The Seversons

It’s been a long time.  The baby from my previous posts is not the same baby that we’ve got right now.

He has always been a good eater, and we’ve slowly been making the transition to more substantial solids.  He has long enjoyed the little puffs, not long ago most of them ended up on the floor but now he’s quite expert at getting them into his mouth as quickly as possible.  We’ve also started him on biter biscuits, which were an excellent toy.  Sticking Grammer in his high chair with a biter biscuit guaranteed a good 15 minutes or so while he hit his tray and sucked on it and hit his tray some more.  (This was generally done right before bathtime to make sure we got all the cookie bits off of him.)  This past week he finally quit sucking on the biter biscuits and started taking bites.  Fortunately it only took him a day or so to figure out how to chew those big bites.

He is substantially more mobile.  He has left behind the army crawl and made a full commitment to real crawling.

It wasn’t long until he decided that this was just not enough.  He started hoisting himself up to almost standing.  Of course, he could not use all the sturdy pieces of furniture to do this.  He would only try it on small, rather precarious items.  A few heads were bonked in the process.

But finally he started pulling himself to standing.  And finally he figured out that the coffee table is much better for this than the little cube.  Note his tendency to stand on tiptoe, which he gets from his daddy.

Despite the now-regular falls and head-bumps, he still hasn’t quite figured out how to be cautious.  He tends to throw himself around without much concern for the outcome.  This causes the most problems at bathtime, and a few weeks ago he got his first blood-inducing fall when he bit his cheek on the way down.  (Don’t worry, he’s fine.)  I’m not sure he learned anything since he’s as daring as ever, but I learned that we need to make sure we’re both ready to catch him when he’s in the tub.  This is a cute picture, but it came about two seconds before he took that spill, so there probably won’t be any more bath pictures until he gets more stable.

Some of you may have heard that we were a bit worried about Graham for a while.  He started babbling very early and then suddenly quit, so the pediatrician sent him for a hearing test.  He passed all the tests with flying colors and, of course, started babbling again the very next day.  He’s also starting to recognize more and more words.  It feels like just in the last couple of weeks he’s made incredible progress.  He learned “no” pretty quickly (not that he always obeys, but he does sometimes), and, not surprisingly, if you ask if he wants to watch Nemo, he’ll immediately look at the television to see if it’s on.  The Bug is not much for television, but he is utterly addicted to Finding Nemo, it is pretty much the only thing he will actually watch.  More than that, he will sometimes get upset because it is not on.  His new ability to recognize words makes this easier since he’ll immediately get calm when you mention “Nemo.”  We watch it on mute, which I highly recommend to other parents of infants.  Everything is about 10 times less annoying and repetitive if you don’t have to listen to it.

He also recognizes his three stuffed animals: Nemo, Puppy, and Sheep.  He has taken quite a shine to them and they’re now the most reliable way of entertaining him.  Here is a video of the Bug playing some kind of a game with Puppy–the little blue thing near the bottom of the screen–though it’s not clear what the rules are.  Our best guess is that he’s playing Peek.

His favorite thing to do with his stuffed animals is to give them kisses.  This started a month or two ago after we bought his stuffed Nemo and we started to have Nemo give him kisses.  He seemed to get a kick out of this and after a while he would start crawling to Nemo and playing the same game back.  Because stuffed animals don’t have functioning lips, the Bug’s idea of kisses is just to open your mouth and smush it on the stuffed animal, like so:

But the Bug’s relationship with Nemo started to get more intense.  Here is a photo shoot of Graham giving Nemo kisses (it gets pretty heated, so some of these are a little blurry):

He is a little Lothario in the making.

Don’t tell Nemo, but Graham is also regularly making out with Sheep and Puppy, too.

My favorite thing about this is that it was the very first command/request Graham ever responded to.  Now, if you ask him to give Puppy kisses, he will immediately smile, crawl over, and go to town.  And I have a very long video to prove it.  You can also see here how somehow he has added to this routine a few little headstands that he performs on his way over.  Perhaps to impress Puppy?  No matter what, it is certainly one of the cutest things ever caught on film, or in this case, on a digital camera.

Forgive the lack of posting. And forgive this post for making you think there was a real post before faking you out that it’s just one of those annoying posts that’s telling you there are no new posts.

Eric is working nights, I am working nights, and thus the babysitter is also working nights. Unfortunately the baby is not taking mornings off so I can sleep a bit. And Graham is stuck in a phase where all communications must be given in the form of a loud shriek. And he’s also sick. And Eric is studying for his exam tomorrow. And I am helping to organize volunteers for the Atlanta Film Festival, which starts in 7 days.

BUT… next week is Eric’s spring break. The one he was supposed to get twice already but which kept getting put off. Which has been put off for so long that he will take spring break, do two more weeks, and then graduate. It would be nice if we hadn’t spent so long waiting for our much much much much needed break already.

There is a possibility of blog posts during spring break because I will have another body in the house to watch the baby, whose naps are becoming increasingly short and infrequent. But there is a possibility there will be no blog posts during spring break because during those few days I will be working several shifts at the Festival, going to the doctor, going to the dentist, returning things I bought during a quick shopping trip with the shrieking baby which was definitely too quick since most of what I got has to be returned, buying pajamas for the baby, buying clothes that actually fit me, continuing the apartment search, making at least a couple of trips to the library, making another attempt to take the baby to Library Storytime, going to the gym at least a couple of times since it’s been WEEKS, going through our closets and throwing things out, packing anything we won’t be using between now and June, buying a good pair of sandals, and did I mention I’ll still be working next week? And that Eric is not really going to be on break since he’s trying to get a paper finished in lab?

Most of the crazy-ness that will be next week is because everything has been postponed due to the shrieking baby who can no longer muster the patience for the simplest errand. Don’t get me wrong, we can go to the grocery store, we could walk around for hours, but the minute we stop to put something in the cart he is DONE. DONE. SERIOUSLY, HE IS SO DONE. WE MUST GO HOME NOW NOW NOW NOW. The only way I can imagine getting groceries is to do it like they did on that old game show (Supermarket Sweep?) where people literally sprinted through the store and just threw stuff into their carts. I think we’re going to have to start bringing in a sitter just so I can run the blandest of errands. Depressing. Especially since in the last week I’ve already had a sitter 5 out of 7 days now that I once again have a consistent work schedule. I think we need a live-in nanny. Who’s up for it? Free room and board and meals!

Somewhere along the way this turned into an actual post (hopefully the baby stays asleep so I can do what I’d originally planned, and work on the novel… 57,741 words!!) so I suppose I’ll upload some pictures and leave you with the cute baby, whose cuteness is the only thing he’s got going for him right now so it’s a good thing he’s really freakin cute.

Do not fall for that poor-pitiful-baby look he’s got going on.  He’s plenty happy.

(See those teeth!)

And if I don’t post again until after graduation, I apologize. At least I can promise it will be post-worthy, there will be pomp, there will be circumstance, there will be hooding, there will be family here to celebrate, and we will see a commencement speech from the Governator himself. Pictures, I promise.

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.

We’re proud to announce that Eric will be doing his residency at Brigham & Womens Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass! More to follow…

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.

He just started scooting two days ago and it’s already come to this.  I think he actually crawled once or twice today.  We are not ready.  Someone tell this kid to slow down!

I have wrestled over whether or not to address this issue, but I have decided that it is unavoidable.  We must talk about the puppy.

I must issue a disclaimer here.  I in no way mean to disparage the puppy.  The puppy was a gift from Grammer’s wonderful grandparents and he adores it.  We may not adore the puppy itself, but we adore what it does.  It is the toy of last resort.  All day, between naps, every minute of time is spent attempting to amuse this baby.  It is rather like he is a medieval king and instead of his parents we are his humble jesters forced to dance for his enjoyment.  But he has a short attention span and eventually everything is no longer any fun.  Except the puppy.  When everything else fails, there is the puppy.  The puppy alone is responsible for giving me a good 20 minutes to blow dry my hair or write an email or some other such actual non-baby thing that needs to be done.  We are beyond grateful for the puppy.

All that said, perhaps you need a video clip to truly understand the puppy.

(Thank you for ignoring the mismatched socks on the baby.  Seriously, baby socks are the most difficult things to track down in the entire world.)

I know that this is just a preview of things to come.  We are about to endure years of toys that have lights and sounds and sing songs and play games.  Not to mention television programs that shout at children and encourage them to shout back.  We are bracing ourselves, and the puppy is good practice for that.

There is one truly disturbing thing in all of this, though.  It is not so much the puppy as the way one Nugget has completely mastered it.  He knows the little red hand plays the songs.  Did you see in the video clip how he plays and then once it’s over, he goes straight back to the red hand?  And he knows the red hand plays different songs so he will often flip through them until he decides which one he wants.  It is like he wants a soundtrack to play by.  He will sit with a rattle or a ball and play while he listens.  Then when it stops he will reach over, turn it back on, and turn back to his rattle.  (If you know how often his father listens to his ipod while he works, this will probably come as no surprise.)

Because of the nonstop ABC’s and 123’s and colors, etc., I decided we needed a second-string toy that could help manage these duties but not drive us nuts.  I did some research, found a few I thought we could live with and we went to the store to test drive.  Graham’s new toy plays Mozart.  I know, I know, snobby baby toys blah blah blah.  But the Mozart is not for Graham.  It is for me.  It is so I do not have to have “It’s a great big colorful world out there” stuck in my head all day long.  I was also confident that the toy would be advanced enough that it would take Graham at least a day to crack it.    Here he is on his first go-round at home.

But there is more.  Did you also notice in the first video clip how he kicks his adorable chunky little legs IN TIME WITH THE MUSIC?  I didn’t until I just looked at it.  This frightens me because the other day Eric mentioned that he was shaking a rattle in time with the Mozart cube.  I insisted this must be coincidence, even though it happened twice.  Now that I have seen the video as additional evidence I am a smidge worried.  Does this baby lay in bed at night scheming ways to take over the world?  Honestly, I am kind of concerned that he does.

The good news is that if he is striving for total world domination, at least your future leader will be astonishingly adorable. This is probably part of the master plan, he will overwhelm us with cuteness as a diversionary tactic.

I think it will work.

In all honesty, I doubt we have a musical prodigy on our hands.  Let’s get a little perspective.  His current favorite toy is a shoe.  He likes to stick it in his mouth.

Welcome to February, also known as the month where we must put our heads down and push through until it’s over, when we may take a teensy break and curl up and sleep.  This month I am working in 5 different states so I’m logging just a smidge of travel time.  It should be no surprise, then, that Grammer has decided this is the perfect time to start dealing with separation anxiety.  I’m not sure if it’s really full blown since it’s not something he’s supposed to do yet, but he seems to have his own time frame for everything.  Fortunately it comes and goes and teething seems to be distracting him.  Those top two teeth are set to burst out on the scene any minute.  We will keep you posted and attempt to take pictures which, inevitably, will not show any teeth at all.  (Actually the one below was on purpose.  This is Graham’s close-mouthed grin, which I find charming.)

Since Eric is back on rotations, the babysitter is left with an unsatisfying “I don’t know when one of us will be home.”  We try to compensate appropriately.  And every now and then Eric obliges by coming home far earlier than expected and giving her her evening back.

Speaking of Eric, February is also his birthday month, which is unfortunate this year.  On the bright side, he got his whole birthday weekend off and we were able to spend the big day just as we liked: sleeping in, doing very little, hanging with the Bug.  Because his birthday falls just a week before Valentine’s Day, and Valentine’s Day is the single most unsatisfying day of restaurant dining in the universe, we will celebrate instead on some day inbetween the two that has yet to be determined, but will surely be lovely and involve dessert.

Getting back to the baby (which is why you’re all here anyway, right?) I hate all the milestone stuff.  It feels like we are imposing schedules, and our baby loathes schedules.  If they are behind, you worry.  If they are ahead, you feel like you’re bragging.  I am basically content to let Graham do what he wants when he wants.  Mostly I like to encourage things he is interested in.  Which is why we spent so much time helping him sit: he wanted it desperately so we helped the little guy practice.  He hasn’t really been interested in mobility until the last couple of days.  Now if a toy is out of his reach, he no longer just cries until it’s given to him, he makes valiant efforts to get it himself.  Mostly this involves strategic rolling.  I was thinking he might be a late crawler, but now I’m wondering.

One thing that Graham is seriously behind on is laughing.  This baby does not giggle or chuckle or laugh.  At least not until last week.  For most babies this comes at 3 or 4 months, and if it weren’t for the fact that he is so obviously happy much of the time, I might have worried.  I told the pediatrician and she didn’t seem concerned, she assured me he’d get around to it.  I said, “Or I’ll have a 3-year-old who screams whenever he’s happy.”  Screaming is his preferred expression of pleasure, so the fact that he’s starting to show little signs of laughter is a welcome change.  In the video below, you can see both the occasional chuckles and the screaming, along with a sudden interest in grabbing the camera which is starting to affect the quality of our picture-taking.

We are at the point where books on babies are amusing rather than helpful. When it says, “Over the last few months, you have noticed your baby taking fewer and fewer naps until he has settled into a regular schedule with only one or two naps a day,” I laugh. Because our baby still takes anywhere from 2 to 6 naps a day which last anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. When it says, “If you’d like to exercise, why don’t you try doing yoga with your baby,” I laugh. They even have instructions for these things. The pictures involve happy little babies who sit placidly on their rumps until picked up and incorporated into the pose somehow. My baby would never do that. If I tried to set him in front of me while I got into warrior pose, he would a) need a toy to amuse him, b) need another toy for when he got tired of that toy, c) not sit still because he’d inevitably find something out of his reach that is more interesting than what he currently has, and d) totally destroy the pose if I even attempted to pick him up what with the wriggling and the carrying on. I am already dreaming about the Imaginary Baby #2 who is the low-key, laid-back baby who will happily gaze up at me while I do the warrior pose, then be placed serenely on my knee… while toddler Graham destroys the entire house around us.

He has already mastered his cherubic look of innocence. “Who, me?  I could never do such a thing.  I cannot even use a sippy cup!”  Or can he…  I’ll try and get a picture if I see a “mwa ha ha” any time soon, but I suspects he saves it for when I’m not around.