:: In Which I Jinx Myself ::

I haven’t written much about Evan lately.  We’re sort of in a holding pattern right now that consist of us playing together, him playing alone, him taking a nap, and then me feeding him from a bottle.  We repeat this little pattern from waking time to sleeping time, twelve hours total, throwing in the occasional bath or walk to spice things up.  While he grows more cheerful, more personable, and more independent by the day, there haven’t been any big changes. 

He still sleeps like crazy.  Our beloved sleep bible, the one of which I have spoken before, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, doesn’t come close to describing the sleep maniac we have on our hands.  It says something like, “At this age, babies should develop a morning and an afternoon nap.  16% of babies this age will continue to take a third nap.”  Oh, Dr. Weissbluth.  That’s funny.  A third nap.  In 16% of babies Evan’s age.  Evan still takes four naps a day.  Four unless the second one lasts through the third like it did yesterday (a three hour nap, people) and then he takes only three.  I may be the only mother in the history of mothers to wish my kid would sleep a little less.  His window of wakefulness is so short we hardly have time to do anything.

He’s also still happily sucking down cold-from-the-fridge bottle after bottle.  Only now he thinks he knows how to do it better than mommy.  He holds on the whole time and randomly pulls the bottle out of his mouth then wimpers for me to put it back in.  When he tries to put it back in himself, he does so by grabbing the nipple in his two little hands and then trying to stuff the whole lot – hands and all – into his mouth, which results in more wimpering.  But it’s cute, and I like it that he’s learning to do new things.

We start solid foods this weekend.  He’s stealing forks off plates and spoons out of cereal bowls.  He’s eyeing every morsel of food that passes from my plate to my mouth.  He’s smacking his lips.  He’s so ready.

Which I’m sure means that when we finally try some yummy gruel rice cereal on Saturday, he will spit it all out, cry like a banshee, and then clamp his wee mouth shut until someone gets him a bottle already.

Other than that and the daily drive to move move move (he wants so badly to be standing, crawling, and walking and practices these things whenever given the opportunity), things here are just calm and good and relatively easy.

I feel surprisingly competent.

And those, my friends, are what we call Famous Last Words.