Yes, baby, I'm here!

There are some moments I wish I could freeze in time - or somehow take a snapshot to forever hold on to the memory. Do you ever have those moments - ones that just tug at your heart strings, but yet are so simple and impossible to truly capture with a picture. There are times when I wish I was an artist - perhaps I would sketch the images when they are fresh in my head. Bedtime tonight was one of those moments - well, three of those moments.

The evening was a typical night - we gave him his bath, he played with his ducky and only attempted to climb out of the bath tub two times. We really do need to start bathing him in the upstairs bath tub! Elliot took Micah upstairs after bath time. He put on Micah's pajamas, read him a story and gave him his bottle. Micah was sleepy, so Elliot put Micah in his crib...and the crying began. Usually, Micah either rolls right over and falls asleep, or he rolls around the crib a bit restless (but trying to sleep), or he is happy and chats with his toys until he falls asleep. We waited a minute to see what would happen, but it was obvious that Micah needed a bit more cuddling before bed time.

I walked in, picked him up and sat with him on the glider. As we rocked together, Micah sucked his thumb and nestled in close to my chest. I held him with one hand on his head, gently stroking his hair, and the other arm wrapped around his body with my hand fanned out rubbing his back and tush. This was moment number one. I just love those moments when Micah snuggles. Within minutes, Micah was sound asleep, gently snoring.

I carefully stood up, slowly moved to the crib and gently lay Micah on the mattress. I slowly inched my way towards the door...and the wailing began again! I walked back to the crib and reached in to touch Micah. He immediately quieted down, took my hand and started smiling. Micah just wanted me to be close - moment number two. I rubbed his back and he slowly relaxed and put his head down. I gently worked my way back to the chair and sat down again, hoping that just having my presence in the room would be sufficient. Micah fussed for a moment until he realized he could play peak-a-boo with me through the crib.

After several rounds of peek-a-boo, I decided that it was time to try and sing Micah to sleep. I started with You Are My Sunshine and then I moved on to The Rose. Within moments, Micah was quiet, lying still and sucking his thumb. (As an aside - is anyone else picky about grammar? It drives me crazy when people misuse the words "lay" and "lie" or "then" and "than" or "accept" and "except." Not to mention when people misspell definitely - there is no "a" people! I admit it - if you blog and I'm reading it, I am noticing your grammatical and spelling errors. When I review my OWN blog posts, typos, missing words and failure to use parallel grammatical structure drive me bonkers. I even try to avoid ending sentences in prepositions, and it drives me crazy that I have allowed contractions to sneak into my blog posts. And yes, Dad, you did actually catch a typo once before I had a chance to correct it! But I digress.)

This time, once Micah was quietly nestled in, I decided to be smart - I thought I would wait a bit longer to ensure he was fast asleep. Micah's room is quite small - the glider is in the back corner of Micah's room and runs perpendicular to his crib (forming an "L" shape). The ottoman sits in front of the glider just next to his crib. While I waited for Micah to fall asleep, I sat back in the glider, closed my eyes and slowly started to drift off myself. And then, it happened - moment number three. I noticed this very faint whisper of a tickle by my feet, and when I opened my eyes, there was Micah's little arm sticking out through the slats of his crib reaching out to touch my toe. He just needed to know that I was still there. I pointed my toes towards him so that his hand could brush up against my foot, as if to say "yes, baby, I'm here." He slowly started to fall asleep, intermittently checking for me. It took another fifteen minutes, but he finally fell into that deep sleep that allowed me to quietly creep out of his room.

What I want to remember tonight is that there is a little boy upstairs who is just comforted by my mere presence - reaching out of a crib to brush my toe brings him a world of comfort. How incredible is that? I hope he knows how full my heart is with love for him, and that I am filled with joy just knowing he is there, too.

I don't know why he swallowed the spoon

Do you remember that children's song "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly. Perhaps she'll die." Looking back at the lyrics (and so many lyrics to children's songs), it is rather inappropriate for young children. Nevertheless, I could not get the song out of my head at dinner on Tuesday night.

We took my parents out for a dinner at Zaytinya (one of our favorite Middle Eastern restaurants) for Restaurant Week. The restaurant serves only "Mezze" portions (small tasting/appetizer sized portions) and they had a 5 course special for Restaurant Week. We each ordered a different option on the menu for each course, and we had 20 dishes to share between the four of us! The food was delicious.

During the meal, I fed Micah his dinner. When he was all finished, I let him have the spoon - I figured it would keep him busy and entertained. What I did not expect was to spend the remainder of the night trying to confiscate the spoon back from him. Every time he had the spoon, he shoved it all the way back into his throat and tried to swallow it! Needless to say, it kept making him choke - not that he stopped doing it over and over again or allowed me to take it away from him.

I guess the low point of the meal was picking up my car from the valet. Apparently, he decided to park it on the street (and we payed $11 for that courtesy) and he got a ticket. He handed it to me and told me it was my problem. We contacted the restaurant and they offered us a free meal and offered to cover the ticket. We are appealing it first, but we'll see about whether we take them up on their offer to cover the ticket.

Micah is officially a crawling MACHINE these days. Army style, on all fours - it really doesn't matter much to him. He pushes back to a sit, he chases the dog, he follows me around the house - he is just adorable. He gets into everything now, and he is constantly wanting to stand (and he keeps trying to walk, which worries me). We are working on childproofing the house, but we still have a way to go.

You say it's your birthday....

Today was my birthday! It has been a great weekend - I couldn't ask for a better birthday celebration. We took Micah to visit my grandmother on Saturday, and they had such a good time. He smiled and showed off his crawling skills and stood up. I think she understood he was her great grandson (hard to tell as she suffers from dementia), but she kept saying how gorgeous he was and what a sweet baby he is, so in that moment, I think we brought her a bit of joy. What else could we want?

Saturday evening was just a quiet night at home. Elliot spent most of it baking me a birthday cake while I hid in the other room, and at midnight he surprised me with a tiny little chocolate peanut butter cake with a candle in it! He also gave me my gift - an ipod touch! I'm so excited to start using it.

On Sunday, Micah slept until 8:30. Naturally, he refused to nap, so at 10:45, we packed up and went to my parents' house for brunch. Jeremy, Paige and Peyton came down to join us, and we had a DELICIOUS brunch! My mom made a french toast casserole, and we had bagels and cream cheese and lox. She made a yummy chocolate roll to top it all off. Micah was a bit cranky because his napping schedule was off, so he crashed in the car on our way back home. We were able to transfer him to the crib, and he napped for about an hour. My mom came over around 6:30 to babysit, and off we went for a wonderful dinner at Jaleo (a tapas restaurant) with some friends. Elliot brought a cake - a chocolate cake, with dulce de leche filling and chocolate icing. He even wrote happy birthday on it! He is getting much better at decorating cakes.

So now I'm sitting here, stuffed with cake and food. I am re-starting my diet on September 1, so I better enjoy this next week!

I want to be an Army Ranger

Micah is crawling! He sometimes crawls on all fours, but his preferred mode of crawling... Army style! I know I'm a proud mom, but isn't he adorable?

Spa day was a raging success - I had a thoroughly relaxing massage and a facial, and a fantastic dinner by the water. What more could I want? I did fine without pumping, and Micah did a great job taking the bottle all day. Our only problem? I wasn't around to enforce the schedule. Elliot did not exactly make sure Micah got his 2:00 nap, so Micah crashed hard at 5:30 when Lauren was here... and slept until 7:30. When I came home after 8, she was just feeding him dinner. He was up until well after 9 last night, but he finally went down and slept through the night. Today was a good day, and I insisted on napping on time today!

Spa Day

My birthday is coming up this weekend, so today I'm headed off to spend the day at the spa with one of my best friends! This is the first time I'm really leaving Micah all day - I'll be saying goodbye at 9:00 am and I do not think I will make it back before he heads to bed. I'm also planning to go the entire day without pumping or breastfeeding, so we'll see how that goes.

Micah has woken up twice so far this week. Tuesday night, he cried out at 11:00 pm, but he fell back asleep...until midnight, when he woke up screaming. We went and got him and cuddled with him for a bit before he fell back asleep at 12:45. I'm not liking this trend! He did something very similar Sunday night. Hopefully, this phase will pass quickly.