Bellies are for raspberries

Owen has decided, since his father and I use his belly for the sole purpose of such things, that bellies are for raspberries. After work today Mr. Doodle and I were unwinding on the bed playing around and he pulled up my top and planted a big raspberry on my belly then looked at me with such a look of pride. I was proud too, because that realization is an important one for any playful soul - and my child is nothing if not playful. I was also relieved: up until about 2 months and 10 mommy-pounds ago, Owen really wasn't sure what to do with my belly. He could tell that my belly-button wasn't like the rest of my belly, and he could tell too (after several interesting attempts) that my belly-button was not an oddly shaped nipple. So, this realization that bellies are for raspberries is one I consider equal to the realization that farts are funny and that it is not ok to throw food off the high chair. We're still eagerly anticipating these last two.

Balloon love

I'm not sure what it is about balloons that captivate kids so. I suppose it's that they float, and are often covered in colorful pictures and words. And maybe they're associated with parties, cake, and attention. Or it could just be something inherent to balloons. Regardless, Owen has a fiery passion for the round things, particularly ones filled with helium. He practically assaulted a miraculously-still-surviving Valentine's Day balloon at Monica & Klaus' house on Sunday; I guess we figured if the balloon lasted from February 14 to April 13 that it could probably handle Owen's chubby grabs and slobbery gnaws. The problem is it caused him to squeal so enthusiastically that we feared he would wake up Kai, and perhaps any other poor soul trying to sleep somewhere within a 2 mile radius.


So today at the store I bought Owen a Spiderman balloon. My acquiesing to Marvel Comics' marketing seemed somehow more honest than buying him a "Congratulations!" or "Good luck!" balloon. I figure, for a kid with an XY chromosomal makeup, Spiderman is pretty much always appropriate. At any rate, it was love at first grab, kiss, slobber, and shake. He hugged the balloon the whole way home, squeaking it with his hands, squealing at it when it dared to bob above him, and rubbing his face on it. It was then that I realized with some mixture of horror and amusement that Owen felt the way about this balloon that I feel about the tub of cookie dough in our refrigerator.

Life from pregnancy onwards: it's all fair game

I've told some of you the (now old) story of the woman at work who, when she saw me rinsing my pumping supplies in the ladies room, asked me "How old is your baby now?" I said, "He's 7 months" and she said "And you're still pumping? You're not going to be one of those women who breastfeeds their kid until he's three, are you?" I was impressed: I had never heard someone make the word "those" and "three" sound so dirty.


Suffice to say, my reply contained no expletives or rude gestures (not that she deserved such restraint), but more of the "Would it really bother you?" variety of reaction followed by awkward silence and then some more awkward silence as I realized that she believed my question to be rhetorical and she realized that it wasn't.


I've come to understand, since the moment I was widely-known to be pregnant (either through word-of-mouth at work or through the belly protruding later) that people have no hesitation about sharing unsolicited advice, opinions, or horrific stories with pregnant women and moms. For example, there was the woman who asked me when I was about 32 weeks pregnant, "How much weight have you gained?" And when I just stared at her blankly trying to think of a situation where that would ever be an appropriate question, she lost all frontal lobe function right before my eyes: "...because I hope you're not going to be one of those women who gain 40 pounds!" You can bet my response was a shrug and a smile - this woman is easily 1/3 of my non-pregnant weight - to tell her I hit 196 would probably send her into some type of frothy convulsions. Come to think of it, it may have been worth it.


The truth is, I was one of those women - I proudly gained 46 pounds and have lost 40 of those pounds since the birth of my child. I may also be one of those women who breastfeed my child until he is three. Who is to say? And who does it bother? Both the Canadian and British pediatric associations recommend breastfeeding until age 2. The American Medical Association only goes so far as to recommend nursing for 1 year (but they're off the hook as far as I'm concerned: they're probably just happy if you do not feed your child McDonald's before s/he has teeth). My friend Monica and I would be happy, I'm sure, to discuss the benefits of extended breastfeeding at length to any interested parties.


My friend Jenn and I were talking about this and I think she put it best: people who have a problem with nursing older babies/toddlers probably imagine a scenario where the child nurses every two hours like a newborn and relies on breastfeeding for a majority of their nutrition. That's not it at all. As Jenn rightly pointed out, at this point, nursing Owen isn't really about his nutrition anymore, although of course it is good for him; it's about snuggles and comfort. Sure, it has been shown to boost immunity even beyond 1 year, and it has been correlated with improved social skills and higher IQ - but any of these things could also be correlated with being raised by fabulous hippie parents who, coincidentally, are also more prone to extended breastfeeding. For Owen, it's a way to settle down after an active day at school with his friends, and to transition in and out of naps and nighttime. For me, it's time I get snuggles with an increasingly active boy. I love the way he giggles and says "yum yum" when I ask him if he wants nursies. It's things like this that make me relate - somewhat - to the women who nurse their kids well past their first math exam.


Even in my open-minded world I have gotten the occasional well-meaning query about how long I plan to nurse Owen, and to that I can only offer this deal: I will stop nursing Owen sometime between now and when he prefers his breastmilk chilled in a wine glass. Deal?

My other kids

Ahhh just got home from an AWESOME day in San Diego with the Havens. We had a picnic at the park - the pics will soon be uploaded to Picasa - the weather, food, & company were all unbelievable. But I have this post I started Friday and want to get posted - I'll try to post another update tomorrow on all-things-Owen (he's just amazing lately!).



Can I do another plug for Jenn's blog? The link is now at left. Because honestly, it's probably my favorite blog out there, and that includes dooce, so that's saying something. Read it. All the entries. Jenn is laugh-out-loud funny, and none of it (I promise) is made up. Her posts make me want to go back and edit all of mine to make them funnier.



Thursday night Jenn and I had girls-night-out, which consisted of a very tame evening of Margaritas and appetizers, which we chased with a trip to the Carters store. I told Marcy at daycare about this and although my point was how fun last night was, her first comment was "You went to Carters for girls night out? Lauren. Carters?" It's true, we did. But did I mention the part about the margaritas?

Jenn told me a couple of awesome stories about the kiddos, but my favorite one was about Cathryn. Cathryn is my current muse of the three (it rotates pretty evenly) and she is an entirely different kid than her younger (by a couple minutes) sister. Again, Jenn describes Cate perfectly on her blog, but another story, which Jenn shared with me Thursday, is just classic, perfect Cate:

[Cate walks into the bedroom holding her crotch and dancing side to side]
Jenn: Cathryn, do you need to use the potty?
Cate: Nope. I'm just scrrratchin'!



I love it because she's just so funny and blunt. I'd love to write a million more stories about all the kiddos (I just got off the phone with the Services; Charlie and I counted to 20 together and it was totally adorable. I love how some numbers are more fun to say than others - apparently Charlie likes to say "seventeeeeeen!"), but need to get back to my own precious boy. More soon.

Daycare

Yeah, my kiddo has no fun at daycare! If you want to see more pics of Owen at daycare, email me and I'll send you the link. The boy with him is his buddy Brandon.

Hellplantation

I need some reassurance. Either reassure me that it's normal for an angel child to have an occasional demon possession, or reassure me that the stage we're entering is "not so bad".

Last night we met Gary and Kim at Souplantation. Kim is 20 weeks pregnant and we haven't gotten together in awhile, so we figured we'd meet at Souplantation for some dinner, some parental advice, some good times. The good times were really no where to be found - Owen was just a total joy (or, wait, no I mean the opposite of joy) and poor Gary and Kim - it wasn't their fault. Or was it? We tease them that Owen is a hellion only around them, and I must admit that I've yet to be convinced otherwise. You see, when Owen was 7 weeks old, Gary and Kim came over for dinner and Owen cried for about 30 minutes straight that night. Inconsolable. His crying, up to that point, was easily squelched with a boob or a diaper change. After that dinner, he cried for ~15-30 min nightly for a few weeks, and we've since read that it's really common for very little babies to do that - as a kind of letting-go-of-the-day kind of thing - but it was the first time they'd met Owen so I'm sure they thought he cried like that all the time. It was so out of character for him at the time that both Keith and I were completely bewildered and it totally stressed us out.

So, let's return to last night. Remember how I was saying that Owen was an angel this weekend? Last night - not so much. He wouldn't eat anything (unheard of!), would throw whatever we gave him (the poor cleaning staff, honestly), shook his head "no" to every offering, screeched a good portion of the evening, didn't want to sit, didn't want to be held, only wanted Mama (that's pretty normal) but then didn't really want Mama. Gary and Kim laughed and we all joked about it. But Owen was acting like a maniac, and I have to admit that I'm just not ready for this. I know we've been lucky and I realize that this is largely a brag-blog, but honestly - I don't know how I will deal with it if my sweet boy becomes a normal toddler. Sigh.

Playing catch up

I feel so lame that I haven't updated this blog in over a week! To be fair, last week was a doozy, and then I went up north for the weekend to see Nonnie and Papa with Owen, so I apologize for not being more "in touch" on this site. I pledge to do better this week! Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

Owen and I flew up Thursday night. I had no idea what to expect on the flight. He's 12 months now - his reaction to flying could range from mellow to screaming banshee not wanting to sit still for an HOUR. Who am I to predict such a thing?

The airport was interesting. He wanted to crawl all over; any mother can tell you that the last thing she really wants to see is her child crawling on the floor of an airport terminal, but I can also guarantee that the last thing that anyone else wanted to see was a screaming back-arching child waiting to board the same plane as them. Sooo, he crawled on the floor of the airport terminal. To all those gaping in horror at their computer screen, believe me when I say that we washed his hands very well and went through almost an entire bottle of hand sanitizer. It was all worth it because as soon as we got on the plane, we read some books, he nursed, and then he was asleep. We had a whole row to ourselves - bliss! He slept the whole flight, the whole drive home, I put him to bed and it was fantastic. And, aside from the green fungus on the palms of his hands, he's totally fine!

The trip back to OC was somewhat less subdued but I was blessed with no one in the middle seat and so Mr. Snuggles was able to play on the floor (again with the floor, I know I know), play with the man behind us (which was all fun and games until Owen smacked the top of this guy's head when he was reading leaning over his tray table - whoops!), and look out (and occasionally attempt to lick) the window.

In between the two flights, Owen learned a new word ("doggie!" - exclamation point included of course), charmed the pants off of all our friends up north, crawled all over Nonnie's garden, and spent a good amount of time hugging Ozzie (this activity is also known as "collecting dog hair" - seriously, springtime is not a good time to introduce a 2.5 foot tall dog fanatic to a laborador). Ozzie is such a perfect dog for kids, though. He gave the occasional sweet lick (nothing like Blue's unending painting in dog slobber), let Owen roll all over him and hug him, and - and this part is amazing - let Owen touch his tongue, nose, eyes, ears...he's a sweet DOGGIE!! Owen was constantly signing and saying "doggie" it was cute and also exhausting because I knew each snuggle session with Ozzie meant a change of clothes. Anyone who knows me at all probably knows that I brought more clothes for Owen than he would normally need for a 2 week vacation, and yet I could have used many more clothes for him given how quickly they were covered in Ozzie fur.

I, myself, had a great time. It was one of the funnest trips in recent memory, not only because of the fantastic cocktail party Mommers threw on Friday (complete with 6 types of homemade savory galettes and fabulous company) but also because of the nice visiting time with Mommers, Diana, Meredith & Bill, and Michelle & Lance. I was somewhat anxious about traveling with Owen alone at this age (his, not mine - at 33 I've learned the ropes) but I seem to always forget what a joy he is and what a charmer he is; he manages to win people over no matter where he goes.

While we were gone, Keith went for a looong ride on Saturday and started an Oktoberfest brew with Stew & Jenny on Sunday. I came home to a fabulous dinner and tasty Lambic. All in all, a really great week!

Tonight: Dinner with Gary & Kim (she's pregnant!). Thursday - girls night out with Jenn. Friday - fun at home with Owen & the Triplets. I'll keep everyone up-to-date with the scoop.