Crazy baby

Matt said, "You should get a video of him pulling up for people. It is pretty cool."

Here you go. The beginning is especially entertaining.

Suddenly, pulling up

For the last week, Cooper has rarely (perhaps once a day) been able to pull up to a standing position from a crawling position.

Yesterday he suddenly perfected it. He can now pull to a stand on much of our furniture, the side of his bouncer toy, and just about anything else that provides him with handholds at the right height.

He is still exuberantly proud of himself each time he does this- laughing and smiling broadly after he gets steady on his feet. It is pretty cute, although very hazardous.

Along with this development, and possibly because of it, sometime around Thursday or Friday he chipped one of his baby teeth. Top right one, to be exact. It is a tiny chip, and my friend that is a certified dental hygienist (which is just shy of a "MD" style dentist) said that for such a small chip that doesn't extend past the enamel there is nothing that we need to do, but I'm still horrified. He just grew the teeth! I can't believe he already chipped one!

I asked my friend if there was something I might have allowed him to chew on that could have chipped it. She said, and I was relieved, "Well of course, anything not fabric or soft plastic could have done it. But I've seen Cooper smash his face on the floor enough to confidently tell you there was no way you could have prevented this. He probably chipped it on your hardwood floors- and you can't pad everything in his life." So there you have it. Early, aggressive crawling = chipped baby tooth.

Three more babies!

Two friends had babies in the last few days- and one of them had twins!

My one friend named her little girl Spencer, which is interesting. I associate Spencer with being a boy's name. What amuses me is that both the parents of this child have gender neutral first names. So I'm giggling at the idea that they were intentionally thinking... "maybe we should name her a boy's name! yeah!" Hee hee hee...

I am meeting up with a mutual friend and doing a visit to see Spencer on Friday, which I am excited about.

The other friend (actually, a friend of a friend, but I do see her around town and at some get-togethers) who had twins managed to hold those girls in for almost 37 weeks. In the last week she was starting to develop pre-eclampsia and so they induced her. I'm thoroughly impressed that both the baby girls weighed over 5 pounds, were born vaginally, and are already at home with mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, and a friend that came in from out of town to help out. Girl twins! Yikes! From the looks of it, these twins are fraternal, but I think it is too early to say for certain.

The friend with twins is the proud owner of all the gender neutral baby clothing that I had that I didn't want to hold onto "for next time." I think she'll be glad to have extras, you know?

I'm forgetting what the twins are named. Tia and... eh... shoot. Tia was one of them. The other was a cute name but I'm not recalling it.

Photo alert!

I created a new set of photos on Kodak- these will be from 6 months old, onwards. If you read this blog and did not get an email from me with an invitation to see the photos (and you would like to see the photos) please email me at my yahoo account and I'll be happy to send you the link.

Cooper's two upper teeth are really looking like teeth now. He was awful about biting me for about a week, but that has calmed down significantly- thank god! He still bites our arms and shoulders sometimes, but hopefully he'll learn to stop doing that soon. The biting is not malicious, I know, but it hurts a heck of a lot. We are trying to remind him to use his teething toys for biting, and not our bodies, but of course it takes a while for him to learn these things.

Video of crawling

Admittedly, his technique in this video is lacking. In real life, he is much better at opposing hand-leg movement (crucial to maintaining a good crawling rhythm) then depicted in the clip. I think he was getting sort of tired of being taunted into crawling for the camera when I got this sequence. That idea is supported by his brief whine at the end, I feel.

At any rate, it is cute and shows that he can move pretty fast.

For those keeping track- that is a 12m Circo onesie. The kid is big.

HAPPY SIX MONTHS!

I know it isn't really a birthday, but it is something.

Happy 6 months, Cooper!

Our big, giggly, happy, crawling, sitting, cruising, chatting, tooth growing baby is a half a year old. Amazing.

Some friends of ours (4 1/2 months pregnant!) came over last night for dinner. The first words out of our female friend's mouth were, "OH MY GOD he's a TODDLER."

Scary.

Did I mention he has his 4th tooth now? What a relief that one is done.

Lightning round!

Quickly! Things are happening too fast!

Cooper can sit up! Unaided! For long stretches of time (10 minutes plus)!

Cooper can crawl! Forward, sideways, and backwards! And grab thing while crawling! Speedy little devil!

Cooper can say a wet "pppppbbbtttthhhh!" It is his happy approval sound. The dog's name might as well be "ppppbbbttthhh" because that is what Cooper says when Lucky walks by.

Cooper can "cruise" (walk while holding onto things for balance) on his crib railing! All the way around the crib! Or all around the ottoman in the bedroom!

Cooper is showing interest in pulling up to a standing position! Successful... no. Interested- yes!

AAAiiiiiiiiieeee! What happened to my helpless infant? I practically have a toddler. He's not even technically 6 months old yet!

Inexplictably better

Tooth four is still not out. Tooth three is unchanged. And yet, Cooper is happy, napping well, sleeping like normal, and not viciously biting things anymore.

My only guess is that he had an irritated nerve with one of those teeth and the problem resolved itself. Because there is no visible change at all. I am baffled.

But hey! I slept pretty well last night! Full dose of ibuprofen for the little guy at 9pm might have helped, who knows. Certainly didn't hurt anyone.

Also- unlike his cousin, Cooper likes green beans. Interesting.

Finally, my resolve finally dissolved on a funny thing. While I was pregnant, I resolved not to buy Cooper new clothing with our money for the first year. Used clothing, sure. Gift certificates and returns, sure. But new clothing seemed so silly- you get these great gifts, people love to send clothing, tons and tons and tons of used stuff at second hand stores, etc.

But the kid grew so fast that he's in some 12m stuff now... only 5 days until he is 6 months old! So I guess in a way I made it, as I only bought stuff in that size... naw, that is a cop-out. I faltered. Resolve-schmolve.

Today I bought some clothing at the amazing 40% off sale at Old Navy. Awesome selection, great stuff, lots of sizes, and the few things I really felt we needed were stunningly cheap. And cute. And I can't get things this cheap at the used place, amazingly, because they only accept really fancy stuff for resale. I guess I could have gotten stuff at Salvation Army... sigh... yeah.

Go to Old Navy online. Prices are great. Selection is great. Go buy your kid something. But don't get Cooper any three packs of long sleeved teeshirts with monkeys on them- I already did that.

Tooth four is the work of the devil

For some reason, Cooper is really, really upset about his final front tooth. He is having trouble sleeping, he cried and screamed for about 2 hours yesterday evening, and another 3 hours in the middle of the night last night, and he is biting everything in sight. It might be that his other top tooth is what is causing the trouble, but it has emerged out so I'm not sure. I think it is the still-to-emerge fourth tooth.

Recently I've been dosing him with baby ibuprofen and that does help. I resorted to giving him drugs after he bit me so hard that he actually drew blood, and made us both yelp. That was very unpleasant.

The good thing is that I'm 99.9% sure it is his teeth, and not another more serious problem. When he is happily eating, chewing on something, or otherwise distracted he is his usual chatty happy funny self. But when he isn't distracted and he gets tired or otherwise on edge, he falls apart into misery. Poor little thing. It got so bad last night that I sent Matt downstairs to sleep on the futon so that one of us would get some sleep. No need to torture all three of us.

On a related note, we are dog sitting this sweet dog named Marley and he is very upset about Cooper's situation. Every time Cooper starts to get loud, Marley goes and sits on the couch (which is not OK, but you can't really blame him) and pouts. Poor Marley spent all last night with sad dog eyes, staring off into space, on the couch. Lucky is also unhappy but shows it differently- he tries to make Cooper feel better by licking his toes.

Tooth three emerges, and a recollection

Cooper's third tooth was officially out and sharp as a knife on Sunday. Today he figured out how to grind his new top tooth on his bottom teeth, which as you might guess makes a remarkably grating and horrible noise. But I suspect the novelty will wear off shortly and he'll stop.

I just remembered something from wedding #4 that we attended. There was a woman there who drank just enough to talk A LOT and yet still make sense. A chatty drinker, shall we say. She was telling me about how her husband wants to wait a few more years to have kids, but she wants to get started now. I was nodding courteously when she suddenly said, "You need to tell me if it hurts as much as they say it does." I said, "Well it really depends on the person, circumstances, medications, and that kind of thing. For some people it really doesn't hurt very much- and you could be one of those people."

To which she said, "Well how can it NOT hurt if they slice you open all the way to your @$$shole?"

I remember being puzzled. Weren't we talking about having a baby here? Call me slow on the uptake if you want, but I didn't realize for a few ticks that she was assuming, or perhaps had been told, that everyone that has a baby vaginally has to have a very, very, big episiotomy.

I replied with something to the effect of, "Well not everyone gets an incision. Most people's bodies just can stretch, or sometimes they tear a little. Personally, I had a small incision- but I had local anesthesia so it really wasn't bad at all. It healed really quickly, too."

In retrospect I am sad that this question came up. Here is a woman my age, well educated, who thought that in order to have a baby you must surgically have your nether-regions ripped asunder. That is crazy. People's misconceptions are sort of depressing sometimes.