“No… okay?” Nathan replies as he turns his head to the side. He furrows his eyebrows.

“Nathan, I need you to look at my eyes please,” I say. But instead of looking at my eyes, Nathan squeezes his own eyes tightly shut and shrieks at me. “Nathan, when you look at my eyes, you won’t be in trouble anymore.”

“Okay,” he says, still keeping his eyes squeezed shut.

“Look at my eyes, Nathan,” I repeat. “You’re not getting out of Time Out until you look at my eyes.” Finally, Nathan raises his eyes to mine, moving his eyes so slowly that they seemed carrying a thousand pounds of weight behind them. But Nathan, being the Stubborn One that he is, will not succumb to rules, no siree. He won’t have anyone tell him what to do. So, what does Nathan do? Well, Nathan tries to trick me. By PRETENDING TO LOOK AT MY EYES. Instead of making eye contact, he looks at that space in between my eyes, on my nose.

I’ve totally got my hands full with this kid, don’t I?

It doesn’t matter if I say a simple “No, not for Nathan” or “Don’t touch that, little guy.” His eyes well up with sparkling tears, his chin quivers, and he starts wailing a broken ambulance siren. Then he throws his little arms around my neck and kisses me.

That’s why I can never be mad at the little guy. He’s such a sensitive, precious sweetheart, and it breaks my heart when I have to hurt his little feelings and not let him do something that could cause him to get hurt, such as playing with electrical cords or grabbing the scissors the millisecond that I have my head turned. (How DO their little hands move SO quickly?). The way he acts when I have to tell him no, you’d think I’m the meanest mom in the world and that I callously crushed his heart!

This isn’t going to get any easier as he gets older… is it?

No, it wasn’t a Mega Poop.  And no, he didn’t fall asleep standing up again.

Ok, since the possibilities are endless, I’ll just tell you.

He was on his belly, scooting around the living room floor. Drool was flying everywhere and his hands and feet were spinning and whacking the air so feverishly that they became a blur. I could practically hear the air whistle as his limbs sliced through it. All of a sudden, he stopped, raised himself up to all fours and after rocking back and forth a couple times, he pushed himself up into the sitting position!

For the first time in his life, my little boy didn’t need my assistance to go from laying down to sitting up!

I’m so happy right now!!

See, he’s not started actually crawling with his tummy off the floor just yet. He crawls backwards though. And he rolls around from front to back all over the place. He also does the Army Crawl, and recently, he started doing half Army Crawl, half Lurch. And he’ll get up on all fours and rock back and forth. But no crawling.

If you’re a parent, then I’m sure you can understand when I say that his lack of mobility had me worried. When he was nine months old and still not crawling, I started obsessing over it. After all, I thought ALL babies crawled by nine months.

So I got on the Internet and worried myself to death by researching what other nine-month-olds were doing. I watched You Tube Videos. I cried. I wrung my hands. I obsessed over why he wasn’t like other  babies, and I worried ceaselessly.

I worried so much that I lost sleep at night.

But then his pediatrician said that some babies completely skip crawling and go straight to walking. But he thinks that Nathan is simply choosing not to crawl. Because, get this, he would rather Mommy pick him up and CARRY HIM AROUND. So I quit carrying him around whenever Nathan cried for me to. Now, Nathan plays on the floor and if he wants a toy that’s out of his reach, I gently encourage him to go get it himself. If he cries when I walk away, I tell him to come to me.

And he tries.

He may not be crawling yet, but he is zipping around all over the place.

And he loves to stand. He can’t stand on his own yet or pull himself up, but he can hold onto furniture and keep his balance. And it’s precious watching him because he just looks so proud of himself. He’s all smiles and his head swivels around like that of an owl, trying to take in every single new detail he can obtain from this new height.

Sometimes he looks around so much that it seems like his head is going to just SWIVEL RIGHT OFF.

But his head is still attached. Miraculously, considering the amount of swiveling it does on a daily basis…

Now, we’re going to relax, watch a movie, and enjoy each other’s company. But not before I share some pictures of Nathan on Thanksgiving!

Like I mentioned yesterday, he didn’t take his nap so he was a bit moody. I had to take some pictures of him to cheer him up because he’s a rare breed and actually loves having his picture taken. So I got out the camera, and a huge smile brightened his face.

I thought taking just a picture or two would do the trick, so I put the camera away after a handful of pictures.

He started pouting.

So I turned the camera back on, but he wasn’t quite ready to forgive me for my transgression. He looked at me with Pouty Eyes that didn’t understand why I would put the camera away when we were having so much fun.

So after taking a few more pictures, his pout disappeared and he was grinning like a champ again. He looked lovingly into my eyes as if to say thank you, Mommy. Thank you for reading my mind and taking more pictures of my awesome self.

After a few more clicks, he actually started posing. Like a miniature model. Hand behind the head and all. He’s learning all the tricks on how to keep me taking pictures of his Awesome Cuteness.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are enjoying your holiday weekend!

My husband is bending over the sink, deveining some shrimp. I personally think all shrimp should already come deveined. But hey, I get to stare at his butt, so keep getting those unprepped shrimp, honey! 

So yeah, I was watching him pluck the veins out of the shrimp while muttering about how painstaking the process is, which made me think about Biology textbooks, which made me think about serial killers, which made me think about Ancient Pharaohs, which made me think about Nathan and his bad day today. 

Did I mention that sleep deprivation makes my imagination go awry? 

So let me back up a bit. Nathan’s day wasn’t totally bad, but a large chunk of it was.

It started out as fine and dandy as a postcard-inspiring spring day, considering he woke up way too early so I was sleep deprived and craving that elusive cup of coffee that I cannot have. The love in the air was so strong that it could make a MAN FART smell like Popsicles. I could practically see the butterflies swooning outside, intoxicated with Nathan’s good mood. Nathan was just as precious as he could be.

We had a fun time singing together and cuddling. He studied my face and yanked out some more of my hair, which by the way, hurts like HELL. My hair is now permanently up in a ponytail, and yet somehow those little hands still manage to find the wandering wisps that escaped the security of a skin stretching, tightly wrapped hair band. And so he wraps his spit-coated fingers around those wisps, thus giving them absolutely no hope for escape, and yanks. If they don’t come out the first time, he yanks again, which elicits a loud yet somehow always surprised yelp from me.

Then he EATS MY HAIR.

Yes. He eats it while laughing gleefully, like a little maniacal clone. 

So anyway, he started rubbing his sleepy eyes and crying much earlier in the afternoon than usual, but I decided to take the chance that he would go down for a nap.

I laid him down.

Breathe.

Okay, all is well. I gently take a step back. Everything is still okay. Cautiously, I take another step back… but my knee pops.

THANK YOU, IMPENDING OLD AGE.

In an instant, I can see the sleep melt out of Nathan’s eyes like sugar melting in water. He rolls over onto his belly with lightening speed, head popping up like a prairie dog’s, and he catches me in The Stance…  a pose that ensures no other creakage of cartlidge or popping of bones, often with one foot off the ground and arms thrust precariously away from your body to help keep your balance.

The Stance failed me today.

Utterly and totally failed me.

So when Nathan saw me doing The Stance, his entire face crumpled. His forehead wrinkled with indignation, his lips quivered, and he started wailing. I relented and picked him up. He wasn’t going to sleep anyway. 

We played for a while. Went outside and poked sticks at unsuspecting bugs. Gave each other kisses and mini high-fives. Three hours later, he’d had enough and was quite ready for his nap. Only he still didn’t want to take it. I tried all my old tricks to coax him into sleep, and nothing worked. After another two and a half hours of unsuccessful wishful thinking, I knew there was no way he was going to let me win this one, especially since it was now only two hours away from his bedtime. I picked him up and lo-and-behold! The kid magically ceased all crying, thrashing, kicking, and screaming. Immediately, I mean immediately, his tears dried like rain in a desert and he started laughing, laughing, his eyes gleaming as if to say, “See, Mommy? All I need to do to get out of my nap is cry and scream long enough because I know you’ll eventually cave into my wishes!”

This is a war of wills.

How can an infant have more willpower than me?

I have met my match. Perhaps my increasingly growing bald spots are sapping away my energy.

My little guy is quite the manipulator. He was in such a marvelous mood for the rest of the evening. The worst part of it all? I couldn’t be mad at him. He covered my entire face with kisses when I picked him up. He put a dimpled hand on each side of my face and licked the bridge of my nose and giggled. How can I begrudge that? We stayed up until his bedtime. He playfully cooed at his bedtime storybook, poking at the pages with an inquiring finger, just as happy as a baby bug in a rug. He went to bed like a champ without so much as a whimper.

My little Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Nathan likes to keep me on my toes. You never know how the day is going to go.

And I’m cool with that, as long as I get those kisses at the end of the day.

Nathan, 4 weeks, sleeping in his swing

Sleep.

It’s a commodity around here.

When the opportunity arises, I grab it like an addict grabs for her drug, saliva dripping from my mouth, tasting the anticipation.

Nathan has made it clear, however, that he does not share my sentiment. The past few days, Nathan has decided to rip up his previous sleep schedule with a vengeance, tossing it around in his pudgy little hands and molding it like play-dough, creating a whole new schedule for us to live by.

Ah, my little benevolent dictator.

Previously, we would wake around 8am, then he would nap around noon for about an hour and a half in his crib, and then around four, he would nap another hour and a half. The past few days, on the other hand, Nathan decided he wanted to get up earlier and not take a nap at all during the day.

That made a grumpified baby and a grumpified mommy.

I attempted in vain to put him down for his nap during the usual times, but it was met with animalistic howling, screeching, and other ethereal sounds that I didn’t know a human being could produce.  I tried rubbing his head, singing to him, lovingly patting his back… all to no avail. He simply did not want to sleep. There is only so much yowling a mother can take before she caves to the heart-wrenching pleas. As soon as I picked him up, all sounds of anger abruptly ceased. His face lit up with a huge, toothless grin and he planted an open-mouthed, drooling kiss on my cheek.

My little guy is learning how to manipulate quite well. 

Today, I initially planned to not put him down for a nap at all, but when I saw his eyes become glassy from sleepiness, I jumped at the opportunity and laid him down in his crib. He didn’t so much as whimper and slept for three solid hours. Perhaps he desires one long nap a day rather than two short ones. Perhaps he doesn’t want to nap at all. He becomes very grumpy when his nap is later in the day or when he completely forgoes his nap, but I’m fine with that because no matter how grumpy he gets, I know that sooner or later, sleep will come. Even if it’s not until his bedtime, he will eventually sleep.

And so will I.