I totally forgot that babies continue to grow once you get past 12 months. For some reason I had gotten it into my head that after his first birthday Baby Evan would just continue to be one forever. Which, actually, wouldn’t be so bad. It’s a pretty good age. If you don’t count the teething, which could really be said about almost any baby age. Oh teething.

Chillin' at Stroller Strides, still our favorite way to start the morning. Despite the obvious AWESOMENESS of that hat he refuses to keep it on more than 30 seconds.

On the super cool milestone front, yesterday E taught Baby Evan to climb up AND slide down his Little Tikes plastic slide by himself. There was only one falling-on-his-head incident, which is normal for an average day around here. Baby Evan sometimes falls on his head just from looking at the dog wrong. I’m really impressed he has the gross motor skills and the kind of control over his limbs it takes to climb a ladder, swing his legs around under him and push down a slide, especially since until recently the best he could do was kick the slide end and whine when I told him not to climb up that way. Although I think this means trips to the playground can no longer be called “leisurely” – the slide there is like 14 FEET TALL. Head-falling from that height is not so fun.

This picture makes my teeth hurt. Why my child is the only person on the planet who things gnawing on tin foil is fun is beyond me.

As far as the food thing goes, well, I almost don’t want to talk about it since things have improved so so so much it’s not worth jinxing. I’m willing to risk the wrath of the mommy-gods with almost ANYTHING ELSE (including sleep, as in, we night-weaned Baby Evan again this week and it’s going super well! I’m looking forward to a full 9 straight hours of sleep in my very very near future!) but when my kid actually starts opening his mouth and letting me feed him stuff off a fork I cannot screw that up. I will tell you he drank cow’s milk AND lemonade out of a glass today – with our help – so it’s just about time to start pushing the sippy cup as a means of hydration rather than just pouring water on the floor. My nipples are practically weeping with joy.

Just call me Baby E for Enigma. Or not. Whatevs. Does this look like the face of someone who cares?

Dude, we’re on a whole new chart over at BabyCenter!

Mastered Skills (most kids can do)
• Uses two words skillfully (e.g., “hi” and “bye”) – I dunno. He say mama and dada with some purpose. He said “nigh-nigh” at bedtime last week. He’s said “hai” for a while but not consistently. He says things that sound like kitty and dog and no but not on command. I’m not exactly concerned about his language skills but he’s not exactly advanced.
• Bends over and picks up an object – Let’s just assume he can do every physical milestone between now and 18 months. Because physical development is not our problem.

Emerging Skills (half of kids can do)
• Enjoys gazing at his reflection – He’s so vain, he probably thinks this blog is about him. Oh wait. Yes.
• Holds out arm or leg to help you dress him – Does kick his legs and arms and flail to prevent diaper changes count? Then yes. But he does know socks go on your feet and will try to put his socks on if I let him.

Advanced Skills (a few kids can do)
• Combines words and gestures to make needs known – He still knows the sign for milk and dog a kitty and stop but doesn’t do them himself. I would say he combines yelling with reaching but not words and gestures.
• Rolls a ball back and forth – He can hit a ball with a stick and throw a ball in a forward direction about 75% of the time. The rest of his tries end up as some sort of slapstick routine where he drops it behind his head and gets totally confused when he can’t find it. I’ll try rolling back and forth this week.

Happy Monthday Little Monster!

Today you get the long version.

E and I have always planned on more than one kid, although we’ve never actually decided how many. I’m one of three, so I think three sounds good. He’s one of four, and insists middle children always turn out weird so we have to have an even number. My original “plan” to “plan” on kids 15 or 16 months apart flew right out of my crazy-ass brain the second I went into labor with Baby Evan but the further I got from the actual birthing event the sooner I thought maybe I’d like to do it again. So when I couldn’t remember to take my mini-pill I didn’t sweat it. Besides, I’ve only had one period and one almost-period since June 2008 thanks to breastfeeding full time – nature’s child spacing, if you want to be a hippie about it. But just like EVERYONE TOLD ME, nursing is not a foolproof method of preventing pregnancy and so here I am. Although if I’m being totally honest, I would say we were trying to get pregnant harder than we were trying not to. Believe it or not, nosey cow at the blood-draw lab, I DO know where babies come from and how to keep it from happening. And this one happened on purpose.

I decided I was pregnant about two weeks ago, right around my own birthday. I didn’t base my suspicions on any medical facts or actual symptoms – just my own intuition. I mean, I don’t want to sound like a crazy person, but I could just sense that I wasn’t alone in my body anymore. Although when I say it like that it sounds INCREDIBLY CREEPY. I had a few moments of heartburn, a little light headedness and a tiny bit of nausea but not any more than I’ve had every other time I’ve imagined I was pregnant. I suppose my biggest clue was my milk supply seems to have decreased a little – not enough to starve my child to death but I’m definitely not going to be wet nursing any stray babies people leave on my doorstep. I think right now my biggest fear is that this pregnancy is going to ruin my nursing relationship with Baby Evan – either because my milk dries up or because I can’t handle sharing my body with TWO babies – and that makes me want to cry. We worked so hard to make nursing work, it’s not fair to take away his favorite thing in the world. At least I still have some time to figure all that out.

Since I don’t know when I was ovulating, I really don’t know how far along I am. My best guess is I conceived at the end of March, although it could be as early as February. I had the same problems getting a test to register my knocked-upped-ness as I did when I was first pregnant with Baby Evan, so I think convincing myself I’m probably already 5 or 6 weeks along is just going to end up being disappointing when I go in for my 10 week ultrasound and I’m only at 5 weeks. Unfortunately, instead of wanting to see me SOONER to determine my stage of pregnancy my OB scheduled my first visit for JUNE 2ND. JUUUUUUNE SEEEEECOOOOOND. That’s a ridiculous amount of time to wait to find out a due date. How am I supposed to start counting down the seconds if I have no idea how many seconds to count?

So there you go. Bebehblog is now going to be Bebehsblog (not technically, don’t change you bookmarks or anything drastic) and I’m going to be a mother of 2. Oh crap.

p.s. Any suggestions for what to call Baby #2 while we wait to find out what he/she is? I never managed to come up with something cute for Baby Evan,

Having spent a great deal of my last few years wasting time on the internet, I’ve developed quite a few online friendships. At least they’re friendships in my head. Sometimes the other person doesn’t exactly KNOW we’re friends (HI HEATHER CALL ME) but I like to think if we ever did meet for coffee we’d chat and laugh like we’ve known each other for years and then braid each others hair. Ok, maybe no hair braiding.

Two of my internet worlds collided this week when one of my favorite people on the internet SarahMC wrote about the Radical Parenting special on Discovery Health that featured The Feminist Breeder, one of my other favorite people on the internet. In case you didn’t see the show, Sarah’s recap covers it pretty well, or you can check out the posts TFB did while the crew was filming for a behind the scenes look at her segment. I was excited to join in the conversation about the show in the Harpyness comments section, since talking about parenting is kind of my thing these days.

The show covered three different “radical” types of parenting: un-schooling, attachment parenting, and gender neutral parenting. Personally, I think the most radical of the three were the un-schoolers, whose 7 year old son and 5 year old daughter didn’t participate in any type of formal education. Instead, they learned through experiences – trips to museums, farms, zoos, etc – and studied whatever they were most interested in. They also claimed their family was a true democracy where everyone had an equal say and the kids got to make all their own decisions. I think I would have been a little more skeptical of those parents if they hadn’t come across as really sort of…normal. The parents both had advanced degrees, the mom seemed to really enjoy spending all her time with the kids, and they were really realistic about how un-schooling would affect their kids in the future. I think we could be friends. One of the things the parents mentioned a couple of times was their son had learned reading and math through his “video games” (I’m imagining V-Tech or something similar) which I was surprised about – I pictured un-schoolers are being totally TV free. I guess when you’re with your school-age kids ALL DAY EVERY DAY you’d almost have to use an electronic babysitter every once in a while.

The third family (I’ll get back to the AP people in a minute) showed The Feminist Breeder and her Hyphenated Husband (he changed his last name to their combined name when they got married) practicing “gender neutral” parenting…but if that was “radical” then I guess I am too, just because my kid had a doll in his toy box. Shocking. Truthfully, I can see how some parents (mostly fathers, I imagine) could freak out if their sons wanted to try on Mommy’s shoes or asked for a dollhouse but none of the parents I know would care. I think if the show had focused more on how the parents DEMONSTRATE gender equality – Dad doing housework, Mom using power tools, sharing childcare duties equally – they would have done gender neutral parenting a greater service.

Most of the discussion on Sarah’s post about those two families was pretty in line with what I just said – maybe there was a little disagreement regarding un-schooling – but since attachment parenting is my (accidental) area of expertise I was most interested in talking about that family. They were pretty by the book AP  and practiced co-sleeping, babywearing, extended breastfeeding, elimination communication, and even baby-led weaning, with a touch of TV shock value crazy thrown in when they planted a placenta under a tree. As someone who didn’t set out to practice AP, I remember thinking all those things were weird, hippyish and uber-crunchy. Then I had a baby, discovered slings were convenient, co-sleeping was the easiest way to handle night feedings and made it through those first few awful months of breastfeeding…and became an accidental attachment parent. Which is why it was so strange for me to find myself  talking about it like I was some sort of expert and even defending AP online. Although I think the weirdest part was being involved in a conversation with someone who was anti-attachment parenting. My world, both online and real-life, is full of people who support all things AP (much more than I do) so I’ve never really had anyone criticize my parenting decisions before and it was a strange experience. It was more like a discussion than an argument and I felt really good about how I described and explained attachment parenting (with a little help from Sarah’s link to my babywearing post) and even got a super awesome email from another commenter who wanted to thank me for supporting accidental AP parents. In the end, both my online conversation and the Radical Parenting special made me feel more confident that the decisions we’ve made for my family are the right ones for us.

(p.s. Over on Harpyness I use “blondegrlz” as my screen name, since I know them from my old baby-free life on Jezebel. In case you’re confused.)

I feel like this month’s birthday is going to be mostly overlooked because next month’s is SO HUGE. In just two weeks, when people ask “How old is he?” I’m going to have to start saying “almost a year old.” When you think about a year’s worth of anything it seems like a really long time. No chocolate for a year, no internet for a year, no drinking for a year, no driving for a year, no shopping for a year all sound really really hard, but when you’re actually living that year day by day it passes pretty fast. Not getting a full night’s sleep for a year sounds TERRIBLE, but I’ve almost done it. And I’ll probably do it again. Look at me already writing the 12 month post when this is the 11 month milestone. I’m going to skip right to the BabyCenter chart to save you from any more blubbering about my baby growing up sooooo faaaaaaast.

11 Month Milestones from BabyCenter

Mastered Skills (most kids can do)
• Says “mama” and “dada” to the correct parent – Uh, no. He says “mama” a LOT more than he used to but he doesn’t say “dada” very often. He does say “ba! ba! ba ba ba ba!!!” all day long.
• Plays patty-cake and peek-a-boo – He loves peek-a-boo and will play behind anything: my computer screen, the dog, the chair, a blanket, but he’s not very good with clapping yet so patty-cake is sort of pathetic.
• Stands alone for a couple of seconds – WALKS
• Cruises – WALKS

Emerging skills (half of kids can do)
• Understands “no” and simple instructions – Understands “no”, yes. LISTENS to “no”, not even a little. But he does follow simple instructions, like “bring that toy over here.” When he feels like it.
• Puts objects into a container – Puts them in, takes them out, puts them in. As long as the container is pretty big. This morning he threw his shoe in the trash and put the trash in his toy box.

Advanced skills (a few kids can do)
• Says one word besides “mama” and “dada” – See “babababa”. But he can sign “milk” and I think I saw him sign “more” and “dog”.
• Stoops from standing position – Definitely yes, he can squat without holding on to anything and stand up again. He likes doing it when he’s pooping.

So my kid really excels when it comes to physical development but is a little behind with the talking, which is the kind of thing a more high-strung mom might freak out about. If I start thinking about it too much even I get a little worried, but it’s more of a general annoyance that he doesn’t love me enough to call me Mama than a genuine concern he might be developmentally delayed in some way.

Baby Evan also has seven whole teeth with at least three more lurking just under his gums and yesterday he ate a couple of Beechnut animal crackers and part of a carrot stick. I feel like he’s right on the edge of discovering food is meant to be swallowed and one day he’ll just wake up and demand a cheeseburger and fries something really healthy and nutritious. I’m still loving baby-led weaning and highly recommend it especially if you’re as lazy as I am.

The past 11 months have been more fun, more work, more stressful and more enjoyable than any of my pre-baby life. I can’t wait to see what comes next. I apologize if the following photos hurt your uterus.

Baby Evan is almost 11 months old and still does not eat anything. I’m getting to the point where – although what my obviously happy, healthy kid eats is NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS – people have started giving me funny looks when I turn down children’s menus and offers to “just let him try a little bit.” (Actual conversation with E’s boss at Christmas party – Boss: Oh, we didn’t plan any food for the baby. E: That’s ok, we brought food. Boss: What, like a bottle or something? E: …Or something.) It’s hard to explain to strangers that although Baby Evan will literally run across a room to grab the food from your hand, it’s gonna come right back out as soon as it hits his tongue.  All of my pockets are full of mushed up pieces of Cheerio the baby spit out and I had to pick up because I am not a jerk who leaves drooly bits of cereal all over the play area/pediatrician’s office/Target/your shirt. I’m also afraid people are starting to suspect I’m doing this on purpose, like some sort of extended breastfeeding Nazi who won’t let her kid eat any solid foods because I think BREAST IS SO MUCH THE BEST that everything else is unnecessary. “Anything?” people ask when I tell them he doesn’t eat, “Really? Have you tried Cheerios? My kid loves Cheerios. How about apple slices/Popsicles/mac and cheese/chicken nuggets/a whole turkey leg?” No, I say, not anything. But thanks.

I did talk to a nutritionist (also known as my friend Megan’s mom) about Baby Evan’s strange dietary habits and she assured me we were still well within the realm of normal child behavior.  She had plenty of stories of kids – her own included – who didn’t eat anything until 14, 15, 16 months. After looking over the list of foods that have gone over pretty well versus the list of total failures, we decided it was a texture things as well as an independence thing. Mushy food on a spoon is AWFUL. Crunchy things or anything he could potentially choke on are OK. Things he can chew with his many sharp little teeth are best. My plan of action is to just keep offering food – some food, any food, all food – until we find something that he’ll swallow, and work on “balanced and nutritionally sound” later.

Foods he hates even more than I hate Katy Perry
Oatmeal
Rice cereal
Baby food
Applesauce
Things eaten with a spoon
Pureed anything

Foods he almost ate once
Bacon
Avocado
Mango
Celery sticks
Carrot sticks
Banana nut Cheerios
Peas from some sort of Gerber baby stew meal
Yogurt
Grapes
Salmon
Hummus
Soybeans in their pods
Pasta

Foods almost worth feeding
Puffs
Teething biscuits
French fries
Conversation hearts Valentine candy

Foods he eats enough of to provide nutrition
None

Thanks God I got the hang of this breastfeeding thing. Hey at least it’s cheap, easy and always available.