Self-propelled!

Because I was home sick I avoided a "Cat's in the Cradle" moment: I saw his little butt the very first time he did a real crawl across the floor.

He scooted in four-wheel drive without even thinking of it in order to capture the cat toy from the other end of the room. Having grabbed it, he whipped it around to the evident delight of all the floor-dwelling creatures in the room.

So, we are one step closer to my dream of having a child and cats that mutually amuse one another.

When I went to change the child earlier I found our big cat on the changing table. Normally she will not tolerate the boss's proximity but this time I put him down and she hung out. He grabbed several double handfuls of cat and she was very calm until she decided she needed to be somewhere else.

milestone

First real crawling today!!

Dad ramblings

Let's start with some uncommented and out-of-context kid pics!

Today I am at home sick. The doctor says it's some kind of opportunistic infection to which I was made vulnerable by allergies, or allergies to which I was made vulnerable by some kind of infection. Anyway, it sucks. I am coughing, snotty, and have a rotten sore throat. I can only croak intermittantly and I curl up into an unattractive Monty Burns posture when I cough, because the relevant muscles are so sore after four days of this.

Yeah I know, it's not childbirth, get over it. More to come as we all get older. A great opportunity to ponder the limitations of the flesh.

Anyway, it was cool to be able to see a local doctor for $5. He was a nice young guy, unhurried and competent. It's good to have insurance when you need it.

He gave me some drug samples, wrote a couple of prescriptions, and listed some OTC meds he thought I should buy. Guess how many different medications? If you guessed seven, you are correct. One bottle of prescription nose spray cost $77.

I tried some of the drug cocktail yesterday but I still wasn't feeling much better, just dried out and dissociated from the cough syrup. In the evening I started gargling with cayenne pepper. This is touted as a miracle cure on various websites -- I found it more effective and much less unpleasant than the $15 chloraseptic throat spray, but not an instant cure.

The $77 nose spray is supposed to start working after a week or so, but it seems to me that most illnesses are going to start feeling better after a week or so no matter what you use, right?

What has helped instantly with the sinus problems has been regular use of G's neti pot. This produces instant relief, lasting for some hours, for the approximate cost of a teaspoon of salt. It'll never catch on.

In family news (from the Dad's perspective) we've been having a wonderful time as spring unrolls across NJ. The leaves are out and the season is truly underway. We were delighted to see tulips in all colors appear in our back yard, and the sadness of seeing the blossoms drop off has been largely assuaged by the joy of seeing all the new green.

Much of the initial green was an agressive hegemonising weed swarm that tried to eat the back yard. I beat it back with a shower of harmful chemicals to maintain the sanctioned monoculture. At this point the insurgency is in its last throes but I remain prepared to deliver a surge of more 1,5,8-disbiphenoxypropylacetate if stability is not achieved in a couple weeks.

Now it's mostly grass back there, and probably even safe for the baby to sit in. Or it would be, if he did not have the impulse to grab and eat anything smaller than his head. Although we're cool with the idea that he is going to eat a certain amount of dirt and bugs, there was an incident with a stick last week that raised some choking concerns.

We planted some flowers and some herbs in the boxes by the side of the house and they seem to be thriving. We buried a bunch of other things in the dirt around the house and they are displaying a more varied set of behaviors. I've discovered I quite like yard work, once I get into the groove.

Home remedy update: I'm now sipping a cup of hot isotonic saline with a half-teaspoon of extra-hot chili powder steeped in it. It's effective on the sort throat and actually pretty tasty. Not at all like the yucky medicinal deadening of the Chloraseptic. Next time maybe I will try chicken broth instead of the salt water.

Well, wife and child are home from the Mommy and Me hike at Schiff so I better sign off. It's been nice blogging at you, hope I get to do it again soon. Now go update your own so I can read it!

mamamama

Peter is 7-months-old now! So much goes on:

He's been making a scary amount of progress with locomotion and grabbing. He did his first 360 roll April 14. It took him a while to figure out that he could use this skill to get anywhere in the room. He seems to have radar for the things in the room that are expensive, dangerous or both. So, he'll roll straight up to the computer cord and either eats it or try to pull the computer onto his head.

He doesn't seem to be very interested in crawling. He's much more interested in standing. He will try to pull himself up with any object. He doesn't yet have a good sense of which objects work for this and which don't. (e.g. side of the crib, good. kitty, bad.)

He will sit, throw himself forward into the crawling position, and then try to stand rather than crawl. New this week: he learned how to get back to sitting after throwing himself into crawling position. He used to hit the crawling pose, fall onto his stomach after his arms tired, roll onto his back and yelp to be sat up. This weekend I saw him combine this set of skills. He rolled over to an object he wanted, rolled to his stomach, pushed up through crawling position and back to sit.

He can also scoot on his butt when he's sitting. He surprised me with this one two weeks ago. It was raining and I sat him in the middle of the bed to close the window. I figured it was safe: queen-size bed and only long enough to close the window. Wrong! He scoots to the edge of the bed and dives onto the hard-wood floor. Bad Mommy took him to the doctor. He cried the whole way, then proceeds to flirt, coo and giggle at the receptionists, nurses and Dr. -- who are all like, 'Why are you wasting our time, lady.'

Today, I actually saw him scoot himself & his rocking chair across the kitchen to try to pet the cat while strapped into his chair.

Over the last week or so, he's been making consonant/vowel combinations-- rather than just vowels. So, we've heard our first mamama and bababa and full blown baby talk words like abagaba.

He has 2 teeth now: bottom front. The first one came in April 17 and the second one on April 21. He can bite quite hard. a couple of weeks ago, Daddy sported a band-aid to school for all to see.

Over the last month we traveled to Florida, Maryland and Philly. Peter had his first trip to the beach, rode his first merry-go-round, saw King Tut's stuff and watched St. John's cream the Navy at croquet. By the way, if you want to crash parties and be offered lots of free champagne, show up wearing a cute baby! Click here to check out all the new pictures of the young prince. No croquet pictures yet -- they are on Aunt Gretchen's camera.