Things The Velociraptor Is Doing: Week 11

• Not only has zie discovered those things on the end of hir arms can grab things, they have discovered that they can use them to put things in their mouth. Things that have ended up in said mouth include blankets, burp cloths, my fingers, their fingers, toys, and everybody's clothes.


• Hands can also be used to touch things, so they have spent a lot of time investigating my arm and elbow during diaper changes. The first time this happened, it was so weird - here I am, changing a diaper, when all of a sudden I feel this little hand gently stroking my arm. I look over. and The Velociraptor is ENRAPTURED. And stroking my arm, over and over. They have also spent some quality time investigating our hands and faces.


• Speaking of diaper changes, we still have at least a dozen of those a day, and oh, does The Velociraptor LOVE peeing during them. LOVES IT. THINKS IT IS HILARIOUS. HAS LAUGHED WHILE DOING IT. Has also managed to not only get pee all over themselves, including caught in their belly button (it's like a little pee reservoir, and always gets filled), they also once managed to get pee IN THEIR EAR. And thought it was hilarious, naturally.


• Also apparently this one romper that I REALLY LIKE okay? The Kid has apparently decided they hate it, because the last two times zie's worn it, zie has pooped on it.


• Between that, the peeing all over, and the spitting up pretty regularly still, I am still doing a lot of laundry.


• Zie fucking LOVES watching me fold laundry. And touching laundry. And knocking piles of folded laundry over.


• Zie also LOVES "talking" to us. Right now it's vowel-sound babbling, but swear to Maude zie's trying (and nearly succeeding) to say "hi" to us. ("Hi" is a word that happens a LOT in our house.) Like it's REALLY close. The Man was also reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? to hir the other day, and says that when they got to Red Bird, a sound remarkably like "red" emerged from hir mouth.The Kid is definitely watching our mouths and trying to imitate us, and loves having conversations, and will definitely let us know when they want to "talk".


• Zie HATES baths in the bathtub so far. Sponge baths they'll tolerate, but oh, the hate for the bathtub.


• The Kid is also REMARKABLY INTERESTED IN OUR FOOD. Oh my gods, if we eat in front of hir, the glares we get. It's like we are taking the food out of hir mouth. We keep telling hir zie can have some with zie grows teeth, and that they'll get a taste of it via breastmilk, but this is not doing much to placate them.


• Zie still hates "tummy time". We usually do pretty good if it involves laying on me, but on the floor? NOAP. They pick their head up and move it fine if they're upright or on my shoulder, but getting it up off the ground leads to frustration... probably because it's not crawling. Seriously, the legs are moving like whoa during tummy time. I keep telling hir that zie has to pick up their head before they can crawl. It's not gotten through yet.


• Zie has also grown out of 0-3 months sized clothes. I put a 6 mos. sized sleeper on hir this week and it fit PRETTY DAMN WELL. So I culled all the 0-3 mos. stuff. Straight 3 mos. still fits, but probably not for much longer. This child is LONG, y'all.

DO NOT LET ME READ SLEEP SITES

[Contents: mommy/parent-shaming]

SERIOUSLY.

So the other day I tweeted this:

Note to self: no seriously you are banned from reading any baby sleep sites or books. BANNED. #zomgbaby
— Wench (@kingdomofwench) July 17, 2014

[Text: Note to self: no seriously you are banned from reading any baby sleep sites or books. BANNED. #zomgbaby]

BECAUSE I NEED TO NOT READ THEM ANY MORE. ALL THEY LEAD TO IS TEARS AND FRUSTRATION.

We got here because I am a reader. And a researcher. I cannot even tell you how many hours I spent reading baby books and websites while pregnant, and that hasn't really stopped now that The Velociraptor has made an appearance (and been around for TWO AND A HALF MONTHS WHAT). So I was reading baby sleep sites!

And they pretty much all say things like DON'T DO THIS YOU WILL RUIN YOUR CHILD FOREVERRRRRRR (not always in those exact words, but it surprises me how close many of them are) and YOUR BABY SHOULD BE DOING THIS and HERE ARE THE WORST MISTAKES YOU CAN MAKE.

Oh my fucking god! So stressful!

Also, none of them agree with each other. They do not even agree on the basics of how many hours per day babies should sleep at various ages, much less on how many naps babies should take, the best way to get babies to nap, etc. and so on.

But I kept reading them, because y'all, The Kid's naps are a MESS.

Here's the thing. I am not complaining. I'm frustrated, but I'm not complaining, because The Velociraptor has slept through the night since they were about two weeks old. And not that crappy "oh five hours is TOTALLY sleeping through the night" that sleep sites and books try to sell you. Nah dude. At least seven hours. Right now, we're averaging nine hours straight a night.

But daytime sleep, since about a month ago, has been a mess. Developmentally, this makes a lot of sense, because right about that time zie discovered that they could talk to us! And hit things! And move their legs! And there was a baby in the mirror! And they could grab things! And they could maybe roll over! So there were ALL SORTS OF SUPER NEAT THINGS TO SEE AND DO AND TRY at once so FUCK SLEEPING AMIRITE CHECK THIS OUUUUUTTTTTT

So then we'd get to the point where The Kid would be up for five hours at a time (note: ALL sites agree that is WAY too long awake for a baby The Kid's age), and then suddenly crash and be screaming. And then only sleep 26 minutes (I am not kidding, you can set a fucking watch by this child). And wake up cranky, RINSE AND REPEAT.

But even in the midst of that, The Kid would sleep through the night. GETTING them to sleep was a challenge, but once they were out, they were out.

So I would read sites about how to get your baby to nap regularly and not be up for five hours. And then when things wouldn't work and we'd have one of Those Days again I would be in TEARS because WHAT AM I DOING WRONG WHYYYYYYYY and feel horrible about nursing The Kid to sleep or sometimes just giving up when they were tired and not going to sleep and just letting them quietly play in their crib and did I mention TEARS.

This is no good.

Because here's the thing. I even asked The Kid's pediatrician about it. She said "Do the best you can. It's great zie's sleeping through the night, and I often find that great night sleepers are crappy day sleepers and vice versa. It'll probably settle down after three months, so in the mean time, do what you can."

And that's just it. The Kid sleeps through the night. They are ahead of the curve developmentally. Even when super fucking tired, they are not super fussy and impossible to calm down. Does it suck when they are up three, four, five hours and I'm like GO TO SLEEP JUST GO TO SLEEP? YES. YES IT DOES. Because it feels like I am beating my head against a brick wall and I can't stop. But, zie does eventually go to sleep (and increasingly, they seem to want LESS intervention to go to sleep). And while most people would tell you that the unpredictability of the nap schedule right now means going out is hellacious, honestly, it isn't for us. We took a road trip to Chicago last week, then road-tripped to Michigan from Chicago, and zie did AMAZINGLY FINE. So it's not like this is keeping me tied home or anything.

But oh, the SHOULD and MUST and BLAH BLAH BLAH of sites. Oh my gods.

I have decided that pretty universally, people are just making most of that shit up (not the part about babies needing a lot of sleep; that is pretty easy to tell just by observation. The rest of it, though, is highly suspect). So FUCK THEM. They don't know MY kid. (They really don't; none of them I've found even remotely address a 2-month-old who sleeps through the night but is a terrible napper; at this age they're all like HERE IS HOW TO TEACH YOUR CHILD TO SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT... thanks player, lucked out on that one already). The Man and I know our kid. And so some days we have horrible no good nap days, and some are rock star days, and in the meantime, we make sure zie is clean and fed and we try to get them to sleep as regularly as possible.

AND THAT IS OKAY. 

Things The Velociraptor is Doing: Week 7

The Kid will be eight weeks old on Friday. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN.

They have definitely started realizing that they can move their hands and feet. We've watched hir bat over and over at toys hanging from their play gym in the past week or so - like, it's clearly a deliberate, repeated movement. Same with the legs - we got this play gym, which has a toy piano at the foot that they can kick. And they do. Often. Repeatedly. Deliberately. We're going on vacation in a week or so, and I'm planning on adding a few small hanging toys to the packing list, to attach to the car seat for driving entertainment.

They have also discovered that cute baby in the mirror, and will gleefully talk and talk and talk and smile at them.

They will also talk and talk and talk at US. We have reached the "coos" stage, although that really doesn't describe the range of noises zie is making. There are all sorts of coos, squeals, grunts, groans, yelps, etc. that The Kid is making, in various patterns, pitches, and tones. We have "conversations", wherein The Kid will squeal, and I'll respond, and go back and forth for a few minutes. They also try to imitate us - I can usually get hir to "sing" 'ah-ah-ah' with descending pitch at me.

The Kid has also recognized our faces and voices.  This morning, when zie woke up, they were laying in their bassinet with their face away from me. I sat up in bed, said "Good morning" and zie quickly turned their head towards me, focused on my face, and gave me the BIGGEST grin. The turning the head to the voice in the morning is new, but for a week or two now, we have gotten facial recognition. We could pick hir up while they were fussing awake, and watch hir calm down, focus on us, and then grin. Soon after that, they started tracking movement - I could lay hir in the bassinet, then be walking around getting dressed or whatever, and zie would follow my movement.

The biggest grin upon recognition helps immensely when zie wakes up after only half an hour of napping. Or when we think we have hir down for the night, and zie wakes up forty-five minutes later. Even then, I can't complain, because zie's been sleeping 7-9 hours at night consistently for weeks now. Granted, that doesn't always start until really late (The Kid's bedtime is somewhere between midnight and 2 right now), but once they're asleep, they are ASLEEP. The other night they were napping and we went out to dinner with friends at a super-noisy restaurant, and they slept through the entire thing. As well as with moving from the car seat to bed when we got home. Today zie napped through construction next door.

Zie also has been picking up their head when up on our shoulder pretty much since birth, but now is getting better at doing it while laying on the floor. Today we got to about a 45-degree angle. When I'm reclined on the couch and zie's on my chest, zie can pick their head up and turn and look at me, which is awesome.

Finally, our current favorite song seems to be "The Fish of the Sea". What, you don't sing shantys that featured in Assassin's Creed: Black Flag to YOUR baby? Pffft.