Crows have friends too

While I often write about Wren, Frost is (of course) also very interesting and entertaining. Here are some snapshots of Frost at age 6 and a third:

1) Frost likes to be funny. His sense of humor is not always well timed. Yesterday I went out the back door to put out the garbage, carrying Wren. It was very cold and I was wearing flip-flops. When we got around to the front I knocked on the door, asking Frost to let me in. He replied "sorry, I can't let you in because I can't find Mummy!" I said "Frost, it is Mummy, let me in". He replied again "wait, I am going to go and ask Mummy." There is silence and some thudding as he goes out the back door and comes to the front porch. I was not laughing.

2) Tactical Poverty: The school is doing a Trick or Treat for Unicef fundraiser. Each child has a little box. Now that Frost can read he has learned that 9c can feed a child for a day. The flipside is that he feels it is very cheap to be a poor person and people will feed you. When I mention that we don't have enough money to buy something he wants he says "well, why don't we just fly to Africa and be poor for a while and we will get all that Unicef money?"

3) The meaning of things: Frost is learning lots of new words. Sometimes, I stop and check he understands the meaning of word he is using. This morning it was "distracts". I asked him what distracts means and he said it means that someone does something so that you notice while their friend does something else you don't like. I think this meaning comes from the theme of pickpockets in a Tintin book we are reading. I explained that it can have a more general meaning of "capture your attention".
I gave as an example: "That noisy crow distracts me from driving".
"Well," said Frost "that's the same thing because Crows have friends too!"

4) To dress or not to dress: Frost needs a lot of encouragement to become and remain clothed. He prefers to walk around naked. When he gets home from school he seldom remains fully clothed and whenever the doorbell rings there is a frantic rush to the bedroom to find new shirt and pants. This morning Frost came to me wrapped in a blanket. He explained:

There are two reasons I prefer blankets to clothes: 1)Blankets are warmer and 2) Blankets are portable like clothes.

So saying, he wandered off trailing 6 ft of blanket behind him.

The stumbling video

Wren standing up and tottering.

Hacker

Frost (6): You know what I have been doing in my room since I quitted Insane Aquarium?
Me: No
Frost: I have been trying to find out what Daddy's password is.
Me: Why do you want to do that?
Frost: So I can get into his things and see what is there!
Me: So how do you do it?
Frost: I have been trying to type his password but there is this green arrow button that says "have you forgotten your password?" So I click on the question and I click on the letters but I have no idea how to start and go into it. If you click the green arrow, I think, oh yeah! But I have to type that password like 5 times?
Me: So what do you type for the password.
Frost: Well, the question says to me "fraction" so I have no idea how to type that but I try to type that but I don't know if it actually was fraction. Can you come and see what I mean about logging onto Joshua's website thing?

Sunday update

I can't believe its been a week since I last posted. Its been a busy week including multiple plumbers visits for the blogged tub drain, a Newsvine party, a KapKa board retreat, joining a gym, Frost heading to Vashon for the day and a few after school play-dates. Now, where is the weekend going?

Wren is doing well. His proto-walking has not developed at all. He is still happy to oblige me with a few tottering steps towards me before tumbling into my lap but I have to stand him up and say "come on" and hold out my hands to get him to do this. On two occasions he has 'walked' a few steps alone in the kitchen. It seems that if he is standing up and gets hold of a treasure like a pot or spoon he might decide to move his legs instead of dropping to a crawl but crawling is still his preferred and only mode of real locomotion.

In contrast to my interest in his being upright, Wren's main interest is ensuring I am never out of his sight. He is very anxious about all separation (including a bathroom break or me going down to the basement alone to put on the laundry). He whines pitifully and crawls after me as fast as his little arms and legs can go to keep up. When I stop he winds himself around my legs and cries. Its quite tragic. As a result I spend a lot of time carrying him on my hip or in the baby carrier as well as a lot of time feeling frustrated and reassuring him he is okay.

The anxiety he feels about me going away makes going away hard. This week I had a meeting with Josh, a KapKa workshift and a KapKa board planning day. These three required childcare. Thankfully Lisa has come ot know Wren but there are gut wrenching transitions when I get to leave, it is even difficult to leave Wren with Josh although he does well once I have lost to the outside world.

Wren like to play games. Josh and he made up a game in which he hides behind a cloth and then pops out to "peek a boo". He can do this for far longer than an adult's attention span.

Frost has a game in which he bounces and pops up behind the couch to squeals from Wren. I have taken little movies of these games as well as the Big Pounce & stumble-walking. I hope they work.

Signs and smashing mornings

Wren made his first "sign" today. He copied me when I signed 'milk' and then did it again a bit later. I shall wait and see if he figures out he can ask when he wants.

He did well last night. He woke at 3.45am for a nursing and then did the 2 hour sleep till 5.45 but cried out only once and then slept-in until 6.30am. Fabulous. Of course I am now trying to make a theory about this and figure out what, if anything, I did differently. I can't tell right now.

This morning was good in another way. While I was out taking Frost to Zephyrs Joshua installed the clips on the kitchen cupboard doors. This should put an end to Wren's smashing spree. So far has has broken 3 bowls, one saucer and nearly a few glasses. He did the usual rounds of the cupboards but couldn't open any and moved on to ransack the recycling instead.

Baby Sleep and the law of diminishing returns.

It has been a while since I moaned about sleep deprivation but it hasn't been all bliss and 12 hour nights since the white-out. I changed my strategy from attempting to get Wren to sleep longer than 10.5 hours and decided to get him to go to bed later and get the 10.5 hours at a better time for me. Here is what happened:

Bedtime 6pm, wake-up 4.30am
Bedtime 7pm, wake-up 5.00am
Bedtime 8pm, wake-up 5.00 to 5.30am

As you can see there does not seem to be a one-to-one correlation between hours at night and in the morning. In fact, there seem to be diminishing returns. Last night Wren slept for 9 hours and fifteen minutes before being up for the day and that included his usual 3am-ish nursing.

So, here is my theory. Wren sleeps for 2 hours AFTER his early morning nursing. That means that when he was waking at 4.30am he used to nurse at 2.30am. (correct) and now that he nurses around 3.30am he makes it till 5.30am. Last night he woke at 3am (perhaps because there were a few noises at that time since Josh came to bed late probably due to having an X-box 360 and Halo 3 in the house, about which I shall say no more). So, he woke at 5am.

I am cranky.

I think that night weaning is really truly upon us. If he sleeps through that 3am business perhaps he will make it longer in one long sleep.

I am not sure what else to do because I am certainly not keeping on getting up at 5.30am when it becomes 4.30am at the end of daylight saving on Nov 3rd. That gives me 2 weeks to get Wren to a 6.30am waking.

I am grumble-bollocks X2 this morning.

First step, first shoes, first root-beer float

Wren had a big day today. It was my school workday so he stayed at home with the babysitter Lisa while the wild winds blew and flurries of hail and bouts of torrential rain scoured Seattle. He did okay. He cried a bit, had very short naps but wasn't as wary as before. I think his molars are starting to hurt because although the right has all 4 cusps through, the left are just emerging.

First Steps
Since yesterday, Wren has been standing up all the time. He has learned to stand up from sitting down without holding on and pulling himself up. However, once up, he didn't know what to do so he would just stand there playing with a toy or looking at something he is trying to reach. Today, I showed him that he could take a step once he was standing. He had a few tries and can now take one and a half steps most attempts. He mainly does it because he thinks its funny that I am so excited. He grins at my encouragement.

Shoe Shopping for Frost
This afternoon we went shoe shopping to get Frost a pair of winter shoes. All he had until now was his pair of orange crocs with a pumpkin and black cat stuck on them. He ended up with a pair of Stride Rite sneakers and some socks in which he ran up and down the shop "sliding, like it was really slippery so I was like woooooosh". A customer who came in while we were in the shop said "he is very high energy, isn't he?" He is.

Wren Has Big Feet
While there I was seduced into buying Wren a pair of shoes, his first. He was barefoot at the time despite the cold, storms and rain so it was fitting that he was shod. According to the Shoe Man, Wren has big feet.

He said "The average size for a 12 month old is a 4 and a half and he is a good 5 already."

I commented that it was because he has a longer big toe that sticks out quite a bit. I have posted a picture of Wren in his new stride rites. I bought them because they are as flexible as a porn star. Okay, wrong simile for a baby blog. Anyway, thy are very flexible.

Fries and root beer
Because I was tired and in the car already, we went to fetch Josh from work. No, actually it was because we wanted to see Josh and spare him a bus ride home in the stormy traffic. On the way home we bought Frost a Dicks burger and fries from The Big Dicks at Queen Anne. Wren was sad about being confined in the car so Josh gave him some foam from the top of the root beer float. After that he was very quiet and able to be entertained by a couple of fries until he got home for his healthy squash and quinoa dinner.

Baby co-op, playdate and a French Maid

"I have always wondered why babies scream so much louder than humans. Maybe its because their pressure of excitement is higher?" Alexander (Age 7)

Wren was in fine form this afternoon when we went to fetch Frost and Alexander from school. Alexander ran up to the car saying "hello Wren" and Frost arrived yelling and hooting and swinging his backpack. From that moment on Wren decided to scream his own version of shouting. He was not unprovoked because Frost has the mistaken impression that shrieking back will be entertaining. It is not.

Somewhere on the way home I decided we needed an easy and crowd pleasing dinner so I stopped at Safeway for hot dogs, buns and instant cornbread mix. How the mighty have fallen. In 1996 I was cooking and grinding my own soybeans to make tofu and feeding a green tree frog from my hot compost heap. Now I am reading The Erotic Secrets of a French Maid (I kid you not, most of my excitement happens between the leaves, not sheets) which is a library book and am feeding my son hot dogs. These are not even Whole Foods nitrite free happy turkey hot dogs. They come from the aisle with that liquid cheese and meat that you can peel.

Anyway, Wren is well and enjoyed his baby group except for the part where I went to the discussion group without him for ten minutes. He also enjoyed his afternoon except for the part where I left him with a babysitter, awake, for an hour and a half. Yes, there is a theme here. Wren is very attached to me and is confident and exploratory and happy if I am within sight. If not, he cries and looks for me. It is tiring. At times he clings to my legs and follows along crawling and crying until I pick him up. This makes cooking difficult. I know this is a phase but I would like him to be a little more relaxed around people he knows so "I can go out without anxiety and return to a baby who is happy not crying and fixing me with gulping guilty stares.

What else? Oh, my blood test results came back showing I am once again calcium deficient. It seems whenever I go off calcium supplements it takes only a couple of months for calcium deficiency to rear again. I am taking that chalky supplement at night.

Yesterday, old family friends Brenda and James visited. It was very good to see them. It is surprising how important friends and connections from "home" are for the psyche. I feel very energized and appreciated for who I am after their visit and hope they enjoyed meeting the children. Yesterday, was a big digital day so Frost was not ultra-social. He had just noticed Joshua had bought and installed an X-Box 360 and the High-def cable had been turned on. As a result we could interest James in the intensity of our TV signal on the new screen as well as keep Frost mesmerized with HD eye-candy that came free with the X-box. He is now playing breeding pinata and feeding them fruit:

"I am making a garden of pinatas and building them houses and letting them have marriage cos then they can make babies" Frost (6)

Uh oh. I hope he doesn't do the math on his birth certificate.

The "how is his heart?" question (10 monthday)

This afternoon Wren and I got together with some babies and parents from our Listening-mothers Infant group. It was lovely to see the babies so big and social. At the group I was asked a question which has come up a lot of late. "So, how is his heart doing?" I have been asked on 2 phone calls and by 4 other people in the past 24 hours.

This question is difficult to answer. Wren's heart is not entirely normal. He still has aortic stenosis (mild), a bicuspid aortic valve, a mild coarctation of the aortic arch and the most serious concern - a left ventricular outflow tract obstruction (LVOT obstruction). His left ventricle has been mildly thickened since before he was born and remains pretty constant at a slight thickening.

The great news is that he seems to cope very well with these obstructions. If his stamina is reduced we have not seen it yet and we are unaware of any imminent problems like high blood pressure, regurgitation, problems with the valve or strain on his left ventricle.

However, we are not sure what these obstructions will mean in the long term. We have not been told that they will go away or become insignificant. We have not been told that they will require intervention. All conversations are along the lines of "if he shows the need we will do X and Y".

So far, he seems to be in the "chronic" state with his CHD - meaning he is pretty stable and will need monitoring every 6 months or so unless something changes. This is pretty hard to live with when you think about it but since Wren looks so well, is thriving developmentally and is clearly happy and 'healthy' we do not worry much day to day.

IF he did need surgery it would probably be open heart surgery to address the LVOT which can damage the aortic valve if turbulence is severe. Our cardiologist said they would be cautious about suggesting that surgery because it has a significant risk of causing scar tissue at the site of the repair which leads to further complications. We hope Wren does not need the repair.

Thank you for your concern, those who asked!

New games
Wren turned 10 months by stealth yesterday. He continues to surprise me with new games and cleverness. Today he continued his "I feed you, you feed me" routine and tried to feed me water from a cup in the bath. I had just shown him how to hold a little plastic cup and drink from it and he had taken a series of gulps while holding it himself. I showed him the sign "drink" and opened my mouth. He brought the (now empty) cup to me and pushed it to my mouth with a huge smile.

Bathing together
This is the second night we have bathed together and its fun. He likes to stand in the bath (probably because it is deep) and splashing makes him laugh. He is fascinated by the stream of water falling from a bottle and makes serious attempts to hold it. He also laughs at the gulping noise of air exiting an empty bottle pushed underwater. He squeals and laughs.

The Later Bedtime Attempt
Tonight, Wren went to bed at 8pm. This is part of the plan to get him to sleep past 5.30am but also in anticipation of daylight saving causing his current sleep habits to go awry. I really cannot go back to the days of 4.30am wakenings. It is just not going to happen. We all ate dinner together in a strange parody of a Top Chef challenge - my intention for us all to eat the same thing failed and we all ate different meals with similar ingredients:

1) Me: bunch of Kale with red pasta sauce, vegies and chicken
2) Wren: bits of Kale, vegies, chicken.
3) Frost: vegies, red pasta sauce, pasta, vegie meat balls.
4) Josh: pasta, vegies, chicken, alfredo/mushroom sauce.

The "how is his heart