Cerin Amroth

Dominic had his (belated) six-month appointment today.  The doctor proclaimed him a “Grade-A Boy,” and indeed, he was in fine form at the doctor’s office, lively and friendly and full of smiles the whole time — until the shots, of course.

He’s up to 20 pounds, and 28 inches long, launching him from the 75th percentile 2 months ago to the 90th percentile now.  This should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who has seen him recently.  One nice side effect of this is that his height and weight have caught up, proportionately speaking, to his head circumference, so while there was talk at four months of a precautionary MRI to rule out problematic causes for his Unusually Large Head, that’s no longer an issue.

He’s much more vocal these days, using the standard cutesy gurgling noise, plus a few others, in order to attract attention or just to mimic us talking.  With most people, a simple half-smile will suffice to transfix them, but Ella can be a bit more of a challenge, especially if she’s busy playing — and, of course, she is the one whose attention Dominic wants most.  So when he wants her to focus on him he goes totally all out with the cutesiest gurgling noises he can muster, interspersed with ooooohs and AHs! and a big, big smile.  I’ve watched him do all this while she is really quite occupied with whatever she’s doing and would much rather not play with Dominic right now, she just wants to focus but, oh, there’s that little smile again and she just  . . . can’t  . . . resist.

He’s eating cereal and baby food every day now, taking two or three naps a day.  We’re still putting him down in his bouncy chair in the early evening and not putting him down for the night until after one more feeding around 11:00.  It would be nice to get him on a schedule similar to Ella’s, but that would entail putting him down earlier and inevitably working through a transition that would involve late-night wakings again.  No wonder we’ve been procrastinating that.

Here are some examples of Ella rationalizing:

Kids Day – While we were in the store last weekend, I told Ella that we needed to look for a Father’s Day card for Nate. She countered that it was Mother’s Day, not Father’s Day. I said it had been Mother’s Day, but now it was going to be Father’s Day. She thought about it for a minute and said, “Yeah. And after Father’s Day, it will be Kids Day!”

Name Change – Ella and I were talking about names the other day because we have several friends who are pregnant. She thought that our friend who is having a girl might want to name her Ella. Then she said that we should rename Dominic Ella, as well. I said that Dominic already had a name. She said that she thought Dominic might be getting tired of the name Dominic and would like a name change.

Flying to Michigan – We are going to Michigan in a week, so we’ve been talking a lot about the trip. The other night before bed, we were talking about how we’re going to get there. I told her that it’s going to be a long drive in the minivan. She wasn’t excited about that, at all, so she tried to convince me that we should fly to Michigan, instead. She and I recently flew to Chicago together, so she knows flying is a lot quicker. I told her that we need the minivan in Michigan so that we can drive around once we’re there. So she told me that the minivan is going to break, so we should really take the plane. She isn’t totally making this up. When we drove to Michigan in January, the minivan did break down. I told her that we got it fixed, so it will be okay. She hasn’t come back with another rationale for flying to Michigan, but I suspect she’s still thinking about it and will spring it on me at an unexpected moment.

Potty training.

I haven’t really written about it in recent weeks because to do so would have been to write something devoid of any amusing anecdotes or wry observations, but would rather consist of a deep and primal cry of frustration.  But now I can see forward progress being made week to week, even if the end is still somewhere over the horizon, I think at least I can work up the will to mention it.  Ella is now wearing underpants around the house, and is quite good at whipping them off and heading for the potty whenever her body is telling her to.  This comes after a couple of weeks of going around entirely pantsless in the house.  She still wears training pants when we’re out and about, and still doesn’t have reservations about filling them up, which is what makes me think the next phase is going to take a while.  But at least she’s telling us about it when she does go in her training pants, which wasn’t true a few weeks ago.  I think, looking back, I’ll remember this as the Lost Summer — days like today, 90 degrees plus, having to time outings (which are limited anyway on account of the heat) to coincide with Dominic’s naps and Ella’s use of the potty, where it’s a miracle we ever get away from home at all.

Though she can still be as shy as ever at times, Ella has been pushing the envelope at the other end of the spectrum.  The other day, lunching by a fountain in Old Town, I told her I couldn’t dip my feet in the water just yet because I was still finishing my burrito.  She gave me a look that I’m sure I’ll be seeing a good deal more of when she’s a teenager, then turned and located another girl, about 8 years old, playing by the side of the fountain.  She ran up to her and started talking to her — too far away for me to hear what she was saying — and soon they were splashing their feet in the fountain together.  Later that same day, when another girl her age arrived on the playground, Ella walked up to her and said, “Hi!  My name is Ella!”  I almost fell off the jungle gym.

In other news, Dominic is huge, I can’t say exactly how huge because I totally forgot about his 6 month doctor’s appointment last week because my mind was all frazzled (see “potty training,” above).  Rescheduled for next week.  He loves the Exersaucer, quite a bit more than Ella ever did, and is also a big fan of his hang-from-the-doorframe bouncer thing — something we never even bothered to get for Ella because we knew it wouldn’t fly.  He is very tactile, and loves exploring a new object with his hands and mouth for a good long time.  He sits up easily now, though we’ll still put a pillow behind him if he’s on the floor to cushion the occasional flop-back.

When we do get out of the house these days, Dominic is usually strapped to my chest in the Baby Bjorn, pudgy arms and legs dangling, cracking a lopsided smile at every person who meets his ever-searching gaze.  Meanwhile Ella is walking at my side or scampering around, in her purple sandals and the sassy white hat that she picked out herself.  The two of them never fail to attract attention.  “What beautiful children,” I heard a woman mutter to her husband in the grocery store as we passed by.  That about says it.

It’s a lazy afternoon, I’m playing with Dominic on the floor, Ella’s navigating pbskids.org on the laptop.  I pause to watch her play a puzzle game.  It’s a simple nine-square grid with animated pieces — Arthur playing a guitar — and she click-and-drags them all to their proper places way more quickly than I would have expected.

I beam.  “Elanora!” I say.  “You solved that puzzle really quickly!  That was amazing!  High five!”  And I raise my hand for the high-five.

She whirls around — she hadn’t realized I was watching.  She smiles at first, but then the smile fades.  I am distracting her from her game.

“No, Daddy, not right now,” she says.  “I don’t need to be proud.”

It was rainy Sunday; lots of sleeping for both of us.  This morning we tried out the playroom at the YMCA, but the caregivers called me to get him after half an hour.  He was crying up a storm because he was tired and not at all interested in napping in the swing thingee they have there.  We’ll give it another go tomorrow.

Three new pictures, starting here.

I’m convinced now that Dominic is exhibiting instinctive self-preservation behavior.  Having lost two of the familiar faces in his life, he is determined to keep the third and final face around.  He does that by doing what he does best: acting cute and affectionate all the time.  He has been smilier, huggier, and cuddlier than I’ve ever seen him these past few days — and those are some of his strong traits to begin with.

Needless to say, his approach achieves the desired results.  It has been fun to be able to lavish all my attention on him, instead of the usual divided-and-distracted state of affairs.

Day Two Picture

Suanna is off to Chicago for work, and Ella is spending the weekend with Nana and Papa. This leaves we menfolk back home to hold down the fort. A couple years ago, spending a weekend with just me and a baby when Suanna traveled was a tremendous burden. Now, it feels like vacation.

Well, not quite. Dominic did get up at five o’clock this morning. Last night he seemed perfectly comfortable with the notion of having just two of us in the apartment, but in everything from the expression on his face when it was me who lifted him out of his crib, to the way he kept looking over my shoulder and all around him all morning, it was clear that he was at least a little discombobulated by the absence of the women in his life.

Early rising aside, though, he’s been a good sport all day. He had been sleeping very little during the day earlier this week, and I was worried this was going to continue, but he seems to have fallen back into his usual pattern of three hour-or-so naps a day. It’s miserable hot out outside, so we’re being homebodies, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He is currently seeking recognition and approval from the ceiling fan for the fact that he’s holding both of his feet in his hands at once.

Suanna asked for a picture a day, so here’s the first one.