Cerin Amroth

For Dominic:

He’s smiling! Honest-to-goodness, non-digestion-related smiles. Small ones, of course, sometimes just on one side of his mouth, but they’re there. He likes sticking out his tongue when you stick out your tongue, and will sometimes even do it first so that you’ll do it. And if you make a gurgly noise at him he will try like the dickens to make it back to you, with varying degrees of success. He even smiled at Ella this morning, though as a rule when he hears her coming — she’ll creep her head around the corner of his bouncy chair and say “Hi Doooooominic!” with the highest-pitched “hi” you can imagine — he assumes a demeanor of Disaster Preparedness.

And just as I was writing this and occasionally making faces at him, he laughed. Kind of. Open mouth, little mouth, and a couple throaty “hics.” Seemed kinda like a laugh. At any rate, Suanna’s putting it in the baby calendar.

Ella:

Language development never ceases to amaze me. The other day, Ella started to say (I forget the context), “The car drived all over the place!” But she stopped because she realized, intuitively, that “drived” wasn’t right. She wrinkled her brow and I realized that she was trying to remember “drove,” but couldn’t summon it to memory just then. So instead she said, “The car would drive all over the place!”

For the next few days, if you need to get a hold of us via email, use:

nbruinooge at gmail dot com

suanna.bruinooge at gmail dot com

Things will eventually be back to normal, though.

UPDATE: And they are back to normal, sooner than expected!

Our drive to Michigan was interupted by trouble with the minivan. We pulled off the highway to stay overnight in Youngstown and immediately heard some squeaking and whirring. Ella informed us that it sounded like crickets. By the time we pulled into the hotel, there was smoke. We turned the engine off and wondered just how long we were going to be stuck in Ohio. Early the next morning, Nate headed off in search of a repair shop, and I hunkered down for an indefinite wait with two kids at the Holiday Inn Metroplex.

Eight hours later, we were grateful that our delay had ended and didn’t involve a car rental and leaving our minivan in Ohio for a week. There were four things that helped me make it through the day — 1) wireless internet; 2) PBSkids.org (specifically, the Cailiou train game); 3) PBS kids television; and 4) an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet (the hotel restaurant wasn’t open for lunch and there was nothing in walking distance) with a baby who slept through the meal. Ella’s lesson for the day — salty corn chips are tastier than animal crackers.

Thank goodness, Dominic wasn’t very fussy and slept a good portion of the day. Miraculously, Ella didn’t once ask why we weren’t heading to Michigan — even though she spent a good portion of the previous day’s drive asking over and over again where we were going and when we were going to be in Michigan.

In the final hour, I felt like McGuyver because I had run out of diapers for Ella and had to create an alternative. I thought I was going to have to resort to emergency potty training, but I made do with one of Dominic’s diapers, a burp cloth, and a pair of her stretchy pants.

I almost screamed when Nate told me that he got the same hotel on Priceline for our return trip. I almost cried when he told me they assigned us to the same hotel room. It felt so good to pull out of the hotel at 7 am the next morning and head home!

We’re still in Michigan.  Dominic is being very patient with the endless rounds of Pass the Baby.  He still gets a bit of digestive fussiness pretty much every feeding cycle, but never with much length or intensity.  Ella is in seventh heaven getting to spend time with her cousins and with my cousins’ kids and our friends’ kids.  And, it must be said, because she gets to play with their toys.  Some new pics are up on the web album, starting here.

Welcome to the new webhome of Cerin Amroth.  If you’re curious about the reasons for the switch, have a look at this post on Polytropos.  Otherwise, just keep on watching this page for more updates just like normal.

One casualty of the move, sadly, is all the picture links in various entries on the blog.  I’ve put all the pictures in one big web album for now, but they’re without captions.  At some point I hope to fix those links so everything’s working swimmingly again.

Eleven new pictures are up; the link to the whole album is in the sidebar, but if you’ve seen the older ones you can start right here.

Thankfully, Ella has exhibited almost no resentment toward Dominic. Her only frustrations have been sent our direction — and we can get over it (provided there aren’t too many more laptop incidents!). At her first encounter with him (5 hours after he was born), she seemed more concerned about my hospital bed and gown than about her new brother. I suspect this is because we had strategically placed him in the bassinet, rather than in my or Nate’s arms. On the second meeting, I used a Clementine orange to coax her on to my bed, and she was willing to stay and touch Dominic’s head. Ever since then, she’s been really into touching his soft hair, rubbing noses, rocking his chair, alerting us when he cries, and helping us burp him.

There are two occasions, however, where the pecking order became abundantly clear. She overheard he calling him Tootsie, which is my special nickname for her. I had been deliberately avoiding calling him that, but slipped up one morning. She immediately told me that I may not call him that. Thankfully, she’s okay with me calling him Sweetie. I would have a horrible time trying to limit that name to just her. In the meantime, I’m trying to come up with another special nickname for Dominic. Squeaky or Grunty seem awfully appropriate, since he loves to make sounds while he stretches and moves. However, I’m quite sure he’ll resent those names when he’s older. Bug-a-boo is also out on a test run, but it doesn’t seem to come naturally yet. (On the subject of nicknames, Nate has been calling him Dude, and Ella has recently taken up this mantra, as well, which is pretty hilarious.)

In the wee hours of this morning, Ella staked her other claim. She woke up at 5:45 and found me in the living room nursing Dominic. Once he finished eating, I suggested that we all go back to bed for a little longer. Mind you, 6 is Ella’s normal wake up time, so I doubted whether she’d actually go back to sleep. At 6, she usually climbs onto my side of the bed and lays there a while, twirling her fingers in my hair. Upon my suggestion to return to bed, Ella emphatically stated that Dominic should go back in his crib, and she’d lie in bed next to me. It was abundantly clear that he was not welcome in our morning routine. I dutifully put Dominic in his crib. He must have sensed the rejection because he started crying a few minutes later. Nate ended up taking him out and bringing him to bed on his side. So it became a family bed … clearly separated by gender.