Bailey & Scream

Breastfeeding is a contact sport. I no longer have my orginal breasts...they've been replaced by air bags. as quoted by me, 5-19-06

When Josh began nursing (on the day we took him home), we didn't have the difficulties that most new moms/babies experienced with the whole process. I s'poze that if one has the "large tracks of land" (or as Suz is fond of saying, "cleavage in turtlenecks") that I am, er, blessed with, it isn't as rough for the infant to find/figure out what he's supposed to be doing. (Of course, because of said "tracks of land", we seriously considered giving Josh a snorkel and a mask for his feedings, but so far that hasn't been necessary -- I wonder, though, if he should be feeding without a buddy diver)...and I'll concede that I could be talking out my ear on this, too. Josh would snuggle up, latch on with all of the cute and cuddly-ness of a great white in a feeding frenzy, and proceed to suck out my toenails (to this day, I think that the two white spots on his gums where I think he's cutting teeth may actually be bits of my kneecaps). After a few minutes, he'd settle down and relax, and become the quiet soothed baby of all of the mommy commercials. Initially, when he was full, he'd just pop off...like a cork, and settle further into trusting, easy sleep. Now, though, he's gotten into the habit of fighting sleep...he just has too many other things to do, and he has absolutely no patience with sleep at all. Now, when he's done, he grabs me between his gums, yanks his head to the opposite side, bites down harder, and then releases me with an audible snap. I feel like I'm attached to a living taffy-pulling machine, and to say that this process is a mite uncomfortable is like saying that cracking your small toe against a corner is a mite painful (and I've been doing this an awful lot lately, too -- Joy). Then he fusses. Once he's down, he's fine, but the only time he really all out go-for-broke lets loose anymore is when we are trying to get him to sleep, and he just won't have it.


Last weekend, Auntie Suz-ing was home for a visit, and she brought with her my fuzzy cousin, a cairn terrier (think Toto from "Oz" combined with a rock-solid footstool...or, and I say this with love, picture Elvis as Toto, and think the Elvis of his later years ). This dog actually outweighs Josh, but is roughly the same size...In her own environment, and truth be told, until "Josh, the Usurper" came along, she is/was the resident diva dog and THE center of attention. She is NOT impressed with Josh, and spends much of her time (when he's around) barking high, yippy statements to that effect. Josh is boring. He won't play properly...and he gets petted and held all of the time, and quite frankly, she can't quite make out his appeal AT ALL. Sadly (well, I'm sad about it, Bailey doesn't seem to mind), Bailey was eventually banished to Grandma O's sun porch, so the playing with the Josh could commence in earnest. Well, with all of the people he doesn't get to see very often around him, Josh always feels the need to stay wide awake and entertain with all the powers of cuteness his little bod contains. Wide awake. For Hours. Finally, he dropped off in mid-cry (he does this frequently, it's rather disturbing, as I always think "something bad" has happened to create this ceasing and desisting), and we laid him gently on a blanket on Gram's smooth brown couch...we covered him up, and cooed over him..."Isn't he sweet!" ... "Aw, look at that!" (and from my head-- "Oh, please God, let him stay down for an hour and a half!!!) and Bailey was permitted to re-enter the living room to be sociable again. For the first fifteen minutes, she was very sweet...She looked around, allowed all of us to admire her chunky adorableness...and then she decided that she wants petted. She jumped up onto the couch, whipped around very quickly, and promptly sat on Josh's head. Amazingly enough, Josh is so zonked at this point that he barely moves or makes a sound. We nudged Bailey off of him, and she then flopped agreeably by my leg...Josh didn't move. She stared at Josh and whuffed at him. He did not move. Her cleverness was wasted. She then tucked her head down by her shoulder...playing hard-to-get (Oh, please! My cat who actually is"hard-to-get" has the registered name "Silken Hussy". In a side note, Mom's two trampy cats - Female' -pronounced Fehm-Mahl-Leh - and Goldie no longer bother playing hard to get...if they had a red light on their cat door, it would be the Las Vegas strip.). Josh still didn't move, and by this point, Bailey had completely run out of subtle. She got up, grabbed the corner of the blanket Josh was on in her teeth, and with a quick jerk of her head, she made like a bad magician and yanked exactly half of the blanket out from under Josh. His head and back bounced a few inches into the air and then hit the couch cushions, and at that point, Bailey FINALLY got his attention. Sleep was no longer a viable option until nine that night, and at that point, he was so tuckered out, that he slept through his diaper change.




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We tried Josh on his first solid food...rice cereal and Mom-juice. Some actually got into his mouth, but he did decide that rice cereal tasted better with baby feet in the bowl.
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I will do anything to get Josh to laugh. I should say that he actually tends to be very picky about what will make him all giggly...and I created Octopus Kisses just for this purpose. I find that I am compelled to kiss and pretend to gnaw upon my only son, and somehow Octopus Kisses just naturally grew out of this odd obsession. I turn to Josh and latch my lips on his cheek and make a popping noise as I release him. He laughs, I laugh...it's all good. The other day, Josh gave me his first kiss. He turned to me, latched his lips onto my cheekand then sucked hard and released, trying to imitate the popping noise. It was very cute...but I forgot his powers of suction...he nearly took half of my face with him.

Today...Josh gave me his first real kiss. As I held him close, he leaned into my cheek, and touched his lips to my skin. As I turned to him, to say "Aww, how sweet" he looked deeply into my eyes, smiled, and stuck out his tongue and licked my face from my chin to the tip of my nose. Yep...it would seem he's inherited his father's sense of humor. *sigh*


(Somewhere in the near future, I'm going back through these posts to kick my "tense-ing" back into line. I am an English teacher's daughter who has fallen off the wagon. Sorry.)