Bigger Steps

LR had a great morning with the nanny yesterday and when I got home we packed up and headed out for lunch with his friend R and R's mom. LR gets restless in restaurant highchairs. I can't keep him entertained with food or toys. R on the other hand could sit in his seat endlessly. R's mom, much more prepared than I, handed out toy cars to both boys. LR decided he wanted the bigger car, so traded with R. R didn't seem to mind.

After lunch we hit Old Navy and picked up a few rugby shirts for LR. It's not just that we love the sport, he just looks adorable in them. While shopping I realized I was starting a migraine. It was mild, so we took our time checking out and getting back to the cars. I let LR walk in the parking lot a bit, but he found a shopping cart he wanted to push and when I finally had to pick him up, he had a hissy fit. By the time we got to the car he had recovered. At home I took some migraine meds and we played for awhile. The headache intensified, so I turned on the TV and asked LR to play by himself. He kindly obliged. Then I tried to get him down for a nap 3 times. He finally went to sleep and I took more meds. He woke up an hour later and when I went to get him, the head rush was intense. I brought him back to the couch where he fell back asleep in my arms. I called Daddy and asked him to come home to help me. After hanging up, I put LR on a blanket that had been sitting on the floor and ran to the bathroom. Luckily LR stayed asleep and Daddy arrived ten minutes later and sent me to bed where I passed out while they had dinner. This is the first migraine (with the exception of the spinal fluid leak post delivery of LR) that made me throw up.

While being sick in the bathroom I couldn't stop thinking of what I would have done if he had been awake. What do you do if you physically can't take care of your child? It makes the prospect of having another baby even scarier. My doctors have given me the go-ahead despite higher than normal counts in some of my Lupus blood work. If I flare while pregnant, how can I take care of LR? When I talked to R's mother later in the day she said I should have called her and she's probably right. I have a lovely woman downstairs with her 3 kids and plenty of nice neighbors. I realize that I don't have much of an emergency plan in place and that we should probably think of one.

On a lighter note, LR is still impressing us with more signs and words each day. He's signing "phone" and "train" now. He touches his cheek for phone and he wrings his hands for train. Our phones can also act as walkie-talkies, so I've been calling LR and chatting with him from a room away. He doesn't talk back much, but he does listen.

In the bath this evening, he put his head on my hand on the surface of the water again. He stayed there for awhile and then moved on to something else. A few minutes later he did it again, but all by himself. He got on all fours and put the side of his head in the water. Daddy and I watched in amazement as he turned his head and blew bubbles for the first time and then put his ear back in the water. I'm going to look into swimming lessons this weekend. I don't want to miss this opportunity, this small window in time when he's not afraid of the water.

He amazed me this evening during book time before bed. I showed him a book I had been saving until he's older a few days ago. It's a Dr. Seuss pop-up book. It goes through 7 different Dr. Seuss books and is beautiful, but he's too aggressive with the delicate pop-ups, so I let him touch just a few of the sturdier pieces. He loves it to death and has wanted to see it every time he spies it in the bookshelf the past few days. I put it away this morning hoping he'd forget about it for a little while. At bedtime I read him "Each Peach Pear Plum" and then "Jamberries." Then I pulled out "Hop on Pop." Halfway through the book he turned toward his bookshelf, signed and said "book, book." I assured him I was reading him a book and finished it. He turned to his bookshelf and signed again while whining. I let him off my lap and he toddled over to the shelf. I realized he wanted the pop-up book, but it wasn't until I sat down that I realized he had recognized the drawings from "Hop on Pop" as Dr. Seuss which reminded him of the pop-up book. Cool, no? Or is it more amazing that Dr. Seuss drawings are that recognizable. Either or, it was a neat moment and both Daddy and I have seen big leaps in cognitive development recently. In other words, he's wicked smaht!