Saturday, September 17, 2011

8 months home!!!!

It is hard to believe that last Friday (16th) marked EIGHT months home with our sweet son. Life has been anything but calm the last few months and this has of course led to very few blog posts. Sometimes I ponder the fact that friends of mine with MANY more children than me are able to stay caught up on their blogs and yet here I sit, always months behind and too tired to talk about them even when I have time to write. Now as I write I wonder who is actually reading this blog anymore.

If you recall, right after M came home I wrote an entry about attachment and 9 months and 20 minutes being the length of time it takes to really attach (like a bio pregnancy and birth). A couple of months ago when things were going pretty well I was totally believing this data and excited to think about how I would be feeling at the 9 months mark. Now, as we cross 8 months we have found ourselves back in a place of sleeplessness and sadness throughout the day. This type of life is hard to maintain. M wakes many times throughout the night at then is up at 4:00 am for the day only taking a one hour nap in the afternoon. This began a couple of weeks ago and is really taking its toll. On top of that M has been leaking though diapers right and left turning me into a laundry machine. Through all of this I have been having major lower back pain on my left side making is demands to be held emotionally and physically painful.

Well... the whole sob story above has a point, and it isn’t a cry for sympathy, potato chips and chocolate. I came to the revelation a few minutes ago that we are right on schedule with this attachment thing. I began thinking about women I know who are 8 months pregnant. Their emotions are all over the place. They are not sleeping well at night either. They are dealing with their own bladder issues. They have intense lower back pain. They are gaining weight and dealing with food cravings too, oh I might not have mentioned that one above :) You see, I guess it is all normal. It is all healthy. It is all HARD, but is continues to be GOOD!

In the past months I have seen our son recognize so fully that we are his parents. He is attaching well. He doesn’t just cry at night, he cries “MOMMY” and is soothed when he knows that I am there. He is also attaching well to our home. After two weeks of visiting family around the mid-west he spent days running from room to room saying “Home” which almost brought me to tears. M has developed great bonds with the people at our church and loves being there and playing will all his great friends. It is such a joy to see him run off with the group and to see their care for my little man.

General M update:

~He is talking like crazy and says words so cute that even as we work with pronunciation my heart will be sad when the words don’t sound as cute anymore. A couple of favorite I can think of right now are Dowm = down, Mallmut = walnut and Mall = small.

~He is really into dancing and singing and loves to have mommy copy what he does and how he moves. He also says “Walk Mommy” and wants me to follow him swinging my arms like a speed walker. He also likes to run and run in circles which makes me quite dizzy.

~ He love to go for walks in the stroller, esp. with his best bud L. Sadly, L and M do not like wooded paths. This was discovered late last week and many tears were shed as we made our way back to the land of garbage trucks, dogs, big trucks, and buses.

~He loves Nicole C. Mullen music and says “Mullmen” wanting to listen to it. He sure has dancing in his genes. Watching him move and groove is awesome.

~He loves reading books (esp with big trucks, tractors, diggers, fire trucks, dogs and other important things). He enjoys a couple of Bible stories, but mainly just likes the line “he stumbled, he staggered, and CRASH fell dead” and enjoys pounding the book when I say crash.

~He has used the toilet a couple of times, but prefers the diaper, which is OK for now. We just got some new diapers in the mail yesterday and I really like them so far. They are Kawaii brand and are overnight heavy wetters which my son is day and night. They are a great price and super cute. The hardest part of me is all the snaps. My fingers have issues with them which I know is silly, but they do. I wish they were available in hook and latch, but it makes me more thankful that most of my diapers don’t have snaps.

~Funny poo story... this should really be its own entry, but I have come to the conclusion that the few of you that still read this blog don’t mind my creativity as much as you want to hear how your grandson is doing ;) So, last Saturday afternoon M woke up from his nap and I changed him. We were then dancing around when I stepped in something. I thought it was mashed banana, but I was very wrong. When I looked down I realized that poo was all over my foot, and all over my son. I carried him to the changing table and called for back up (daddy). He came home and dealt with the diaper while I dealt with my foot and went back to scout out the scene of the incident. Luckily there was only one spot, sadly it was quite ground into the carpet by my foot and major work had to be done. Our carpet is new and plush, thick, great at concealing things... not so great for poo removal! In then end I had to use my fingernails to pull it up bit by bit. Finally when it was all clean I cut my nails as low as they could go and gave myself a good scrub.

~He is still very interested in baby food vs. big people food. He does eat fruit, cracker bread type things, nuts, raisins etc, but overall depends on mommy made baby food for nutrition. All we can do is try and wait and keep the blender going.

~ Recently M and I were outside on a warmish fall day and I said, “We should go in the house and warm up the chili.” He looked at me and said “cold” while wrapping his arms around himself pretending to shiver. I asked him to give me a high five for that one. He is too funny!

~ This weekend he invented a game with his pen. We took the ink element out of a pen so he could play with it. He attaches the cap very loosely and then gives the bottom of the pan a cast (think fishing) and the cap goes flying. He has entertained himself for over 30 minutes (a REALLY LONG TIME for him) doing this in the back couple of days.

~ He loves pushing things around including several push toys which have taken over our closets and walls. He still enjoys pushing our chairs around and even the pretend lawnmower every once in a while.

~He loves climbing on kitchen chairs, but only when we are around. I am thankful that he is quite a careful little man. He is only daring when we are near which is great.

~He has moved on up to 18 mo. clothes for the most part, though still wears some 12 months which basically means there are clothes EVERYWHERE in his room. The thing with little ones is you can still use short sleeved onesies under long sleeve shirts so we are working from about 5 bins of clothes right now and there is a small clothes explosion his his room. 2 year olds are not interested in having mommy check and see what fits so I have to test and see and he is often tripping over pants that are too long or sporting high waters which are too short. The funny thing is that while we have over 30 pairs of 18 month size pants I am sure we will wear only a few as he still is really only into soft knit pants and a couple of other pairs I have convinced him are also soft.

~ Brandon and I are both doing well (minus the whole lack of sleep, back pain, emotional trauma discussed above). Brandon’s new sermon series is great and our church has lots of great options from spiritual growth this fall. Things are always exciting at church. I am excited for my Sr. High girls small group to start tomorrow night. Having “girls” in my life again will be a great blessing!

~ God is faithful and we continue to learn more and more each day how to surrender to Him what is His (which by the way is everything)!

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