7 months, day 14 - Ahh, Grinda

Today was our last day in Stockholm; tomorrow morning we board a plane for England, where we will visit with many Watsons, and Augie will meet his Granddad and great-grandparents for the first time. We're all very excited, though tomorrow will be a long travel day.

As mentioned, we had a fantastic couple of days on the island of Grinda. The pictures tell a better story than I can:

Our room at the hotel:

Evening chill time, first day:

Dinner the first night:

Breakfast:

At the beach:

Dinner the second night:

Evening chill time, second day:

Final day, walking back to the ferry, saying goodbye to the sheep:

Augie's seat on the ferry:

7 months, day something - The ride to Grinda

We've just come back from a lovely couple of days on Grinda, an island in the archipelago. It's going to take me some time to put together a post about our time there, so in the meantime, here are pictures of the ferry ride on the way out.

7 months, day 10 -

It was a tough day. I'll tell you more about it in a minute, but let's get the pictures out of the way first.

This is what happens when you let Baba and baby go to the store alone together:

No surprise, we had to go back a second time:

Oh man, I love these two:

As I mentioned before, today was a tough one. Here's the short version of the story: two days ago, Augie bit my nipple and broke the skin. As he doesn't bottle feed and I don't pump, he's had to continue eating off the right side, which has gotten worse. This morning it seemed infected, so we went off on a westside walkathon to visit the pharmacy, an urgent care facility, and another pharmacy to get penicillin and the wise advice to stop feeding the baby on the injured side.

In the midst of it all, I was in pain (from both the bite/infection and the rapidly engorging breast), and Augie still needed to eat and to nap. The great news of the day is that we have now successfully bottle fed Augie! This means it is possible that one day in the near future I might be able to leave his side for more than two hours! It also means that I can give my right breast a break from his hungry maw....

Sadly, though, that means way more work for me. I can't pump the infected breast because of the pain from the hand pump, so I have to manually express into a bottle. I'd prefer you not try to picture that, but I will say that I have hand cramps and the beginnings of carpal tunnel after only one day of this.

I'm on penicillin for 7 days, and Augie's off the right breast at least until the wound is healed. 

On top of this, Augie was impossible to put down for a nap at home today. We've gone through so many napping phases, phases when it's easy to put him down and phases when it's hard, and we're in a hard phase. He didn't take a single nap at home (despite multiple attempts at each of three naptimes). If you've ever tried to get a baby to nap who refuses, you'll know it's soul-crushing. I am not exaggerating. It is one of the most disheartening, frustrating, maddening, spirit-deflating things I've ever done, and it often ends in tears for everyone involved.

At about 5 o'clock this afternoon I felt like this*: 

*Not actually a picture of me. 

The good news - the great news - is that James can now feed Augie (from a bottle, though Augie's tried the nipple), which means that he can now share in the quiet delight and utter joy that is nourishing our son, feeling his heft settle into the crook of our arm, hear his sighs and swallows and watch his little beak suck down the milk; feeling him rest and be nourished as he lies our lap.

Tomorrow we are off to Grinda, an island in the Stockholm archipelago, until Wednesday, so you may not hear from us until Thursday - our penultimate day in Sweden!

7 months, day 9 - Chewing, crawling, Södering

We're taking a new approach to eating. I did some reading about baby-led weaning (I perused Baby Led Weaning, this pamphlet, and some other websites) and realized that this philosophy is very much in line with how I/we want to be feeding our little sproglet. The basic idea is that you don't bother with purees or with "baby food": you give your baby real, solid food from about six months and let them handle it and feed themselves. We've already been going with the whole idea of Augie-eats-what-we-eat, but we've been pureeing his part of the meal. After today's reading, we're giving him spears or nobs of soft foods and letting him feed himself. Today he ate banana, feta from our lunch salad, and roasted carrots and sweet potatoes - all by picking up his own food and putting it in his mouth.

The idea is that this way, baby learns to chew and then swallow or spit it out if necessary (rather than just to swallow, as with purees), and he also engages with his food more - he feels it, smells it, and tastes it. (In truth, he was sort of doing all of these things before when he'd get his hands on the spoon and smear puree all over EVERYTHING within a two foot radius). And importantly, he decides exactly how much he's going to eat.

He's a bit clumsy with the food so far, but from what I read, after even just a couple days baby's pincer grasp and hand-eye coordination will develop and more and more food will be getting into his mouth. Tonight I was impressed by how little food, comparatively, was splattered on the kitchen floor, walls, dining table, high chair tray, back of the high chair, seat of the high chair, and me, than on a usual pureed-food night.

Enough about food.

Today we went on another urban adventure. We took the blue bus to Södermalm, a super-hip part of the city, and walked around. We intended to do a bit of shopping, but then we got to the shopping street and I went into a shopping store and freaked out, as I usually do when I go into stores, and we turned off the street and left retail dys-therapy behind.

We found a gorgeous churchyard with open green space and a cemetery, and plunked down to let Augie roll around in the grass for a bit. We had a fantastic time, all rolling around together, tickling and biting each other - and Augie crawled the big-boy crawl! As in real, actual, hands-and-knees crawling! It wasn't pretty, but he went 10-15 feet.

The rest of the day was mostly walking and wandering.

Mr. Coolio on the bus:

Action shot of the crawling:

Pausing for a little nibble:

Sky baby:

Giving Baba the smackdown:

Cheeky little fella:

We had lunch at a cafe with this view:

Still cheeky hours later after wearing out Baba:

7 months, day 8 - True love

True love is letting your seven-month-old try to open-mouth kiss you while he uses your hair and the sides of your face for balance:

7 months, day 7 - Skansen

We've done very little sight-seeing here in Stockholm. We've done tons of wandering around and neighborhood exploring, but I'm almost embarrassed to say that we've seen almost nothing of the Stockholm that people come to see. Today we set out to change that. We set off to visit the Vasa Museum in Djurgården - the Vasa was one of the most fearsome warships ever made, and it set sail in 1628 only to sink twenty minutes later - but the line was ridiculously long and, if you've ever met me and James, you will know that we are ridiculously impatient, so we walked right on past.

Instead we plunked down our hard-earned kronor (that's not exactly true, neither of us have actually ever earned kronor, we've only withdrawn them from ATMs) at Skansen, a massive open-air folk museum showcasing original buildings from bygone days brought from all corners of Sweden. It also includes a handful of native Scandinavian fauna - we saw wild boars, bears, big ol' owls, wolverines, lynxes, and even a baby goat jumping out of a pond (who knew baby goats jumped out of ponds?). People dressed in period costume hang out in the houses, knitting and tending fires and chopping wood, and, in perfect English, answer questions from visitors. It was all fairly fascinating, and I probably would have loved it if I hadn't visited with a 7-month-old baby and a 33-year-old-ridiculously-impatient husband. When you come to visit us after we move to Sweden, we'll leave the husband and baby at home and check out Skansen on our own.

We did, however, find another fantastic cafe - Rosendals Trädgård - after we left, and then we walked through the park in the sweetest early evening light until we caught a bus back home.

Oh! I forgot to mention the mini amusement park in Skansen. Here's Augie in the "Baby Trotter", looking as thrilled as I'd be to have that clown trying to hitch a ride behind me:

A family with 6 kids lived in this one room in some long-ago day - makes me feel better about our real estate prospects in Stockholm (note the ghost in the window):

Pausing to feed the babe in the backyard:

No idea what this is, didn't have time to stop and read the sign (must visit without ridiculously-impatient husband) but I really liked the flora growing on the roof:

Goodies at the cafe (the ones at the left were gluten-free, yipee!):

Enjoying the walk along the canal to the bus:

Across from the bus stop is the most beautiful restaurant with deck chairs overlooking the canal that borders Djurgården; one of these days we'll stop there and have a ridiculously overpriced glass of wine and a plate of potato salad and watch the aspens across the water quake in the wind and evening light - so come visit, and join us.

7 months, day 6 - The long distance crawler

Augie has fully mastered "ning" and "mamamamama", so he's moved on to a new sound: "fffff." He loves working on his "fffff." He wakes up in the morning and "ffffffs", and smiles, and then "ffffffs" some more. There's often a fine mist emitting from his mouth as he "fffffs" - but it makes him so happy, so I "fffff" back, and before long we're just sitting there, grinning at each other and "fffff-ing". I have no idea what word he's working on - any guesses? (He couldn't possibly be working on his Mama's favorite word, could he?)

And his 6th tooth popped out! It's just the tiniest bit poking through the gums next to his top right  front tooth, but it's out, so maybe some of his recent fussiness will abate now. Well, at least for two days, until his next one comes in.

Prior to the last few days, Augie has reserved his commando crawling for short distance tasks, like getting to a toy that's just beyond reach. I think he viewed crawling less as a mode of locomotion and more as a way of lengthening his arms to reach a toy. But recently he seems to have realized that he can get places with his crawling, so he's started getting places. He's now clearing entire rooms with his long-distance crawls (email subscribers, click here to view the two videos):

7 months, day 5 - Sleepytime shenanigans

Today began with a happy baby trundling around the bed in the morning sun:

The morning was followed by a couple of ridiculously difficult naptimes (we only managed to get one in), probably because Augie would rather do this than sleep:

(Sorry for the fuzziness of the photos, but he hasn't yet mastered standing still). But you can't get too frustrated when it's this shining, proud, happy face that won't go to sleep:

(He likes to hook the blanket over his bottom teeth and then yank on the blanket with his hands. James and I both cringe when he does it, but there's no stopping him.)

7 months, day 4 - My five front teeth

This is the best shot we have of Augie's teeth - you can only see four, but there's a fifth hiding in there, too. He's been pretty darned fussy today, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a sixth pop out pretty soon.

Augie had a mini-meltdown yesterday while I was kayaking. I could hear him crying from the kayak. We aren't really sure what it was about: separation anxiety, teething pain, general fussiness - but you have to admit that it makes for a cute picture: