Saturday, August 31, 2013

Malcolm is 7 months and other things that blow my mind

My baby!! Is on the cusp of becoming not a baby! I call a timeout. Just let me languish here for a moment with a baby and a preschooler.

Wow! Eliot had a lot more hair at 7 months but Malcolm started out with more hair. This is interesting to nobody but me.
 
HA.




So is there some switch that flips at 6 months and these previously lumpy babies develop little personalities? I'm loving it. Malcolm has the happiest personality. He's so...well...happy! Lots of smiles and giggling and talking from this guy. He is so very very awesome. Malcolm is sitting on his own for small periods of time now. There's no sign of teeth yet, but lots of chewing and a definite preference for 2 specific fingers to suck on. He hates purees, loves whole foods (bananas, apples, watermelon, anything he can suck on and pretend he's also a 3 year old boy), but is still a pretty gaggy little guy when he eats. He's an easy baby, really only cries if he's hungry or tired, and has begun spending the first part of the night in his own crib. He's there from anywhere from 3-6 hours. I'm easily impressed considering Eliot was my first child and the most difficult sleeper ever. So way to go Malcolm! I think the thing I want to remember most about Malcolm at this age is his awesome smile. It's so pure, so completely all-encompassing, and so freaking cute.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Eliot, while still totally adorable and in possesion of my heart, can be somewhat sassy lately. He's trying out his future teenage attitude and he's quite adept at it. He's starting preschool on the 9th and I'm just...just...so very nervous and excited and I really really hope he likes it. Of course it's a milestone. Every year after this we will have a beginning of the school year, every year until he graduates high school and hopefully college after that. Twenty more years of school kid, it's a long crazy ride. Eliot is very well-spoken, hilarious, is a talented dancer, and loves all things that move. He's also pretty well potty trained! We're still dealing with accidents here and there, and daycare has him in a pullup (which makes him lazy and not remember to go to the bathroom) but he is doing AWESOME!! I'm so proud of him. I forget to tell him often enough sometimes. I worry I'm not being a good enough parent a lot, he can be difficult and I can lose my patience. He loves his little brother though, can't wait until they can play together someday soon.

This 3 year old is the master of the cheesy grin:

 
 
But sometimes you can catch him truly happy, like at the fair on a ride....
 
 
In larger family news, my mom had a cancer scare. It's not, not cancer, totally benign, which is totally awesome. But damn. Just the thought. The thought of my family's mortality....I can't even tell you. My mom is the glue that holds us together. I talk to my mom almost every day. I cannot imagine a family gathering, a family function, a life event, a regular day without my mom.  I still need my mom. More than I can say, more than I had previously thought about. And we came together during this scare like I've never seen. We covered almost every minute with my mom. It felt like a big family wall, a wall against this thing, this cancer that we all felt was so surreal and so fucking real and scary at the same time. We stood together and said "not her." Not now. But it remains surreal, it remains a scare, a story, a blip. Thank god. But it's a reminder of what is sacred, of how none of us is promised another second. We went back to "normal" pretty quickly once we found out the news, but I still remember. For now I'll take it as a lesson. I love these fragile people around me and will try and appreciate them more, to soak them in as much as I can while I can.

Love this lady like crazy: