My new dentist

I went to a new dentist yesterday, new for me, not new in general. His office is very small, he's the only dentist, and homey. When I got there a few minutes before 1:00 the lights were off and there was another patient waiting in the waiting room. He told me everyone was still at lunch. I guess the office closes between 12 and 1:00 for lunch. When the receptionist returned she said hello and asked if I was Doodlebug. Then the dentist came out and introduced himself and told me how happy he was to meet me. I felt welcome.

While the dentist was examining my teeth and gums the receptionist came in and said that Charlie was in the waiting room and thought he has an appointment but he didn't. She asked the dentist if she could drive him home. It would only take about 10 minutes and it was really cold outside. The dentist said yes and off she went. I thought, I love how they take care of their patients here. The team of people all seemed genuinely interested to hear about baby Doodle and they requested that I bring pictures of him next time. I think I will.

It's nice to finally have a dentist, or any medical professional for that matter, who I feel comfortable with and who runs a small-town-like office. And their office is just a short drive from my house.

Baby Doodle's first word -- sort of

Yesterday, baby Doodle and I were looking at the growth chart hanging in his room. I pointed out Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Pluto, who I identified as a dog. BD said "daw." I said, yes, "dog." He kept repeating it. A few minutes later we heard the dog across the street barking. I said again, "do you hear the dog?" He repeated "daw." I don't know if this counts as his first word because he's always heard me say it first. But I have never heard him call anything else a "daw," so I'm inclined to think that dog is his first word.

He also seems to say "yes" when asked a question, but I can't tell yet if he really means yes.

Baby Doodle is also walking all over the place with assistance. He holds my or Mr. Doodlebug's hands and walks around the house. It's his favorite pasttime.

random thoughts II

1. The OC sucks. I continue to watch because I feel some loyalty to the show. Mr. D and I watched the first season on DVD while simultaneously watching the second season on the air. We were hooked. During that time I was teaching at a pretty rough middle school outside DC and hated, and I mean hated, my job. The kids were unruly, to put it mildly, and I had so many more responsibilities than teaching, grading and planning. I was working 12 hour days at the beginning of the school year. The OC really helped me take my mind off my misery. I was actually happy while I was watching the show. Now I read Real Simple and half watch the show because it is so awful. I can't stop watching now with only five episodes left, but man does it suck. I could go into the details of how much it sucks, but it would take too much time and I have to put the laundry in the dryer before BD wakes up from his first nap of the day.

2. Baby Doodle decided to wake up last night at 1:00 a.m. I went downstairs (usually Mr. Doodlebug goes for the first wake up if there is one, but last night he was feeling more sick than I was -- all three of us have colds) and rubbed his head. He would start to drift off and I would think I could go back to bed in a few minutes and then, as if he could sense that I was thinking about leaving the room he would wake up and whine a little. I rubbed his head some more. This routine continued for 40 minutes. At that point I had had enough and thought he might fall back asleep more easily if I wasn't there. So I went back to bed and let him cry. He seemed to have fallen asleep about 20 minutes later (this is an hour after he originally woke up), but then started screaming and this time he didn't let up. Mr. D went down and rocked him back to sleep, but alas, he cried as soon as Mr. D put him back in the crib. At that point we let him come to bed with us -- it was about 2:15 a.m.

3. The cold. We walked around the King of Prussia mall yesterday for two hours to give us something to do while it snowed outside. It was too cold and windy to go for a long walk with baby Doodle so we went to the second biggest mall in the country and walked around. I bought some clothes for BD at Old Navy because they were having a really great sale, and I bought a pair of pants for me. They're cute but a little too big. It turns out I'm back to a size 2.

Mr. Doodlebug makes me laugh

One of the many reasons I fell in love with Mr. Doodlebug is his sense of humor. He cracks me up all the time. Lying in bed we laughed so hard my stomach hurt two nights last week. Today we went to Lancaster County, where I had never been. We went to Intercourse and Bird-In-Hand, yes those are the actual names of the two towns we visited today. We bought some incredible desserts (shoofly pie, chocolate-peanut butter whoopie pie, pumpkin-vanilla whoopie pie, chocolate peanutbutter fudge, chocolate marshmallow ice cream, and rootbeer licorice) at a few bakeries and specialty shops. In one of those specialty shops Mr. D noted that they had large boxes of pickling salt and he said, "Honey, why don't you pickle more things for our family?"

The other day, knowing that I make fun of him for not knowing how to cook anything (except peanut butter bread -- where you spread peanut butter on a piece of bread -- and macaroni and cheese from a box) he asked if I wanted him to whip up some whipped cream to go on our sundaes. I asked how he would go about doing that. He replied, "I would take some butter and sugar and milk and whip it really fast." It doesn't sound as funny now that I'm retelling it, but believe me, it was funny at the time.

One time when we were still living in DC I had come home from grocery shopping and was telling Mr. D about my trip. I said, "Do you want to hear about my trip?" He said, "I can't wait to hear every detail!"

Part of what makes Mr. D perfect for me is his ability to disarm me when I'm pissed off and in an argumentative mood. His humor makes our relationship work, not to mention it's good for my health to laugh so much.

my baby brother who would be older than me

Ever since I became pregnant with baby Doodle I have worried that something will be wrong with him. When I was pregnant I worried that he might be deformed or have a mental disorder. When he was born perfectly normal I worried that he might get some illness and die. I'm not overly worried about these things. I just have fleeting thoughts every now and then. Like how awful it would be if he died. Most of this irrational fear is because my parents had a baby before I was born who died when he was seven months old. He had the coxsackie virus, otherwise known as Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (which is different from Foot and Mouth Disease common in animals). The virus went to his heart and he died pretty quickly.

When baby Doodle turned seven months old I thought about how he was the age that my parents first baby was when he died. Now that baby Doodle is nine months I think about how much older he is than my brother was. I have always thought about my brother -- it's weird to call him that because I have a living brother who is younger than me and I never met this baby who died -- but I find myself thinking of him often now that I have a baby of my own. I think about how awful it must have been for my parents and how I don't know if I would have been able to have another baby.

My aunt recently showed me a picture of my brother that I had never seen, and he looked very much like BD. I was just thinking of my parents' first baby this morning and how fortunate we have been so far with baby Doodle's health (knock on wood -- yes I'm a believer in knocking on wood).

I thought gas was supposed to be cheaper this season

We're back to getting extremely high gas bills. It's so nice in the summer when the bills are like $30. Our last bill, which was not based on an actual meter reading was $274.78. If it were based on a real reading I would guess that it would be much lower as the weather has been down right balmy (except for today). Along with our bill came a card that asked us to read our own meter and send back the number, and a note asking us to make an appointment to have our meter replaced. I called.

The PGW guy came yesterday and replaced our meter -- it is now set to 00000. He had to turn off the gas to make the switch. When he turned it back on he reset the pilots on the hot water heater and furnace. While he was relighting the pilot on our hot water heater he took the liberty of resetting the temperature at which we keep our hot water. My shower this morning began with scalding hot water. I had to turn the nob to almost exclusively cold to get a temperature my skin could tolerate. It is of course to PGW's advantage to have our hot water heater set so high. It's ashame because I really liked the guy who came. He pointed out that we need to clean out our chimney so the gas fumes will be able to escape, and he explained how the new meter works. With the new battery the PGW truck will be able to read the signal on the meter by driving by our house. Apparently the old battery was dead and the trucks weren't getting a signal when they drove by. That's why I had to read the meter for them last month.

I hope we don't get a $400 bill like we did last winter. It just seems ridiculous to pay that much in one month to be moderately warm.

crib sleeping -- it's so nice

Baby Doodle is asleep in his crib in the middle of the day, again! I am shocked, shocked to find there is sleeping going on here -- by here I mean BD's own room. I don't quite know what to do with myself. I think I'll empty the dish drain and steam some carrots for baby Doodle. He loves carrots.

depressed last week

Last week I took baby Doodle to his nine-month appointment with the pediatrician. I really like our doctor. She takes a real interest in BD, seems to ask a lot of questions, checks him out pretty thoroughly, and encourages breastfeeding to all mothers. Though she is not an alarmist, she recommended we get an EKG to check baby Doodle's heart after he had that fainting spell. She didn't think it was a big deal when baby Doodle went on a hunger strike (refusing solid food, not breast milk -- never breast milk). She was reassuring when he fell out of the kitchen chair onto the hard tile floor.

After checking in and getting weighed and measured BD's doctor came in the exam room. She asked what he was eating, how often I'm nursing him, what his sleeping schedule is like, etc . . . I told her that BD still wakes up around 3:00 a.m. to nurse and then goes back to sleep in his crib. Her response was, "he doesn't need to be eating in the middle of the night any more, nutrition wise." In other words, he's waking up to be cuddled and get some comfort from nursing, but doesn't need the calories at night any more like he used to when he was an infant. I was kind of glad to hear this news because it meant, theoretically, that I could stop waking up at night to feed BD.

That night Mr. Doodlebug and I decided to give it a try. Baby Doodle predictably woke up at 3:00 a.m. to eat. Mr. D went downstairs and tried to comfort BD. He wanted no part of being comforted while still lying by himself in his crib. Mr. D took him out of the crib and rocked him back to sleep. Forty minutes later he put BD back in his crib and as soon as his head hit the mattress he was up again. Mr. D tried again. No luck. I got up, fed BD, put him back in the crib and we all went back to sleep, around 4:30 a.m. The next day I was exhausted. I knew BD would be too, so I lied down with him on the guest bed and thought he would fall asleep without a problem since I was lying next to him and he was super tired. He fought it for about a half hour, then I gave up. It was an extremely frustrating and depressing day for both of us.

Since then I have given up on trying to cut out the night time feeding. It's a schedule that works for us, and though it would be nice to not have to get up every night, it's a lot nicer to only be up for a half hour instead of an hour and a half. BD is asleep in his crib right now. It's only the third nap he's ever taken in his crib -- in nine months. That is another thing I get depressed about.

I feel like I have messed up as a mother. I never made him nap in his crib and so he doesn't want to now. He would rather sleep in my arms after I've fed him or next to me on an adult bed. This morning I fed him in the rocking chair and then after he fell asleep I moved him to his crib, where he staid asleep, which almost never happens. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a phase where BD will actually sleep in his crib in the middle of the day.

I don't know how people with more than one kid do it. Kudos to you.

9 months

My baby is nine months old. He turned nine months yesterday. I cannot believe that he has lived outside my body longer than he was inside it. He is growing up so fast -- I can't stand it. I want him to stay a baby forever, well not really. I know it will be fun when he starts talking and can express himself with words. He already is a real person with a real personality. If I were to charaterize baby Doodle at nine months I would have to say he is sweet, beautiful, smart, curious, did I mention that he's sweet?, perfect. He laughs a lot and smiles even more. He is a happy baby, and I'm so grateful for that. He gets compliments everywhere we go. I don't think we even get through a quick trip to the drug store without someone commenting on how adorable he is. I feel very fortunate to have such a wonderful child. And I hear it just keeps getting better, until they hit puberty, yuck.

Baby Doodle always smiles when a camera is pointed at him.

He tries to put everything in his mouth, even his mommy.