Yesterday was one of those days when Eric is just extra-clingy. None of his usual fun activities, like playing in his exersaucer or in his bin, kept him happy for long, and he did not want to sleep. I managed to get him down for two naps of less than 20 minutes each. It's not that he fusses a lot, or can't be soothed on days like that: he just wants to be on me and with me. I can't even tell you what I did with my time; the day is a blur of feeding the baby, playing with the baby, lying inert on the couch with the baby. By the time David got home at 6:30 I was desperate for someone else to take responsibility for Eric for just a little while. Except that by then, he had eaten a 6:00 bottle and was lying happily in his bin practicing his phonemes. I swear he does that on purpose so that David and Scott will think I'm a big slacker: "My god, I'm glad to see you two," I say, standing in the kitchen wearing dirty sweatpants and the T-shirt I slept in the night before. "Eric has been driving me crazy." They turn and look at Eric, cooing sweetly and seemingly entranced by the interweave of his fingers, and they say, "Sure he has, Su. Anything good happen on your soaps? How were the bon-bons? And, by the way, where's our dinner?"
Today is less blurry only because we had a bunch of stuff to do in the morning: I taught, then we all went to the chiropractor, then Eric and I went to the dentist where I had my teeth cleaned. By the time we got to the dentist a little after 11, Eric was already getting drowsy, but it's after 3:00 now and he has yet to take his nap, except for a short snooze in the car on the way home. He's playing happily in his exersaucer now, but based on the droopy-blink action of his eyelids, he needs a nap. Or maybe I do; I could be projecting.
At the dentist, besides being sleepy, Eric felt that he had spent too much time confined to his car seat, and he started getting fussy while I was having my tartar scraped. The receptionist came and got him, and when I came to the counter to pay my bill, all the office staff had been playing with him. I was thinking, "God, he fussed all that time so they had to come get him, and now they've had to neglect their work to amuse him. Why can't he have been a good baby like he usually is?" And the receptionist said, "Is he always this good? You do know how lucky you are, don't you?" I said, "Um, I thought I did."
The hygienist put him in the hallway in his carrier while I was getting my x-rays. "Let's hope he doesn't get too lonely out there," she said. "Oh, he'll probably be fine," I said. "It'll only be for a couple of minutes." And then we both laughed as from the hallway we heard someone saying in baby-voice, "Did they put you in the hall, sweetums? Is mommy having her x-rays? Yes! What pretty eyes!" Lonely, indeed.
He slept through the night last night, until I got him up at 7 to change his diaper and give him a bottle before I left for class. It was a relief. When he first re-introduced the 3 a.m. feeding, I wasn't sorry. Feeding a baby in the night is so sweet that I enjoyed re-visiting the experience. But now I am ready to re-visit the experience of sleeping straight through until morning, and I am pleased that he seems to be, as well.
The staff at the dentist's is unanimous in predicting that Eric will be an early walker. We'll see. [Note from the future: Unless you call sixteen months "early," the dental staff was dead wrong.] I was just impressed awhile ago as he locomoted all over the dining room floor using a combination of rolling and inch-worming. He doesn't pick a destination or anything like that, but his aimless wandering took him from lying on his stomach licking the toe of my shoe to grabbing the leg of his swing to lying in the middle of the floor doing butt-ups.
Posted by Su Penn at December 18, 2003 03:32 PM | TrackBack