two

Mr Funny Pants turned TWO last Saturday! Two whole years of having this beautiful boy in my life, two years since becoming a mamma! It's been amazing, awesome, wonderful, crazy, weird (in a good way, mostly!), wild; it's a continuous learning curve that's blowing my socks off!

I love it! I LOVE my baby boy, who is most definitely not a baby boy anymore, but will forever be my baby boy :)

Thank you so much for being you & being here, Squirt! You've made my world a much better, more fun, happier, softer & kinder place to dwell in :)

squirt

Baby Boy is no longer a baby, really. I might not want him to grow so fast, but he does. Henceforth (yes, really!) he will be known as Squirt :-)

vulnerable

I've got to get this off my chest - quite literally. Damn the consequences, I guess. I haven't been sure about showing vulnerability since I started this blog. I'm still not sure. But if I don't do something, I'll scream!

The breastfeeding is over. Baby Boy is done. I'm not. But there are moments in a mother's life - I'm discovering this, like every parent must - when you're not in charge. As simple as that.

I knew this moment was coming. I knew it was coming soon. I had my own deadline of January 6th - @ 14 months, rather randomly picked. I knew that this wasn't going to last forever. I knew it wouldn't last as long as I wanted it to, either. I knew that from the beginning, which was far from smooth, and through all the hiccups and obstacles along the way.

The moment came yesterday. Actually, it was the culmination of several moments. Yesterday was just the 'grab that darned ostrich by the neck and jank its blissfully unaware head out of the sand already'-moment. So I tore the plaster off. Followed by such a bad migraine that I had to call Man to come home from work so I could go to bed.

Baby Boy was 13 months & 2 days when it happened. A grand score after a bad start. But it might take a while for me to see it that way. Today, it feels like the umbilical cord is truly severed at last. And unlike the first time, it hurts like hell!

juxtaposition

In this house - like I said before - you can eat off the floor.
Which means you can't really 'eat off the floor' as the saying goes.
Which is a bit of a contradiction, seeing that Baby Boy heartily eats off the floor on a daily basis...

sheer brilliance

Just now, Baby Boy said "hé dikke!" ('hey, fatso').
Either that, or he said "Heidegger".
I'm going with 'Heidegger'. I'm calling it early-onset genius.

brave

Finger painting with Baby Boy. Or should I say 'body painting' ;-)
'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'. The title just popped into my head. Projection, projection... ;-)
I was called 'brave' on beforehand. And yes, it was. I was ;-)
Two baths later, I think the yellow paint came out of his hair...
:-D

aftermath

Baby Boy was here!

selfservice

Pappa is working late (not home till 11pm!). Mamma has a long day too, consequently. And Baby Boy is his usual self, which means active & baby-babbling away :-) Which is fun :-)
But when mamma needs to express some milk and pappa isn't there to pick up the slack, give the baby a bottle, mamma thinks - mamma knows - Baby Boy can hold the bottle himself for a few minutes.

Baby Boy is lying on the floor, half-heartedly holding the bottle, crying his eyes out. You're the mommy, I'm the baby, ain't no selfservice happening here!
Aw shucks!

tv

Man was not too impressed just now. Baby Boy said "Pappa!" to a telivised Gordon Brown...

Edit: I'm sure there are implications for me, here, too. But I'm not willing to explore them. It's too scary.

train

Calling me 'mamma' is still in its infant shoes, as is Baby Boy. I know I blogged he picked up the pace, but that was then - way back then...
Since then, BB has started calling anything humanoid 'pappa'. At times questioningly, mostly quite convincedly.

Last week, I decided to visit my parents. Just on a spur. Which really was (and still is!) something to be impressed by. It meant taking Baby Boy in his sling and a huge backpack full of his stuff onto a train, changing trains in Amsterdam, and onward. 2 hours door-to-door, approximately. It seemed like a huge mountain to climb on beforehand, but while I was absolutely wrecked when I got off the train to meet my parents, it hadn't been as much of a challenge as I'd envisioned.

Sweetened by pieces of bread and a bottle of diluted applejuice, Baby Boy had been a dream! He looked alternately out of the window and at the people in or entering the carriage, calling everyone, invariably, "pappa!".

priorities

Baby Boy knows what's important in life.

"I'm in my favourite recliner (pappa), got the remote, got my booze, all's well with the world!"

sick

We all have serious colds over here.
It started with Baby Boy, and that left me wondering what he caught when I didn't...
I shouldn't have. And anyway, with the type of hugs & kisses BB lavishes on me @ times, there was no way I wasn't going to catch it, too ;-)

A day or three ago, it was only Baby Boy who was leaking from all orifices. And he looked droopy. And we felt really sorry for him. Poor little mite! He was wearing a t-shirt which said 'STOER', which means 'cool'. But he wasn't cool - at least not where 'cool' isn't a superlative for 'cold'... So I went out and bought a baby nose spray. Which didn't really help him much.

Yesterday, I started feeling sick. And sorry for myself, too... Baby Boy is feeling slightly better, which is a good thing, because I have found out I'm no Mamma of the Year when feeling off-ish... Somehow, spending large chunks of time on the floor is the first pass-time to go off the schedule when I'm leaking and feeling like I'm fraying at the edges.

This morning I decided to use Baby Boy's nose spray for myself. I hadn't been feeling well enough to go out and buy my own (yes, I know, you're bringing out your violin...), and seeing that it wasn't doing much for him anyway, I decided to live dangerously & disregard the warning on the packaging leaflet ('Never use someone else's nose spray'. At 4 euros a spray, I would say that, too, if I was the manufacturer).
It was on the chest of drawers in a darker corner of the living room. Next to the synthetic oxytocin I had been using for breastfeeding. I have used a score of different aids to keep breastfeeding, but that is a long, and different story. I remember thinking earlier, to make sure I pick up the right spray. Which, of course, I didn't at 05.30 in the morning, feeling clogged and sorry for myself. Serves me right. I took three hefty squirts. Then looked down at the brown vial of oxytocin in my hand. And was left clogged. With serious let-down reflexes in both breasts...
Oxytocin is not a cold medicine.

mamma, pappa

As if he read that last post, the next day Baby Boy picked up the pace on calling me 'mamma' :-D And admittedly, it's pretty cool to be called 'mamma' :-D

Also new this week, every time BB hears a noise outside (pretty much every five minutes, on average, as there is still a lot of construction going on a couple of blocks away), he looks at me expectantly and asks "pappa?". Have to disappoint him, most of the time - "no, pappa is at work...". Adding that when he hears hammering and drilling, it most likely isn't his dad. Who has a lot of talents. But home improvement, or singing, are not two of them ;-)

words

On Wednesday the 12th of August, Baby Boy said his first word!
Well, he's been saying 'pappa', 'pappuh', 'pap' & pretty much any other form of the word's repetitive syllables. And he means his dad when saying it, too! He's been doing the same with 'mamma', but that doesn't necessarily mean 'me, the mamma wrapping the girl within', at all times. Ah, never mind - that day will come too :-) I am not upset about this. Much. No, but seriously, I'm not :-) As someone pointed out the other day, he sees me every day, the whole day long, pretty much, so he doesn't really need to speculate about me by 'name' ;-)
I was dying to find out what word, out of the millions available to us all, Baby Boy would choose as his first! Not that I really want him to grow up faster than he already does, but being a bit of a word-junkie myself, it is just one of these things I was looking forward to, a little more so than other developmental hurray-moments.
And there it was! His chosen word! It's 'schaap' (sheep), pronounced as 'aap', which incidentally means 'monkey' - I'm so proud :-D
The only thing left to hope for, is that 'sheep' will not substitute 'mamma', and that we, the parental units, will not henceforward be known as 'sheep & monkey', or 'schaap & aap'... ;-)

baby boy...

... spreads joy & happiness, some frustrations - and food. At times.

fiend

Yesterday, Baby Boy had his first Brush with Nature - Up Close & Personal. He had grabbed hold of a huge monster that was taking a walk through the living room, insect-style (what was it doing there in the first place?!).
I was busy with the breast pump, BB not directly in my line of vision, and when he cried out, it was just after a bit of thunder outside, so I didn't immediately disentangle myself to see what was going on (bad mommy!). But when he cried again, I unplugged to see what the fuss was about. The Thing was stuck to his little hand, and it must have bitten him, or done something with its pincer-stinger-thingy! Bastard!
I checked BB's hands, and kept a close eye on him for the next few hours, but thankfully there seemed to be no ill effects... All the better since I couldn't find out what the Thing was, apart from it being an insect through basic determination. Here are the pictures, the building block measures 4.5 cm!

After its little scrap with Baby Boy, it found itself dead. & no, not by me - I'm too scared for my karma!
Four reasons why it wasn't Michael Jackson, even though it's dead:

• I couldn't find it on the internet,
• it was really BIG, relatively speaking,
• it was actually black,
• last but not least - apparently it didn't like children.

Do you know what this thing is? Please let me know, FFR!

9 months

This last Thursday, the 6th of August, Baby Boy has been living in the Outside World for exactly - to the day - as long as he parasitised (in the best possible meaning of the word) inside of me! Another milestone in the lives of both of us!
He's still getting mamma-milk (only as a supplement to 'food-food', of course) and I am so proud of that, considering the effort we both put in to get it happening & happening right, that I just wanted to have that mentioned :-D
Baby Boy is beautiful & cute & growing (way too rapidly!) into himself; it's fun & amazing to watch...
& I'm well aware that this is a soppy post to the point of 'bring out the violins', but this is my blog, & I write what I want to ;-)

slob

I use the vacuum cleaner every other day and mop the floor every week. So how come Baby Boy still manages to look like Mamma never even heard of cleaning?!

OMG

I have no moral objections against people having a sex life. Honestly, no problem with a little action between two consenting (almost-) adults whatsoever. But back when I was an au pair - which is longer ago than I care to put a price tag on! - I did have a bit of an issue with something I never mentioned to the people involved: the dear mom & dad in my guest family had their (monthly? weekly? don't remember - and be fair; should I?!) bit of fun with their door open, and loud enough for me, and who knows who else, to hear! Squirm! I never knew where to look at breakfast the next morning ;-)

Okay, you've got to be wondering where I'm going with this after all those years, right? Well... When Baby Boy does his newly mastered belly crawl, he sounds just like dear old Mrs K. on a roll in the marital hay! I kid you not! OMG, I swear he sounds exactly like her riding the horse to the finish line :-D

Oh, this is a terrible story - but it's too true & had to be told :-D
Now I don't have to fear that Mrs K. will ever come across this little piece of information, lost touch with the family years ago (although I can find assorted members on Facebook, and my-oh-my have they grown up!!). But if she would read this (or any of the au pairs moving in before and after me - I doubt she started all this when I was there, or that she stopped when I left, LOL), I'm telling you, she doesn't need to meet my beautiful Baby Boy - she would know exactly what the little tyke sounds like on his exploring missions around the house ;-)

P.S. to perverts! Don't even go there! This only clicked a week ago! Little old attic trapdoor in my brain, much like playing Trivial Pursuit; Mrs. K. has not been ringing in my ear ever since way back when!

stroppy

If Baby Boy is anything like Mamma... he's going to know way better what he doesn't want (oh, consider the Happy Hours ahead!) than what he does want... Oh crap... Oh crap!