Poor baby

It's been a rough couple of weeks for Xander. Last week, he had a stomach virus. This week, he has a cold. In protest, he has gone on a near-total solid strike, and for the past two weeks will eat nothing but yogurt, teething crackers, applesauce, and mangoes. He'll spit out the plethora of other healthy foods I have made for him, and fling what's on his spoon across the room. On the bright side, he doesn't act very sick. Most of the time, he scoots around like normal, getting snot on all of his toys.

A day of parenting failures

When we got back from our morning walk, I set Xander up on the sofa with a sippy cup.  I puttered around, getting his play area ready--blocking off a section of the room with giant tupperwares, laundry baskets and boxes, setting up his foam mat, selecting toys that Xander likes and is not tired of, running the microfiber mop over the area so that he doesn't end up with his belly looking like a microfiber mop--a bunch of meticulous stuff for a supposedly simple activity. In the middle of this, I heard a thump, and turned around to find Xander on the floor.  He commenced screaming.  I held him and shuddered, in disbelief that I had let my child crash to the floor.  There was even blood (a little, from his lip.  I'm not sure how someone with no teeth can cut his lip, but he did).

Xander stopped bleeding and crying pretty quickly and started playing contentedly with his toys.  I eventually calmed down, too.  After a half hour of fun, it was time for his nap.  I put him down, sleeping, in his crib.  Then I realized that I had gone the entire morning without changing his diaper.

He's still napping now, in what must be quite a bit of pee.  If he were older, I'd buy him an ice cream cone to make it up to him.  What do guilt ridden mothers of infants do?

Scooting around in his baby pen

The world we live in

I have become increasingly addicted to my kindle.  This is a very guilty pleasure for me.  After all, I have a lot of access to free books.  I visit the library almost every day.  I started out just purchasing book club books on my kindle, leaving the library copies for the other members.  Then I started buying kindle books to travel, and checking kindle books out from the library (we have a small collection).  It has progressed to the point, now, where I'll buy a kindle book because I don't want to drive to the library.  You know, the library I visit almost every day.  I recently checked a book out, then bought a kindle copy when I found myself facing a long bus ride without it.  After all, when I check a book out, I only have one copy of it, not one on my phone, one on the ipod I leave in the nursery, one on the kindle...you get the idea.

I can only imagine how my customers who do not work at the library or have a vested interest in increasing circulation behave.  It's hard to deny that anything less than instant gratification is hard to deal with these days.  I imagine telling my son about video rentals.  Can you believe that we used to drive to the video rental place, pay $4 to rent a video for two days, then an additional $4 when we failed to return it on time? Unfathomable.  When we heard a song we liked on the radio (radio?  he asks) we would drive to the music store and purchase an entire CD so that we could have it.

I wonder what we used to do when we found ourselves stuck with a few minutes of time, say, waiting in line at the store.  As I pull up a book on my iphone, I can't imagine.  I'll be sure to buy more kindle books for the library next year.

Fun new skills

Xander has gained two new skills this month, both of which are fun to watch.  There's singing.  I hear him do this over the monitor sometimes.  Then there's scooting.  I had suspected that Xander wouldn't be a crawler, and he seems to be bearing my predictions out.  Now, without further ado..

Singing

And scooting