redonk

Everything about Theo is ridiculous. (In a good way. Hello.)

His hair. I kid you not.

When his eyebrows came in they looked like they'd been painted on and plucked.

When his eyelashes came in, they were twice as long as mine.

When he got past the squinty newborn phase, his eyes opened up and stayed the size of silver dollars.

When his hair came in, it was ridiculously high and fluffy, courtesy of the double crown on the back of his head - two hair whorls that mirror each other exactly and are about an inch apart.

When his teeth came in, there was a howdy-doody gap between the two front ones.

Wild Man is taking requests. His hair tuft is not.

He has the same cleft chin as the rest of us, but when you add it to the other stuff it kind of fits the bill.

His cheeks are so fat now that someone we didn't know said, "What's the name of the one with the fat cheeks?"

He is ridiculously loud, to the point where Jono said to him one evening, "Theo, you don't belong in my family." (He was joking, of course. A little.)

He fell halfway down our long-ish staircase, giving himself a black eye. He cried for about 30 seconds. (This is the opposite of the behavior we typically see in another small person who lives here.)

He's all about cheap thrills, wherever they may be found.

Theo seems to be wired for the extreme, both in his personality and his physicality. We've enjoyed watching one ridiculous thing after another occur in and around him, and I'm sure we'll be entertained by this for years to come.

Iowa: a first

Rainbow near Grundy Center, IA

I'm half-Iowan, if that makes sense. My mom was born and raised there, and I grew up there too, partially. We get back often - a few times a year - because of these roots, and to see the people we love who are still there.

First stop, three hours in.

Squash face

My latest trip to Iowa was a first though. I went there alone, with my two boys. I have a small clan of  good, old friends from the Iowa days who I wanted to see. My friend Malissa now lives in Washington and was going to be back near our old hometown for her sister's wedding. She e-mailed the other three of us to see if we could make it out. I am the only other wild card, being second-furthest away in Michigan, while Teri and Deborah both live in Iowa. At first I wasn't going to go. I had just been there with my family the month before, and I knew my mom couldn't come with me this time because of a surgery she was scheduled to have. So I dismissed it.

But then the e-mail responses from my friends continued to come in, saying "I'll be there!", and I thought to myself, what's stopping me from going alone with the boys? Deborah comes to Michigan alone with her three kids to see her sister all the time. I felt inspired by her. If she could do it, so could I. Thirteen hours each way? Meh. It was do-able.

Blue skies and big trucks

Rain over Minnesota

Windmills were a common part of the landscape

My little creeper. And my glasses are crooked.

Last stop - relief from one of Theo's two meltdowns.

So I did it, it went amazingly well, and I was inwardly a tiny bit proud of myself. I feel like I could do it again sometime, no sweat.

One major thing that helped were two great little kids' albums by the 90's band, They Might be Giants. We checked out both the ABC and 123 records they had made from the library (Jude is currently obsessed with letters and numbers), and both Jude and I were singing along with every word a few hours into the journey.

Also, the big sky and massive cloud formations were incredible. I have probably 20 photos on my phone of the various stages of storms rolling in and out, and it was breathtaking.

Lastly, it helped that we stopped to stay overnight with my lovely grandparents eight hours in. If we hadn't been able to do that, it probably would've been a deal-breaker on taking this trip. What ended up being a fifteen-hour journey would've been a wee bit too much to ask of my small-ish boy-children.

Jude with his Bedstemor ("Grandma" in Danish)

Hanging out with my friends was so great. There's always that catch-up period, but a few hours in we were talking over each other like we always used to do. My friend Deborah's sister, Heather, said to her, "Do you realize you guys are constantly interrupting each other?" We laughed and agreed that we still manage to hear what everyone else is saying. We're just excited by each others' presence, I guess.

Seven of the ten collective offspring

Deb's Jackson with Theo

I sadly did not get a photo of the four of us together, but I did snap a couple of our multitude of offspring. Malissa has four, Deb three, Teri one, me two. We tromped around Sioux Center, Iowa with our ten collective children for an afternoon, hitting the park, a huge open space in the mall (because it rained for awhile), and a coffee shop.

We're seriously discussing having our next reunion in Las Vegas, a destination that usually wouldn't interest me, but with these women (and maybe without the kids), I wouldn't say no :)

A Love Affair...

Theo has begun his love affair with solid food. Watch out if the cereal runs out before he's full. He gets his cry face on in .2 seconds when it happens.

He is eating everything except a few items that are banned before age one. And in massive quantities.  He likes third helpings.

I have allowed a breastfed baby this indulgence because he has never been a great nurser, and he is under-weight. He grew to prefer the bottle at about three months, around the time we realized he wasn't getting enough and had to supplement. (He had become an insufficient eater because of his food sensitivities, and my milk supply went down as a result.)  That left me pumping about 25 to 50% of the time to keep him from weaning. But a few weeks ago I mostly stopped with the pumping, letting nature take its course. We were down to three times a day, then two, and now this week, one. He's not quite nine months old. Something that started out unnaturally (the bottles) is ending naturally, but I still feel guilty and sad sometimes that it's happening before he's one.

I would be one of those hippie mamas who would nurse her kid until he was two, but so far neither one of my offspring have been interested in going past babyhood. The nursing of eight-year-olds will have to be left to this woman, I guess (ha).

Regardless, ever since starting him on solids at six months I've been relieved to have the extra calories he's been needing available. Fatten up, child. Show me some belated leg rolls.

Here are a couple of shots of the first feed. His mohawk is about an inch higher than this now, just FYI.

HOLY MOTHER I'M JUMPING.

Theo is a fan of the Johnny Jump-up. Much more of a fan than his brother was (video here), which isn't surprising considering the fact that Jude spent most of his first nine months twiddling everything in sight. Theo's more of an Action Jackson type of guy.

He did this for 30 minutes, and that includes the excited breathing.

Arms and Legs

This is me. I have arms and legs now. And I really love what he's done with my mid-section.

Jude generally refuses to draw or color by request, so I have to catch him at it and snap a quick pic before he erases what he has done. Sometimes he does this in frustration because it doesn't look how he wants it to, and other times he senses how much I want to keep it, so he erases it quickly to tease me. Stinker.

Suddenly he can write his name now too. I knew he was capable of the J and the U because he had formed these two letters with play-doh when he was two. But I'd never seen him write the whole thing out.

Lately he's developing some new abilities that I haven't noticed until he's all the way there. It's strange. This didn't happen so much when he was my only.

Theo has not escaped my being in a sleep-deprived fog either, Both of his new teeth had poked through his gums last week before I even noticed he was teething.

Sorry, sweet boys. I now understand when mothers of grown children can't remember who did what when, or why.

Easter and My Birthday

Playing catch-up: first egg hunt, and my birthday.

I turned 32 on April 11. Jude helped with the festivities!

Zero to Six

It's safe to say I've missed a few monthly updates on Theo.

So, finally, I present to you... Theo's first six months :)

We went from crying issues to feeding issues to sleeping issues and back again. What we have now is a sweet baby boy with looking-glass pools for eyes. He has a dimple on his upper right cheek, a cleft in his tiny chin, and fuzzy hair that stands on end. He still doesn't sleep (much), but apparently this lies within our genes. He is forgiven.

To save time, I'll speed through these first few months.

ONE MONTH: Small (Five Pounds +!). Slept Lots. It Was Christmas.

 TWO MONTHS: Crying. Lost weight. Food Sensitivity. Chiropractor. Medication. First Smiles.

THREE MONTHS: Pumping Lots to Chunk Him Up. Turned a Corner.

FOUR MONTHS: Rolling Over. Thrush Treatment. Hair Starts to Float Off Head.

FIVE MONTHS: Standing. Delighted Shrieking. Totally Crappy Sleep Patterns. His "Tuft" Appears and His Mullet Shrinks.

   

 SIX MONTHS: Rice Cereal. Better Sleep. First Two Teeth (At Once). Floaty Hair.

I have a good feeling about this month. He's been a challenging little guy, but he is the sweetest thing, and we've had many good moments. The other day I put his little bare feet into the grass for the first time. He also reached out to stroke a dandelion gone to seed. This is one of my favorite things about motherhood - watching them discover these simple experiences most of us don't notice or savor any more.

Theo is constantly seeking me out with his ginormous eyes. He just started reaching for my face whenever he needs some comfort. He also likes to pinch, scratch and slap me now, but it is all affectionate. When I read to him, he alternately looks at the book, then me, even though our heads are less than an inch apart lying on the bed. When I take him out in public, people ooo and aahh over his eyes, his legwarmers, his hand-knit booties. Theo dresses to impress.

Here are a few extra shots I couldn't help but include. Wired, perpetually flexed baby, anyone?

 

Seidman Park

One of our most loved places, since we discovered it in our college years, is Seidman Park. Naturally, it is one of the first places we've taken our boys for hikes as babies. (Here's a link to Jude's first hike at Seidman.) On Sunday it was Theo's turn for his first hike in the woods, and an opportunity for the rest of us to remember what it's like to be outside without our extremities going numb.

Jude is obsessed with blowing on dandelions, so we spent a good amount of time waiting for him as he tromped off the trail to pluck one and blow on it until every last fluff-topped seed was gone. Even the shot I took of Jono and Jude sitting on a branch in the middle of the stream, you can see he has a dandelion and is still going at it.

Theo was game for a tromp through the woods, and after the thrill wore off, he cat-napped in the carrier. (It's the only kind of nap he takes - light and short.) Nothing says "special occasion" like a hat with bear ears on it, in my book.

The woods were beautiful and full of spring green. Jude was thrilled with the trail and the fresh air, and we're excited to make a habit of this now that it has warmed up a bit. Cabin Fever season is officially over :)

jude's barbershop

When Theo was about a week old, we took Jude to get his first "real" haircut at Jude's Barbershop (of course).  He was well-behaved, and though I wouldn't have brought him anywhere else for his first time, it felt odd exposing him to all of the half-naked lady posters on the wall.  There was some pretty major boobage. Luckily, the only knowledge Jude has of boobies right now is that they're a food source for Theo.  To him, these images are probably along the same lines as food photography. Right? 

Anyway, the pictures are the main thing.  Here they are:

Spelling J-U-D-E, a major obsession for a few months now.

Jude is still quite small, despite being a big brother.

 Investigating how Daddy feels about this before it's his turn.

The next few are sideways, which is incredibly annoying. I flipped them in my photo editor, but Blogger doesn't care. Oh, well.

 

 

 

It's Jude the Dude!