The nap king

Sometimes Cooper takes a short afternoon nap- like 1.5 or two hours. Rarely, he makes it more like 3 hours. Today has reached the level of "personal best," with his nap reaching a whopping 3 hours and 45 minutes. He is still napping, although I suspect he's on the way to waking up. I mean, seriously- I bet the kid is hungry for his midafternoon snack!

I am very glad that he is such a good napper. While sometimes he drives me batty with his desire to wake up early from a nap and then snuggle on the couch for an additional hour, it is very endearing and a fairly rare occurrence. Much more frequently, he naps for about 2 hours and 45 minutes, wakes up grumpy and harrumphs around all whiny and clingy for 15 minutes, and then settles into a nice nutritious snack and some quality time playing in the backyard. What a good kid!

We are now at 3 hours and 48 minutes.

A sibling for Max

I ran into an acquaintance today, and I am glad to finally be able to set my mind at ease on this one... yes, she is pregnant again. She was sort of looking pregnant the last two times I saw her, but I thought maybe it was just unflattering clothing and bad lighting or something, so I didn't want to say anything. But now, she's looking pretty darn plumped out. She's due in December, and her little boy Max will be 2 in either December or early January (I don't recall precisely), so that is exciting. I do recall that Max was a very challenging newborn; bad sleeper, textbook case of really dreadful colic, and he was born after a very tough labor followed by a C section. So I really hope that this one goes a little smoother for them. And I'm weirdly thrilled to see another person having their second kid in the same spacing as us. Always nice to have peers on these things.

Wait a minute- scream again...

It is official. Cooper is getting his 2nd year molars. He's been having some weird problems with falling asleep at night, and he's even been waking up now and again at odd hours in the night to whimper sadly in his crib, so Matt and I were suspicious that he might be getting his last set of teeth. Then, two days ago, he was in a terribly hungry and clingy mood (but refusing to eat, of course) when he just started screaming at me for attention. A loud, wide mouthed, obnoxious hollering kinda scream. I was about to employ my usual method to make him stop, which entails grabbing a favorite book of his, sitting on the couch, and telling him that when he's done screaming we'll sit and read about doggies together, when I saw something glinting deep in his mouth.

So I said it. "Wait.. what the... ok, buddy, scream again for momma..." And sure enough, he already has one full molar in there. The other three are probably very sore. So now we are on our normal pattern of giving him some mild pain killers before naps and bedtimes to help him sleep, which has done wonders for his mood.

I reminded Matt last night, as I held a cranky sad little boy that didn't want to go to bed, that these are his last teeth. He's done now. We're done now. Congratulations to us!

Our neighborhood has something in the water

First off, belated congratulations to my neighbors, who had a beautiful baby girl a few weeks ago. The mom, who is a doula, was successful at having her baby at home like she wanted. This is pretty remarkable, because it was a VBAC! Sooo.... welcome Lucia! Her older brother Silas seems to be taking it pretty well (he's 4) and the family looks great.

The other thing that I've been procrastinating talking about on the blog is that Matt and I are expecting another kid in February! Exciting! So far I've had an extremely easy pregnancy. The only things that have plagued me are the first trimester itchies (same as last time) and first trimester sleepiness (much less acute than last time). Other than that, this has been an amazingly simple pregnancy. Oh, and I guess I've gotten a little weird about food again, but not nearly as quirky and picky as last time.

In the last few weeks I've started to really look pregnant, instead of just looking sort of bloated. I must say that in general, I did start to grow a belly far, far, before I did the first time. That's typical from what I've heard.

The kiddo's due date is February 1st, 2010, so the two of them will be just a bit under two years apart. Woo hoo!

First ever no cry morning!

Cooper took a big step today. It was his first day since starting day care (5 weeks ago, I think) that he didn't cry when Matt dropped him off. Cooper has been getting noticeably more comfortable, and less stressed, during drop off times in the last two weeks. I'm really proud of him for finally adjusting to the point where the two of them can work together to arrive, get settled in, and then Matt can leave- all within a minute or two- and no tears need to be shed.

Good work little guy! And nice work on Matt's part, of course. Matt has been working really hard to establish a comfortable routine for Cooper's day care mornings, so most of the credit really goes out to him.

I knew that it wasn't normal

When I was pregnant with Cooper, one of my biggest complaints was that my belly button hurt. It hurt a lot, for weeks. I had to put hot compresses on it for relief- I mean, this really hurt. People thought I was nuts (although, to his credit, Matt did say that he believed me) and my OB at the time claimed it was normal and wasn't concerned.

Fast forward to post-partum, maybe 2 months out, so perhaps May or June of last year. The rest of me looked pretty dang normal for having a baby- some stretch marks, some extra body fat, but hey, that's the price of having a kid. But my belly button? Weird. Really weird. Nowhere near normal. And it never improved from then on. To this day, it is weird.

I'm not vain, and I've never had aspirations to be a bikini model, but I felt sort of betrayed by my belly button. I felt like it somehow had failed me- it was the only thing not to heal up on track, or at least act like I had expected it to. And all the websites, all the literature, everything said that basically your bellybutton would go back to normal- even if it had popped out like a freakin' turkey timer.

But not mine.

Today, at a routine checkup, my doctor was doing some routine doctor-y stuff when she stopped and said, "Has your belly button always looked like that?" To which I replied, "No, I think it is broken." And thus, with a very quick examination and some light poking, a nearly two year quasi-mystery has now been solved. I have a herniated umbilical region, combined with a fairly significant "Diastasis Recti" (stomach muscles distorted via pregnancy), which combines to make a very weird looking belly button. Which means I have a hernia. In my belly button.

It isn't something I need to worry about right now, but I do need to get it fixed sometime when it is convenient. Maybe next year. She said there is no rush.

And I feel better about the whole thing knowing the real story. I'm not crazy, there WAS something wrong with my belly button last winter, and in all probability it DID get damaged during pregnancy, and it IS weird looking, and I CAN get it fixed without feeling like I am crazy for getting cosmetic belly-button-plasty. So there. Take that.

Now go stick your finger in your own belly button and thank it for not looking or feeling like mine.

Word count

Cooper's understanding of what we say, and willingness to do what we ask of him, is astounding. He can follow simple tasks very easily (can you give this book to Daddy?) as well as do basic baby tricks like point to about 10 different body parts on request. He knows most of the interesting objects in his books, which means he can identify (point to, when asked) a wide variety of animals, gardening tools, vegetables, and objects that reside in children's bedrooms. He also has picked up on what "you need a fresh diaper" means, and will obediently walk over to the changing table and wait to be lifted up for a diaper change. Sometimes he runs in the opposite direction instead, which I know is his way of saying "but mom, I'm having fun! don't disrupt me!" Either way, his understanding of what we say is great!

His spoken vocabulary is a little bit meager, but he's building it every day. His best words are doggie, dada, chicken, balloon, bird, down, water, hot, "woof" (for the noise a dog makes), and boat. You'll clearly notice from this list that he likes O's and D's, which I think is because he's good at saying them. He also can say a wide variety of things if he really, really wants to- like button, mama, more, head, hat, and dot. The only sign from all the sign language that we've worked on that he truly uses is "more," but he also invented his own sign that seems to signify either "I don't know" or "where did it go?" depending on context. He had invented his own sign for nursing, which he no longer uses now that he's weaned, but it sure was handy before that!

Interestingly, his sign for "more" started as only pertaining to food, i.e. more crackers, but now he's figured out the more global uses of "more" and has also requested more tickling, more blocks to stack, and more markers to play with. So he's figured out the deeper meaning of more, which is neat.

Matt has successfully taught him some very amusing things, like how to do a fist bump, and to stick his tongue waaaay out on command. Matt likes to teach him these things on the sly, and then impress me once Cooper has it down pat. The two of them are thick as thieves, I tell ya.

How to create your own personal hell

I have an acquaintance with two lovely, apparently well behaved, children. They are 3 and 1. Neither child sleeps for more than 3 hours at a time, with wakeups, screaming fits, and hours of soothing happening with both kids, every night. To cope with this, the parents sleep in separate rooms, one with each child. This has been the case for 3 years, as with the first one they started by taking turns sleeping in the kids room or the adult room. That is 3 years without a decent night of sleep, a break, or a semblance of sanity. This family is approaching urban legend in my circle of friends, and we all know that they have really severe issues with their kids sleeping.

Today, I ran into them. We did the usual small talk about kids, etc and I mentioned that Cooper just finished his 3rd ever week of daycare, and it went pretty darn well. The mom said something like, "Have you had any problems with Cooper adjusting?" To which I replied (far, far before thinking it through) that the only thing we are adjusting to is having a child that now likes to sleep for 12 or more hours straight, because he is so tired from all the activity and stimulation of his big days at daycare, and how that is making our mornings so very different.

I think I saw tears forming in this woman's eyes, and she said, "What have I done? What did I do wrong? Why won't my kids sleep?"

Trying to be less stupid and insensitive, I said something like, "Well, it was hard, but with Cooper we did end up needing to just let him cry sometimes- even for up to an hour. And then he adjusted and started sleeping well."

And she said flatly, "Oh, I could never do that. I can't do that to them. They need us."

What do you say here? What can be said? I wanted to say right to her that what she has done wrong is place her child's very temporary frustrations above her family health and personal sanity, and that what she needs is to create boundaries around the sleeping experience, and that if she never lets her kids figure out how to sleep on their own, the whole family will suffer for many, many more years.

Instead I just said that maybe she should talk to her pediatrician, because that was what worked for us, so I didn't have any other ideas.

So now I am reminded how to create your own personal hell- fail to see that sometimes you must be strong and sacrifice a small thing (perhaps a week of kiddies screaming frustratedly in the night) for the greater good (years of sleeping well for an entire family).