Busy Day

First we did some laundry

Then we went to Babies and Books at the Brooklyn Public Library. After the reading out came the toys. Roan challenged himself to put every single toy in his mouth.

Mission accomplished.

After breaking a mental sweat, we were ready to focus on our physiques. So Roan joined the YMCA, which makes him the only person in our family with a gym membership.

Even though we didn't actually work out, being near a gym made us feel hungry and entitled, so we went home and made smoothies. It was Roan's very first smoothie. He liked it more than I expected.

Energy restored, we put this walker together, which required screwing in about 900 tiny little screws by hand. When I became discouraged, Roan's shrieks of excitement kept me on task.

The maiden voyage

The backyard voyage

When Roan gets a new toy he doesn't just forget about his old toys. Incredibly, he retains his enthusiasm for the very oldest toy: my toe.

After all this, Roan did what he hadn't done in two days.

He took a nap.

**I'd like it noted that I did not put together Roan's outfit. This was all Jay, who apparently let Roan chose his own clothes.

Surgery #2

Roan had surgery on Friday. If you're surprised by this, well, we were too. We knew he needed it, and went to the doctor on Wednesday planning to schedule something for January, but they had a last minute opening on Friday, and we took it.

Roan was born with an undescended testicle. Which isn't so unusual - a lot of times they come down on their own, in their own time. When it hadn't gone anywhere by three months we went to see a pediatric urologist. She said if it didn't come down by six months, it would probably stay put. So we waited. We egged it on. But at six months, the testicle hadn't budged. It remained pretty high up, hanging out in the vicinity of Roan's abdomen, which is not an ideal environment for a testicle.

Fast forward to Wednesday at the urologist's office (Roan is ten months old). We were encouraged to hear that the testicle had relocated. It had moved down (great news!), but it had taken a wrong turn and was headed for Roan's leg (terrible news).

It was lost.

You can imagine how hard it was for me not to ask a barrage of really stupid questions. Would the testicle ever find its way, or was it, like the ancient hero Odysseus, cursed to wander? Could it move back up, or only laterally and down (like Tetris)? Once it was surgically placed in the scrotum, was there any guarantee it would finally settle down and stay put?

There was no time for questions. We had to go to the lab for blood work right away. It's really hard to take blood from a baby, because their arms are so fat, and they have tiny baby veins. Roan was asleep when they called us, and the nurse thought that maybe he'd just sleep through it. Right. They had to dig around a bit to find the vein, and Roan still has a bright blue bruise.

Friday morning we woke up and tried to act normal, but Roan sensed something was amiss. We couldn't give him breakfast; he looked longingly up at the counter top, where the Cheerios come from. Even so, he was good natured. We met with the nurses and an anaesthesiologist, and Roan charmed them all. In addition to general anaesthesia, Roan received a caudal block, which is basically an epidural. The surgery lasted close to two hours, and having gone through this once before, it was easier for me this time around. I didn't watch him go under this time - the hospital was strict about only allowing one parent in the operating room, and that was Jay.

When they brought us into recovery Roan was fast asleep on one of the nurses, who was reluctant to hand him over. He smelled wrong, like hospital, but it was wonderful to hold him and feel him snore. When he woke up he kept trying to stand in my lap, but his legs were too weak from the caudal, so he just flopped around, which was sad, but also a little funny. Jay and I alternated between giggling and tearing up.

There's something elemental about holding your child after surgery, watching him fight his way up through the fog of anaesthesia and realize he's back in the world. It's like when I first held him after he was born. There's this profound relief that he's okay, and even a bit of amazement that he's alive and exists at all. For a moment, it's like you are discovering each other all over again. And then he's back to his old tricks.

This weekend was rough, but here are some photos to assure you that the Robot is back in form:

Guilty

Weekend

Jay and Roan on Friday, September 11th, Jay's 33rd birthday.

Sick Day. We all stayed in bed. It rained all day and night.

Roan helped pick up leaves after the storm.

Peek-A-Boo

Blurry Babies

Two things have kept me from posting this week:

1) My Costco camera? It broke and only takes blurry photos. Yet I continue to use it, because just the thought of going back to Costco makes me need a stiff drink.

2) We are all sick. First Roan got a cold, which led to his very first ear infection. Then I caught his cold, and have a psychosomatic ear infection. Now Jay is getting sick too.

But to cheer everyone up after that downer, here are some blurry babies! On Labor Day Amy, who is a month younger than Roan, came over to play. She used Roan to pull herself up, and was even more bent on escaping the mat (Roan can be distracted from his jail break by toys, while Amy was more of the "live free or die" persuasion).

Cheerios

This is Roan when he realizes that we've left home without Cheerios. His Cheerio deprivation is so severe that he appears to be suffering from Phantom Cheerio Syndrome. Look at his hands: the left one is holding an imaginary Snack Trap, and the right one is grubbing for imaginary Cheerios.

Contrast this with the image below, where Roan's hand position is exactly the same, except that the Cheerios aren't imaginary, and there is no visible pain and suffering.

From this aerial view you can see that the Robot's Cheerio access is unrestricted by the Snack Trap. Jay and I are currently designing our own version of the Snack Trap that will more effectively "trap" Roan's hand and not result in a stroller full of Cheerios.

Cheerios restored, the Robot looks like a true visionary here, like he is about to deliver a ground breaking speech to fellow babies everywhere; like the MLK of babies' rights:

"...I have a dream, that one day we will rise up, up to the countertop, where the Cheerios are, and we will have access to the entire box, and won't have to contend with this ridiculous Snack Trap..."

In the meantime, strict parental regulation of Cheerios has only increased their street value, so the Robot must always be on guard against Cheerio theft.

He Thinks He Can Walk

After seeing Roan "walk" Melinda said to me, "he thinks he can walk. Look at him, he doesn't think he's any different from anyone else here, walking around."

We were in the toddler room at Chelsea Piers, surrounded by toddlers (aka babies who can walk). Roan was the only non walker.

Wait, I take that back, there was Danny, who was also 9 months old but not yet crawling. Danny's mom was one of those uber-competitive moms and she honed in on the Robot right away.

"How old is he?" and "Is he crawling yet?" she asked these questions aggressively.

"What kind of crawl does he do?" She was squinting at me, suspicious. Did she think I was lying about Roan's ability to crawl?

"Um, it's a pretty standard crawl," I said over my shoulder, and let the Robot lead me away as he stumbled toward the ball room.

She followed us.

"Danny stays on his belly. He pushes himself forward with his toe. Watch." And she deposited her son on the mat right next to us, where he proceeded to lay there and look completely overwhelmed.

"Oh, yeah, like a slithering motion, like an army crawl, I've seen that." I said, just to have something to say in the face of so much awkwardness. She was staring intently at her son, willing him to move. Then she prodded him, trying to get him to propel himself forward with his toe, and the more time passed the more it became clear that Danny had no desire to go anywhere. I wrenched my fingers free of the Robot's grip, and he plopped down to his butt and crawled right past Danny, going after a ball.

"Oh wow," the crazy mom said, clearly impressed, "look Danny, watch!" and spun Danny around so he had better view of the Robot in motion. Danny was non-plussed. He was wearing a pair of oversized dockers and a polo shirt, and looked ready to nod off in a recliner after a long day at the office. But for the next half hour she followed us around, positioning and repositioning Danny so he could watch Roan crawl. At one point, when Roan crawled up some padded stairs she too put Danny on the stairs. If the kid won't move on flat ground, what the hell was he going to do on those stairs?

But I digress. Other than Danny, all the other babies were walkers. And Roan "walked" right up to them to do whatever they were doing, oblivious that he was dragging me around. Thinking this over, I'm afraid that Melinda might be right. If the Robot thinks he is walking just like a big kid, then why would he ever be motivated to walk on his own? Will I spend the next year hunched over so he can hold onto my hands?

Who can know what these babies think. I hope that Roan realizes that none of the other toddlers are holding on to their moms' hands, and wants to be just like them. I am hoping that peer pressure will save my aching back.