Geekamama

Author Archives: Jessica Wallace


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You can take the Mama out of the Geek world…

It’s been nearly twelve years that I’ve worked for my current employer, a software company that I suspect most of you are all too familiar with.  Earlier this month, spurred in part by the seizures and in part by a few personal factors, I decided it was time to leave.  I’m fortunate in many ways; I have the full support of my husband and family in doing this, and we have the means (and medical insurance) such that I can afford to take a couple weeks of down time before jumping back in to the workforce.  It was not an easy decision to make, but from the way I’ve been feeling since putting in my notice, I can’t help but be convinced that this was the right choice to make for now.

Many years ago, when my  previous husband and I were divorcing and I had to start breaking the news to people, I did so with expectations that people would be disappointed in me for not being able to make it work. Instead, I received almost unanimous support from family, friends and co-workers. I thought I was going to hear things like “Have you tried [something else]?” or be told that I was giving up, not trying as hard as I should have.  Instead, I heard things like “I’m so glad! You deserve to be happy,” and “Kudos for making a tough decision!”

This past week, as I’ve been telling my friends and co-workers that I’m ending my working relationship, I’ve realized that I had similar expectations about their reactions.  I worried that people would question my decision, or ask whether I had done everything I could to make things work out. And once again, I’ve realized that I haven’t been giving them enough credit.  Once again, I’m hearing nothing but supportive comments.  My friends and family know I’ve been unhappy here for quite a while, long enough that it’s worn me down physically and emotionally. They probably also know that I’ve stubborn and hate to admit defeat, so it’s not too surprising that it took something drastic to make me realize what was happening. Walking away from a decent salary and a prime slate of benefits seems a little crazy, especially in this economy.  Working here was right for me for many years, and it was through my job that I met many of those friends (one who later became my husband).  But even good relationships can go sour under certain circumstances.  Sometimes it’s possible to put things right.  Other times, the price of staying outweighs the benefits.

I’m an engineer at heart, so I have to analyze. In looking at the similarities between the two “breakups,” I’ve been trying to understand why my first instinct is to brace for criticism and disapproval.  The best I’ve come up with is that it’s the criticism and disapproval that I feel myself. Is this really the right decision? Could I have found a way to make it work if I’d just looked a little harder or put more effort into it?  Clearly I’ve failed somehow, and surely it must be my own fault.  After all, hundreds of other woman, mothers of young children, are able to pull off the necessary balance of effort needed to succeed in the workforce, and even in this high-intensity company.  If they can do it, there’s no reason I shouldn’t have been able to as well.

But frankly, if I’m going to send my Kiddo off to the care of someone else five days a week, it really should be so that I can do something I love and find fulfilling, rather than something that’s going to drag me down or even leave me in tears at the end of a too-long workday.  The people who care about me are able to see that, and I can certainly stand behind it when it applies to other people. I just don’t do as well acknowledging it for myself.

The support and love I’ve gotten from the people close to me as I’ve made this decision has been more than I expected.  As my husband loves to remind me, I am more than just my job title.  Yes, it’s been an integral part of my identity for a very long time, but just as I’m more than a mom, more than a wife, more than a puzzle solver or a blog writer, I’m also more than what’s on my business card. I’m greater than the sum of my many hats–and now, it’s time to try on a new one.


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Curveball caught, life goes on

Sometimes life throws you curveballs.  I’ve had a few myself, the most recent being just a couple weeks ago.  I’ve noticed that the key to surviving unexpected situations seems to be how well you can adapt to the new version of “normal.”  Heck, even for surviving expected situations (bringing home a new baby, switching jobs), when it’s a significant change to what you were used to.  It’s been about two and a half weeks now since Return of the Seizures, and we’ve had to make some changes at home in response.  Most of them have been minor ones, but breaking old habits and forming new ones can be a little rough until the changes become routine.

The biggest issue for us is that I’m temporarily restricted from driving.  Even though it does feel like we’ve got the seizures under control for now (they haven’t been back since I left the hospital), we’ve been abiding by the restriction for the time being. My husband and I carpool to work now, and he drops me off and then takes Kiddo to daycare himself, since daycare and my husband’s office are very close to each other.  In the evening they pick me up.  It’s been nice driving in as a family, even though it’s meant having to shift around some work hours and responsibilities.

I’ve also had to get back in the habit of taking medication twice a day.  Thankfully, I’m no longer feeling the dizziness on it that I was experiencing the first couple days.  I have a new neurologist now, and I like him a lot. My old doctor’s office was very far away, and they couldn’t see me until the end of May.  This new one is closer, is associated with some of my other regular doctors, and was able to get me in for a visit much sooner.  Switching doctors often means going through another round of tests, and I’m not thrilled about that, but since medical science continues to advance, perhaps they’ll find something helpful this time.  The good news is that my new doctor was willing to switch me from the Keppra that I’m currently taking back to the Lamictal that I took several years ago with great results.  It’s a multiple-week ramp-up process, so I’m sure there will be some emotional ups and downs over the next month or  so, but I’m willing to suffer through that knowing that it has worked well for me before.

In my limited seizure experience, the only time there was a single contributing factor was when I was drinking heavily.  In all other cases, it’s been an accumulation of multiple factors: insufficient sleep, high stress levels (often work- or school-related), and a slightly weaker physical state due to illness. The last one is difficult to avoid entirely, and the first one can also be a challenge with a young child in the household. But there are things I can do about my stress levels at work, and I’m taking steps in that direction.

Other than that, life at our house hasn’t been too affected by this event.  In many ways that’s great, but it also makes it easy to forget sometimes why we made those changes in the first place.  I get busy enough in the evenings that in between sorting laundry and cleaning up dinner leftovers, sometimes it slips my mind that I was supposed to take a pill until it’s overdue by a couple hours.  If I had a severe enough seizure history that forgetting to take my pill on time almost always led to seizures, I’m sure it would be a top priority every night.  But instead, sometimes the more immediate demands of life distract me from those tasks with less obvious results.

For all that I’m willing to talk about it and write about it, let me be clear about one thing:I hate having this diagnosis. I don’t like the practical and emotional impact it has on our family, and I don’t like the idea that my brain needs help to function properly. I just want to be normal again (or as close to it as I’ve ever managed to get.) But I’ve adapted to it before, and we can deal with this now.


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By the way…

It’s probably obvious by now by now that I’m a huge fan of Intersect.  A couple months ago, they added a new feature: your own personal map with the stories you’ve shared pinpointed in space.  They also provided code to embed your story map in other web pages.  Unfortunately for me and other WordPress users, the embed code uses an HTML tag that the WordPress software intentionally strips out for security reasons.

However, last week I came across a workaround to this problem, and I’m delighted to say that it works almost as well as embedding the map itself.  I’ve added a new page to the menu bar above, and I invite you all to check out my storyline.  I’ve also added a few more stories there to make my map more interesting, although you do have to scroll the map to the left to get to the Hawaii ones.  I’ve got a few more coming soon, but thought it might be more tantalizing to distribute them sloooooowly.  (ok, fine. I’ve been busy this past weekend helping assemble an application for the World Henchmen Organization, and doing various job- and brain-related things.  More stories AND blog posts coming soon, I’m sure of it!)


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Reader question: Did changing diapers lead to a change of mind?

Recently I challenged some friends to come up with blog topics for me. My friend Sora suggested this one: how have your opinions about parenting changed since actually becoming a parent?

I have to cast my mind back almost two years to answer this one. I remember feeling very uncertain, especially as the due date got closer. It seemed like there were so many different approaches to parenting.  So many books.  So many philosophies. How would we know we were making the right decisions, especially in cases where we wouldn’t see the results for literally years?

In many ways, it got easier after the delivery.  There were a lot of decisions that became moot, because we went with what felt instinctually right.  For example, when to start solids? We just waited until Kiddo started showing interest. The best guideline I’d heard was that when we started feeling guilty about eating “real” food in front of him, that would be the time. As imprecise as that sounds, it turned out to be spot on. One day not long before he turned six months old, he started showing a different kind of interest in the food we were eating, as though he was trying to figure out why we were putting it in our mouths and more importantly, why we weren’t taking it back out.  A week or two later we broke out the traditional box of rice cereal, plus some avocado for variety. It was important to me that he be exposed to a variety of food, because I’m a picky eater myself and didn’t want to pass along that habit. But as it turns out, Kiddo loves to eat all kinds of things. Last night he was chowing away on chicken curry; one of the fastest new words I’ve seen him pick up was “couscous.”

There were a few areas where I’d been firm about an idea while incubating the boy and changed my mind afterward. The biggest one was Baby Sign Language. I’d written it off  years ago after an incident at a friend’s house. Even when Kiddo was born, I wasn’t planning on trying it. When my mom was visiting a week or two later, we had a conversation in the car about how useful it was for a friend’s family back home, and I found my position softening. A few months later, baby sign language books were on my Christmas list. We only learned about a dozen signs, but I’m sure glad we reversed position on this one.  Having a way for Kiddo to tell us he was all done with his food, or that he wanted more, has been a huge help in reducing frustration at the dinner table. We taught him a sign to use when asking for help and it comes up all the time. Just this morning, after he knocked all his toys off the edge of the bathtub, he turned and calmly asked me for help getting them back, rather than whining in frustration. And contrary to some nay-sayers’ belief, studies have found that learning nonverbal signs doesn’t actually delay or interfere with children’s ability to learn spoken language. Thanks, Mom!

One area where I found myself being less open-minded than I’d expected is breastfeeding. Before getting pregnant, I figured formula feeding was just as good as breastfeeding. Once I started reading parenting forums and other collections of opinions I decided breastfeeding was preferable, but that I wouldn’t be upset if we had to supplement. I was unprepared for how much of an emotional impact it would have on me. While Kiddo and I had a good breastfeeding relationship as far as direct feeding went, I struggled when it came to pumping. At work it was difficult for me to produce enough milk for him, and also a challenge to carve out regular time for pumping. At home I often stayed up late at night, trying to get just another half-ounce or so. Around five months, my husband began laying the groundwork for introducing formula, at least while at daycare. I gave lip service to the idea, but still resisted. The day it finally sunk in that I just wasn’t producing the way I needed to, I sat at the kitchen table and cried. In the long run it probably doesn’t matter when we started giving him formula in addition to pumped milk (for the record: seven months) but it was a surprise to me how much stronger my feelings about it were once I was actually doing it.

If I look back even further, before I’d actually considered becoming a parent, I think the biggest change in viewpoint was that I used to think I didn’t want kids because I’d be a terrible parent. I didn’t think I could measure up to my own parents. And heck, I enjoyed sleeping in on weekends and being able to eat whatever and whenever I wanted. I never believed that being a parent would be an easy thing (having a baby brother born just before I turned 16 cured that illusion quickly) and in part, my decision to be childless was born out of wanting to take the easy path. When my husband and I decided to try for kids, it was a big leap of faith for me. Now I honestly do believe it was one of the best changes of mind I’ve ever had.


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The lurking demon

This past Monday evening I left the house for what was supposed to be a fun social evening, an officewarming for the new Intersect offices.  Instead, I ended up in the hospital.  After almost eight years of dormancy, my epilepsy returned with a vengeance.

I don’t talk about it much.  I don’t consider myself a Person With Epilepsy, but rather someone who occasionally had has epileptic seizures.  I was diagnosed in the summer of 1998, more than a dozen years ago, but I’ve had only a handful of incidents in that entire time.  For the first ten years, I was on medication to keep the seizures at bay (and it worked, for the most part) but when I got pregnant in 2008, it had been five years since any seizure activity and my neurologist OK’d me stopping the meds.  Call me, she said, if you have any more incidents.  We were both cautiously optimistic that we’d seen the last of them.

Everyone has a seizure threshold, the amount of stimuli needed to provoke a seizure.  For certain people, myself included, that seizure threshold is more easily reached.  The stereotypical trigger is flashing colors or lights, but only a small percentage of people who have seizures are actually triggered in that fashion.  More common triggers are sleep deprivation, stress, and heavy alcohol consumption.  For me, it’s generally a combination of factors.  This is why I don’t drink much these days; unfortunately, the others are trickier to control.

Last Monday, I was coming off an extremely rough week at work that involved a lot of late nights. On top of that, a stomach flu bug was making the rounds in my family, and I hadn’t eaten much that day.  I was feeling a little off when I got to the party, but wrote it off as merely an upset stomach even though every single seizure I’ve had has been preceded by dizziness and nausea.  Frankly, it never occurred to me that I might be vulnerable, because I thought that my seizures were a thing of the past.

At the party I got to meet a few people I’d been hoping to talk to, but mid-conversation with one of the Intersect developers, I was hit with a wave of dizziness.  I excused myself and slipped into an empty conference room, intending to sit down and collect myself before making a mad dash for the restroom.  But the next thing I knew, I was on the floor coming out of fuzzy unconsciousness, trying to reply to someone nearby saying my name.  When I finally was able to sit up, covered in blood and worse, I learned that I’d apparently fallen face-first onto the concrete floor.  We thought at the time that I might have fractured my nose, but the consensus in the ER later was that I’d just “thumped” it.  I’ve got some nice bruises to show for it.  While in the Harborview emergency room, I had another seizure.  I don’t have a clear memory of everything else that happened there–I’m told I was given Ativan a couple of times, and I was taken for x-rays (I remember them taking out my earrings) and a CT scan–so I’m very grateful that my husband was there to observe and to advocate for me.  Four days later I’m still piecing things together.

Around 1:30 a.m. I was released, and with the help of a friend, we set out to pick up the car I’d driven to the Intersect offices that evening.  We were almost there when my brain foiled that plan by misfiring again, and it was back to the hospital for us.  This time they admitted me overnight.  And from there on out, I really don’t remember much at all until the following morning.  After a few more tests and some discussion with the on-call neurologists, they decided it was safe to let me go again, and this time we made it home without incident.  Since then, I’ve been taking Keppra and resting, and have had no further seizure activity.  Then again, it’s only been four days.  It could be months before another one happens.  It could be years.  It could be never.

I’m surprised by how much this has thrown me.  After all, thousands of people live happy, fulfilling lives in spite of an epilepsy diagnosis.  Years ago, it was just a thing I dealt with, another pill to pop twice a day and a couple behavioral modifications.  But this time it’s hitting me a little harder.  Maybe it’s because the Keppra has depression listed as a common side effect, or maybe it’s annoyance at how much this disrupts our daily schedule (I’m not supposed to drive for six months) and the plans I’d roughed out for the next few years.  But I think a lot of it is due to the fact that I truly believed that this was a demon that had gone away for good.  I’d been seizure-free and off the meds with no ill effects, even through pregnancy and the sleep deprivation that comes standard with most newborns. I was convinced that whatever had gone awry in my brain at the age of 25 had somehow righted itself.  It’s a bit of a blow to discover that instead, the demon was merely biding its time, waiting for the right (or rather, wrong) combination of factors.


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More than I could ever promise

I have a husband.  He is wonderful.

We met many years ago while helping to run an intern puzzle-solving competition at Microsoft. We started dating in 2005.
In 2007, in front of about 125 people who shared our geeky puzzle-y interests, he asked me to marry him.
I was so surprised that it took me several seconds to respond.

 

We were married in March 2008, with a couple dozen friends and families to bear witness.
As a tip of the hat to a Montana girl gone west, Mother Nature gifted us with a surprise snowstorm.
The California guy handled it with flair.

I think he’s a very handsome fellow.  He’s a full foot taller than me, and his eyes crinkle up when he smiles.
Most days you’ll find him wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but when he wants to, he cleans up real nice.

He’s a great husband. He does things like wash my car as a surprise when I’m out with my mom and sister, and buy me pistachios when they’re on sale just because he knows I’m addicted to them. True, he’s not always great about picking up after himself (but then, neither am I) and sometimes we get into arguments about stupid things. But he shows me love in so many ways, like being consoling when I’m taking days to work through a tough decision, and listening to me, and remembering the little things that are important to me.
He puts up with my occasional stress-induced spazz-outs, and he takes care of a lot of vital household tasks that I often overlook and forget to thank him for.

On top of that, he’s a great dad to Kiddo. They play together, they read books, they enjoy being around each other.
Kiddo is continually amazing us with how quickly he learns things, and he gets plenty of love and praise from his dad whenever he shows off a new talent.

I love him (both of them) so much.

 

Happy anniversary, dearest husband.  Here’s to many more wonderful years together.

 

Photos 3, 4, 5 and 9 copyright 2008 Rathbone Images

Photo 2 courtesy of Jan Chong


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Getting the picture

Sometime during the past football season, Kiddo discovered the TV. It was bound to happen; my husband and I are regular TV-watchers, and to cut it out of our lives completely wouldn’t have been realistic for us. We did make some changes to our habits so that we were watching it less while Kiddo was awake, but from September through January, our Sundays are usually spent watching men in tight pants crash into each other chasing a funky-shaped ball. And on one of those Sunday afternoons, Kiddo pointed to it and announced “Dee!”  The age of innocence was over.

It’s commonly claimed in online parenting forums that the American Academy of Pediatrics says children younger than 2 shouldn’t have any screen time at all, be it television, computers, or video games.  I looked up the exact recommendations, and found the following:

“In early care and education settings, media (television [TV], video, and DVD) viewing and computer use should not be permitted for children younger than two years.” (from page 58 of the Preventing Childhood Obesity in Early Care and Education PDF)

and

“Pediatricians should recommend the following guidelines for parents: […] Discourage television viewing for children younger than 2 years, and encourage more interactive activities that will promote proper brain development, such as talking, playing, singing, and reading together.” (from the AAP’s 2007 policy statement on Children, Adolescents and Television)

In other words, daycares and preschools shouldn’t be letting the infants and toddlers watch TV or computer screens; parents should try to find other activities when possible. But I did feel a little better knowing that the recommendation wasn’t that screen time must be avoided completely at home. We’re stumbling enough already in this parenting gig.

Actually, considering how much time my husband and I used to spend in front of the television, I’m pleasantly surprised at how little screen exposure Kiddo actually gets.  He’ll ask us to turn it on, but then he doesn’t pay much attention to it. While he will occasionally look at it for a bit to point out cars and dog, he doesn’t drop everything else he’s doing to watch it. The only time he’s seen popular kids’ shows like Yo Gabba Gabba was when we visited his older cousins last Thanksgiving. He’s started to recognize characters like Elmo and Mickey Mouse, but he knows them as toys and t-shirt decorations rather than TV characters.  Let me be clear, none of this was from any intentional plan to keep his TV time at a minimum. I suspect that if I were a stay-at-home mom, Cailou and Wubbzy would be a regular part of the day.

Back in our pre-kid years, my husband and I would usually eat dinner in the TV room in front of whatever we’d DVR’d recently.  We could usually make it through three or four hour-long programs.  Usually we’d be multitasking, running laundry during the breaks or working on computer tasks while keeping one eye on the big screen.  These days, the three of us usually eat together at the kitchen table with the TV off. After dinner, we play with Kiddo or read stories until it’s time for him to go to bed.  Usually it’s not until after he’s down for the night that we manage to squeeze in one or two shows, much less than we watched together a few years back. But we’re busy enough now that if I tried to watch more than that, I’d be viewing them from behind closed eyelids.

The shows that husband and I watch together are mostly reality shows with a few dramas and comedies mixed in: The Amazing Race, Survivor, Top Chef, American Idol, Castle, How I Met Your Mother, Hawaii 5-0, Glee. We record Burn Notice, CSI, and reruns of NCIS as well, but often end up holding on to them for weeks and watching them when our regular shows are airing re-runs.  Around Christmastime we add The Sing-Off, and during the summer we record Big Brother and the Tour de France.  I have hazy memories of the first couple weeks after Kiddo was born, sitting up with him watching cycling live as it aired during the pre-dawn hours.

It probably won’t be long until we start recording Sesame Street and other kid-directed programs. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with being able to enjoy a show together, and I have warm memories of weekly Popcorn Nights growing up, when the whole family would get together to watch Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas on Friday night. Television is just a device. It’s up to us to be parents, and to be wise about how we use it as a family.


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Quest: successful!

Last saturday afternoon we decided to check out the KidsQuest Children’s Museum in the Factoria Mall.  It was a lot of fun, even for someone as young as our Kiddo.  While many of the exhibits are geared toward children ages 6 to 10, there are still plenty of things for smaller kids to do.

There’s a central play area called the Backyard that’s designed for children ages 0 to 3.  They have a big train table set up…

… and a slide shaped like a giant green plant.

Near the train table is a miniature kitchen.  Naturally, Kiddo gravitated toward the orange foods and dishes.

Then he went to another part of the Backyard and had fun flipping light switches on and off like he does at home.

We spent some time looking at–and through–the fish tank.  On the other side of the tank there’s a small area set up with stools, mirrors, and makeup for face painting.

After that we left the Backyard and headed to the Waterworks area.  We spent almost all of the rest of our time there playing in the Central Stream, in the Waterworks area.

He carried that orange ball around with him for the rest of the time that we were at KidsQuest, and wailed when I had to take it away.  Sorry Kiddo!  He also soaked his shirt, and I’d forgotten to bring an extra one along so I had to run out and buy him one.  I bet the OshKosh B’Gosh store across the walkway gets a lot of business from museum visitors.

It was a lot of fun, and something I plan to recommend to my local friends.  I’m sure we’ll be back many times.  I’m even mulling over the idea of having his next birthday party there–that central area for small children is a nice selling point, and there are other exhibits that would appeal to older kids as well.


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Step 1: Make a list.

I’m just going to come out with it here.  I’ve found something that helps me cope with my hectic days and too-short weeks.  It’s becoming something I rely on–perhaps even depend on.  I’m lost without it.

Hi, I’m Jessica, and I’m a Listmaker.

Bah, you say.  Everyone makes lists.  Everyone knows that making a task list can help keep you on track.  I agree.  However, earlier this week I went a couple of days without making my standard to-do list, and felt totally at sea by the afternoon.  What was I doing just now?  It was so easy to get sidetracked.  Perhaps I’ve become addicted to my list board.

The list board is a small whiteboard on my desk at work.  It’s about the size of a standard piece of paper.  I’ve got a set of four whiteboard markers next to it, the same ones my whole company uses on the large wall whiteboards in conference rooms.  Every day before I leave the office, I erase the contents (writing them in a small notebook for posterity and to use in my weekly status reports) and then I make a new list of what I know I’ll need to do the next day.  I use the large markers because I’m not trying to summarize the task, just keep track of it, and if it takes me more than three or four words to capture it then perhaps it needs to be broken into smaller steps.  “Meet w/ George” “Test plan feedback” “Code review for E” were some of yesterday’s items–just a couple of words per item, enough to trigger my memory .  The whiteboard isn’t to document the details of the task.  It’s mainly a way to keep my work items in front of me throughout the day.  Its small size, combined with the thick-tipped markers, help keep my workload at a do-able level.  If I was able to write as small as I can on a pad of paper, it would be really easy to fill the board with a set of tasks that I couldn’t realistically complete in a day.  And on the rare day that I do finish everything on the whiteboard, there’s a “Future To-Do” list in the notebook with extra tasks to work on.

I also color-code my tasks.  Black ones are work-related ones, blue ones are personal ones like “Dentist appt.”  I check off the completed ones with green marker, and mark the ones that are blocked or postponed with red.  (Not coincidentally, these are the four colors available in the company office supply rooms.)  I tried crossing off items as I completed them, but that was getting the tip of my green marker all messy.  It also made the items hard to read at the end of the day.

I used to use a spiral notebook for tasks, and I’ve long been known to jot notes on whatever scrap of paper I can find when I need to remember something.  That worked, but the little whiteboard has been really helping me narrow my focus so that I can get through just today’s tasks without being overwhelmed or stressed out about the things I need to do next week.  Those items are documented in emails and on my calendar, so as long as I’m checking it regularly (or, um, obsessively) I don’t forget about them.  But one source of stress for me has been getting too focused on the big-picture glob of things to do, to the point where it’s hard for me to stay on track working on a single small piece of that glob.  The whiteboard has another advantage that paper lists don’t: at the end of the day, it’s so satisfying to literally wipe the slate clean and start anew.

Keeping the whiteboard list on my desk has helped me a lot over the past few weeks.  I haven’t yet carried the practice home for evening and weekend productivity, but that’s because I keep coming up with other things to do that are more important than fixing our whiteboard so that it hangs properly, or rounding up a set of markers.  One of these days I’ll remember to do those things.  Hey!  Maybe I should put them on a list!


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Yes sir, that’s my baby

I was dropping Kiddo off at daycare the other morning, carrying him across the parking lot before setting him down inside the lobby.  As we neared the door I heard another mom say to her child, “Look at the cute baby!”  I glanced around to see who she was talking about, and then realized she meant us.  I smiled and didn’t say anything out loud, but mentally grumbled a bit as we went downstairs to Kiddo’s classroom. Baby??

This kid is no baby.  He’s more than a year and a half old!  He’s walking, he feeds himself (sometimes even using the appropriate utensils!), he can tell us when something’s bothering him although, regrettably, he’s not so good at telling us exactly what that something is.  He plays with cars and stacks blocks.  He colors with crayons and only chews on them some of the time.  He’s lost the baby chubbiness from his cheeks and legs.  He’s even managed to grow some hair.

We have to change some of our habits now, because he’s tall enough to see what’s on the kitchen table or the bathroom counter, and he’s got enough of a reach to grab for the things he sees.  He knows about cell phones and laptops and what Mom and Dad do with them, and if he catches one of us attempting to do work when we should be playing with him, he’ll come over and shut the laptop with a firm “NO NO NO.”

When I pick him up in the morning, I’m not carrying the tiny little bundle who once was small enough to snuggle on my chest.  Instead I’ve got a monkey who wraps his arms and legs around me for a big hug, and hangs on to me as much as I hang on to him.  When we walk to the car in the morning, he asserts his independence by trying to take us through the outside door rather than the one leading to the garage.  Oh, he’s still got his clingy moments, like recently when we went to a friend’s new house for a Superbowl party, but it doesn’t take him long now to get comfortable with being in a new place, surrounded by people neither of us have met yet.

So, nope, this Kiddo isn’t a baby any more.  With all the things that he can do, he’s definitely a little boy now.  Every day it seems like we’re finding something new that he can get into.  The babyproofing we did is no longer adequate; it’s time to rearrange the contents of counters and drawers to move unsafe things to better locations.  He hasn’t started climbing on things just yet, but from what I’ve seen lately, it won’t be long now.  Nothing will be safe unless it’s locked down or stowed away.

I kind of miss the little baby snuggles.  But the little boy snuggles are great too.  And I stand by what I told him that first week when we brought him home: no matter how big he gets… he’ll always be my baby.

Kiddo plays next to the couch