Happy belated Canada Day to y'all. Although you must know that if I had my wish I'd be on a cold hill in Canso right now, listening to some fabulous performer from God Knows Where and emphatically not sitting in clean dry clothes. In front of my computer. On a Friday night. Listening for my baby to wake up.

Sigh.

I started to think about baby-proofing the house today. Because Good Lord! Does this look like a safe space for an infant?

There're power cords everywhere, lots of unsecured bookshelves with lethally heavy votive candles perched on the very top shelf, computer cables hanging down from our desks like inviting garlands, stereo & dvd equipment at floor level, blind cords, open garbage cans, computer generated arrows... I'm hyperventilating just thinking about it. Our bedroom doesn't even have a smoke detector, for heaven's sake. I think I need to call the tenant rights people on my landlords.

I suppose I have a choice. I could set up our borrowed playpen and plunk the Sprout in baby jail whenever I'm too busy or distracted or tired to keep a good eye on his squirmy progress. Or I could do the million things I need to do to ensure that Blake lives long enough to charm his fellow toddlers. I think that, like co-sleeping & pacifier use, this is going to be one of those times when I order up a little from both columns.

Our sleeping is going better, by the way. I didn't used to define "better" as "wakes up 9 times but goes back to sleep every time," but motherhood, while far from painless, has brought on many changes. Last night we did okay until 3 a.m., when Blake woke up every 15 minutes for an hour and the Boy snapped. It wouldn't have come to a boiling point if the two adults hadn't stayed up until 1 a.m., but that's an entirely different entry, and it goes in my paper journal, thank you very much.

I decided to provide this brief & essentially undramatic update because I was so public & angsty about Blake's sleeping (and the lack thereof). Those of you playing along at home can mark this as another day on the gentle sleep-conditioning highway; I have yet to take the turn-off into Cryitout. I'll be sure to post further details as the situation develops.

the world's sweetest picture.
we all. need. our. rest.

(A cookie to the person who can identify the second caption.)

When you're pregnant, you take things really seriously. Not just the parts about not smoking crack-cocaine, but the other, more subtle details of your impending motherhood. I was all set to start a solid food diary for Blakers, believing sincerely that I should keep track of his likes & dislikes, the amounts eaten, and any possible allergies. I even wrote down his first taste of cereal. It says, "rice cereal. One tablespoon." That's the only entry. Sad, isn't it?

Since then, it's been kind of wild around here. There've been 2 new cereals, all unrecorded. Quantities? Forget about it. There was the day I succumbed to temptation & fed him a bit of yoghurt off my breakfast spoon. There was the oatmeal incident. And there are days like today, days when I give him some fruit to "see what will happen." The fruit in question was a little chunk of ripe watermelon, left over from yesterday's pool party. I thought that everything was going well until I noticed that he was wearing his "concerned, kinda choking face." (This is the face he makes when he accidentally gulps too much water from the cup and has to splutter out the excess). I picked him up from the highchair, wondering if I would remember enough CPR to save his life. Fortunately, a finger sweep pulled out the offending chunk of watermelon. It didn't dissolve at all, it just lodged between his tongue & his palate where he stores his food until he can swallow it. And here I though that I was homefree because it was seedless.

Good thing he's not allergy-prone. I'm not the person you want to rely on in an anaphylactic emergency.

Yesterday we hosted a fairly good pool party for my grandmother's birthday. I was expecting it to be a horribly draining experience, what with having to tell each individual when I'd be returning to work and if Blake's sleeping through the night. Then there's the fact that my family is more or less evil, and it's tiring to battle evil when you're in the afternoon sun & surrounded by attractive slices of watermelon. But it was fine. I took some of the edge off by sequestering the baby in our bedroom for 2 ½ hours so that he could get a decent nap; this killed the beginning of the afternoon nicely and I was able to co-ordinate our happy return with the appearance of barebequed meat. My parents were snippy with this plan as it reduced their ability to show off their grandson, but they're not the ones getting up in the night so they can get stuffed. I had a baby, not a performing monkey. And they got a lot of mileage out of Blake's first swim in the pool. I have to admit, every time I think that muffin can't get any cuter, he goes and gets cuter. It's the way he kicks and wiggles and thrashes in the water like a little merboy. He's more frog than baby, I swear it.

He was so cute in fact, that we got invitations to come and visit "anytime." I guess they didn't know that I take all such polite offers literally. I'm that annoying person who calls to find out when we're going to get together because the last time I saw you, you said we should see each other more often and I took you at your word. I really have this social ineptness thing working for me.

After everyone went home, I realized that this was the first time in a year that I've actually enjoyed being with my family. It's an interesting feeling, this happiness. I may pursue it if time allows.

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 7/02/2004 08:31:00 p.m.