Got one right for sure

Today we went to the diner for breakfast after having missed on this outing for the past several weeks. If the weather is decent (meaning nothing falling from the sky), we walk. I usually get an omelette along with potatoes and toast, which The Boy shares. Musical Daddy often gets a "burrito breakfast" that comes with potatoes as well; he shares the potatoes but not the burrito.

GOOD eatin' this morning. It helped that we put ketchup on breakfast. Everything that we gave The Boy to eat was gone by the time he decided that he was done. I'm so glad...and yet, there's chemo coming up soon so all of this good eating will probably go out the window. At least he has otherwise good eating habits to which he can come back.

Now that The Boy is nearly 14 months old, it's interesting to compare him to other children of a similar age in terms of eating. Three other children that we noticed at the diner come to mind. The first is a boy, almost 2, whom we see every now and then, although today we just noticed him on the way in. When he was smaller, he'd mostly eat tiny pieces of things with his fingers. Now he's a silverware-using guy. We're pretty impressed by his prowess with the fork and spoon.

The other two children, however, were another story. The first child that we saw was pitching fits about being in the high chair. When he finally made it in, he just got a scrap here and there. He also had something in a bottle at the table. The second child looked older than The Boy by only a bit and was sitting in the high chair being spoon-fed oatmeal and bananas. He was drinking from a cup with a straw, though. The family was impressed by the way that The Boy fed himself. I recommended broccoli.

I can't tell you how glad I am that The Boy was feeding himself right from the beginning. The fact that we weren't obsessive about rushing him into eating food, the fact that we never cared about whether he was eating "stage 1" or "stage 2" jarred nonsense, and the fact that we already knew that everything he touched was going into his mouth at some point anyway made the decision pretty easy for us. Musical Daddy was a bit skeptical at first--after a few weeks of The Boy playing with food and eating just a bit at the table, he asked when we were going to grind up a banana and feed it to him--but he bought in pretty quickly as well.

The Boy was eating at restaurants regularly by about 7 months. Before that it was somewhat prohibitive because he was only eating a few things. But as a result of his always sitting at the table with us, for as long as he was able to sit, he always knows how to behave at mealtime.

Score one for us.

The Best Resters

Since I am awake and it's only just after 7:00, while The Boy and Musical Daddy are still sleeping, it's clear that I do not win the "best rester" award.

The Golden Pillow...the mattress trophy...The Bronze Blankie...none of that for me. Not for lack of trying--I wanted to nap with The Boy yesterday but it just wasn't happening.

Yesterday I went out to lunch with some other moms from an online group. We all live close to each other (relatively speaking) and we get together occasionally for park playdates or museum visits, and occasional house visits as well. The leader of the group (appointed so because she takes most of the initiative in arranging events and also does the online group maintenance) has a son who just turned 5 and a son who is 8 months or so. The Boy will likely be friends with the younger son once they are old enough to have friends.

We had Indian food which, to me, is fantastic. I know that it's an acquired taste...but somehow I think that The Boy would enjoy it. It's a lunch buffet during the day, so I'd imagine that at his age he would just be expected to eat from our plates. Which he does (sometimes literally, by swiping food from us). One of these days we'll go as a family. Preferably on a day where we anticipate that The Boy will actually have an appetite.

So far he seems better than last weekend. The Boy and I went to services last night which is not nearly as difficult as one might imagine. For much of the service, he has no problem just sitting on my lap. Once he gets antsy, it isn't a problem to let him get down and do some crawling. When we first entered and I had to get him out of the sling, he actually stood for a good five-ish seconds! Long enough to realize that he was standing. Then he fell on his bum.

It's been helpful, we think, that he's in cloth dipes because there's so much more padding there and he isn't afraid to just plop right down on his behind. Another friend told us that their little girl would sometimes get a bruised behind just from plopping down on the ground so much. But then, she was walking at 9 or 10 months so she must have gotten over it enough to practice!

At any rate, I need to go hang up the diapers so that enough of them will be dry; otherwise, The Boy will have none.

Happy Birthday, Musical Daddy

Today Musical Daddy had a birthday (I'll leave it up to him to tell you which one). I had left his presents on his side of the bed last night since he got home late from rehearsal and hanging out with the guys afterwards. The Boy had gone to sleep at 9:00 and woke up at 12:00 just as I was about to get into bed, so I brought him in with me even though I could have easily put him back to bed after a quick feeding. Musical Daddy got home around 12:30 and we all slept for quite awhile. The Boy woke up at 4:30 to nurse...not bad, going for over 4 hours overnight.

By the way...I'm on the really old laptop. It is in such bad shape. Worse so because it fell down a few days ago...and the 4 key is messed up. Among other problems. There's very little response, so you don't know what you're going to get with it. As an experiment, I pressed the 4 key 10 times and got 5 4's out of the deal. But I deleted them because you don't want to see 4's (I had to type that over again).

ANYHOW...we woke up for the morning at about 7:30. Barely awake, but we somehow managed. Musical Daddy opened his presents--an organizer for the fridge with shopping list and white board (you'd think that that was the equivalent of Marge getting a bowling ball from Homer but if you know him and us, that's a pretty good gift) and the book Tigerheart which, in all fairness, he specifically requested.

The best present, however, was when he handed the wrapping paper to The Boy, and just to watch him explore the new texture, examining it carefully in his typical multisensory fashion...and then to watch him rip it and throw it around, just shouting with glee, was SO worth the effort of wrapping the gifts and a lovely way for Musical Daddy to start his birthday.

We went out to breakfast, to a place that we hadn't gone in awhile because since the management had changed and most of the staff that we knew wasn't there, it wasn't nearly as good as it had been. I decided that since it was the middle of the week it might be a good idea to try them again. Musical Daddy was not disappointed by his raisin French toast and eggs on the side and I did enjoy my broccoli, tomato, and cheddar omelette. The Boy enjoyed breakfast as well; he ate quite a bit of both plain egg and the broccoli and tomato egg, and some potatoes.

Another aside: Musical Daddy and I have been together for nearly 8 years. For quite a long time he led me to believe that I was indecisive and needed to have a stronger voice in picking out things for myself or for us...when in reality he's the one who is indecisive and I can't believe it took me as long as it did to figure this out. Really, neither one of us has strong opinions about things like exactly where we go out to eat or what color to paint the walls but it seems as though I'm usually the tiebreaker (I rather like our walls, by the way. They are a silver color, rather than a white or a beige, and they have a satin finish).

We relaxed at home for awhile and then I exercised. This makes the third time in a week that I've exercised and I have to say, I rather like the feeling. Of course, with the way that I ate today, I'm sure glad that I have been exercising.

I also washed diapers today. The past 2 diaper washings have been more like 5 days apart instead of the more typical (and more recommended) 3 or so. I think that since we've rediscovered the prefold, thanks to the wonders of the nice covers that make it easy (like the Bummis Super Whisper Wrap), we've been using them more often. I think that we've been changing The Boy more often, especially while he's in prefolds, but it hasn't affected the amount of wash cycles. We have been setting it for large instead of medium, however. Since it was sunny and hot, it was a good day to line-dry (I would have planned the washing for a line-drying day anyway).

I went to teach lessons after lunch and, surprisingly enough, The Boy went for that entire time while I was gone without any milk (I have a stash in the freezer; if you just clicked the link and you're a person who is looking to improve athletic performance, tough luck).

We walked around a bit before dinner; we had intended to walk down the street for Soul Food but alas, they were closed because they lacked air conditioning. So we went to check out another place and to be honest, I thought that it looked too foofy to bring The Boy there. Instead, we went for dinner.

It is rare that we, being both health-conscious and cheap, will go out for more than one meal in a day unless perhaps one of those meals is a nice light sandwich from Quick-Chek. However, since it was Musical Daddy's birthday, it was a treat.

The Boy was fussier than normal at dinner. I tested the meatball theory and while he did moderately enjoy it, he also had some chicken in a sauce and quite a bit of bread. Including garlic bread, which he really enjoyed. I'm glad that we don't usually have bread in the house because white bread has so little nutritional value and The Boy doesn't need to have it become a staple of his diet.

We also had forgotten a sippy cup but The Boy did have several successful drinks from a regular cup. And several successful attempts to shove his whole face into the cup.

Chemo tomorrow, week 5. I'm not looking forward to the fact that it seems like he just got back to normal after last week and now he has to have more chemo; who knows how long it will take this time? Will he still be "not himself" for the next treatment? I'm not sure if next week will, in fact, be worse, because the Adriamycin (Doxorubicin) was 2 weeks ago and that is probably the harshest of the three drugs. It is certainly the reddest. Since chemotherapy is cumulative, maybe he was only recently feeling the effects of that drug rather than this past week's Vincristine, which is the primary drug in his treatment schedule.

Interestingly enough, as we studied the treatment schedule, The Boy will not get medicine every week once week 9 is over. Sometimes he will only require a blood draw at the center. Tomorrow we should have some more definite answers as to when more things are happening.

I do hope that Musical Daddy had a good birthday. We're not the most exciting people but we have a good time, and we love each other.

Delicious? Or not.

This morning, as part of my breakfast, I had a banana, at the perfect stage of ripeness. And, as is commonplace in our house, I offered some to The Boy. He seemed all too happy to share Mommy's food, but perhaps his body had other ideas because he backed away and started making horrible gagging noises. And in my squeamishness, I sat him down on the floor. Fortunately, nothing came of that...but he decided that he wanted the banana again! And the same thing happened!

At that point I decided to cut my losses and finish the banana myself. I guess The Boy doesn't like bananas anymore.