So where did I leave off, there was swimming and the battle over the milk. Well the swimming is going really well and so is the bottle feeding. But it's really funny. There is a little dance, a baby/adult thing, a waltz, a cha cha cha. I give him the bottle and he pretends to suck. He pretends to like it. He pretends to wolf it down. Then I look at the bottle and there is none missing.
I take it out and give him a break. He has shown me. He is the boss, I get it. I try a second time and he wails. Loud and sobbing, telling the world that I am a bad parent and that I am trying to poison him with snake venom flavored milk. So I stop, settle him and try again. At this point he admits that there is purpose to the bottle feeding after all and drinks the milk as if it was the last 120mls on earth!
The most important addition to this story is the 'Mother can't be in the room' thing. Some send mother away for a night out or a long walk. Well certainly the time it worked perfectly the first time, Ciara was in another room, but today she was in the room and he stared at her for most of the feed. He has graduated to an easy feeder.
There was a bit of screaming along the way and a good load of wriggling and one really unpleasant afternoon, but we are there. There is a very good maxim that says never row over food, that can lead to all sorts of difficulty later on. I console myself with the hope that he'll never remember that row, he's too young. Can we have scarred him for life already? The baby books tell us we have so I'm already saving for the therapy sessions. Or maybe it would be easier to retrain as a psychologist.
The other graduation is to the big bed. Its a cool apartment friendly transformer cot that has two levels, interchangeable sides and concertinas down into a tiny little thing that fits in a cupboard. It has a massive sleeping area which hopefully means Max won't smack his head against the sides. He has just outgrown the Moses Basket. The wicker sides were about to be broken down by his gorilla fists and massive gorilla head. He's not out-sized you understand just bigger than the Moses Basket. If he were relying on that basket to float him down the river he would now be a child of the Mer-People.
We had a very exciting day today, home at 2:45 and back out the door to the new art Gallery in town by three. Max had already been out to the Botanic Gardens but he rallied and took the opportunity of the car journey to nap. It must have been really weird, given that when he awoke he was in a room full of barbed wire. He then went into a room with chalk drawings of ghost estates and stonehenge. He made a decision late in the trip that he prefers the classics, we must go to the National Gallery soon and confirm that decision. We then went to Tesco and sorted out the shopping for the week. The magic ended in the car on the way home when hunger finally struck properly and the wailing began.
The magic of the organisation slipped too as the bottle leaked all over the bottom of the changing bag. There is a reason a dampener is called a dampener. Some days are just packed and wonderful and perfect. Dampener or no dampener, it was Ace!
No comments:
Post a Comment