Standing Ovation

In the week before Gunner turned 11 months, he started to stand alone for a few seconds. The first time it happened, he was in his crib, standing against the railing and suddenly it occurred to me that he wasn't holding on. 'You're standing!' I exclaimed happily. With this, he realized what he was doing, panicked, and plopped down on his rump. The next day, he stood at the park, letting go of his carriage in a moment of distraction. I ecstatically tried to share the moment with Daddy, which served again only to draw Gunner's attention to what he was doing and before Arron turned to look, the baby had sunk back down to the safety of his knees.

In the next few days, he had more and more standing moments and within a week, he was able to clap his hands or feed himself while up without support. He has even tried to dance on his feet, shaking his little bum and waving his hands up and down. When he learns a new skill, it happens so suddenly: one week he can't stand for more than the odd moment, the next week he is sturdy on his feet, shaking his booty to one of Arrons' songs.

In the same week leading up to his 11 months birthday, Gunner really started to sign clearly and regularly to get his needs met and to share his thoughts with us. He had been starting to produce signs for the last month, but would do so erratically, signing some words like 'Opa' a couple of times and then never again, signing favorites like 'more', 'bottle', and 'dog' more consistently. Then, about a week ago, he learned to sign' light' and that became on of his favorites. He started to show me lights wherever we went: bright lights, dim lights, long lights on the bus, tiny lights on the elevator buttons, high up lights in the grocery store. 'Light, light, light' he would sign, opening and closing his little fist. I put up my heavier curtains to block out the sun, hoping I could thereby fool him into letting me sleep in past the crack of dawn. The next morning, he woke up around 6:00 am just the same and sat up on the bed. 'Gunner, are you awake?' I asked. He pointed to the crack in the curtains and signed 'light'. Translation: 'Look Mommy, it's day! Time to get up!'

The next night, I made sure the curtains had no cracks between them, but it doesn't help much, despite my best efforts. I don't know why I feel so tired lately, like I could just sleep all day if I had the chance. I wonder if this is just what happens to people as they get older. In any case, Gunner definitely doesn't have this problem.

The Knights Who Say 'Dat'

I was reading a parenting book and they were listing milestones babies meet at 11 months and among them was 'says one word other than mama or dada', and I realized that Gunner is saying a real word: he is saying 'That'. He say it all the time. In fact, since he started saying it, he says it all day to everyone and anyone and he has practically stopped saying the other words/word-like sounds he was producing up till now. He points at things he wants to know about and asks 'dat?', he chooses his foods by pointing to the one he wants and declaring 'Dat', and he asks for objects by pointing to them and saying 'Dat'. Sometimes it sounds like 'that'. Today he asked for a picture of Arron and Cougar. I brought it down and talked to him about what was going on in the picture. My brother happened to drop by at this time and my Gunner pointed out the picture to Max and told him 'Dada'. My brother (the shrink, no less) was impressed and I was as proud as a Mom could be when her kid does his best tricks to astound the visitors with his brilliance at such a tender age.

Besides saying "Dat" and the odd 'Dada' or 'Mama', Gunner is, I think, jargoning. He sounds like he is talking Swedish or something. One of his favorite expressions is 'Nogn dogn', whatever that means. He's even got me talking Nogn Dogn back to him. I know you're only supposed to use real language with your kid and not baby talk, but motherhood does funny things to your brain and makes it bypass the usual logical circuits in favor of reducing your own language to jibberish.

My Life Is Shit

A few days ago, I was sitting in the rocker in Gunner's room in the morning, feeling utterly groggy and foggy and wanting nothing more than to go back to bed and be left alone. I felt really negative about everything in my life: my friends, my weight, my financial situation, my shitty fridge and my asshole landlord who won't replace it, etc. I was complaining to Arron about the crappiness of my situation and found myself using the phrase, "my life is shit". This is of special significance because, historically, I have been known to use this phrase when, and only when, I am about to get my period.

"Hah, did you hear that, Arron? I just said 'my life is shit'. I must be getting my period"

We both laughed because my moodswings and ill humours are so predictable, it's almost a joke and then laughed it off because I hadn't had my period since the birth and was starting to think I might never get it again.

But, wouldn't ya know, the next day I got that visit from Aunt Flo, the kindly old aunt whose calling cards are engraved with the motto, "My Life is Shit"

Signs Gunner Uses at 11 months:

More
Eat/Food: fairly consistently, though he sometimes does 'more' for 'food'
Bottle: consistently uses this sign to get a bottle
Water (adapted to: hand with fingers spread wide bounced quickly against side of mouth)
He even signed this one while he was in the bath the other night, to show me the water.
Potty (adapted to: hand waving side to side at chest level)
Light: does it all the time
Hat: will sign this if I show him a hat
Dog: signs this consistently in response to a dog or a picture of a dog or if he wants to see the book with the dog in it.
Bath: Started to do this this week, around bathtime
All Done: Started to do this in the last couple of day, raising his hands and rotating his wrists to tell me he is all done eating or finished with the potty
Hi/Bye
Mommy: he only did this once when I put him in the crib at bedtime for a few minutes
Daddy: he does this sometimes, signing it further back on the side of his head

EC Update:

We still do the morning poop on the potty. I have been putting him on it a few times a day for pees, too, whe we both seem up to it. I have been trying to put him on when he signs potty but this isn't always possible because he will only sit on a toilet with an insert, and there aren't too many of those around when you're out and about.

1st Outing to Westmount Park

I had a beautiful day today. Since I have been with Arron, I have had so many happy days. 'Salad days', I always say. Today was especially wonderful as I watched my beautiful son discover the park, and experienced his discoveries right along with him as if they were my own. He played in the sandbox for the first time and had a blast digging his hands into the sand, watching this amazing stuff running through his fingers, and pouring it in and out of a bucket. He played with some toddlers and looked like such a little baby next to them, I wished I could just capture this moment as a magical essence to be imbibed any time I want to recapture the bittersweet of seeing your son as a precious baby growing so fast into a little boy. When I see kids that are 18 months old, I think how cute they still are at that age and when I see kids that are just a couple of months younger than Gunner, I am amazed at how small they are and I can hardly believe my son was that small just a little while ago. He seems so big to me, but then again he has always seemed big. He was relatively big as a newborn and he grows so fast that whatever size he is, he seems huge compared to how he was just weeks before. But when I look at the young toddlers, as cute as they are, I then realize how tiny my little man still is and I enjoy that so much, taking in what a little baby he still is, trying to imprint these fleeting moments as memories etched forever in my mind. Once you have a child you realize how true the old platitude 'they grow up so fast' really is. 

Signing Update

All of a sudden, he is making all kinds of signs. I realize now that he has probably been doing some of them for a while, only I didn't notice because he was approximating then. Whenever I show him a picture of a dog in a book, he makes the sign for 'dog'. Today he signed 'light' while we were in Arron's kitchen. When he wants his bottle, he makes a sign that he learned inadvertently from Arron, who used to wiggle the bottle around in the baby's mouth to get him to make a 'Indian' woo-oo-oo-oo sound, which he would also do himself with his hand. Gunner picked up on this and now, when he wants his bottle, he moves his fist from side to side over his mouth. He also does a side-to-side wave at chest level to signal  that he wants to use the potty. He did that this afternoon and promptly made a poop when I then sat him on the potty.
I made him a book of pictures of all the people in his life and tonight I was showing it to him and signing 'Opa' and he signed it back to me. My father will be so thrilled to see him do that one! I think  seeing Gunner do that will win him over to signing himself with the baby.
Here is a list of the signs he is making:
'More'/'Eat': taps his hands together
'Eat': brings hand to mouth
'Bottle/Milk: fist going back and forth across mouth
'Potty': right hand waving back and forth at chest level
'Hi': waves with outstretched arm
'Dog' : right hand pats right leg
'Daddy': open right hand taps right temple
'Opa': open right hand bounces forward from right temple
'Light': right  arm held up, plam facing down, hand opens and closes
'All done': both arms up, hands open (not always clear)
He also 'babbles with his hands', making various gestures and doing different things with his fingers. It looks like he sometimes makes the sign for 'cheese'

Wow, that's a lot of signs! It's amazing that he is doing so many now, when just a week ago I was still thinking he's not picking up on it. Now, he doesn't do these signs all the time and when he does, they are approximations so you have to know what you are looking out for in order to catch them, but I do find him using them often enough to communicate, although sometimes I'm not sure if he is waving or trying to tell me he's 'all done' with something or wants to go potty. Often enough, I have to rely on context and my intuition as much as on his gestures at this point,

C'mon, Baby, gimme a sign!

I was getting discouraged. I had been signing with Gunner for three months, starting at when he was about 7 months old. At 10 months, we seemed to be making little progress. I chalked this up largely to my inability to get his attention.

Gunner is sitting in his high chair. The table is piled with our breakfast plates,  assorted babyfood containers, plastic spoons in every color of the rainbow, books to read to baby while feeding him, plus various items of junk to be sorted when I eventually find the time. Mom (i.e., Me) is spooning yogurt into his mouth, balancing the bowl on her lap while trying to catch his eye long enough to show him the sign for yogurt.
"Gunner. Gunner! Do you want some yogurt? (signs 'yogurt') He won't look at me! Look at Mama. Gunner. Yogurt. Yo-o-o-gurt! Yummy! MMMMmmm! Look Gunner, yogurt. Do you want to see the sign for yogurt?"
Arron, trying to be helpful, attempts to sign 'yogurt'.
'No, Arron, if you do it like that it means 'Spoon'. You have to go like this'
'Like this?'
"Can you bend your fingers to your palm more? '
'No.'
' Ok, do it like that. No, not like THAT.'
'Yogurt. Yogurt. Yogurt, Gunny!'
We suddenly realize that Gunner has been sitting there watching us this whole time, probably thinking we've both gone crazy.
'Oh, look, Arron! He's watching us! Gunner, look: this is the sign for- oh shit, now he won't look at me again!'

That's pretty much how the scene played out every morning. It was much the same thing when I tried to show him any sign under other circumstances as well. Then, to my great surprise, he produced the sign for 'dog' last night. He was sitting on the potty looking at a book of pictures and individual words and I was trying to show him a picture of a potty. On the opposite page was one of a dog. There I was going on about the potty and trying to get his attention as usual, when I realized that he was looking at the picture of the dog and signng 'dog' perfectly clearly and intentionally. Then, he looked up at me while he was doing this as if to say, 'Look, Mummy, a dog!' and I said 'Yes. Yes! It is a dog. That's right, sweetheart!' and gave him a big hug and felt like I had just hit a new high in our relationship and in how much I could possibly love him. Ever since that moment, I talk to him in a new way, as if he actually understands what I am saying, because I now realize he probably understands far more than I ever gave him credit for.

First Illness

I was right the other day when I thought something was wrong with Gunner. It took me a while to realize just how sick he was though. When he threw up on his was to the potty, I thought, inexperienced Mom that I am, that it was odd the he spat up because he never does this anymore. At breakfast, I thought he had gagged on a piece of toast when he started hurling half-digested bread and cottage cheese curds all over the place. I put him in his crib and he slept for an unusually long tow-hour stretch, but it wasn't until I noticed he was burning hot with fever when he woke up that it dawned on me that he was really sick.

What freaked me out was not the temperature or the throwing-up, but the total lethargy. This kid, who is usually so wound up that every diaper change turns intoa wrestling match, was lying still on his side as I had placed him on my bed, too ill to even turn himself over. Silly me, I had wondered why he was being so 'good' when I changed him and dressed him this morning and he wasn't squirming all over the place. Now I was really worried. He was lying there looking so pitiful, his mouth and eyes both half open, looking at me like a little sick kitten through his fever fog . I had never seen him so still and it scared me.

I took him to the hospital, stopping only at the pharmacy  to get a much-needed prescription of my own filled first. The hospital was great, with a well set-up, nice-looking waiting room with all kinds of interesting things for the kids to do and look at. The staff was very kind and friendly, and the system was amazingly efficient. In other words, it was absolutely nothing like going to an adult hospital where you can wait for 12 hours to hear your name on the PA system, languish on a stretcher in the hall overnight only to find your purse missing by morning when the doctor finally tells you it's (insert benign complaint here) and that you should go home and come back if the problem persists. They ran some tests to rule out a UTI, patted me on the back for bringing him in, and sent us home with a print-out on the prevention of dehydration.

Gunner threw up on and off all day and every time I gave him formula for the next three days. The whole time he was sick, he wanted nothing but breast milk which really boosted my milk supply. The evening we returned from the hospital, he was generally feeling better and had most of his energy back, along with an explosive case of diarrhea. The person at the medical helpline told me not to come in contact with it and to disinfect all contaminated surfaces with a bleach solution. This appeared to be sound advice until I tried to put it into practice with my pooping tornado who, every time I changed him, writhed around and contorted himself  until he was satisfied that he had spread invisible particles of poop all over me and every surface he could wriggle his bottom against. The stuff (or microscopic trace amounts of it, anyway) was everywhere: in the sink where I washed him, on parts of the floor of every room where he had managed to escape my grasp and scoot his half-wiped bum, on the bathroom floor where he had pooped outright, in the hall where he had projectile-squirted the stuff from the bathroom where I was changing him. At least as many places, including my sheets and my own clothes, hair and hands, on a few occasions, were tagged with vomit. And this was happening in one way or another every 30 minutes to an hour, while the rest of the time I did my best to keep him hydrated with a constant drip-feed of Pedialyte. The only way I could have kept the place disinfected would have been if I had had the folks from the CDC come in with their space suits and do the job themselves.

Naturally, I too was stricken soon enough and spent three days attending to my son as best I could in between making my own frequent dashes to the bathroom. I was exhausted and felt like crap but fortunately Arron was a big help and really came through for me. He did more than either of us realized he was capable of, including even giving the baby his rinsings in the sink. So we made it through. I think that for every test, trial and triumph of motherhood, Moms should get a little sew-on patches as tokens to stick on our jackets the way Girl Guides do. For example, there should be one of a little baby bum with poop squirting our of it to honor the Mothers who have made it through their child's first bout of the stomach flu. Hey, everyone likes a little appreciation now and then.

According to the experts: toddlers are demonic munchkins

I got the book 'What to Expect: The Toddler Years' and it seems like all toddlers do it give you a hard time! They refuse to go on the potty, refuse to get dressed, refuse to eat. They hit other children, steal when you take them shopping, say rude things, throw stuf, have tantrums, etc, etc. Ah, the little dears! Precious darlings.

I can't believe my angelic baby will soon be like that. How can this be? Maybe it won't happen to us. Positive thinking, now. Recite the mantra, 'My child will never become an out-of-control toddler'. Maybe if I read lots of books on toddlers and on brain development, I can outwit him, resorting to all kinds of clever tricks straight from the experts in order to get him to behave. Maybe if he learns to sign, he won't thrown fits out of frustrating. Maybe if he gets used to the potty now, he will accepts it as a given and won't have to be bribed and coerced to use it later. Wishful thinking? Probably. I suppose I will find out. Let's just hope for the best.

So far, he has been nothing but an angel. I couldn't have wished for a better, sweeter, more easygoing baby.