Graham has reached the age where he enjoys very simple things.
A box.
A bottle. (Sticking a couple paper clips in there so it rattles helps.)
A laundry basket.
And shoes. We can’t forget shoes.
I don’t think he’ll be getting any new toys for a while.
As you can probably tell, our Bug is mobile. He is not exactly crawling. Instead he looks like the guy at the end of an action movie who you thought was dead but isn’t actually dead and who’s going to drag himself across the room to save the day by getting the gun/bomb/whatever to take out the bad guy at the very last second. It’s that kind of dragging. Very purposeful. And as quickly as possible.
If anything, Grammer is simple to a fault. He so enjoys simplicity that when things get complicated, he tends to lose his cool. Toys in a room are great. Toys in a room with other kids is a bit too much for him. He is a sensitive Bug. But before he gets upset, he’ll “crawl” over to whatever toy some other kid is playing with and take it for himself. Sensitive and yet oddly aggressive. Gee, he couldn’t possibly be my kid.
I am trying to follow his lead and enjoy simple things as well. Like taking advantage of the occasional warm-ish day by dressing him in one of the many rompers that are sitting there just aching to be used.
Dressing the Bug in his Bug pajamas.
Kissing a chubby baby.
And giving his head an occasional Nom.
And entertaining ourselves the old-fashioned way. (I think a willingness to post embarrassing pictures/video of yourself is the hallmark of a good blogger. So consider this to be a sign of my sheer awesome-ness. Even worse, my attempts to hide my little dance number off-camera were thwarted–you can see my shadow on the wall.)
When you are in law school there is no such thing as matching. You hope you get a job and it’s often a year-long process that involves any number of emails and interviews and visits. Medical school makes it a much more abbreviated process with a definitive outcome. And I have to say it has its advantages. There’s just something nice about knowing that on a particular day at a particular time you find out your future. (Especially if you are a planner, like me.)
This day has been on the horizon ever since I met Eric. When we went on our first date, his medical school classmates had just matched and were getting ready to set off as doctors while he was mid-way through his PhD. So the match has loomed large from the beginning. As we got more serious it was something we talked about more often.
I have to say that it’s been much easier to watch it with a slight remove. I have complete trust in Eric’s abilities, which helps, and I know that if I was the one matching we would’ve been in a lot more danger. Eric’s match list was pretty short, mine would’ve been crazy long and I still would’ve been on pins and needles about finding one program that wanted me.
Deciding how you want to match has a lot of factors. First, you have to find your specialty. Eric had less than a year to try and get through all the rotations he was required to do and still do enough electives that he could decide what path he wanted to take. When he finished his PhD he had Pathology as a backup, something he could do if he didn’t like anything else. But it turned out that he liked it the most and it fits the best with his long-term research goals. He gets teased about it a little (both of his research mentors were pathologists, which may explain why he wanted a little distance) but we’re happy he has a good fit.
Each specialty is competitive in different ways and every potential residency program is good for different reasons. Because Eric knew he wanted research we had a short list of schools that would give him the opportunities he needed. And because of his PhD we could breathe a little easier at how he’d stack up in the pool of applicants. (Only took 4 years of work for a little breathing room.)
Eric spent several weeks in the fall interviewing and I spent several weeks as his travel agent. We had long phone conversations after every interview. Each time we’d talk Eric would tell me he’d found his new favorite program. It got to the point where I would roll my eyes and say maybe he needed a little distance. But when all the interviews were done we were able to put together our list pretty quickly.
How much of a role did I play, you might wonder. Not much, actually. I scouted out the different cities and they all had their own pros and cons. I knew that we could control our own list, but we couldn’t control the entire outcome. So I took a low-key approach (very unusual for me) and was happy with whatever happened. The worst possible thing was not matching and taking a year off for more research. The second worst possible thing was going to a great program that we loved though it wasn’t our first choice. I felt okay with that.
Match day itself involved a fair amount of ceremony. First there was the class picture.
(I love how Emory just stuck a newer building on the end of an older building but left the facade intact. An interesting architectural decision, but it makes for convenient indoor pictures.)
Then we headed over to the Medical School building which is all fancy and new, but which wasn’t finished until Eric no longer had any classes there. So at least we got something out of it. On a big table they laid out all the envelopes with everyone’s names on them.
I was expecting something very sophisticated to go with the fancy new careers everyone would find out about. Instead, Match Day was kind of like a New Year’s Eve party without the ball dropping. There was even a lady holding up a big clock so everyone knew exactly when they’d get the news. Here’s the group with a couple of minutes to go.
You can see Eric near the front of the pack. Up on the catwalk are other med students who will match in a year or two seeing how it goes down. Oh, the suspense!
If you’re wondering, the big moment looked like this:
If you look closely, you’ll see that Eric was one of the first ones at the table. He was nice enough to bring his envelope unopened through the crowd so we could open it together. The Bug was not able to be with us due to his very deep-seeded hatred of crowds and noise. It was definitely a loud affair.
But at the end of the day, we opened our envelope and saw that Eric got into his favorite program. We had our suspicions that we’d be going to Boston, but it was hard to try and plan without being able to plan. I think we need to invest in some Harvard and/or Red Sox regalia for the Bug. He is getting ready, too, he hears it’s wicked cold there.
Now, if you’ll excuse me I have a new apartment to find and an entire move to plan.
Let me get this out of the way before I move on to other matters. Just when you think this baby cannot get any cuter, he does.
This smile was elicited by a game of Peek with Eric. Grammer is getting old enough that he is starting to show specific preferences towards one of us depending on the situation. Daddy is definitely the one for happy fun time.
As for how things are going on the homefront, we are all sick. Eric and Graham came down at about the same time with some kind of virus. There followed a week of sick grumpiness while I was the sole person to look after everyone. I miraculously stayed well… until yesterday. So this is our first shared virus. Very sweet, huh?
The nice thing about it is that Graham has mellowed out big time. I am hoping it is a permanent change and not just illness-induced malaise. He will now sit with someone on the couch and may even allow himself to be cuddled. He will be contented to play with one or maybe two small toys and will be terribly cute. This was especially useful yesterday when I was sick and got a good hour spent laying in bed while Grammer played next to me. When this kind of thing happens, Eric and I look at each other and ask, “Is this what a normal baby is like?”
Another sign of either illness or maturity is his sudden lack of freakouts when we run errands. On Tuesday I ran not one, but two errands, and in the middle I walked Graham around the park for over an hour. And he was totally fine. It was crazy. He has sat through walks around the neighborhood and a walk through the museum in his fancy new forward-facing stroller (by which I mean found-on-craigslist-used forward-facing stroller) without much complaint.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that taking Graham on an errand means I am stuck with an extremely stoic baby. He has never once smiled at me in the grocery store. He may smile in his car seat, but once we walk through those doors, this kid means business. It doesn’t matter how many other shoppers coo at him or how many checkout girls smile at him. He looks back with concern, wondering why they are not treating the occasion with all the gravitas it deserves.
At home his moods vary. There are times when he is calm and contented just to have a sock in his mouth and sit on Mama’s lap.
It used to be that when he was playing on the floor we could keep him busy with one or two toys at a time and when he wasn’t looking I would put away any he had forgotten about for the moment. We keep his toys in a couple of cloth bins and for a long time he didn’t notice. Now, though, he is mobile and wants everything. So it is not at all unusual to find him like this:
Tricks can only work with this kid for so long. We are going to have to up our game.
Finally, a picture and a video to wrap things up. Here we have Our Baby with someone who appears to be his 14-year-old babysitter.
And finally we have video with Eric. I must give a disclaimer. Eric worries this video makes him look like a bad father. So I have to explain that I took this video after instructing Eric to go about his business on the computer. He is not purposely ignoring Our Bug. I just love the way the baby watches him.
As you can tell from our previous post, Grammer has learned how to crawl. It’s important that I phrase it that way. It’s not so much that he does crawl as that he learned how. He doesn’t actually do it even though he’s capable. Part of it is because he hasn’t quite perfected his moves yet. But the other part is due to his unique personality.
His unique personality, of course, comes from his parents. And I’ve been wondering whether he takes more after Eric or me. The word we use to describe Grammer most often is “deliberate.” I generally think of that word applying more to Eric than to me. However, one must consider that when I was a baby, my mother would keep me busy at lunch by giving me a bowl of rice, which I would eat… one piece at a time.
But crawling has shown that, in some ways, Graham is more like me. Eric is the determined one, the hard worker who pushes through anything and everything. I am ambitious, but lazy; I tend to exert effort only when I am interested and the goal is in sight. As for the Bug, he could manifest his genetic tendencies in two ways. If he was more like Eric, he’d keep working on his crawling until he had the whole apartment covered in two seconds flat. If he took after me, he’d see the toy, want the toy, but recognize that someone else could get the toy for him with much less effort than it would take him and by screaming loud and long enough the toy would be delivered into his hands.
The Bug has picked Option B.
I wish I could be happy about this. But with all the screaming it is hard to hear myself think.
Then again, if he took after Eric he probably would have pulled the books off the shelves and figured out a way over the baby gate by now. And while we’ve done some basic babyproofing, it’s nice knowing that while those outlet covers are in place, we don’t really need them so much.
Every now and then he gets in a peppy, adventuresome mood and ventures out towards his jingle bell or his squishy turtle book. So it’s not like he will never be crawling up the walls. I look forward to when he gets a little more comfortable. Because we could really do without all the screaming.
Another thing we could do without: teeth. We’ve got 4 with the 5th ready to bust any day now. With more than two months of teething I think we are ready for a break.
