just ducky

Clement: 12 weeks old

Rhode Island

We took two road trips this fall that were meant to accomplish the following purposes:  

1. Leaf peep

2. See some new parts of our lovely country

3. Get us out into some fresh air with a little room for running around

4. Fill up on different cuisine

5. Last but not least, facilitate some simple laundry for me!  Getting multiple loads down the stairs, walking it a couple blocks over, and managing the timing of the machines with two little ones who have uncompromising needs of their own is a pain.   It's doable, but not fun.  Lately I've just been going in the evenings once Sean gets home.  But for these road trips, I stored up the dirty clothes for a couple weeks and we purposely choose airbnb houses that have a washer and dryer!!  So handy!

Anyway, on our second trip we stayed on Conanicut Island in Rhode Island, in a city called Jamestown.

The house was new and spacious, and it turned out to be in a super location.  It was a peaceful, easy walk to the restaurants and docks.

Sean had to get a good amount of work done that weekend, which we took into consideration as we looked for a good destination.  This house had an office space upstairs, which actually meant he could focus a lot better than he could have had we stayed in our small Astoria apartment.  (See how selfless I am?  Suffering through a vacation so my hardworking husband could have some quiet office space!)

Anyway, at one point I took Josephine and Clement to go see the Beavertail Lighthouse.  Gorgeous day.  Wish we could have stayed around longer, but Clement was fussing.  Much like the picture above.  He needed a nap, so we didn't stay long.

In short, a great northeast port town type of experience.  I'll leave you with a couple video clips of Josephine and Clement.  In the first, I was trying to get Josephine to wiggle her pinky the morning after I shut it in the back door on accident.  It's an improvised version of "Where is Thumbkin?"
The second video is of Clement at 11 weeks, just talking.

Josephine one morning after she and I walked down to the pier for a mommy-daughter breakfast date:

park, oct 6

WHY does putting up a few current pictures always make me feel SOOO GUILTY???  I promise, Photos Of The Interim, I have NOT forgotten you.  YES, I KNOW you are more important than pictures from the park.  I KNOW.  Your importance weighs on me, even.  I cherish you so MUCH I can't just toss you up here brainlessly the way I can these.   Siiiiiigh.  I will get to you.  I will.  I WILL.  Really.  I'll try.

WHY am I inclined to take everything way too seriously??  Lighten UP, self.  It's a BLOG.  ("Oooh, but it's a record of precious photographs that freeze fleeting moments in time-- memories that I long to have at my fingertips-- and if the record is incomplete, then my past is incomplete-- maybe the memories never even happened... and so I MUST capture each moment and etch them all in the stone that is some virtual, nebulous space whose existence I cannot even comprehend...  See, one cannot take this seriously ENOUGH!")

*

Yes I'm going to bed.  Soon.  I have to feed Clement like fifteen more times first, but then.

feist and furious

2 months old!

Clement hit the two month mark on Sunday!  Yesterday he saw Dr. Paul (as Apostolis Tsoumpariotis, M.D. is helpfully nicknamed) for his Rotavirus and DTAP vaccinations and officially checked in at 14.5 pounds and 24 inches long (6 pounds heavier and 3 inches longer than when he was born).  I can't believe the number of clothes I've already had to retire!

Other physical attributes:  the reddish hair is hanging on, despite my scrubbing at cradle cap, though it has thinned to be a bit more friar-style.  The eczema is regressing-- on his face it just crops up on his eyebrows some, and there's just a little dryness left on his trunk.  He has developed a couple patches on his elbows, so I shall continue to try to avoid dairy.  (We just got back from Vermont.  They have a LOT of good cheese there.  I didn't indulge, but I also I didn't do a good job not eating it, so we'll have to see if his skin gets worse as a result... :-/ )

cutest pumpkin in the patch!

Have I mentioned he has a smiley bellybutton?  It's kind of an inny, but enough of an outy to have extra folds, and the way it is prone to squeezing together greets me with a little smile every time I change his diaper.  I need to get a photo of this.

  The grin of a boy with a secret, smiley bellybutton.

His inaugural playset swing ride.  Greenpoint, a couple weekends ago.

At our last check-up, Dr. Paul expressed concern over Clement's sacral dimple.  Josephine has one and no one said a thing about it.  The first two pediatricians that saw Clement indicated that they weren't concerned about his because they could see the bottom of it (otherwise, I guess, it could potentially be related to some sort of abnormality with the spinal cord).  Dr. Paul didn't feel like he could see the bottom of the dimple, though, so he sent us for a sonogram at a children's medical center further out on Long Island (we tacked this on to our road trip to Vermont, since we had a rental car for that).  Anyway, the test showed that all is fine with that, thankfully!

snuggled up in Vermont, healthy tailbone and all.

He had one, then two gunky eyes that are starting to clear up now.  I don't think the tear ducts were ever fully clogged, but enough to where they weren't draining right, and that was leading to some mild junk.  I'd read that the antibodies in breastmilk were great for treating little eye infections, so I've been trying that (much to Clement's confusion and dismay... "No!! In the mouth, Mom.  It goes in MY MOUTH!! wwwaaaahhhhh!!").  It's been working, though, and Dr. Paul agreed it was a good solution.

He's 5 weeks here.

And now on to the fun stuff:

This kid.
He is something.  Expressive and vocal are adjectives that, when I think about them in relation to Clement, get my adrenaline flowing as I strain to find more adequate terminology.  There must be some way to convey to you as well as he conveys to me that he is VERY GOOD at conveying whatever it is he wants to convey.

8 weeks old

Sometimes he wants to convey happiness.  Here's a cute video of a happy Clement.  He does have stunningly cute grins, and when his eyes lock onto mine (say, as I pull him from his car seat where he's been staring into oblivion) his face erupts into the most overjoyed delight so that I can't help but just giggle.  He is SO rewarding in that way.  For instance, no matter how poorly we've slept (that's a separate issue!), after that morning breakfast feeding, he is just CHARM CITY.  He wants to smile, and talk, and do his little grunting laugh (he hasn't quite tapped the super-cute baby laugh but he gives it everything he's got!), and just wiggle with profuse and lavish JOY.  Frankly, it is an onslaught of adorableness that could melt Neptune.

At other times, Clement wishes to express his extreme disapproval of the situation in which he finds himself.  There is, of course, the general screaming.  The sounds of his cries are definitely distinguishable-- the neh/meh sound being when he's hungry, the sharp cry of gas pain or other discomfort, the general waaahs a baby makes when it wants attention, a [somewhat] weaker cry of general misery if he's tired, etc.  If you're ever in doubt-- don't worry-- he is a generous communicator and will provide ample time and increased volume by which you might more clearly be able to understand him.  Yawns, the parts of his body that are fidgeting, the buggedness of his eyes-- these are all additional clues, which makes it simple enough to read him.
What's amusing, however, is that he understands the power of speech on a surprisingly deep level, I feel, and he will TALK to you in angry tones if you have been too slow to comfort him.   Occasionally, as it happens, timing will get off and I'll have to let him cry while I get Josephine set up for lunch or down for a nap or something.  I will then go get Clement, and be treated to a vice-like grip by his arms ("don't even THINK about putting me back down!!"), and he'll hold his little face right in front of mine giving me a good final holler or two.  This is distinctly different from a cry.  It is a vocal "THAT TOOK A LONG TIME AND I WOULD REALLY RATHER YOU BE QUICKER NEXT TIME OKKAAAAAYYYYY???"  Just kind of a general shout.  (Which I react to by dying with laughter.  He doesn't find that funny.)

And like yesterday, at the dinner table following his post-vaccination nap, he had nursed, yet seemed confused about why he still felt lousy.  You could tell that he was just really uncomfortable and miserable.  I let him nurse as long as he wanted to, but he finally gave up on that making him feel any better, and let me just hold him some... but not without a final moaning howl.  "Life is ROUGH and I am DISTRESSED, people."  Anyone-- ANYONE-- even with zero baby experience, could interpret these vocalizations because they are just so human.  Way more human than baby.

And they positively slay me.

...On the other hand, I'm a little worried that Child Two takes himself even more seriously than Child One does!  As the mother of JOSEPHINE I am concerned that I now have a baby that seems especially expressive.  Considering the baseline, it is a situation that merits a "yikes".  (Oh, and speaking of vocal comparisons of the two, I need to amend a blog post I put up about Josephine when she was a baby.  I was certain that after much drilling, I had triumphantly brainwashed her into repeating back "thank you" to me in the form of "ankoo" at a very young age... We'd had a whole conversations of thank yous and then it happened a few times after that, too.  Well, I haven't drilled anything with Clement, and as it turns out, he says "ankoo" all the time.  So apparently it's just a sound babies make.  Like "goo" and "ga".  Rather anticlimatic (I find out, 3+ years later).)

In other news, I'm hopeful that some of Clement's feist and fury will be alleviated once he ever manages to wrangle those fingers into his mouth.  He's been trying hard lately, and is getting sooo close.

He is also accepting pacifiers more, which definitely helps, but is still more high maintenance than if he'd suck his own fingers.  I'm also hopeful that this will increase his likelihood of sleeping through the night.

Ah, sleep.  So, in the past few weeks I've attempted various things in hopes of getting him to sleep for longer stretches, and they've met with unpredictable success.

To be fair, I haven't really imposed the schedule that we had with Josephine.  I've still done the eat, wake, sleep cycle, but at no point has Clement been quite the natural at the feeding schedule the way Josephine was.  With her, things were very consistent and easy to plan around.  For a variety of reasons due to him and our situation, it was and is just more challenging with Clement.  And with low energy, I haven't found myself to be of firm enough resolve to make happen what isn't happening naturally.

But I'm pretty eager to return to a place of being able to sleep overnight, so I know that I need to get things into a routine with more consistent wake up and bed times, making sure he eats frequently enough during the day, identifying the last cycle of the day for him and keeping him awake for it... etc. I have tried all these things, but I'm missing consistency, which could only help.  (It just takes EFFORT!!)

While the ability to snooze predictably is lacking, he has others that he's developing with full and earnest attention.  He adores sitting up in his bumbo, 9 times out of 10.  I prop the boppy pillow behind him to keep that big noggin from slinging too far back.  He think's he's pretty much king of the world sitting there.  You should have seen him the first time I sat him in it.  He got this very self-satisfied grin and gave me a big "huh!"... again, the plain-as-day vocalization where you know from his tone EXACTLY what he's trying to convey.  "Well, would you look at me sitting up like this!  Who'd have thought?  I like it!"  Here's a video of an early sitting session... attempting to master neck control.

6 weeks old

I typically have the bumbo in the dining room, so he can hang out there while we eat or Josephine and I do table time activities.  Sometimes he watches us; other times he gets pretty wrapped up in cooing conversations with his stuffed dog.  I tried to catch some video of him talking to his stuffed dog.  I didn't get the cute noises, but here's a clip-- you can at least see his focus and enjoyment.

The residual head wobbliness is the only factor keeping us from fully exploiting the Johnny Jump-Up, too.  He LOVES using his legs and takes it very seriously when you hold him and give him opportunities to practice pushing up and squatting down repeatedly.  (He also seems to really love little leg massages at the end of one of these physical days, which is cute, too-- he gets all still and focused looking).  We've tried the jump-up a couple times, using Josephine's little travel pillow to help his head stay in place, and he does seem to enjoy the autonomy of it.  It's still a bit of a tangle to mess with, though, so I don't do it much.  A little video of him trying it out can be found here.

5 weeks old

It's also fun watching how hard he concentrates as he reaches out for things.  He strongly favors his right arm right now (I remember Josephine seeming like she'd only found her left arm for ages).  He's figured out how to bop me when we're at the changing table, which tickles us both.
Clement doesn't seem to be a naturally passive or patient person, but he does exhibit significant patience with trying to get his arm under control.  I guess if you don't really have a lot you need to go and do, you might as well lie around attempting to hit something and not really care if you occasionally flip the wrong switch and punch yourself in the eye instead.

However, he does seem to get frustrated with the arm control when he's in a rush to fall asleep or suck on something.  THEN getting his hand to his mouth is NOT a calm, patient practice, but total fury.

2 months old (9 weeks)

To wrap up my scattered cornucopia of Clement descriptors, all I can say is that he's a charmer.  What I wrote in his one month post remains true: he's growing at a hectic pace, but he still finds time to workover my heartstrings and eardrums in a daily basis.
We are all totally in love.

2 and 42

Today is Josephine's 3 1/2 birthday!  (Coincidentally, it is also the 3 1/2 birthdays of all her baby dolls.) She's very excited.  As she said, she's "been waiting and waiting a LONG time for today."

I went out and picked up some balloons for her.  (Apparently there is a helium shortage?  The Greek storeowner told me, "it is because of the war."  Some quick googling doesn't really support that explanation; I think the lady just wanted to tell me a story about how her mother donated her supply of stockings during WWII because the government needed nylon for parachutes.  I also am not sure there is as MUCH of a shortage as the price she charged me would indicate.  $7 for 5 latex balloons?  Hmmm.)

Also got a tiny little cake from an Italian bakery.  I put 4 candles in it after clipping one in half.   And I used her half birthday as an excuse to buy her a little number toy that I saw a couple weeks ago.  It makes THE MOST satisfying little popping noises with these tiny magnets that surface as you trace the numbers.  I'd have bought it for myself for my own birthday which is coming up, except I already know how to write all my numbers.   (...okay, who am I kidding... this was still a totally self-serving purchase.  I've played with it more than she has so far.)

Josephine's a truly delightful little person.  She cracks us up on a daily basis (usually we have to laugh behind her back because it would either overly encourage an antic that is only funny ONCE or it would require us to appease her demands for an explanation of why we are laughing.)  There is much laughter, though.  Including, to my delight, from her at my jokes.  I've started delivering semi-preposterous one liners in a more or less deadpan voice during conversation with her-- and I love that she picks up on them because they catch her off guard and elicit a genuine laugh (as opposed to the more silly laugh that you get during a game or play time).

Josephine is social and sweet, loving to be around other people, her initial shyness melting quickly into exuberant play.  The more engaged you are and willing to play by her spontaneous rules, the more she adores you.  Underneath her little dictatorial style, though, is a very thoughtful and sensitive awareness that frequently catches me off guard.  For instance, the other day she wouldn't let me put Five Guys down on her stomach for tummy time until she took off Five Guys' dress, because she had noticed some stitching on the front that would rub her stomach uncomfortably!   All her dolls and animals have incredibly complicated feelings and needs, and she watches other small children like a hawk while narrating to me their emotions and actions.  She points excitedly to the brown trees when we are paying the red and golden ones too much attention.  And if Clement so much as looks crossways, she's there imposing a myriad of "solutions"... which at least succeeds in distracting him from his original ailment. Yes, her innate attentiveness to others is truly a gift of hers, and one she enjoys cultivating (to the extent that she CREATES needs for inanimate objects just so she can attend to them).

Josephine is also clever-- oooh so clever-- frequently baiting conversations as she fishes for a particular conclusion.  Like yesterday, as we were leaving a rest area on our drive back from Vermont, she nonchalantly wandered from Sean's side until she ended up by a display of candy in the store... and then casually said to Sean, "Dad?  Have I've been really good today?"  He, not as suspicious of wisened to her techniques as I am, agreed without reserve while smiling encouragingly.  I saw what was happening and intervened, ushering them along before the conversation took it's inevitable turn of "Oh, well MAYBE since I've been so good I can have one of these treats that are conveniently right here???" On her face you could see that I'd thwarted her well-crafted plan.  She was not pleased.

And the other day she was looking for some of her sponge animals (the kind that expand from a tiny pill size capsule in the bathtub).  I had just pitched a few of them because they'd gotten torn, so I told her she'd have to wait to get more until the next time she took a bath.  She went off and played for about 30 minutes and then came back to find me and very randomly said, "I think I got a little sweaty when I was doing blanket time this morning."  Yep-- took me a second-- but then I remembered the sponge animal conversation and realized where this seemingly innocuous, bizarre comment was headed.  I couldn't help but burst out laughing, which surprised her, but then she seemed even more surprised when I said, "you're trying to get me to give you a bath so you can have more sponge toys, aren't you?"  It's always a shock to her when I have her figured out.  Her eyes get wide while her little brain races to get one step ahead of me again.  As a rule, she doesn't think I have any sort of leg up on her whatsoever.  She finds the fact that I'm the parent frustrating, bewildering, infuriating, and in defiance of all obvious logic.  

Despite all her AGE and experience and knowledge, she's still my baby, and I adore the moments when she is playing or laughing in an unreserved, unaware manner.  I wish I had a magic formula for how to turn off her self-conscious, grown up tendencies and keep her small.  She's mastering the world at an alarming rate, though, so sometimes I have to rely on midnight sleepwalks to the potty to catch her in a raw, off guard state.   The next best thing is watching her run around in a park with Sean.  Something about his large, I'm-not-going-to-let-you-win presence keeps her feeling little, and it's pretty hilarious watching her try to keep up with him.  She is also still little when something is new: whether it is a joyful situation where her delight is genuine and wonder fills her eyes, or an overwhelming situation where intimidation has her clinging.  All these moments are dear to me because I feel hyperaware that they are fleeting.

Josephine is a passionate, strong-willed, emotional child-- incredibly loving and doting and enjoying nothing more than being loved and doted upon.  She is curious, observant, questioning, and she explains the world with the authority of a queen, regardless of how much she understands. ("You know those little candles that you put in your mouth and smoke comes out?  Five Guys does that sometimes.")  

And, true to form, upon serving the little cake I got for her half birthday, she spent some time being small and delighting in the candles and sugar and wonder of it all... then slowly, as the newness wore off, her clever little edge returned and she said, after a particularly chocolaty bite, "You know I'll be three and a half tomorrow, too..." 

It's a tenacious little pinky finger we're wrapped around. 

As Josephine is relishing her celebration of being 42 months, Mr. Clement, meanwhile, is a proud TWO MONTHS old as of last Sunday.  He might not do much, but he does enough to merit his own post next.