Leaps and Bounds

Growing happens. Liam is learning how to stand on his own, of course always at moments I don't have a camera on me. Standing on the side of the bathtub chewing on his rubber ducky. While I was speaking to someone about being her child care provider. (I got the job! I start in a couple weeks, watching her baby boy who is only 5 days younger than Liam.) I did get one, the first time he did it. Perhaps not the best angle, but you can see he is standing on his own!

Liam has been working on other skills. Like putting blocks into a box. Climbing the bottom step and I am helping him learn how to get down instead of sort of tumble off.

We also just switched him onto a new brand of formula. We decided it was time for him to get onto a formula that was about the same, but a generic brand from Target. It is about half the cost.

As soon as I can, I am going to reserve the picnic shelter at the park where I want to have Liam's first birthday party. We sent out the invitation on Facebook for his birthday. June 5th. Sunday afternoon so that Dan can be there.

I can not believe he is just a week away from being 10 months old. And only 2 months and a week away from being a year old.

We are also moving forward in the food department. He has tried almost every fruit and veggie you can find in the produce section. Just no citrus yet, and we have not done blueberries or strawberries. Those are on the list. When he can have them.

I am about to put an end to the purees and move on to just well cooked veggies for him to gnaw on.

He really liked the butternut squash!

I love watching his personality come out. He is getting more demanding about what he wants. He will whine and fuss about things now. Especially if you have to take him away from something he wants, or deny him something he wants.

He really likes hanging out on the couch and standing against the back of it. If you decide that its time to do something else, he will cry for a bit when he has to be taken away from his couch. Or when he puts himself in danger and you have to stop him. He especially does not like when you see his little mouth chewing something and you know he found something on the floor. He hates it when you take away whatever it is that he stuck in there. I mean, you can only clean so much. Something is going to slip through your cleaning, and he WILL find it. He will make a bee line to it, and you had no idea it was even there.

Liam is a brave baby! He will dive headlong into things and trust with the unshakable trust of a child that you will make sure he is safe.

I think I have found out that I am worthy of that trust. I have relaxed about some things, grown more determined about others. Dan and I are becoming adept at thinking on the fly and deciding what we can all live with and what works for Liam. Choosing formula, foods, snacks and toys.

Just the other day we decided to spend a gift card we had on a stand to walk push toy for Liam. We bundled him up and drove over to the Babies R' Us in a rain storm to look what they had.  I was liking this VTech one, push and ride train. Dan found a dinosaur/dragon toy. They both did what we needed, and we were going to get the train, but we hit some of the sound making buttons, and wow... the sounds were sooooooo annoying. Some not so bad, but others were just enough to make your brain hurt. So we picked the dragon toy. Liam seems to like it and we can stand the songs. They might be a little bit repetitive, but nothing like the train.

Spring is heading here, and summer get to come out and warm up the grass. Soon we will be heading outside and taking Liam out into the yard to explore the outside world. I can not wait to see him smile in the sunshine, crawling and walking all over the yard. I wonder how many sticks and rocks and leaves I will have to pull from his mouth... but it will all be worth it to see him wiggle his toes in the grass.

Oh, and he is learning a bit about talking. He makes more sounds. No first word yet, but he is trying so hard! I hope that in a few more weeks I will have something to say about talking or walking!

How to Forgive...

My best friend is coming to visit today. (hopefully... I won't hold my breath...)

But her significant other said something hurtful and hateful to me about 8 months ago. There is a post in here about it...

And there is a slim chance that person will try to apologize to me. I already told my friend that if that person does not apologize, that person will not be allowed into my home, and will have to go do something else while I visit with my friend.

I am torn... I want them to sit there and listen to me tell them how much it hurt to hear those things. To scream at them and tell them they are a horrid bitch and an ugly soul and that they always do things like this... they say hateful things without thinking. They never think. They are awful and disgusting and make me want to club their head in with a shovel.

But I don't want to carry this much negativity inside me. I want to forgive, if they really apologize and it seems sincere.

I really don't like that I am faced with this.

My friend broke up with them... WHY did she have to get back together with this.... this..... this Ugly Bitch.  WHY!?!?!?!?     Ugh.

I know that even if I forgive, something else will come up, they will say something else hateful and rude and horrible. Because that is what they do. I have forgiven it for years and years, but I don't know if I can keep being the better person. I want to be a good person. But there are some things you can not forgive.





On a happier note, Liam is growing just fine. He is happy and healthy and cruising along on the couch, the chairs, the baby gates, the stairs...  He crawls so fast, he explores everything.  I love watching him reach out with his index finger and ever so carefully touch things that he wants to learn about. Very gently at first, then he presses down harder. Then comes the clumsy grab and whooooop, right toward the mouth.

So far we have extracted 5 leaves, one penny, a rock, a plastic piece to a chair, a 3 inch long piece of yarn, 2 fuzz balls, multiple pieces of cardboard and a dried piece of carrot from his mouth.  And hey, I sweep every other day and try to run the vac once a week or so. I pick up EVERYTHING I see off the floor, but babies just zero in on anything that is small and might fit into their mouth.

And I don't even count all the pieces of baby O's that he finds and get stuck in there and eaten before I can stop him. 

He makes it hard to keep the place clean. The noise from the Vac scares him and makes him cry. It also will wake him from a nap and make him scream. So I can not Vac unless Daddy is home to take Liam somewhere behind a closed door and reassure him and keep him happy.

He is starting to move faster than the cats at times, and has cornered Johnny and gotten his ears boxed already. I am mad at the kitty for reacting that way, but Liam DOES corner him and pull on his fur and gets a tight grip and won't let him escape. Things like this usually happens when I do something dumb, like think I can go into the kitchen for 2 minutes to wash out my cereal bowl. I mean, come on Mommy... Don't you know you are not allowed to do ANYTHING but watch the baby!

Liam also topples over. Less now than before, but he has rolled over from a kneeling pose and smacked his cheek on the edge of a board book. He also had a board book in his mouth and fell over and cut his lip on it.

But all of this is teaching me something... That it is ok. That I am not a failure as a mommy if the baby gets a bruise, a scratch, a bump... He moves so fast that in the 3 seconds it takes to turn around when you hear him crawling, he can already be in trouble. That I am not a bad mommy when he is playing safely with his toys, and I turn away to do something else and he has managed to crawl off and fall and cut his lip on a book. Because all I can do it make him as safe as possible. But no one can watch him 24 hours a day, or even every waking moment.

Sure, I am extra careful about the big things... the changing table, the stairs, the bath tub, using unsteady things to stand... I watch him, never leave him alone, all that stuff. But no one can stop the small stuff. No one can move that fast, or be between him and danger at every turn.

I think it has an added bonus. Ever since he got his ears boxed by the cat, he has not cornered the cat again. When he fell over holding the board book, he has not tried to crawl and chew on the book at the same time. And while I know we have more toppling over and more tripping and falling as we learn to walk and then run, that is all part of growing up.

Now, this does not mean that the kitty scratch on his cheek didn't make me feel like a bad mommy for a few hours. Or that I didn't kiss his little lip and beat myself up for "letting" him crawl with the book.  It just means that once the crying stopped and the redness went down and it didn't look so bad, I didn't feel so bad anymore. I got to think about it and see how he reacted.

A lot of this is about forgiving myself for being human. Forgiving myself for needing to go put a dish in the sink, or looking away.

Even in this moment as I write this, he is sitting on the floor playing with his squeaky blocks and his board books and a cardboard shoe box. There are so many potential disasters in just this scenario. But I am ok with only glancing at him every 30 seconds. He is right beside me, and even if he got hurt, I would be right here to scoop him up and give him kisses. I can't save him from every bump and bruise. If I did, he would never learn. And I would never learn to just let go and let him learn.