I'm Biggie Smalls, I can do what I want!

An ode to my baby:
Oh, my lovely little monkey Michael, you practically came out of the womb exclaiming this.

They said that once your water breaks, your baby will almost always come within 24 hours. You made the doctors induce labor to coax you out, THREE days later. You were like, "I'm Biggie Smalls, and I will come when I want."

They said that newborn babies are supposed to be super drowsy and want to sleep all the time.
You were super awake and wanted to nurse all the time. ALL the time. ALL THE TIME! As soon as I thought you might be asleep on your own for a minute and tried to pull away, you would wake up crying and proclaiming "I'm Biggie Smalls and I defy your attempts to make me sleep!"

A couple weeks into your life they said to breastfeed your baby between 25 - 45 minutes. You took 10-15. You were always done so fast, proclaiming "I'm Biggie Smalls, and I will not conform to any book!"

They said a baby will not first smile until they are six weeks old, at least. You smiled at two weeks. Right after a horrendously long fit of crying. But you just smiled up at some angel off in the distance while singing "I'm Biggie Smalls, and I'll smile whenever I want!"

They said swaddle your baby. You broke out of every single swaddle like Houdini, proclaiming "I'm Biggie Smalls and I defy your weak attempts to contain King Baby!" (Until we got the miracle blanket. Even Baby Houdini can't crack that one.)

They said give your baby a binkie to calm him down. You spat them out, proclaiming "I'm Biggie Smalls and I defy your unsatisfactory attempts to calm King Baby!"

They said to breastfeed your baby when they wake up for their naps, otherwise if you feed them to sleep they will learn a bad sleep association and not learn to fall asleep on their own. As if you can just offer a feed to a baby at any time and they will take it if they are hungry. HA! Any time I try to feed you when you are not in a drowsy state, ready for sleep, you're all cheeky like "I'm Biggie Smalls, so tell me why would I ever breastfeed at a time when I am awake and ready for action?"

My friends said their babies chased the spoon around at mealtimes. Baby sign language people said to teach your baby the words for food and hungry first, because mealtime is supposedly something they are really interested in. When I try to feed you, you are exacerbated and declare "I'm Biggie Smalls, and I'm not going to open my mouth for any spoon of yours. Also, ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
RR!!!"

I thought that changing a baby's diaper was to be done with the baby lying on their back. Nowadays, it happens like this only one in a dozen attempts, if that. You twist and squirm and scamper away the very second I place you on your back. I chase you around the room like a circus clown with my fresh diaper. I've learned I can only succeed if you are occupied in a standing position, generally up at the bookcase pulling out the books one by one as I burn off at least five Swedish meatballs in my attempt to secure the diaper around your on-the-go body. You're like "I'm Biggie Smalls, and I don't slow down for diapers!"

They said that when babies learn to pull themselves up to standing, they sometimes cry because they then can't get back down to sitting. And it often helps to teach them that skill. You just plopped right down on your cute little bum or hands without ever once getting stuck standing, boasting "I'm Biggie Smalls - you don't scare me, Gravity!"

And even through all of your activeness and neediness, at times you even defy that. You will sit calmly in my lap for 30, sometimes even 40 minutes at a stretch as we read and read and read your books together. Your like, "Mom, I'm Biggie Smalls. And you can't put a label on me!"

People say that babies can be cranky and whiny and needy when they are teething. Since that described you for say, the first 7.5 months of your life, people were always saying "Oh, he must be teething". I can't even tell you how many times I heard that to explain your behavior. But you were never teething. Then, right before you turned 8 months, when you finally had your longest stretch of days in a row of pleasantness of your entire life, your teeth broke through. Same now with your top teeth coming in. You've been great! Your like, "I will be cranky when I am not teething, and awesome when I am - just to confound you, suckas! I'm Biggie Smalls and that's how I roll."

And now I was almost positive that you were supposed to get your middle teeth before the ones to the sides. But of course, you are The One Biggie Smalls, and so what else should I expect than that you would will the top side teeth to come in before the top middle ones. Just to show everyone that you are Biggie Smalls, and you can do what you want.

You are going to look like the biggest goof ever if those middle top teeth don't come in soon hereafter!

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World Cup or Bust

Ok, Smalls isn't going, but if we don't post pictures of him, I don't think anyone looks at the blog.

So today at 7:15 pm I am getting a plane for South Africa!  I've always wanted to go to Africa, I've always wanted to go on a Safari, and ever since the US hosted the World Cup in 1994, I've always wanted to go to a World Cup.  So I get to accomplish all three at once.  I'll be meeting up with my good buddy Tyson, who is traveling from Brasilia via the US; over the course of a week, we will be attending four World Cup games and visiting Krueger National Park.   To say that I am excited would be an understatement. 

The only (minor) negative (besides leaving Lorena and Biggie Smalls aka King Baby behind) is that I will probably only get to see the 2nd half of the US-Ghana game tonight (my flight lands in Frankfurt at half time, and then takes off about 10 mins after the game should end).  If the game goes to extra time, I may have to find a way to make my flight leave late - I don't know if I will be able to wait for the 10 hour flight from Frankfurt to Johannesburg to find out if the US will advance or not.  Normally I would have been happy for the US to simply make it out of the group stage, but...if the US wins, we will have tickets to see them play next week!  Here are the games we will be attending:

Argentina - Mexico
Brazil - Chile
Paraguay - Japan
and the winner of US/Ghana v. Uruguay/South Korea

I mean, this trip will be cool, but if we somehow get to see the US play in the Quarterfinal - well, here's hoping they beat Ghana today (and that they beat them before I get on my flight!).

So look for us in the crowd.  If we are lucky and get to see the US play, I will be wearing my US jersey, but I will not have my face painted.  There are some lines that adults shouldn't cross, and painting your face is one of them.

GO USA!

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A Royal Wedding

I can't stop watching this video and laughing at my little marching boy. He was sooooooo happy. After this video was taken, he broke into a full on run/prance along side the royal army and kept at it for seriously the longest time. Kind of a ridiculous distance considering that at nine months he is technically still a baby. There were two different ladies who thought it was so funny that one took his picture and another starting filming him, adding more evidence to my theory that he is the cutest thing on the planet.

The reason for the royal army parade was that the Swedish crown princess got married today. Above is my futile attempt at catching the wedding procession on camera. Go here if you actually care to see pics. The last royal wedding was in like the 70's or something, so it was a Big Deal to the swedes. I don't know what the newspapers are going to do with themselves now that it is over. Kinda cool and interesting, also kinda odd and pompous.

p.s. We do not spike Small's hair on purpose. It's just that his hair is so sparse that we have to put sunscreen on his head (he takes off his hat) and it just ends up working like hair gel.

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Embassy Soccer Tournament

Last weekend Rob organized a "World Cup" soccer tournament between a bunch of different embassies in Stockholm. It seemed like everyone had a really good time, which I guess means it was a success! If we measure the success of the tournament by the amount of fun that Smalls had, then it was an uber-success. I think the monkey had the time of his life. It was big goofy grins the whole time. He quite likes to watch his dad play soccer!                                            Of course after getting all these cute pictures, I then realized that he had a piece of pasta stuck on his face the whole time. I guess that just makes it tell the true story of the day.

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You Gonna Eat That?

Please consider your own eating habits before you judge my upcoming statement in the same category as nose-picking and armpit-smelling.


I eat my child's baby food.


And I like it.


And I am considering keeping on with this habit even when Michael outgrows it. Because I have finally found a convenient enough way to eat my vegetables. The beautiful thing about baby fruit and vegetables is that it is 100% fruit or vegetable. If I buy carrots, the ingredients are.........................wait for it........................................carrots. Not carrots and salt and dehydratedmaltodextrinizedcoagulatedsulfer. If I buy prunes it is prunes, not prunes and sugar and heavy syrup. AND did you know that baby food pureed prunes are good and not at all gross and hard to swallow like real prunes? And they are especially good when mixed with Totally Natural, No-Added-Sugar-Or-Anything Yogurt. Yuck, right? That's what I thought. But it's good. I swear.

I went to a slight bit of trouble to make some homemade pureed green beans for Biggie Smalls a few days ago, but I don't think he liked the texture. And the beauty of all this is that instead of feeling kinda bummed about wasted effort and wasted food, I'm like ALL RIGHT! Healthy snack for mom. I saved a bunch of old baby food jars and froze a big supply of what I made, so I've got all these healthy little green bean shots (along with the pureed prunes, carrots, peas, and lentils I've made for Smalls but am stealing for myself) ready to roll for snacks now. I am aware that microwaving some frozen green beans is about just as easy, but for some reason I just never would do that. And it would require more chewing. I'm talking LAZY nutrition here.

Although that's not really the whole truth. It's probably only like a small little baby-sized pie slice (yum!) of the truth. The real impetus for my baby-food eating habit is this: I want what you are eating. Especially if you are a kid, for some strange reason. I am not sure about the psychological implications of that. But have you ever seen a 3-year-old eating Cheeze-Itz? And not totally hoped that they would get distracted by a fly or something and left their little Cheeze-Itz cup unattended? But you could have a whole box of them at home and not give it a second glance. Or chicken nuggets. I never want to eat a chicken nugget... until I see it on the plate of a child, that is.

My favorite of Biggie Small's food is this stuff here called Majs-Vällning. I'm guessing maybe there is an equivalent in the States, but I don't know what it is. It's like rice cereal (blah), but yummy corn-based deliciousness instead. YUM. I always mix up extra so that I can steal some bites as I feed him. Bite for you, bite for me. Fun fact - we actually first got this corn slop stuff as dog-food for Chewy (the breeder's used it to wean the puppies) and had half the bag left over. So you could say Michael's first food was dog-food.*

I wonder if I will feel the same when I am no longer crazy-hungry breastfeeding woman???

Also, this makes me feel a little safer about getting older, in case I make it to 92 and have to go on one of those geriatric diets. It's a good card to have in my pocket.

*Grandma alert: this stuff is, in fact, sold in the baby food section of the store, not the pet section. I promise.

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Asleep on the Job

He often likes to crawl around in the middle of his naps, but then gets tuckered out right in the middle of it. Invariably it involves a big pool of drool.
Dena, remember how you taught your dog Annie to do that command "Show me your bum"? Cutest dog trick ever, by the way. When I find Michael like this, I always think of your sweet dog Annie performing that trick.

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