It’s been one of those weeks when I can’t believe what my kid is doing with himself.
Saturday afternoon I put him down for a nap. He roamed around in his bed for a while, as usual, and then was quiet. I went in to check on him, thinking he was asleep, and there he was, like this:
In the 10 minutes or so that I had been out of the room, he taught himself to stand up. He could not have been any more proud of himself. I took about a hundred pictures. He was so freakin’ cute.
Do all babies do this? When he masters a new skill, he can’t stop doing it. He does it every waking moment and many sleeping moments too. He did the same thing when he learned to roll - it was constant. Now he wakes up in the middle of a nap crying because he’s found himself on his feet and doesn’t know what to do. And getting him to nap these past few days has been futile (as in, “good thing you’re so freakin’ cute because I want to scream” kind of futile), because all he wants to do is roll over and stand up. Today I caught him half hanging out of bed, pulling on the cat’s ear. Lovely little being that she is, she was purring (though that may not say much for her intelligence).
He also says “cat” - it figures that cat would be his first word. And his new trick is saying “hi!” very cheerfully when we walk into the room, like he’s been saying it all his life. He’s signing a little, and recognizing a whole bunch of signs, which is really fun.
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Every time Roo does something new I think: I have to call Miranda. We talked to her last weekend for the first time in about a month. We never talk for long, and we mostly talk about Roo, but it’s always a relief to talk to her. I’m always amazed that in some ways we know so little about each other, but that we say “I love you” - and mean it - at the end of every call.
We’re making plans to go down to Crazy State in July to see my family, and we’re hoping we’ll get to finally meet Miranda and Michael in person. I want so badly for them to see Roo, too, so they can see - in person, not just in pictures - our (meaning all of our) beautiful son.
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Here’s a short question that deserves (and will eventually get) a much longer post: Can someone please give us some guidance about how to navigate Mother’s Day? We want to do something for Miranda but we have no idea what would be appropriate and loving and respectful. I’ll take any advice.
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We have a fun new plan.. In the fall, NSG is leaving her job becoming her own boss. We’re opening a family day care in our house - three kids plus Roo, with room to grow.
The lovely Clementine has been incredibly helpful and has shared a ton of information to get us off the ground. Things are falling into place.
After months of struggling to figure out how NSG can put all of her various passions - teaching, American Sign Language, Deaf children - together into something that both occupies her brain and earns a living, AND where she can have Roo with her (since we both feel good having him with her and have no childcare budget to speak of), we finally fell into this. She’s going to take in Deaf and hearing kids, and use ASL with all of them.
We hit a day care liquidation sale this weekend, she’s got a pregnant mom ready to write her a deposit check, and we have a website ready to go. The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding won’t be ready until after Labor Day, but right now we’re both feeling like we hit on the answer we’ve been looking for all year.
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I didn’t think I had much to say, but apparently I did.
And hey, what’s with the freakin’ weather in New England these days? The daffodils are up but I can’t stop wearing my damned winter coat. Hrumph.
Posted by roundisfunny
