Seven Month Update

Dear Lana,

You turn seven months old today. I know you can hardly believe that we made you wait almost seven months before feeding you sweet potatoes, prunes, and pears, but you have more than made up for lost time over the past few weeks. I would love to accurately describe the gusto with which you approach each meal – the twinkle in your eyes, the whimpers of excitement, the gaping mouth to remind us where the food should be inserted. But words will never do a better job of capturing the moment than this photo does. Looking at this picture makes me want to interrupt you from whatever you are doing right this moment to give you a bite of applesauce, just so I can see that adorable expression.

Your enthusiasm for new foods is completely and utterly amazing to me because you are the product of two of the pickiest eaters on the planet. As a child, I loathed eating and treated each meal like a terrible chore that I would have happily avoided if only it weren’t so essential for life. I hid food in napkins, fed it to the dog under the table, and made rearranging food on a plate to look like it’s been eaten into an art form. For years, the dinner conversation in my home always included a negotiation of how many more bites of food I had to eat. Once I even convinced a substitute teacher at a “clean your plate” preschool that I was allergic to everything in the meal but the Jello.

While I was manipulative when it came to food, your father was downright defiant. His parents on two occasions attempted to make him eat something he didn’t want. The first time he was told he could not leave the table until he cleaned his plate. He sat at that table all night long, only getting up when it was time for school the next day. On the second occasion he actually sampled the food in question (asparagus) and then promptly threw it up all over the table. Well played, young John.

Your father and I have expanded our palettes somewhat since childhood, but still remain far more selective than your average 30-year olds. I am so pleased that we have not thus far passed this affliction on to you and I hope you will continue to love discovering new foods. I know we will continue to enjoy watching you, our adorable Lana Bear.

Love,
Mom

Doctor, doctor

Both of my babies visited their respective doctors last week for regular check-ups and vaccinations. One of them cried and one of them pooped in the exam room. Can you guess which is which?

Lana’s six-month doctor visit actually got off to a good start. We were mercifully spared another showing of Toy Story, the movie that normally plays all day, every day in the waiting area. It’s a decent movie – one that John and I first saw it when we were freshmen in college. We saw it together and then went back to my dorm room to marvel at the state of computer animation and consume cheap pizza. Never did we imagine that 12 years later we would stare at a blank screen in a pediatrician’s waiting room and feel relieved to not be watching it again.

Once we made it to the exam room, Lana was measured and weighed. She’s currently 27.5 inches long and not quite 16 lbs, which places her in the 95th percentile for height and the 40th percentile for weight. She enjoyed the novelty of hanging out in the exam room wearing just a diaper – something we don’t usually let her do because we don’t want to perpetuate the stereotypes of southern babies and also because she’s become amazingly adept at tearing the thing off. She smiled and played with the nice doctor, and wailed when the evil nurse injected both her legs with vaccinations. I successfully fought off the urge to drop kick the nurse for sticking my baby with needles and mispronouncing Lana for the fourth time.

Rico’s trip to the vet was slightly more traumatic, mostly because he is old and wise enough to know that no good ever comes from a doctor’s visit. We began with his usual pacing of the waiting area like a man condemned to death. They don’t bother playing movies at the vet’s office – probably because they could show dog porn and it still wouldn’t distract or comfort nervous clientele like Rico.

After being dragged into the exam room, Rico proved that you can actually teach an old dog a new trick. The vet tech appeared with a fecal retrieval tool that I’ve cleverly nicknamed “the plastic spoon they stick up Rico’s butt.” Rico took one look at it and promptly took a dump on the exam room floor. The vet tech calmly collected the poop and said, “I guess we’ll just use this for our sample.” Score one for the dog.

Rico then shook uncontrollably through the weighing (25 lbs), physical examination, and nail trimming, but didn’t so much as flinch when he received two shots and had blood drawn. He received a clean bill of health and made a mad dash for the exit, but not before I paid a bill larger than the cost of Lana’s entire hospital stay. I guess that’s why puppies are born in a cardboard box and not in a veterinarian nursery.

Six Month Update

Dear Lana,

Happy ½ a year birthday! You’ve achieved a lot in six short months, like learning to breathe, eat, poop, smile, laugh, play, roll over, sit up, and remove your diaper. I, on the other hand, still haven’t gotten around to unpacking my toiletries from the hospital. I guess keeping you alive and (mostly) happy should count for something, though.

In the last month you’ve developed some strong preferences about what you like, dislike, and hate with a fiery passion. On the list of likes: the theme song from Scrubs, applesauce/pears/peas, your Carter’s bunny blanket, dogs, walks, and pretty much anything you can stick in your mouth. You absolutely love for me to strap you into your Baby Bjorn and walk you around the neighborhood or through a store, and I love how your giggling up and down the aisles of the grocery store makes a formerly mundane chore into an occasion. And although the local Kroger is really funny, it doesn’t hold a candle to the family dog. You have laughed louder and longer than ever before while watching Rico play Frisbee or fetch this month. I knew there was a reason for keeping that crazy canine around.

Your list of dislikes is happily shorter, consisting mainly of pacifiers and anything that we won’t allow you to stick in your mouth. It’s a bit odd that a baby who will stick anything in her mouth should care so little for a pacifier, but I think you view it as a malfunctioning nipple. You become angry when it doesn’t produce a delicious beverage, and anger is the last thing we need from an object that advertises pacification. I should also take a moment to veer off subject and report that after six months, your father still snickers every time I ask him to bring me a nipple for your bottle. Juvenile? Probably. Endearing? Definitely.

Finally, we reach the things you hate with a fiery passion, the way I hate The Macarena or finding pickles embedded in a sandwich that I ordered plain. These things all involve your nose – the wiping of the nose, suctioning of the nose, picking of the nose. For months I cleaned your nose with little or no resistance – The Booger Removal Patrol, as I liked to call it back when it was all fun and games. That name now seems a bit too glib, as Mr. Cruise would say, since we are engaging in real hand to hand combat over the fate of a steady stream of snot and boogies. I’m sorry to cause you so much distress, but happy to report that your hand/eye/nose coordination is improving rapidly as a result.

Keep fighting the good fight, my lovely Lana Bear.

Love,
Mom