This was written Septembe 24, 2001
Our cable modem was installed on Friday; we now have constant fast internet access and can use the phone while on-line. David is frustrated with me that I am not more ecstatic and is looking forward to Scott getting home from San Francisco next week so that he can have someone to celebrate with.
Our Quaker baby shower was Saturday. We had a great time. Enough people came that the host's living room was filled, but few enough that we didn't feel overwhelmed. Eric was charming and impressed everyone with his head control and dazzling smile.
He has been sleeping all night for so long that I forget it's unusual. At the shower, I started to tell a story that began, "Back when Eric was still having night-time feedings," and was interrupted by everyone in the room saying in unison, "You mean he doesn't now?"
We have begun to experiment with Eric sleeping in his crib a little bit. He gets restless in his sleep toward morning, which is fine except that he insists on being cuddled right up to me so all his kicks get me right in the stomach or kidneys, depending on whether I am facing him or not. My extensive reading tells me that this is perfectly normal for a four-month-old, but doesn't mention how long it lasts. If it's just a few weeks, I can tough it out--but if this is the beginning of a restlessness that never ends, he may need to spend some time in his crib. It also occurred to me that if I got a cold, for instance, and wanted to take a night-time cold medicine so I could sleep, I wouldn't want to sleep with him because I wouldn't feel confident I'd wake up if necessary.
The other morning, it came to the test: teaching, and being with my toxic students, has caused my allergies to flare up, and around 5 a.m. I was itching from head to toe and wanted to take an antihistamine. I don't have any of the non-drowsy antihistamine I used to take before I got pregnant, so I wanted to take a Benadryl, and was worried it would make me too drowsy to sleep with Eric safely. So David and I got up, put sheets on the crib mattress for the first time, and popped Eric in there. He moved around a little and then dropped off to sleep, and David says that in the morning he woke up and played quietly in his crib until David got up and took him downstairs at 8:30. The next night, I put Eric in his crib while I went to brush my teeth, and when I came back, he had gone to sleep. So it seems like he's not going to give us too much trouble if we want him to sleep in there sometimes.
Yesterday Eric and I went to Toys R Us to get more big bottles. His meals are almost always 7 ounces now, and he eats as few as four times a day (though usually five). He recently dropped his mid-morning meal and moved his lunch up an hour or ninety minutes, so most days his meal schedule is breakfast between 6:30 and 7:30, lunch between 11:30 and noon, afterschool snack at 3, dinner at 6, bedtime snack between 8:30 and 10.
At Toys R Us Eric was riding in his sling, facing out, as he likes to do. He also had one of my index fingers in each hand, as he also likes to do (when Stevie manages to get one of my wrists in each foot, and refuses to move completely to either arm, we call that "cockatoo handcuffs." Eric does his own version). He pulled my left index finger into his mouth and chewed vigorously on it for several aisles. He hasn't done that before; he's sucked but never before chewed. Tooth coming in, maybe?
[UPDATE: Had the wrong date on this, and hence had to change the title, too. In case you saw it before and were puzzled.]
Posted by Su Penn at December 2, 2003 04:05 PM | TrackBack