Hair surprises

My post-partum hair loss reached it most disgusting peak around 4 or 5 months out. I got a nice haircut around 6 months, and the hair dresser told me that he could tell I'd had pretty severe post-partum losses because my scalp was covered in regrowth.

Jump ahead to now. I got out of the shower the other day and realized two things; it was freezing cold out (about 25) and I needed to spend some time outdoors (fun pre- ski season festival in the outdoors). So I used the blow drier for the first time since about last winter.

Matt and I both started laughing out loud when I finished drying my hair. All over my scalp was a coat of fuzz at about 1 to 1 1/2 inches long. The most obvious was near the border with my forehead, where the regrowth was so thick and obvious that it looks like I cut myself some really short bangs.

I stuck a ski cap on and called it good. It is a lot of short cute fuzzy regrowth. I'm glad it will be back to normal soon.

Letting go

He's letting go.

In the last two days, I've watched Cooper let go of furniture with both hands and stand unsupported for a few seconds. He gets this look of total pride and thrill in his eyes- and then he either grabs something to steady himself, or crashes violently to the floor.

Three times now he's bloodied his upper lip on his giant beaver teeth from falling awkwardly, which results in screaming, bleeding, and then some light whimpering. I feel bad for him, but I can't catch him 100% of the time. I figure his violent falling phase will pass pretty soon. Or at least I hope so. My guess is that he'll figure out how to stand steadily in a few more days, which at this rate will be 1 or 2 more bloody lips.

God and Country

We get a lot of Obama volunteers in my neighborhood, which is nice but distracting. Because I work from home, and my dog freaks out when someone knocks on the door, I pretty much have to say Hi to all of them and tell them to go on their merry way.

Yesterday, I was on a conference call (on mute, thank god) and I saw two women holding notebooks coming towards my house. I had Cooper on my hip, the headset on for the conference call and was wrestling the dog when I opened the door. I smiled nicely and told them, as I tell all of them, we already did 'early voting' and thanks for dropping by.

They looked at me blankly. I looked at them. And then, a realization. They were holding bibles, not voter registration forms. I had just opened my door to the mormons! NooooOooooOooooo!

Without thinking, I blurted out, "Oh jesus, you're not Obama canvassers, are you... sorry, we don't believe in God. But you have a good day." And then I shut the door in their faces. Shut, not slammed. And then I cringed.

Getting things done

Cooper is starting to nap a bit less, and be a heck of a lot more demanding i.e. destructive and active. At the same time, Matt's school and internship schedule are getting crazy.

Thus, I've hired a part-time nanny! Yikes! Her name is Nicole, and she's a really nice college student that I used to teach a few years ago when I was a TA. She's also worked for a friend of mine for a few summers, so I know she's really good natured and dependable. Right now we are doing two afternoons a week of her "hanging with Mr. Cooper." They go for walks, hang out at the park, and make a mess out of the living room. It works out pretty well- it sure isn't cheap, but it is cheaper than daycare, pretty hassle free, and he probably won't get the million colds, stomach bugs, and so forth that he'd get if he was with lots of other kids.

This provides me with more motivation to get work done while she is around, as well as more motivation to get our baby gear all set for winter. Nicole is from Alaska, so she's excited to take Cooper cross country skiing. Gotta get him a warm little ride-along sled! Fun!

More teeth and more skills

Cooper is picking up speed, I swear it.

He's starting to let go of things while standing. This sounds like a bizarre statement, but it represents something interesting. For a few weeks, he's been clinging to things with a death grip- and almost never falling down. Now he's falling down again all the time. Matt and I have discussed this, and now take this to mean that he has discovered the idea of standing up without help, and practicing this skill isn't a peaceful or comfortable endeavor. Just today he fell hard enough to give himself a bloody, fat lip on one of his giant beavery front teeth... sigh... being a baby is hard, physical work.

He's also getting two more teeth. Top and bottom right, which is an odd combination. Normally they are horizontally paired, not vertically. The teeth should be through the gums in about two more days by my reckoning. He's being a good sport about it.

Cooper's pincher grip (picking up tiny stuff with thumb and first finger) is getting skilled. He's an expert cheerio grabber and has surgical precision for grabbing lint and dog hair. Eww.

And the walking. Oh man. He's getting so good with that laundry basket. And now when we help by holding his hands, instead of letting us steer him around the house, he tries to go in the direction of his choosing. Cute. Intimidating.

Da da! Da da! Yup.

Baby names

We just discovered that Cooper's name, had he been born to Sarah Palin, would have been:

Spackle Camshaft

Fabulous!

Faster than a speeding laundry basket

He learns quickly. And he's big and strong. This is a fun combination (but it means Mom and Dad need to get very serious about babyproofing.)

Wanna see him practice walking?

Words

Cooper has started to babble in a very advanced way- he forms complete syllables and mixes and matches them. His favorite sounds are dah, deh, sss, and nah. Sometimes he branches out into other sounds like gah, grah, eeh, dee, and yah.

The reason I mention the sounds specifically is that sometimes, randomly, he ends up making an actual word. Often these words pass by without notice in the general flow of babble, but sometimes he says them in isolation with very funny effect.

Today he picked up an empty tissue box (a favorite toy), looked at it, and clearly exclaimed, "Dude!" Well, he said doo-deh. But it really sounded like dude.

Yesterday Matt was changing his diaper and Cooper was chattering away. Suddenly Cooper declared, "Gross!" so loudly that I could hear him from downstairs (groh-sss). Matt busted up laughing and said, "I hear that, buddy."

Most of the time he just says the same thing over and over again. Dah dah dah dah dah is the most common, with nah nah nah being second favorite. Sadly, he almost never makes an "em" sound, which means that my desire to hear ma-ma is looking like it will need to wait a while.

Barf-a-thon

Out of the blue yesterday, Cooper decided to embark on a horrendous barf-a-thon. The kid must have vomited at least two dozen times, and he hit an amazing number of different surfaces in our house. Poor thing barfed in our bed about 5 times (because I figure once the baby barfs once in the bed, you might as well let him do it again), three times in his crib, once on the bath mat, once on the kitchen floor, twice directly onto my chest, twice in the bath tub, once on the changing table... you get the idea. By the time the barfing started to subside, I had 5 loads of laundry to do, the baby was naked except for his diaper, he was sleeping on a blanket on the floor because that was the only clean flat surface I could muster, and I was seriously contemplating not changing out of my barfed-on shirt because I wasn't sure if he's just do it again anyway.

The worst part was how upset, sad, and exhausted he was. It was so hard to see him all pale and listless, and not to know any real way to help except for keeping him clean and warm.

The happy part is that aside from some minor spitting up around 11pm, the whole problem disappeared as quickly as it arrived. It started around 4pm, peaked at 5pm, and then by 9pm he was happy, chatting, and totally fine. When Matt got home at 10pm from his night classes he commented that Cooper looked pale, but other than that Matt said he never would have known anything was wrong. Kid slept great- from 11pm to 6:30 without any waking up!

Today Cooper's appetite is a little bit off, but nothing outrageous. He isn't pale anymore and his energy level is back up to the usual energizer bunny levels.

I'm baffled. I think he must have eaten something nasty, but nothing came out of note. Oh well. At least we all came out of it with fresh sheets on our beds.

On the street

Cooper is an engaging and cute kid- and I know I'm biased. But whenever we go anywhere, people stop us and talk to him, admire his gorgeous baby blues, and so on.

Yesterday at the farmer's market, Cooper spent at least an hour happily observing the world, snuggled into his fancy patagonia baby bunting, while riding in his cool framepack. I was stopped by several strangers who wanted to talk with Cooper, tell me how happy my little boy looked "up there," and so forth. I even had two separate people ask me where I got the cool baby bunting (Go Grandma G! Nice work.). For his part, Cooper waved his arms happily in the air, screeched exuberantly when dogs walked past (he is in love with all dogs), smiled at strangers, and attracted admirers from far and wide.

Then, he fell asleep in an awkwardly cute position in the pack. I took his napping as a sign that I should do some bonus socializing- so I wandered over to the other farmer's market (ran into three separate pairs of friends, said hi to the friend whose sells her uncle's pears, bought myself a hot apple cider) and then the craft market (talked with my friend that makes neat custom hats, admired some cool wool blankets, sipped my hot cider, ran into friends with a cute toddler). Cooper obliged me by sleeping for nearly an hour and a half in the pack while I enjoyed my fall morning outing. People would smile at the comatose limp baby in the pack, and lots of people mouthed "so cute!" to me as they walked by. I swear, the world loves a sleeping baby.

I was debating where to go next with my sleeping buddy (walk along the river? go shopping in the boutiques?) when he started to rustle and twitch himself back awake. He groggily began playing with my hair and I noticed his tiny fingers were chilly, so instead we went back to the car and headed home.

It is mornings like that which make me so glad we have a great kid. He's so much fun, so cute, and pretty flexible about stuff like napping in his pack, being poked by strangers, and new situations. He's even tolerant of getting cold hands and having a cold wind in his face- which is more than I can say for myself much of the time.

Friend's baby born!

I am really excited!

Our friends had their baby- only 10 days overdue... :)

They named her Linnaea, which is a very pretty name in my opinion. Their last name is a particularly interesting (yet short) name, and it goes really well with a longer girls name like that.

Baby looks just like her mom in the three photos I've seen so far. Very cute. And petite- in a good way.

Yippee!

Bucky beaver

Cooper's four teeth are growing in quite nicely (the chips are barely noticeable) and he loves to use them on any available objects. He even likes to pretend he is a little cow- he'll be crawling along on the floor and lean down to chew on the carpet, the fringe on the edges of the rugs, or his sheepskin rug. It is cute, and extremely unhygienic. He's also learned that he can gnaw little bits of food off fruits- so I let him gnaw tiny niblets of apple, pears, zucchini and squash off the edges of the fruits under close supervision. I'm pretty sure he thinks this is the most fun activity ever.

Most recently, he learned that if he gets a cheerio in his mouth, he can make it go "crunch" in his little beaver-y teeth. His ability to get the cheerio in there is still pretty dicey- I'd say he gets one cheerio into his mouth for every five he picks up. Maybe not even that. The dog is thrilled about his inaccuracy. But Cooper's skills at grabbing a single cheerio are improving rapidly- the picking up isn't bad at all- the issue is more of the delivery into his mouth. Sometimes he even just uses his thumb and index finger for picking one up, which considering the size of a cheerio and the inherent shakiness of baby coordination is quite amazing.

At any rate, pretty soon I think he'll be able to execute the "pick up, insert into mouth, crunch, swallow" sequence for cheerios. Which I'm excited about, because it will be his first foray into feeding himself! Very cool.

Official weigh-in stats

Cooper's 6 month appointment, which was actually his 6 months and 3 weeks appointment, went well.

The kid continues to be on the big side, weighing 17 pounds and 8 oz. I think if we had done his 6 months appointment AT 6 months, instead of now, he would have weighed more. He has noticeably slimmed down in the last couple of weeks as a result of his intense crawling-standing-cruising training regimen. His thighs, especially, are now more "svelte" then "pudgy."

He is now 27 inches tall. That is pretty tall.

Overall, he is still around the 75% for size.

My two favorite quotes from the doctor;
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Pretty soon after she walks in the door and introduces herself, with Cooper placidly sitting in my lap watching her and smiling adorably.
"So, is he rolling back to front yet?"
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After listening to me describe his ability to cruise, crawl, pull up, open ground level cabinets, and forcibly launch himself off the changing table in the blink of an eye.
"You have a very advanced kid! Sounds like you might need to sign up for the Frequent Flyers discount at the ER in a year or two."
(note that she did say this with evident admiration and good humor.)

No, I'm not Larry Craig

Cooper is getting better and better at so many things, it is hard to know where to start. For one thing, he can now stand up using anything vertical- even a glass door or the wall is something he can use to stand. He also has learned how to sit back down, which is nice because it has cut down on the fall-and-scream pattern we had for about a week. Lastly, he somehow figured out how to kneel recently. Now, he sometimes goes from standing to kneeling, and he can kneel completely unassisted.

He also can transition from crawling to sitting, sitting to standing, crawling to standing, and standing to anything else. Which essentially means that he can now get from point A to point B in any situation he pleases.

And yes, I've been doing a lot of baby proofing. Oh, and did I mention he can now "walk" if we hold his hands? Yikes!

My trip to DC went really well on the home front. Cooper gave up his bottle-strike in favor of actually eating something, and he was generally in good spirits while I was gone. It was great to get updates from home like, "He ate 8oz and just fell asleep a few minutes ago." Awesome. He wasn't perfect, but Matt survived and our multiple friends that did a few hours of baby sitting while Matt was in class all reported that he was a good kid.

I did not appreciate pumping for two and a half days straight, but it didn't kill me. Pumping in the Minneapolis Airport restrooms was particularly challenging and bizarre, and all I could think of was Senator Larry Craig. I'm quite happy that nobody called the airport police on the crazy person using some kind of loud suction device in the handicapped stall... that would be me... oh the things we do for our kids. There I was, dumping 10oz of fresh hot boob juice in the toilet.