Tell me about your baby! Our baby puked last night, again and again. He’s fine now, but it was scary at the time – he had one puking episode at about 1 or 2 months of age, and how he’s close to 6 months. We called the doctor just in case, and everything appears fine. He seems okay now but tired.
He’s very cute. He’ll smile back at you if you smile at him. Somehow we’ve developed some sort of strange baby game called the Milk Game – if I offer him a bottle when he doesn’t want it, he looks at me slyly and giggles, then guides the bottle to his mouth but pushes it away at the last minute and laughs again. I say “milk? milk milk milk?” and he does it again, rejects it, and laughs again. It can go on for many minutes. I tickle his belly and call him “my funny baby” and he laughs again.
I call him “my little buddy”, “king baby”, “baby champion”, and “the baby machine”. My baby is the best baby, it turns out. Tell me about your baby!
My daughter is 30 now, but a few years back when she was just learning to walk she cracked me up. She was fresh out of the bathtub, still naked, and we let her walk around the living room for a bit.
She was doing really well walking when she went into a squat. I thought she was trying to sit down instead of falling down. Then I realized she was growing a tail.
I dove like an outfielder and did a barehanded catch before it hit the carpet. It was instinctive, yet weird.
Spice Kit is eight months old, and today we’re going to dress him in a turkey costume. I couldn’t help it. I have the cutest baby in existence. He has cheeks for days. I’m not sure how, because I’m not that cute, so he must have gotten it from his Dad.
Last week he learned how to pull himself up to stand, and he keeps trying to let go of whatever he’s hanging onto, so it’s clear this boy wants to walk. He struggles more with fine motor skills so it’s a challenge teaching him to eat.
He’s an extremely independent kid (for a baby.) After he eats, he starts squirming to be let go so he can go explore on his own. He loves when we are together just the three of us. If we’re cooking he comes to hang out in the kitchen.
I call him my little butter bean and I sing to him all the time. Usually just complete nonsense. I also change lyrics to existing songs. The Beatles’ “Hello, Little Girl” becomes “Hello, Little Bean.”
That old song by 311 becomes
However far away, I will always love you
However long you stay, I will always love you
Whatever words you say, I will always love you
I will always love you
The lil’wrekker was possibly the cutest baby ever born. She had so much hair we cut bangs in it before she was 3mos old.
The bluest blue eyes that always sparkled. And pink lips that looked like a color of lipstick.
She was officially colicky but very good natured about it as long as I toted her around like a football.
She brightened my days and still does at age 21.
I love that girl to pieces.
This reminds me of how my Eldest Dorkling (he’s 30 now and a Dad in his own right) gave up the bottle and binky. One day he decided he was going to start chewing the nipple, aaaaand it burst all over his face as he was laying down with the bottle above. It was traumatic for him, but holy cow, the missus and I had to take turns leaving the room so as not to laugh in front of him.
To this day, he won’t even use a straw.
I’m sure I’m going to hell for thinking it was funny. But it was funny.
Mine did this, too, except when she did want the milk. Then instead of laughing she would scream, then repeat. She’s seven now and this same personality trait persists. She will refuse things she wants. As I was typing this a minor example occurred. Kid says, “My tablet turned off, the battery is dead.” To which my wife responded, “Do you want the external battery?” Which got the response, “no!” Moments later the kid went and got the external battery to plug in her tablet.
Your baby sounds great. I hope the good humor and silly personality traits persist.
The best thing with babies, in that pre-talking phase, is when you get 'em together with babies just a touch older than they are. We have a nephew nearly exactly a year older than Number One Daughter, and I well remember the Christmas when she was one, following him around the room watching him climb on chairs and similar advanced skills. She’d get this look in her eye like ‘whoa - you can DO that? Lightbulb moment!’
As for daughter the second, my favourite saying about her was that she didn’t really believe she was a younger child. Big kids are awesome. Borrow one if you don’t have one handy!
Our nanny has a one year old that she brings with her whenever she watches Spice Kit. They adore each other. He gets so excited when she’s around that he won’t sleep. They teach each other new skills and even share toys. It’s wild. I’m glad during this pandemic he has at least one playmate.
Turns out, babies are easy; but you have to watch toddlers like they are on a terrorist watch list.
The older, after a bath but still in her diaper, decided she needed to make a little extra effort for a special outing occasion. While were were getting changed, she wondered into the bathroom, grabbed the lipstick from the counter and put on a little on her mouth, then her cheeks, forehead, chest, hell why not the belly and knees for maximum impact.
The younger, while sitting in his high chair at the kitchen island counter where cookies were being made, waited until our backs were turned. He then managed to reach the bag of flour carelessly left within arm’s reach. Dumped it on the counter. Himself. The chair. The floor. He achieved maximal radial coverage in under two minutes without ever leaving his perch.
My two-year old took a can of soda off the counter and very carefully poured it out onto the floor, then looked up at us and said “It is a can.” We had to agree…
Boy, I’m in for it. I’m honestly terrified of the toddler stage but we’re headed right for it.
The Wee Weasel is all standing all the time. Today I put some music on and he started, er, you could charitably call it dancing, banging his head and thrusting his body back and forth… And falling over immediately. Then getting up and doing it all over again.
YMMV of course, but I never found the toddler stage, or the “Terrible Twos” for that matter, to be terribly challenging or awful.
What I did find surprising, at least with my two eldest kinder, was how much preferences are either developed or come to the fore, I’m not certain which.
My experience is that if you want WeeWeasel to like physical play, ie football wrestling and the like, do that with him now. If you focus more on less physical types of play, I would tell you that is how he will lean later.
Vaderling loves talking and math. We always spoke to him in complete sentences and never used “babytalk”. His cousin took great delight in teaching him simple numbers, how to count and addition and subtraction when he was four.(she was eight, the youngest and Sis raised her kids with a strong sense of responsibility for the next youngest, so that was Vaderling for her)
I wish now, that we had focused more on reading also, his teachers have consistently been amazed at the level of his spoken vocabulary and his utter disregard for the written word.
My advice for babies is “just go with the flow”
Their phases will changed regularly.
I liked the toddler stage as well. When they’re really talking it is hilarious.
The lil’wrekker loved vehicles. One day we had to pull over for a firetruck with lights on, sirens blaring. I look back at her in the car seat thinking it might alarm/scare her. She said one word: Firefuck!
That one has gone down in family lore.
OMG, my daughter had this insane love of school buses! She would talk about them, going on and on, point them out, look longingly at them.
When she was four-ish I took her to a county fair. There was a school bus there promoting safety. We spent a solid hour just looking at it, going on, sitting in it, etc. You’d have thought we’d met Barney (her other love).
When my daughter was a baby and toddler, I was working full time, so I missed a lot. But now that she has a toddler of her own and I’m retired, I get to experience all that fun stuff, and it wear me out!!! RoxStar is a trip, and so entertaining, but as I’m creeping up on 67, I see why nature saw fit to end women’s fertility at a relatively young age.
I once saw a t-shirt or a plaque or a coffee cup that said “If I’d known grandchildren were so much fun, I’d have had them first!” So, so true!!
FCMoooom we are very close in age and our grandgirls are close in age too, so we have a lot in common.
There is something so delicious when my daughter, Ms. Tiny But Mighty, looks at me when her Ms.Tiny But Mighty does or says something and her eyes say “so this is what you meant!. Nature will out.
I was 40 when my last munchkin was born so I have to eat my Wheaties as the original Ms. Tiny But Mighty will be presenting me with my second and no doubt last grandbaby in early July 2021. I can hardly wait.