J/K.

So uhhh, we've decided to try this again (he's the father of my child, what can I do?). Our lives are otherwise evolving though, which I think will have a positive effect on the relationship we are trying to salvage. I've been actively job hunting for about 2 weeks now and I've already been offered one position (which I've since politely declined), and have another interview (a job I might actually take) in a few days. 

The juicy part of the story goes like this: I packed some of my things, some of Atticus's things, and sped over to my parents house, not taking time to consider the consequences of my actions. That may sound like I regret my decision, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I'm very proud of what I did and am glad to have proven to myself that I do have the courage to walk away from a detrimental situation even if it's the last thing I ever wanted to have to do. B and I had many, many talks about what our next move would be, and after a whole lot of wishy washy emotions spewing from my end, we decided (10 days later, mind you) that there was still plenty of love to go around. Things haven't been all "kittens and haircuts" (to quote my father) since then, but I see us both making a conscious effort and that's all I can really expect at this point in time. Not so juicy as one might expect, but you can feel free to use your imagination. I've left a lot of trivial details out of the story in an effort to keep you, the reader, as unbiased as possible.

In baby news, Atticus is crawling! (finally) which has brought a whole new level of anxiety to my life, but I'm also so so very proud of him. I honestly thought the day would never come when he would be able to come find me if I'm using the restroom. He's also learning new adorable things like waving bye-bye and giving hugs when I ask. He's also turned out to be quite the lover of music. His "favorite band" seems to be Hot Water Music, which I can only say because he danced for the first time to one of their songs, and any other music I played for him was totally ignored. Now the dancing/bouncing has adapted to a dance/crawl which usually results in a face plant on the rug. (He's still mastering his multitasking skills). We also have a band (The Nova Wild, check 'em out) who practices in our basement about once a week and he loves that. In fact, only just now I caught him bouncing around in his crib to them downstairs after he'd woken up from his nap! So far, 8 month old Atticus is my favorite kind of Atticus.

Defeated.

So, it's been quite a while since I've really had anything to say about parenting or anything else for that matter. Turns out now, I have plenty to share. In the month or so that has passed since my last post, life has changed for me and my little family. Some good things, some bad things, and now the worst thing of all. But lets start with the good...

On September 6, 2010, my little family packed all our things and moved home. (Such a wonderful word) We were lucky enough to move right back into our old house, take it off the market, and settle in as if we'd never been gone. Perfect. We were around family and friends and we started redecorating and making our once empty house feel full again. Baby Atticus has started trying to crawl and now speaks in syllables such as "na na na" and of course, "da da" which is so sweet and I love him even more for it. Unfortunately these wonderful days couldn't last long.

B and I are both very dominant human beings and with that said, we bicker often. These little tiffs had no effect on me but apparently they were starting to wear on B. (These facts only just came to light this morning) I do not wish to delve into any more detail about it.

We are no longer together. As of today, October 17, 2010 I will begin my life as a single mother. (Sooo not what I had planned for us, obviously) I am disappointed in myself for becoming this dependent on another person. I have no choice but to move in with my parents for the time being. I have no job, I have two dollars and thirty-nine cents in my bank account. I have nothing. My worst fear was to have my son in a broken environment, but now that this is my situation, I have no choice but to take it and make it work. I will make myself whole again, someday, but I hate that my son will not be. 

There is nothing I want more than to make things work between B and I, and so I am hoping and wishing with all of my heart that this tale will still end the way I have planned it to. I can't predict the future but I can tell you that yes, of course, I am still awaiting the proposal. It may be further off than I had once thought, and it may not be with the person I had thought it would, but that day will come for me, I know it will.

Mum-Mum.

About a month ago, my baby started really actively teething and has been chewing on absolutely everything he can fit into his mouth, but I have yet to find a teething toy that he likes enough to repeatedly use. He loves to chew on his teddy's foot, his sippy cup spout, and the end of my tooth brush, but if I give him a toy designed specifically for teething, he just drops it and forgets it. 

I thought it might be time to test his hand coordination and start him on finger foods. First I bought him a container of Gerber Puffs, the banana flavor. They are really small and white, and even though he really likes to eat them, he can't see them very well on his highchair tray, and they are too small for his fingers to manipulate into his mouth. So, I ended up just feeding them to him myself, which defeated the whole purpose of buying them. (They've since become doggy treats.) Gerber also makes Puffs in a long tube shape, but the flavors seemed off (cheese, garden vegetable, yuck) so I didn't bother trying those. Then, I saw these Baby Mum-Mum crackers, on the top shelf, in a box that could obviously use a new design. I saw that they were much bigger than the Gerber treats, but still the same melt-in-your-mouth rice texture so I thought, what the heck. The dog never gets tired of treats...

As soon as we got home from the store, I gave him one (they come in packages of two) and he loved it! I handed it to him and he popped it right in his mouth. They are sturdy enough to let him get a few hard chomps in each bite before it turns to mush, so it really helps his sore gums, plus he gets to practice self-feeding. They taste sort of like salty styrofoam, (I always try everything my baby eats) but he really seems to like it. I've been serving them along with meals if he is fussy (Would you like some styrofoam to complement your mush?) and it really seems to help calm him down enough to finish eating his food. And yes, of course the dog likes them too.

Big Baby.

During my....(can't focus, turning off Grey's Anatomy)...Okay! Since becoming a mother, I've read through countless discussions on whether or not a baby's size affects their development. The theory is that larger babies reach developmental milestones later than babies of smaller stature. I've been going back and forth on what I personally think, and finally I've come to the conclusion that size does not, in fact, matter. 

My boy was 8 lbs. 6 oz. at birth, which is 1 oz. heavier than the maximum "average" weight of a baby. So, moderately big, I would say. At first it seemed like he was a little behind on reaching his physical milestones, for example he only just started rolling over regularly a few weeks ago, and almost never rolls from his stomach to his back, which babies are supposed to do first. I could tell he had a harder time with it because of his weight. But that seems to be the only thing he has had trouble with. He started sitting independently at 5 months, scooting backwards 2 weeks later, and now, at 6 months, he holds himself up on his hands and knees and rocks back & forth, which leads me to believe that it won't be long before he begins lunging forward (and I have to redecorate baby-friendly). So as developmental milestones go, he has been ahead of schedule for almost everything.

I think the baby's personality has just as much to do with their physical growth as their size & weight. Atticus seems to be thinking about what he wants to do, and must figure out exactly how to do it in his head before he tries it. He won't even reach for a new toy until he has studied it carefully for several minutes and decided that it's worthwhile to play with. He was even wary of his own feet! I watched him stare at his feet for months before he finally grabbed one of them.
If you are a parent worried about your baby's development because he is bigger (or smaller) than average, I would advise you not to worry! And, even harder, don't let friends and family members discourage you. Sometimes their harmless questioning can instill doubts in your head that weren't there before. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked "Is he crawling yet?" Well, no he's not crawling yet and he doesn't have to be.

Naptime.

I have created a monster!

So you know how before you have your baby, you read all those articles about what's best for him when it comes to sleeping? Well, I just knew that I wasn't going to be one of those weird earth mommas (I believe the proper term is "crunchy mom" now) who let their child sleep with them and don't use strollers and other absurd things like that. My relationship with B was much too important to me then to let a little crying, wiggling, puking thing take over my big, stretch out all I want, king size bed. (Which of course means no you-know-what before bed either, which neither of us was willing to give up.) 
And so it went, Atticus slept in his play pen in our room the first week home, and after that, bam, in his crib, mobile on, lights out, done. Once he got to be about a month old, I decided the cry-it-out method was best for us, (gasp), and by 6 weeks, that kid slept like clockwork, 10 hours a night. I thought, 'Mannnn, I'm a freakin genius at this mom thing.' 
Flash forward 3 months, and we're living in a new city, I have no one to talk to, and it's nap time in the middle of the day. So I think to myself 'Hmm, I'm a little drowsy too, maybe I'll snuggle up next to my little guy in the big bed.' Wow! In all the mommy magazines and emails I got during pregnancy, not one of them mentioned how amazing it feels to wrap that chubby little baby in your arms and listen to him breathe until you both fall asleep. After about a week I realized how much better he was sleeping in our bed, even if I skipped the nap myself, so I figured that there was no harm in letting him stay there, as long as he went in his crib at bed time. We got into a routine where I would lay down with him and snuggle him up, sing "I've been working on the railroad" (B really does work on the railroad), and pat his butt until he dozed off.
Flash forward another 3 months, and I've got this big ole' baby who won't let B put him down for a nap under any circumstance, who won't nap in his crib no matter how tired he his, and who is starting to fight bed time in his crib harder and harder each night. 'Mannnn, I really thought I had this thing figured out.' So, always a quick thinker, I immediately put into a "restore" plan of action, (you know like on your cell phone?) where I just start over like in the beginning, with the cry-it-out method, then bam, 10 hours a night, done. Ha! Soooo not happening. Who knew how much louder a 6 month old could wail? And it's much more heart breaking now that he's older. Newborn babies cry for no reason, a lot, so I was able to deal with it, but older babies only cry when they need something (at least mine does), and I'm not going to be the mom who wasn't there when he needed me, duh.  
Right now, my hope is that it's the teething, fully developed vision, and the newfound ability to move around on his own that is triggering this hypersensitivity. It's normal at his age to be overwhelmed by pretty much everything. I don't have any more solutions, so hopefully this phase passes quickly. Crossing my fingers.

Homeward Bound.

It's finally happening! Our brave and lonely journey to southern Louisiana for the purpose of bettering our lives has finally reaped it's reward. As of September 6th, I can once again proudly say that I am a resident of the great city of Alton, Illinois. (So, no, I didn't get engaged...yet, but this is really exciting anyway!) Words cannot express my angst to get home. I've never been one to stay in one place for long. As a child I attended a different school each school year, and even as an adult I've relocated 3 times in as many years, but ever since I found Alton, (a place I've been traveling through all my life to visit family) I've felt a strong urge to stay there. It's like, well, pepperoni pizza is my favorite kind of pizza, and even though supreme is good too, I would never choose it over pepperoni (unless I was pregnant, but that hardly counts). Even though our time here in Baton Rouge has been fun, I would never stay here if I had the opportunity to move home. Get it?

Thanks, Larry.

So, if you've been following this blog, you have read that we have a family dog. Well, over the past 6 months, he has developed quite a taste for pacifiers and doesn't waste an opportunity to snatch one the moment it is left unattended. He usually takes it, sneaks off to some corner of the house and bites the nipple off, leaving me to find the remains later when Atticus is ready to take a nap. So you can imagine my frustration on the days when it just happens to be the last pacifier of the package and nap time comes around too quickly. He has done this so many times, in fact, that B and I were (jokingly) considering buying stock in "Nuk" since we spent so much money on them! Well, just in time it seems, I found this AWESOME product at Babies R Us the other day and I had to share it with you all. This particular pacifier is capable of protecting itself against the force of canine jaws if unknowingly dropped by it's owner! It's from RaZBaby and is called the "Keep-It-Kleen" pacifier. As you can probably assume from the name, the plastic cover that protects the nipple is actually meant to keep it clean in the event that it is dropped on the floor, but I'm not really that kind of mom, (I usually wipe it off on my shirt and pop it right back in) and many of the reviews say that the nipple usually hits the ground before the cover closes anyway. But I saw this little guy's true potential! So far the dog hasn't been able to infiltrate it's plastic armor, though many attempts have been made. One downside is it only comes in one size for 0 to 36 months, so the nipple is a bit smaller than Atticus prefers. We mostly use it during play time on the floor and then swap it out for a regular one that is kept in the crib at nap time. Overall, I'm very glad to have found it! It's the perfect solution if you also have a sneaky pet living in your house.