Couch time with Mama

I got some afternoon snuggles with my baby yesterday:

Friday with my baby

As a stay-at-home mom, the weekend isn't all that different from the week for me. But I still feel a sort of relief when Friday afternoon rolls around - we have the weekend to look forward to, James is home with us, and we can spend some family time together exploring Stockholm, making new friends, or just hanging out on the couch.

It was a big week for Augie - I'm sure he's ready for the weekend, too! He went to preschool three days. You know what else he did that was great? He peed in his potty twice! I'm not wholly sure whether it was coincidence or if he did it on purpose, but either way, we think it's a really big deal. We've been slowly potty teaching him -- no emphasis on outcome, but taking him to sit on the potty regularly and using words and signs to let him know when he's pottying. So it was either dumb luck, or we made the teeniest bit of progress this week.

Augie and I headed into town to the go the Music and Theater Museum again. While he had fun banging on the instruments, he had even more fun pushing the button that opens and closes the doors between the exhibits. In fact, that's probably the only thing he remembers about today.

What will I remember about today? Other than thoroughly enjoying trudging through Stockholm in the rain so Augie could take a late-afternoon nap? Snuggling with and singing to my baby.

9.5 months - Mama naps, too

Augie has his first cold. I was going to write that Augie is suffering from his first cold, but that would be all wrong -- he hasn't seemed to notice it at all, even when he's blowing green snot bubbles out of his nose. He's mostly fine - just snotty and at times congested.

But he's also had a hard time going down for his morning nap recently, though probably for reasons unrelated to the cold (but unknown to me).This morning was no exception, and by the time I *finally* got him to sleep, I had moved through my own stages of frustration and anger (not at him, but at the situation) to arrive back at sympathy and love for my tired little boy. I stayed with him as he slept, partly because it felt like he needed me, partly because I knew I needed him (and a little extra sleep).

He ended up napping for 2+ hours, with a little wake-up in the middle. We rarely snuggle quite this close when we're all in the bed in the wee hours of the morning, so this was a beautiful, soft, sweet extravagance.

9.5 months - My little napper

I still try to nap with Augie when I can - when the emails are written, the bills are paid, the phone calls are made, the house is in reasonable order. Sometimes I do it not because I'm tired, but because I want to lie beside my baby when he's quiet, when the house is quiet, when I have nothing to do but listen to him breathe and feel his tiny little presence resting beside me. Augie and I are together almost all the time - sometimes reading, sometimes banging on the drum, sometimes walking, sometimes doing different things in the same room - so it seems silly that I should follow him to the bedroom when nap time comes. But those few moments when our bodies rest together in the stillness of the day recharge me, and not just in my minute-to-minute, day-by-day life; they revitalize me as woman, mother, and human being. They fill my soul in the way that only things unspoken can.

And, it means that I get to have another wake-up with him, and waking up with Augie is wonderful....

Which reminds me of this great blog post that a friend passed along. Sometimes doing "nothing" is actually the most important thing you can do.

9 months - Another visit to CHOP

You may remember that last month, we drove down to Philadelphia for Augie to be checked out by a neurologist at CHOP. Today we had a follow-up appointment and repeat EEG. We weren't very worried this time around, as Augie hasn't repeated his weird head movements since before our first visit, and he's continuing to develop and acquire skills apace. The whole visit felt - and turned out to be - quite perfunctory. We saw a different neurologist, who took the time to explain what she was looking for on the EEG and what types of behaviors we should be looking out for in Augie. The EEG was "beautiful" and Augie doesn't display the troublesome behaviors, so we were sent home without any further ado. Whoopee!

Not that the day was entirely easy, though. Our pediatrician told us that ideally, Augie would fall asleep during the EEG so the test would record his brainwave pattern as he drifted off. Yeah, right - like my kid's gonna fall asleep on the EEG table?!? Essentially, she told us to deprive him of sleep to increase the likelihood of him falling asleep during the test. So we didn't give him any naps in the morning, hoping he'd be so tired he'd fall asleep during the test. He was definitely tired, but he definitely didn't fall asleep. He did kick, wriggle, squirm, and scream though.

You've already seen the pictures of Augie during an EEG, so we didn't take more today. We took one immediately afterward though, to show off his new hairstyle:

The doctor's office is a 4-minute drive from our house; Augie fell asleep on the way home (he hadn't slept in seven and a half hours!), so Baba gently carried him upstairs:

We don't get a lot of snuggle time with Augie, because normally he's too busy trying to walk, climb, or bang something together to sit down and share his little warmth with us. James took advantage of his incapacitated state to get some extra cuddles in:

9 months - Sleeping beauties

We had a delicious family nap this afternoon (which might explain why, at 8:34pm, we're still working to put Augie to sleep for the night). It's humid here in New Jersey, and we weren't inspired to do anything today except...this.