Games babies play

Well at the tender age of 8 months, little L is already showing mommy who’s boss. He clearly has decided to do things against the grain and a tad differently compared to what mommy read in her medical books.

No, he doesn’t sleep through the night. The maximum sleep he’ll get is four, five hours tops.

No, he’s not eating all the solid food he can handle. On the contrary, it’s a task just to get a few spoonfuls of home cooked baby food into his little mouth. Yes, we’ve tried many things so far: sweet potato, pears, apples, squash, peas, broccoli, rice cereal, banana, carrots, yogurt . . but when it comes down to it, his homemade “Petit Appetit” baby food isn’t what he wants.  Mama’s milk is what he wants.  A distant second is the table food that he tries to grab from my hand.  I usually make halfway-feeble attempts to mash up the ‘khana’ and place it in his mouth, and inevitably I find him ruminating 30 minutes after a feed on that same ‘khana.’ His next preference is *perish the thought* jarred baby food. We keep Earth’s Best Organics as a backup. Sadly, my homemade purees cannot match the creaminess of the store bought stuff.  Geez.  All that effort! He is certainly teaching me a thing or two about what babies eat!

And no, he won’t crawl. And still he does not say mama. He says Babbabaaaa. . .Dadadadaa. MMmmmmm.

But why complain when he puts us all into such terrific fits of joy that the peculiarities (mostly contrived by my newly donned crazy-mom-psyche) pale in comparison?

Yesterday T taught me that little L has much more to his movements than meets the eye. While he does not want to make himself sit up, and instead flails around like a fish when placed on his tummy, when he pulls to stand, he comes up with the most terrific games. He has begun bouncing around in the Jumperoo that his grandparents gave him, which suddenly gives me 10 minutes at a time to *gasp* do things in the house! I don’t know what to do my newfound time. I just end up grabbing some water and sitting and staring at him going crazy and bopping around with his mouth wide open.

But after inevitably getting him back in hand and having him hold my index fingers with both his palms, I experience the magic. I chant, “Uh . . Uh. . .UUhhh . . . . . .UH OH!!” His bum falls to the floor. Correction: he pulls himself to the floor with a thud and a squeal and a huge grin on his face. We repeat the game for the next ten minutes. And Sometimes he doesn’t wait for me to begin the “Uh” chant – he just goes for it and throws himself to the floor. Most of the time (especially when jumping up and down on the bed or the carpet) he plays the game with reckless abandon. But boy did it make our family laugh when we played the game in their kitchen. With his big cloth diapered butt, I didn’t think there would be much impact, but after his first “thud” he continued to play the game . . . only by lowering himself gingerly to the tile floor. Ah, my delicate baby boy.