Mutemockingbird's Blog

So Hawkeye is one year old.

At his one year check up he weighed 22 lbs and 1 oz. (the 60th percentile) and he was 30.5 inches tall (the 70th percentile).

He likes to eat and climb on things. And climb on things to get things to eat. He discovered the stairs a few weeks before his birthday and we resorted to using his birthday gift (a kiddie slide with climbing rock-wall type ramp) as a blockade to the stairs. It was fairly effective while the slide was still in the box, but once Bloke put the slide together the morning of the party it only took Hawkeye a few days to realize her was strong enough to move the empty box and head up the stairs. He has also mastered climbing up the slide, but like the stairs going down is where the trouble lies.

He was pulling up to standing before his birthday, but within a week after his birthday he was taking a step or two between the coffee table and sofa, but three weeks later he is holding onto the walls and getting just about anywhere in the house. He has also stood up in the middle of the room and taken a a few steps. He is much more motivated to walk on the tile and is more willing to crawl on the carpet which is think is also related to his switching to shorts with the warmer weather and the tiles being more uncomfortable on his knees.

He likes to babble, but he hasn’t said any words yet — or sounds that mean anything like words. We did get out one of Peanut’s old books on animals. It is just color pictures of different animals and she was trying to teach him the animals in the book. He was really liking the book and looking at it on his own, but I don’t think he knows any animals names, yet.

He likes to eat. Tonight we went out for dinner. He had some friend cheese ravioli from our appetizer, half a piece of cheese pizza from Peanut’s plate, a quarter of my salmon from my plate and a cup-full of puffs while we were waiting. He prefers food he can feed himself and he will try and use a fork and spoon the way he sees us use them. He does this with a hairbrush or comb if you leave one sitting where he can get it. This is especially cute as he hasn’t much hair yet.

He is still nursing, but is loosing interest except for as a comfort when he is tired. So I am still nursing a bed time. I had intended to nurse in the morning too, but he usually like to get right up and ins’t too interested in nursing then. We will see how it goes over the summer. I’m happy to keep nursing him through the summer and then at bed time, but I don’t plan to pump at work next school year. And even if I did, I’m not sure Hawkeye would be up for it. He is already having some whole milk at home and they have been supplementing with formula at school for about a month now.

He is also pretty happy to play with balls and blocks. He got a bunch of trucks for his birthday — which we didn’t have much of in the house before that and he likes those quite a bit, but that also might be that they have sounds and most of the toys in our house don’t have sound. His favorite seems to be this set of wooden cars/trucks Bloke’s parents gave him. He will dig through the diaper bag to find them and they have no sounds or anything electronic so maybe he just likes crashing things with wheels into each other.

For his birthday party we did a Kentucky Derby theme. My brother-in-law had pointed out that the Saturday before Hawkeye’s birthday was the Kentucky derby (also Cinco de Mayo) so I had been thinking about it and then we stumbled upon some Vineyard Vines official Kentucky Derby gear so I decided to run (haha) with the theme.

Here was the T-shirt Hawkeye wore. We tried to tie the southern theme in with fried chicken (from the grocery store) and macaroni and cheese (homemade). I also made cornbread (from a box mix). I did a fruit and veggie try that was sliced carrots, sliced apples and granola to look like carrots, oats and apples. For desert we go macaroons which are not Southern or related to horse racing in anyway I am aware of, but Peanut asked for them and I was decorating the primary colors so we tried to pick matching colors. Then in addition to the smash cake we had cupcakes. I ordered the plastic horses and just had the grocery store put grass looking frosting on the cupcakes. The kids really liked the horses. I also had the idea to put Hawkeye’s picture from each month on a ribbon like you might win in a horse show. (I never road myself, but all of my friends who did had bulletin boards covered in their competition ribbons so I assumed it was a “horse” thing.) I couldn’t find what I wanted to I ended up buying a book of scrap-booking paper in primary colors and creating a ribbon around a paper plate and then putting his age on each ribbon like it was the event. They really turned out cute.

Since Hawkeye was born in the spring we could have a back yard party and we lucked out with the first really nice, summer-like day of the year. We rented a bouncy house. The bouncy house was much easier than I ever thought. It was just under $100. They come in the morning and set it up, they come at the end of the day and take it down. It was super easy (for me) and the kids loved it. We also used the kid’s toys that were already in the yard, starting with the sandbox. I bought a Melissa and Doug Take Along Show Horse Stable for $25 that came with eight horses and the kids created horse trails and adventures in the sandbox. We already had a water table so I ordered $2 worth of rubber ducks that looked like horses and let the kids play at the water table. I also put the kids’ little table outside with a package full of (cheap) paintbrushes and jars of washable paint. I used stock paper to cut out a shape of a horse and a the shape of a horseshoe and let the kids paint them. As we were cleaning up I felt bad about throwing away the horses and horseshoes left behind so I put them down on our patio, quickly snapped a picture and then threw them in the trash as I picked up the rest of the party. When I looked at the pictures that last minute impulse picture really looked like art. I put it on the inside of the thank you cards we sent out (a picture of Hawkeye shoving cake in his face was on the front) and people thought I had created original art for the inside, so it was pretty cool to be able to tell them their kids did that.

So we are almost to 11 months so I have to hurry to get this up before a whole month has passed me by.

Hawkeye is constant motion. His crawling can best be described as scampering. He scampers across the floor, any floor. We flew out to Boston to visit family and during a two hour delay he scampered in circles around the waiting area. He is pulling himself up. Just the other day he pulled himself up on one of the little (child-sized) chairs that go with the child-sized table in the corner of the kitchen. The chair was in the middle of the kitchen because Peanut uses them to reach the counter when she helps me (or Bloke) cook. Anyway, he pulled himself up and then discovered he could push it across the tile floor in the kitchen while he walked behind. Of course he walked straight for the stove and reached for the knobs on the front. Funny, I had bough knob covers fro the stove when Peanut was a baby and she never had any interest in the stove, but I have a vague memory of throwing them out once time when the Tupperware cabinet tumbled out and I was annoyed at the Tupperware, and stove knob covers, we never used. So we will need to get a new set.

And a gate for the top of the stairs. Just this weekend Hawkeye got interested in the stairs and after a few tries, he was at the top. He can’t get down, but he can go up pretty fast. Which means you have to watch him all the time because if there are stairs, he is on them or trying to get to them. I have seen him let go of whatever he used to pull himself up for a second or two, so standing independently and walked are not far away.

Knock on wood, his sleeping has stayed pretty good. He is getting up around 11 p.m. and around 3 a.m. to nurse, but otherwise he is sleeping. He has also started napping during the day so that has helped give me time to do something with Peanut or get something done on days I’m home.

He is eating everything. He loves ham. He has had chicken and ground beef, but ham remains the favorite. But I have started giving him a little of anything not too seasoned from my dinner plate. Mashed potatoes, steamed peas, rice, pasta, shredded cheddar cheese, Cheerios, and steamed broccoli are the staples, but anything I eat is more or less fair game for him now. In Boston we were eating at small, downtown breakfast place and Hawkeye was eating scrambled egg whites off my plate when he grabbed a home fry. The home fries weren’t spicy, spicy; but they weren’t as bland as the scrambled egg whites either. He was so upset, I had to take him out and wait on the street for Bloke and Peanut to finish. But his negative home fry experience hasn’t dampened his desire for food. He is still happiest with a high chair try full of finely diced table food and a sippy cup of water. I don’t let him have much water, but he loves the little bit he gets and will keep coming back to the empty sippy cup long after the meal is finished.

He is still in 12 or 18 month clothes. He feels heavier to me and I notice that the 12 month pants are a little short, but the 18 month ones are a little long, or a little loose in the waist which is no good for crawling and pulling up so mostly 12 months. I picked up a few pairs of shorts and some T-shirts for his Easter basket. I started with Peanut making the bulk of the Easter basket her summer clothes. So this year she got a lot of shorts because she had a ton of T-shirts but no bottoms and Hawkeye got a few outfits since he didn’t have anything for summer. Now we just need so warm days!

The Easter Bunny also left Hawkeye some puffs, some of those Gerber yogurt melts, some candy (for mom and dad), a book (Rocket Science for Babies which is pretty good) and a swing for Peanut’s swing set. The swing is a baby swing he can sit in and get some use this summer, although with his new-found love of stairs I thought (too late) I should have gotten him one of these little plastic slide things that he could climb up.

In just a few days he will be 11 months, and then he is almost a year. I started thinking about his birthday party. Can you believe it? A year? Aren’t we so luck to be hear, to see him celebrate a year, to be able to celebrate at all!

Peanut and Hawkeye turned 6 years and 9 months, respectively.

At Peanut is amazing (although she has always been pretty amazing and I don’t see that changing).

She is in kindergarten. The skills she has to master are so much more than I did in kindergarten. She is already reading. Still sounding out words and relying on sight words so not a ton of reading comprehension, but reading nonetheless.

She started soccer and loves it. Loves it so much she wanted a soccer themed birthday party.

We had her party at the kids’ area at the gym I go to. They have a kids’ rock climbing wall, exercise bikes, air hockey, and some other fitness games. They also have a small gym where you can do soccer games or floor hockey. It even comes with an employee to facilitate your games. I had planned to play some soccer drill/games they do in Peanut’s soccer classes, but I didn’t realize we got the part with the rock wall and everything too so the kids spent some time “working out” and then did a few soccer games. Then we did a pinata (Peanut was so excited about the pink soccer ball pinata we found on Amazon).

Peanut wanted Jimmy John’s sandwiches and that was easy enough. We did end up with an excess of chips because Peanut wanted Pirate’s Booty to I told Bloke to just order sandwich platters and he thought I was being cheap and not serving chips so we ended up with double chips. I have been giving them out to my students because there are only so many Jimmy John’s chips a family should eat. I ordered some soccer plates and table clothes. I didn’t do as much decorating, but I saw an idea to get red and yellow napkins and present them as “yellow cards” and “red cards” which turned out cute. I also found a cupcake grouping to look like a soccer ball that seemed pretty simple and the grocery store was able to make it from the picture I found. It turned out pretty good, but I had meant for the black squares to be chocolate frosting instead of dyed buttercream, but the kids loved their black faces, tongues, teeth and probably poop. We ordered some level 1 reading books about soccer. One was Pinkalicious and another was Barenstein Bears (two of Peanut’s favorites) and I got a longer one for Fancy Nancy which my mother-in-law likes so I thought she might like reading the soccer book with Peanut. The day before the party it snowed, and snowed and snowed. School was canceled so Peanut and I decorated the bags I bought for the kids to gather up pinata candy to look like Peanut’s cake.

The party turned out to be a big success. Everyone was happy to get out of the house and have their kids run around since everyone had been trapped inside the day before. I was worried we might have to cancel since we had 13 inches of snow in our back yard. Bloke was going out to shovel every two or three hours just to keep up with the snow and his pile from our drive way was higher than the lamp post in our front yard. After he dug out the driveway he had to dig out his pile to get to the mail box.

In addition to soccer, Peanut takes piano and swimming. I saw a sign for a local swim team that started at 5 years old and considered signing her up, but practice was five days a week and more on weeks they had meets. So she takes lessons once a week and when she gets a little older she can join the team if she wants, but five plus days a week at five years old seems like a way to make her hate swimming or at least a sure fire way to make me hate it (or sitting in the bleachers at public pools with a 9 month old).

Speaking of sitting with a 9 month old — there is no more sitting in our household. Hawkeye started crawling right on his 9 month birthday and hasn’t stopped since. This morning Bloke noted that Hawkeye can make it out of the living room faster than he could. He is drawn to everything he can’t have — outlets, power cords, the dog’s food and water. He does like to bang on the metal air duct covers on the floor and I can’t think of any good reason not to let him play with those but you still have to watch him like a hawk because all of the vents are near outlets. The other day he hit the test button on the carbon monoxide detector and I thought the painful, high-pitched beep would scare him or at least discourage him from going back. It did not. It did encourage the dog to stay out in the yard for the rest of the evening.

He has two teeth that are pretty much in. I haven’t seen any others, but he is chewing on everything so I imagine there are more on their way in. He is still in 12 month clothes, but he seems to be getting longer so some of the onsies are too tight length-wise and some of the pants are too short. I pulled out a pair of 18 month jogging pants that did fit him pretty well so I might need to pull some of the 18 month things out. He was 20 lbs and 11 ounces (65th percentile) and 29.5 inches (86th percentile) at his 9 month check-up so I guess he is long, or tall.

He is precocious. As soon as he got crawling down he starting pulling up to standing. This has lead to a few bumps and bruises. The most glaring one was when he slipped while holding on to the coffee table and whacked his cheek bone on the edge of the table. His whole cheek is black and blue so whenever I take him anywhere people ask about it. He had it for his 9 month check up and the doctor just said, he’ll probably get more before this one goes away and sure enough, he hit his forehead on the leg of one of the dining room chairs this morning.

And sleeping. Knock on wood, we have turned a corner. His doctor recommended the Ferber method. I didn’t much about at — apart from Robert De Niro’s efforts to Ferberize the baby in Meet the Fockers and general Internet outrage — so I hadn’t really tried it. We did a little research and did a modified version. The first night we put him down and while we went back in to comfort him every five minutes, he fussed for two hours. He got up at midnight and I went in to comfort him every five minutes for about an hour and then when he got up at four I nursed him and he slept until I had to wake him up to leave. The second night we did the bedtime routine, put him down and he fussed for  less than five minutes. He woke up once at night and fussed for about 10 minutes. The third night he fussed for less than five minutes. I feel a little bad that I sold him short. I have been making excuses that he needs me more than his sister did at that age. That he was a light sleeper and just couldn’t sleep. That he was bigger than his sister and needed to eat more. That he didn’t like bottles at day care so wanted to nurse more at night. But clearly, he can sleep. In his crib. By himself. For hours at a time.

So Hawkeye is 8 months old. He seems like he has grown up overnight, or maybe it is just that he started daycare at 8 months.

He is sitting up on his own. He is eating primarily purees of orange vegetable, but he seems to like bananas and apples at daycare – although that might be because he hates bottles and he has to eat something during the day. He seems to be on the brink of crawling (although that is a few weeks after 8 months old). He is almost able to get up on his knees, but he can’t quite get up on his knees. Once he puts it all together he will be off and we need to get on baby-proofing ASAP.

I found a box of Peanut’s old toys in the basement. It was all of her wooden toys, the colors and shapes stuff and the Play School xylophone. His favorite from the box was a “puzzle” with three aquatic animals — fish, turtle, crab — each with a big handle (or as the back of the puzzle says, a big knob). He can get all of the pieces out with the handles and chew on them or bang them together. He also really likes his sister’s Hermine wand from her Halloween costume. That he can wave around and bang on things too.

His sleep is still in flux. He has had a good night here and there, and it is better than it was at his worst point, but he doesn’t sleep much more than two hour stretches. I’ve resorted to bringing him into bed with me so I can sleep a little more now that I am back to work. I put him down between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. he usually get up again around 10 p.m. and sometimes 11 p.m. but we are starting to get to midnight. At midnight I usually have to bring him into bed with me because I can’t get him back down. I usually can get him back down by 12:30 or 1 and then we can sleep until 3. I have started getting up at 3 even if he doesn’t, but he usually does. If he is asleep at 3 a.m. I move him to the Pack ‘n Play in our room and then sleep until he gets up or on the rare occasion he sleeps until I need to get up to get ready for work, I sleep until 5 am, but in the two weeks I’ve been back to work, I have only slept to my alarm once. If Bloke is up he sometimes takes him, but if not I put him in the rocking seat in the bathroom while I shower and get ready. Hopefully sleeping gets better soon, because I can’t do this forever, but he won’t be a baby forever either.

Daycare has been going well. He likes the other kids. His refusal of bottles bothers his teacher much more than me, but I guess I don’t have to watch him refuse it. But he has wet diapers, he hasn’t lost weight so until one of those things changes you can lead a baby to a bottle and all that.

He is still in swimming, but I am thinking I might need to pull him out for my sanity. He swims (with me) at the same time as Peanut’s lesson. But it is early and a rush to get there from work and then all three of us need to change. Plus his teacher is nice, but unenthusiastic so the class is kind of boring. And Hawkeye is too young to get the scoop and kick on demand thing. He does like the water though so maybe just take a break until the summer.

He is still pretty smiley. Very much a morning person. He likes the laugh, especially at his sister. He has two teeth on the bottom, but I think more are coming based on his love for chewing on everything and his drool.

So Hawkeye isn’t 8 months yet so this post isn’t too late.

Hawkeye is about 19 pounds. He is wearing 12 month clothes although he started the month in 9 month clothes but he is getting taller and taller (or longer and longer) and the 9 month pants and sleepers are just a little short.

He has moved on to stage two foods. He really likes orange food and it had been orange vegetables — sweet potatoes, carrots, butternut squash — especially the butternut squash. But we started him on a stage two food that was carrots, mango, bananas and then I tried to buy more and accidentally bought a few packages of just mango and we had his first fruit that he really seems to like (he hated pears, and only tolerated avocado, banana and to a lesser degree, peaches). Although I really like mango so maybe he gets that from me.

He is moving. He can roll or scooch across the carpet if you leave him on the floor. He was sitting precariously if you sat him up, but now he is sitting up pretty securely, if you sit him up. He is pushing up and doing “sit ups.” The other day he almost did a sit up to sitting, but isn’t quite up to getting to sitting up himself. I think by next month.

He isn’t crawling or event kneeling in the crawling position, but I think that once he figures out he can move himself, he will be off to the races. I lowered the crib mattress so I could put a wedge in to raise up his head and when I did that he lowered the mattress enough to reveal the outlet on the wall. I had the outlet plugs in already, but the first time I put him in the crib with the lower mattress he stuck his hand through the rails to touch the outlet. Peanut was always curious, but I think Hawkeye will be curious in a way that will keep everyone on their toes.

Hawkeye’s sleeping is still less than ideal. He has had some nights that are better only getting up two or three times and going back down in 15 to 30 minutes. But some nights are rougher getting up every hour or two and once in a while he still needs to be held all night, but (fingers crossed) those are getting less frequent.

I am also getting ready to go back to work with the new semester. Blah. I am mixed. I am excited about a new course I am teaching and I think I will like being back at work, but thinking about going back is torture.  I’ve gotten Hawkeye’s supplies for school minus one sleep sack that I am waiting to be delivered. I am trying to get pump parts organized and bottles labeled. Blah. I just want to hold my baby.

Hawkeye was 18 pounds 11 ounces at his 6 month check up that ended up being scheduled right on his 6 month “birthday.” He was in the 70th percentile for weight and height/length and the doctor was happy with his growth.

Since 4 months he has expanded his diet to include vegetables and fruit. We have tried green beans, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, peas and bananas. I was working on the vegetables first because I thought if he had fruit first he wouln’t eat vegetables, but 1. Hawkeye hasn’t meet a food he won’t try and 2. Peanut really, really wanted to mash up a banana for him. I did let her try to mash the banana with a fork thinking we could add breast milk to thin it out, but the texture seems too inconsistent for a new eater and we ended up having to use the chopper and Peanut lost interest. Luckily, Hawkeye’s interest in eating outlasted her interest in making baby food so in the end we made banana baby food for about a week and will probably mix it in going forward.

Hawkeye is rolling all around, especially when you lay him on the playmate while you cook or fold laundry or answer the door or anything else that is difficult/dangerous to do while holding an infant. I’m not sure of the rolling is an effort to follow the people or a fit of rage at being left behind or maybe a little of both. He can bear weight on his feet and for his six month pictures today we were able to get him to “stand” while holding onto a child-sized chair. (The chair was my grandmothers when she was a child and the pictures turned out pretty cute and a nice way to remember my grandmother.) Hawkeye is grabbing things and putting them in his mouth. Everything in his mouth. I haven’t seen any teeth yet, but there is drool and the need to chew that make everyone ask if he is teething.

Sleep has gone down hill this past month. Hawkeye had a cough early in October and the coughing fits would wake him up and he had a few night where I sat up with him all night because he couldn’t lay flat without coughing. Then we had to travel and he was sleeping in a pack-n-play and our schedule was off and we had family from everywhere around so we have been home a week now and things a starting to get back to normal. He has had a few fussy nights, but hopefully he is on the mend. At his 6 month check-up the doctor didn’t find anything wrong with him and said the same this the doctor we saw at the beginning of the month said … its probably a cold.

Despite being sick. Despite not sleeping well at night, Hawkeye is still a happy guy. He is always smiley (unless you try to leave the room). He loves people and being the center of attention. He loves playing with Peanut’s latch board and while we were traveling the hose we stayed at had a jumperoo which he loved. I looked at getting one for home, but they are like $100 and as soon as he can sit up and crawl — and I don’t think those are too far away — he won’t be interested in the jumperoo. I also think doctor’s don’t recommend them — something about not teaching kids to bear weight properly or something like that.

We also celebrated Hawkeye’s first Halloween. Peanut went as Hermine and I had suggested Hawkeye go at Hedwig, but most of the owl costumes were a bit girly, expically the white owls and Peanut decided he should be a tiger so I found an adorable and warm looking Tigger costume. It worked out well because I could fit his snowsuit on under the costume for Trick-or-Treating. Someone later suggested I could have wrapped him in a blanket and drew a lightning bolt on his forehead to be a baby Harry, but his costume doesn’t need to match Peanut’s. They can each be their own thing and they were both adorable.

October was a rough month for the family. My aunt died of cancer. Hawkeye, my dad and I were with her when she died. After we held her funeral, My dad, the two kids and I went to my grandmother’s home because she had broken her hip the same weekend my aunt took a turn for the worse and at 98 my grandmother wasn’t really a canidate for surgery, nor did she really want it so she went from walking every day to her death bed pretty quickly. My mom and dad had been with her since Sunday morning. My dad came home to shower and get his medications Monday morning and Hawkeye and I went to the Hospice facility to be with my mom. We walked in just as my grandmother’s heart beat was fading. So Hawkeye was there for two deaths in two weeks all before he was six months old. But despite this, he was happy and smiley and I think his being there was helpful to my mom.

It is amazing that he is half a year old. On the pediatrician note sheet (our doctor gives us one at every appointment that outlines normal safety stuff, eating habits, developmental milestones to expect, etc.) it advised up to lower the crib to the lowest setting since he would soon be pulling up to standing. To cover outlets and put locks on bottom cabinets. To keep small objects out of reach. I wasn’t ready for that. But when I thought about it, Peanut stated to pull to standing around now. She wasn’t close to climbing out of the crib, but I remember having a freak out one night at her bed time and moving the crib down — sure she would climb out and fall to her death that very night without this intervention. She never did climb out of the crib, but Hawkeye is taller and stronger than she was at six months and he hates being alone way more than she ever did, so I guess we should be moving that crib down. My baby!

Today was the first snow fall of the season. Nothing too major just some flurries in the morning. By afternoon everything had melted off.  But it was Hawkeye’s first snow.

I’m a little late with this, but as I still have a few days before he turns 5 months I guess I still have time.

We just went for his 4 month check up last week because the doctor’s office changed our appointment time and then their schedule was full, etc. So at roughly 4 and a half months Hawkeye was 17 pounds and 8 ounces. Putting him around the 80th percentile. He was also above average for height. I took him to visit a friend who had a baby a month ago and seeing him next to the one month old did make him seem really big. He is going through an always needs to be held phase and I can feel his size in my back at the end of the day in a way that makes me wonder if he is that much heavier than the average baby or if I am that much more out of shape or just that much older than when Peanut was his age — although in fairness, she was not anywhere near 17 pounds at four months.

Hawkeye is wearing size 3 diapers and is in 6 month clothes, but as the temperatures drop I am phasing out the summer clothes with 9 month size long sleeves and pants clothes.

He started eating rice cereal this month. I started with mostly breast milk with just a tablespoon of rice cereal. From the beginning Hawkeye loved food. He opened his mouth like a baby bird and screams when the person feeding him is too slow for his liking. He has started grabbing the spoon too and tonight he got it into his mouth, but then got a little confused about where the food actually came from and refused to take the spoon out of his mouth. I have slowly been giving him thicker rice cereal so I think after his five month “birthday” we will start with some vegetables. Probably peas or carrots first.

He has striking blue eyes. I see them everyday and I am in awe of them, but I have started to write it off as something a mother loves, even when other comment on his eyes, but then I will see a picture of him with these striking blue eyes and I am amazed. His sister has gorgeous blue eyes too, but they weren’t so striking at four months.

He is sleeping okay at night. He goes to sleep around 8 p.m. and will usually wake up to eat at 11 p.m. and at 3 a.m. and then gets up for the day around 7 a.m. I would like to drop one of the night feedings, but he eats and goes right back to sleep to I guess he needs to be up then. He doesn’t sleep at all during the day. He will sleep for a hour or so after eating sometimes, but if I try to put him down he is up an unhappy. He will also sleep is he is in a moving car but usually wakes up as soon as the car stops moving.

Hawkeye rolls from his back to front — usually to his right. He did roll from his stomach to back a few times, but has lost interest and hasn’t done it lately. He does spin himself around in a circle so if you lay him on the floor he can move himself a foot or two by pushing with his feet. He has also started reaching for things and his able to grab some things that fit in his hand and things made of cloth.

He doesn’t have any teeth breaking though, but he drools and likes to chew on this aqua colored, jell-filled teething ring. He also likes an old doll of Peanut’s. The doll has a rattle for a necklace and a crinkly dress with patches of different colored fleece. He also really likes this turtle toy that has tubing where the turtle’s shell should be with rings that you can push along with wires. He can spin some of the rings and grab the wires to shake the whole turtle toy. It was also a favorite of Peanut’s when she was a little older. She would walk around carrying the turtle by the wires when she was about a year old.

Peanut is still loving being a big sister. She wants to help give him baths or change his diaper, but now that kindergarten has started she has gotten busier or at least more interested in school things and then playing with the first grader who lives next door. But I am enjoying that time I get to spend with my baby and I like that Peanut spends the afternoons playing in the backyard rather than asking to watch TV everyday.

I went back to the gym this month so Hawkeye started at gym “daycare.” They will watch you kids, but they won’t change diapers or feed the kids so that limits your workout to about an hour, but I couldn’t work out for much more than an hour anyway. I plan and try to go Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but between doctor appointments or just things that came up I usually get there twice a week. I have lost a pound this month. So you know, just 19 more to go. But Hawkeye has done well in the “daycare.” The girls that work there say he is smily and he loves watching the other kids. I picked my workout time partly based on when the daycare was open and partly because I thought he would nap. He doesn’t name (too many kids to watch), but he always falls asleep as soon as we get in the car and will usually sleep long enough for me to shower when we get home.

But he is such a happy guy. Such a charmer. I am so lucky to be his mommy! And watching him and Peanut together is just about the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

At three months Hawkeye is a happy baby. We have taken to calling him Guy Smiley because, unless he is hungry, he is happy.

I’m not sure how much he weighs now — I guess around 15 pounds? But he is rolling from his back onto either his right or left side. He has rolled from his stomach to his back a few times, but I don’t think he has figured it out yet.

I have started carrying him on Peanuts old Onya carrier. Peanut, Hawkeye and I did a hike through the forest preserve last week and I took him to a Hummingbird Festival this weekend in it.

He is sleeping through the night, mostly. I usually have to wake him to nurse around 4 or 5 a.m. but that might still be reminiscent of the 1 a.m. pumping I was doing pre-CT scan. His daytime napping is unscheduled and unorganized. Sometimes I can get him to nap in the crib or the swing, but usually he only wants to sleep while being held.

Hawkeye also took his first vacation. We drove to visit my grandmother. Hawkeye was cooperative and let her hold him for a good 30 minutes each day so I think she was happy to get to do that. Peanut was also able to go to the family picnic at her assisted living so I think she enjoyed showing off her great-granddaughter (who wears the dresses that her granddaughter always refused). Here is Hawkeye checking out the view of the Great Lakes from my grandmother’s living room.

We also celebrated Hawkeye’s 100 day birthday. 100 day birthdays aren’t really a thing, but Peanut has been wanting to throw parties for people so when she asked me if she could plan a party for Hawkeye I happened to be flipping through tabs on my iPad when one of the tabs had a web site that calculated how may days till your due dates and it had continued to count the days post due date and I saw that Hawkeye was going to turn 100 days old last week. So we planned a party.

We made a cake in the shape of the number 100. We counted out 100 M&Ms, peanuts, coffee beans, pasta noodles, chocolate chips and made a fruit loop necklace with 100 fruit loops on it. Peanut wanted to serve spaghetti so I made my grandmother’s sauce, but it didn’t turn out great — it was okay, not great. Peanut made a sign (her idea to make the zeros in 100 hearts) and my parents came for dinner.

According to the web site which also calculated the day of conception, Hawkeye’s 100th day of life happened to fall on the one year anniversary of his conception. Of course he may not have been conceived on that day. It fell middle of the week during my first week back to school so it seems unlikely to me that the conception, conception fell on that day, but I like when dates line up like this. It had a literary feel, something like symbolism or a completed journey or something that doesn’t really exist in real life, but I always look for anyway. I have a friend who is due any day now and I keep thinking how cool it would be to have a birthday on the day of the eclipse. Bloke said it would probably only matter to Druids and while I’m sure that would be important to them, I think it would be cool for us nonetheless.

There was no clear medical consensus on how long you need to pump and dump after having a CT scan with IV contrast. My pediatrician said she thought 12 hours, but 48 if I was worried about it. The nurse practitioner who did my 6 week check up said 24 hours. One of those two providers said it was complicated by the fact that contrast isn’t medicine so it isn’t included in the breastfeeding and medicine book they consult. The radiology nurse said 48 hours. The doctor we saw for the one month check-up said 48 hours.

So we went with 48 hours. Better safe than sorry. But it is actually more like 72 because you are away from the baby on the day of the scan.

I had started pumping about 5 ounces a day starting at my six week check-up. I had about 100 ounces frozen and then left about 20 ounces from the two days before the scan in the fridge for our babysitter so she didn’t have to worry about thawing milk.

I nursed the baby before I left and headed off for the scan at 6:30 a.m. on Friday. I got back around 2 p.m. and the baby had gone through all but 3 ounces of the milk in the fridge and we were breaking into the frozen milk before the evening. Over the next two days, we went though about half of the bags of milk in the freezer.

I did develop a new sense of respect for people who bottle feed. I did an enormous amount of dishes. I had washed all of the pump parts a few times before I realized there was no reason to have clean pump parts to pump milk I was just going the pour down the drain.

But the worst part was the pumping. With Peanut I pumped exclusively for the first three months so I never really understood what lactation consultants said when they said the pump wasn’t as efficient as a baby. I think my body made milk for a pump and it adjusted for that and this time, it has adjusted to make milk for a nursing baby. So while I pumped every few hours over the weekend, I felt engorged all the time. I felt blocked ducts forming and had to massage the blocks out with hot compresses. It was hard to sleep at night and hard to be away from the pump. And it was a huge relief to start nursing again Sunday night.

I was worried that my supply would drop, but while there have been some longer nursing sessions he still seems full after and we haven’t had to supplement. And we have turned the nursing corner where nursing goes from being painful and horrible, to being easy. This is the part people are talking about when they call nursing natural and easier than formula feeding (These people never mention how hard it is at the start or that that hardship can last a month or this time 6 to 7 weeks, with Peanut it lasted four months). So I am glad we got here and glad that the results of the scan were normal so I can keep nursing during this enjoyable part, having made it through the hard and downright shitty part. And I’m glad I don’t have to pump and dump again, because that sucks too.

At two months Hawkeye is 13 lbs and 5 ounces. I texted my brother to see how big my nephew was at his 2 month check-up as he is the biggest baby I have ever seen in real life and he was just half an inch longer than Hawkeye and a few ounces heavier. We might need a bigger fridge when he starts eating solids.

But his weight falls in the middle range on the growth chart, his height the high end of middle. He is starting to sleep through the night. He is smiling and will even smile when you say “smile for Mama.” He smiles for sounds and he will try with limited success to stick out his tongue if you stick your tongue out at him.

He is wearing three to six month clothes, but is just about ready to move up to six month for the length.

He still has neck strength that amazes me. He has always been able to lift his head when he is on his stomach and he can mostly hold his head up when being held upright as long as the person holding his is sitting still — but it still makes me nervous when people don’t hold his head. He can “stand” on his legs. If someone balances him he can “stand” for  30 to 60 seconds.

Peanut is loving being a sister. She loves to kiss and hug him. She gets jealous that he looks at me more than he looks at her, but like I tell her he is still learning to focus and she moves more than me. Although I need to get on moving more — I have never been this heavy myself and while weight gain is good for an infant, it’s not so much for their moms.