Blue eyes and deep thoughts

Sometimes, as I watch these sparkly blue eyes taking in the world around you, I wonder what you are thinking. I wonder if you understand how much you are loved. I wish you could tell me.

Sometimes your thoughts are more obvious. There are, really, only a few things that babies usually need.

I want to eat
I want you to make me feel better
I want that thing over there
I want someone to hold me and love me
I want to sleep.

As we get older, our needs only get more sophisticated;

I want to eat something full of chocolate and calories

or more worldly

I want that iPad2 over there.

It will be a few years before you can articulate your thoughts into words. And even more before those words actually make any sense.



Then sometimes I wonder if I knew what you were thinking, would you seem so miraculous? Certainly it would seem less amazing than inexplicably, intangibly knowing what you need and want and feel. If we could use words right away, would I feel like I recognized and connected with your little spirit? And if I recognize you here, did I know you before, in another existence? Did we hug each other goodbye and promise we would meet again?

These are the things I think when I look into these blue eyes.

4 months

He is an angel, if I say it myself.

Sweet baby Smittins is 4 months old! Well, he was 4 months old when I took these pictures - now he's even older! This is his blessing outfit and a gorgeous blanket for his special day that Jenny's lovely mom gave to him.

At 4-something months, he:
- snacks on his fingers all the livelong day
- also snacks on his sleeves, shirt-fronts and blankets. He has a little lovey blanket that's now named Chewy.
- drools and slobbers and slimes everything he's wearing, holding or has near him
- will roll from front-to-back if he's bored with being on his tummy but it usually takes a good deal of yelling to do so
- can roll from back-to-side in an effort to chase down those ever-elusive toes
- spends a lot of time staring at his fingers. So fascinating!
- thinks that being wiggled from side-to-side is hilarious. This makes us sing songs about 'side-to-side', trying to make him laugh. Babies turn adults into babbling idiots. You try to resist him! Let me know how it goes.
- will arch his back and hold himself up, as if he's making himself easier to pick up. "Look at me! Wouldn't it be easy to get me out of this crib! Effortless, really. Look, I'm helping!"
- will protest (loudly!) if his sister leaves his side
- loves his family and is excited to see any of us, at any time

Gray and I are in a fight

Who knew gray was such a touchy, tempramental color? Gray is the Robert Downey Jr. of colors. When it is right, it is smooth, suave, slightly edgy and possibly possessed of super-human, crime-fighting qualities. But when it is bad, it is oh-so-very bad.

Also complicating the issue; you have to choose from 13 million paint chips with names like Rain Soaked Pebble, or Bullet Hole or Cape Cod Ghostly Fantasy or Gum From Underside Of Denny's Table. None of these names are particularly helpful in choosing a color. Neither, strictly speaking, are the actual paint chips because what looks like the perfect, trendy, European Children's Bedroom color when taped to the doorframe, looks like Really Old Lady Hair when slathered on the wall.

Such was the case in my project room (the room that Violet and Dash share). I painted sample swatches of Goose Grey on two walls. I hated it. I let it dry. Still hated it. Painted another coat. Loathed it. Took a drive to find a change of perspective. Hate hate hate. Then the husband came home.

"Why did you paint their room purple?"

"It's not purple. It's Goose Grey."

"It's totally purple."

"It's grey. Maybe it's the light reflecting from the bedspread."

"Dash is going to hate it."

And he was right. He was also willing to go back to the store and have the paint re-tinted a not-purple color, which was super nice AND helpful.

So the project moves on. And because I never think to take a 'before' picture, you get the standard 'somewhere around the middle' picture. My camera-phone has totally betrayed me because it's not capturing the purpleness of the two paint swatches the same way cameras never captured the Salmon Mealoaf Grunge color of our old carpet. Oh, and the reason this room is such a disaster is the dresser is in the garage. Also being painted. Not grey.

As a side note, I should totally be in charge of naming paint colors.

I may have gone crazy

I don't sleep. We've discussed this. I also don't have friends anymore, unless you count the nurses at the pediatrician's office. We're total besties. Call me!

Even when the baby does cuddle up peacefully in his crib with his wooly blankie and congestion-battling humidifier and snooze the night away, I can't turn off the part of me that listens for every snuffle, whine or cough. And so I stay awake, watching way too much HGTV and browsing way too many lovely pictures on Pintrest.

These are dangerous for me because it all involves things I love - namely color combinations and bargain-hunting and the use of power tools. Also when I bounce these ideas off others, I always wonder if they're thinking "that is super creative!" or "wow... I'm glad she's not painting anything at my house." And speaking of combining colors, why does this spell-checker think that 'combinations' is not a real word? Discuss.

I know that I may have gone off the deep end when I start thinking that it would be a Good Idea to put some wallpaper in the linen closet. Because you know I hate wallpaper. Not just a casual dislike, but a soul-deep, white-hot burning hatred that I usually save for snakes, flying bugs, child predators and that one Chuck Norris movie that is half soap opera, half seminary film and none butt-kicking.

So. This week's project may be inspired mostly by insomnia, reality television and diet Dr. Pepper, but here is just a taste.

It tastes good.

When you don't sleep...

...you spend a lot of time thinking weird, unimportant thoughts. Namely how much I hate the blatant misuse of the words 'sell' and 'sale'. Now, I do not know all the word-for-word grammar rules about prepositions and nonessential clauses and inverted quadrupeds (the way Joe does) but I do know that there are a lot of people out there who apparently do not know what these two simple words mean.

For example, if you are a sales rep you do not sale your product. The word you're looking for is 'sell', conveniently located right there in the English language, waiting for you to use it.

Alternately, all you sells reps, your product or house or item on KSL Classifieds is for sale. It's not for sell.

Are we clear on that? Good.

In baby-related news, he's now covered with red bumps and spots and I assume he's allergic to his antibiotic. Unless it's a reaction to his vaccinations. He spends a lot of time yowling and babbling in a complainy way (mostly to his fox toy, but also to his hands) and consoles himself by visiting his favorite boob. He also talks and complains to it.

The saga of sleep and solids

Brought to you by the letter S and the number 4 (which would be the number of hours of sleep I got last night).

So. Yesterday I got a box of rice cereal. And a pack of baby spoons. And a cute bib with a lovely little elephant on it. Love the elephants.

And then I decided that I didn't really feel like forcing the little guy to eat cereal from a spoon because he just has absolutely no interest in it. And judging by the way he wiggles and coos and smiles and jealously guards his nursing territory, he does have a very decided interest in continuing to breastfeed.

He usually does have a bottle in the evening though (Joe and the kids really like to feed him too) and so I put a teeny bit of the rice cereal in the bottle, just to see if there was any truth to the cereal = sleep theory.

There isn't.

At least there wasn't last night. If anything, he got up MORE (ALL CAPS!) than he ever has in his entire livelong life and that includes the first night he came home.

So. What to do, what to do?

When he woke up last night, he was more angry than hungry. In fact, I only fed him one of the 4 times he woke up. One time I held him and rocked him. Twice I gave him his pacifier. Each time I waited (to no effect) about 10 minutes to see if he would settle down on his own.

Right now he is taking his nap. He sleeps in longer stretches for his nap than at night! The differences are:
- at night he sleeps in his crib and I wrap his blanket around him because he tends to wave his arms around and wake himself up as I put him down. He sleeps on his back. There is a white-noise machine in his room.
- during the day he takes his nap in my bed because it's quieter and has less little brothers parading back and forth. There is a fan on. I just lay down with him and nurse him until he falls asleep, then I tuck his blanket around him and leave him there. He usually sleeps halfway on his side (I put a beanbag by his tummy to keep him from flipping onto his face).

I know he can sleep through the night because he's done it before. What on earth can I do to help him sleep longer now?

Solids schmolids

The wee one, while still a precious angel from heaven, has decided that sleeping all night is totally not as party funtime as waking up multiple times to eat and snuggle and eat and eventually be taken into bed with me, where he snoozes away contentedly, tiny fists tangled securely in my hair, holy run-on sentence Batman.

So this is definitely something I addressed at his 4-month well-check today. It's worth mentioning that I have the best pediatrician in the world. I love him. I highly recommend him. If he was in general practice, I would take the whole dang family and possibly some of the neighbors to him. When I die I will have his entire staff entombed with me so they can take care of my whole family forever and ever. I hoped that he would have a magic miracle solution for the no-sleeping problem but I don't know why I was surprised when he suggested starting baby on a little rice cereal.

So now I'm feeling all sad and frowny, thinking that my baby is not old enough for solids, he has exhibited no interest in them and I'm really enjoying nursing this, my last baby.

But baby is 4 months - a perfectly good time to start solid food and his brother and sister both did fine with rice cereal at this age. He's also almost 16 pounds, big enough that he's probably super hungry.

Does this post feel rambly and confused? Good. Because that's how I feel. It could also be the 3 entire hours of sleep I got last night. Sleep would be super wonderful and fabulous. I didn't want to start cereal for another month or so. Sleep.... solids.... not enough Diet Dr. Pepper in my day....

What do I do?

Working as a team

Mr. Naughty has recently discovered that he has opinions. About things! Most importantly, that he would rather be held and cuddled and watch his own TV shows, thankyouverymuch and that napping all by your lonely lonesome is for losers.

So today he is my coworker. Which, while it makes the time pass quickly, does nothing for my typing speed.