Yesterday I took Blake to what may be our last Baby Club meeting. Now that the lovely Tanya has taken over, I'm actually enjoying myself again. Besides, Opera Sarah decided to come out & meet me there before a high-energy afternoon of shopping, so I had no choice but to come out & enjoy myself. No. Choice.

Things that contributed to my good mood at Baby Club:

1. I was a half-hour late, but I'm not the leader so it didn't matter one whit.
2. I remembered all of the material I promised to send along to Tanya. Go me!
3. One of the moms from last month emailed all her new mom friends and formed a posse. There were a half-dozen moms there when I arrived and PEOPLE KEPT COMING IN THE DOOR. I've been there on days when no one has shown up. This was awesome.
4. Blake tooled around like a machine, yet all the other moms enjoyed his presence. There were no annoyed looks or dives to shield a precious child from my monster. They even thought his gymnastic nursing display was cute! Woo hoo!
5. I weighed Blake in the buff, and in one month he has gained almost a pound. My boy is 20 pounds, 3 ounces!! Finally, FINALLY I can switch to the forward-facing carseat! I can stop hauling the huge & bulky infant seat in & out of buildings! Blake may even enjoy watching the road! The only downsides are a cold seat until roughly May (O Canada!) and being unable to carry the whole kit n' caboodle into the house when he falls asleep en route.
6. Whilst stripping Blake for the aforementioned weighing, I witnessed the most disgusting diaper I have ever peeled off my glorious child's heinie. My father had let Blake eat a lot of toppings from the pizza we made the night before and just about every one of them survived the journey intact. I think I've temporarily lost my appetite for olives. And yet even that was funny.

After our meeting wound up, Tanya & I accompanied Opera Sarah to her house for lunch. It was one of those typically gorgeous OS meals: home-made French onion soup with bread & melted cheese, French stick, fresh salad & lemon water. Dessert was a scoop of Hagen Daaz, chocolate pate and two chocolate biscuits, drizzled with an apricot something.

My enjoyment of the meal was all the more poignant as Blake conspired to keep me from eating with every trick in his arsenal (except straight-out bad behaviour – he was a sunny muffin at all times.) Between the two of us, we managed to discover just about every major baby hazard in the house. Leo & OS were stunned by the amount of things an active baby could get into (tack board, kitty litter, pine cones, computer equipment, original art work, make up, garbage & water jug, to name the highlights). He refused to eat the baby food I'd fetched along, although he was willing to tip the cup o' mush onto the rug. He ate an enormous amount of French stick, jamming the soft white bread into his mouth in great choking wads.

Why not keep him safe, you ask. Hear me well: there was nowhere safe for him. When on the couch, he scuttled toward 4-month-old Bradon and tried to make friends in his clumsy way. When on the floor, he moved around the coffee table in a ceaseless loop, threatening all of the hot food. When he wasn't threatening the food, he was making a break for the kitty litter. At one point he decided to make a loud noise with the large bowl of nuts on the table, so he stared banging his hands into the walnuts, spraying them to every corner and crevasse of the room. (I sorta enjoyed this performance, truth be told, and started singing a made-up song about nuts to accompany his destruction.) Near the end, I fed him some ice cream to get a second's peace – we're talking complete desperation here, people. I was at my wit's end.

And then the little monster fell asleep in the car on the way to Once Upon A Child. OS & I were able to do all our garment shopping in complete peace. Some fabulous bargains later, I got back into the car to fight my way out of town and back home. A great day, but an extremely tiring one. Hence the lack of entry.

Today was less energetic but still fun. In the morning I battled extreme lethargy (is that an oxymoron? or a sport?) to take Blake to the family swim time at our gym. He had a great time splashing about the warm water; he also loves seeing older kids and never fails to shoot them a dazzling and flirtatious grin. When we'd swum out, I gathered his gunna from the lockers and prepared to go through the changing stall ordeal (We're too wet! Blake's too active! I'm too nearsighted! There are not enough hands! Only the patience of a saint and the singing talent of a Disney heroine will see us through!)

While we were still at the lockers, Blake pointed to the combination locks. "Ic! Ic!"

"No honey," I explained patiently, "Not ic. Lock. Lock. L-" Then it hit me: for reasons best known to himself, Nic wears a combination lock on his belt. And Blake noticed.

Genius!

Best moment today: Blake woke up from his afternoon nap and clearly wanted to sleep some more. I'd been fooling around on the net, so I wasn't doing anything important. We lay down together on the bed, our breathing synched, and I thought this is what I'm miss when I'm at Hogsboro High. A little voice was telling me to get up, do chores, cook food, be productive but I managed to ignore it. The nap that we shared was sheer bliss. Sigh.

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 1/14/2005 09:17:00 p.m.