. I want to remember the sound of his giggles, and his belly laughs, both the sound of joy without borders. I never want to lose sight of how sensitive he is, and how loud sounds or too much laughter or too many people talking at once makes him cry, such a heartwrenching sound that makes me melt and want to cry along with him. I want to remember how it feels that when he is crying like that, I am the only thing in the world that he wants.

I want to remember the look of mischief on his face when he sees me coming to pull him off the stairs for the twelfth time that day and turns to race away as fast as he can. I want to remember how independent he strives to be - independent already at the age of eight months - and how he wants to do everything for himself. He even sometimes bats away our hands when we try to help him. I want to remember the way he watches things so intently - the dog, other people, little children - almost as if he's memorizing how they do the things they do so he can repeat it later. I never want to forget how he never stops moving, how he can't sit still for long, and how intent he is on every little thing he does.

I want to remember the way he giggles in anticipation when he knows it's time to nurse, his eyes bright with obvious delight. To savor the memory of his little hand, warm upon my breast as he nurses to sleep, the picture of peace and contentment. And of his bright blue eye peering up at me from under my shirt, which rests against his face. I want to remember the calm I feel as I sit in the rocking chair with him laying on me, fast asleep, snoring softly, his body heavy and warm and completely limp against me. And I'll never forget how amazed I am when I look at him and know that he is what he is all because of me - all twenty-three pounds of him, all because of me.

He's down here with me now. I went and got him from his crib and brought him down here with me when his babbling turned to whimpering. I'm sitting here watching him roam around and playing with the remote, the musical table, the telephone, the sticks from the sliding glass door, the Elmo mirror, the baby monitor. And now I must go pull him down off the stairs again, for the thirteenth time today.

where does the time go?

Gavin turns eight months old today - two thirds of a year! Before long I'll be planning his first birthday party, something that still seems as if it should be impossibly far away, but that is in fact just around the corner. He's now climbing the stairs so fast that if we turn out backs for two seconds he's over at the stairs and halfway up. Already he has fallen down them once (just a small flight - about four steps). He's taking more and more watching these days.

Gavin is also waving all the time. He also learned the sign for "dog" (rubbing forefinger and tumb together as if snapping), but now he has confused waving and the motion of the sign for dog, and holds his hand vertically like he is waving, but makes the "dog" motion. It's cute.

A couple weeks ago I bought some cheerios for him - he absolutely LOVES them. He loves being able to feed himself, and it didn't take more than a few days for him to get the pincer grasp down and get to where about 50% of them made it into his mouth. He'll also feed himself a chunk of banana now and then, though mostly he just smears it around. He'll also eat oatmeal pretty regularly. But that's about it. I can't get him to regularly consume much else.

NaNoWriMo is over now for another year. I won, reaching 50,000 with some ease, although the story is far from finished and needs much work. It seems that having a plot is still several stages away from knowing how to write by the plot! But I'm going to keep at it, because I think it has possibility.