Magrilless

Holy cow. You know a kid is tired if she falls asleep eating cheerios. This has never happened before. Perhaps it never will again. She had worked herself up in quite a frenzy of car ride screaming, and that is apparently quite a workout. For her birthday we’ve bought a front-facing car seat, so maybe that will fix some of her car seat blues. Oh that would be sooooooo wonderful. I’m envisioning us driving to the next job in Colorado (just day dreaming), navigating this huge moving truck towing our car down the turnpike with Maggie screaming and screaming and screaming for our entire multiday drive. Please make a difference, front-facing car seat.

Week one of weaning has passed successfully. I only gave Maggie a little glass of milk over breakfast this past week. Just to see how it would settle in her tummy and get her used to the flavor and activity a little bit. She can digest it well if I heat it up first and break down some of those enzymes. (I put it back in the refrigerator to get cold before she drinks it though; drinking something warm is old hat.) By the end of the week she was pointing to her cup and asking for more, which I count as a huge success. Yes, it still has banana puree in it, but this week I’ll keep the amount of banana the same while increasing the amount of milk in the glass. She’ll also get some with every meal — maybe a quarter cup — to get this party really started.

Then in the fall these fairies paint each fan an electric yellow, a bright sign of the change of seasons. “Hey! It’s autumn! Put on your new costumes and let’s dance some more!” So they dance and dance and perhaps they imbibe a bit. And a bit more. And maybe way too much. So they become sotted and sick. And then they throw up all over the sidewalk and everyone who walks past that once majestic tree looks at the bottom of their shoes to see if they’ve stepped in dog poop and pinches their noses and walks past much much faster and then reroutes their walks so they don’t have to go past that one house with the ginkgo tree in the yard again. I hate ginkgo biloba trees.

Wow. Bad hair day, huh? Around here we call that Crazy Baby Hair.

Anyway, we have officially started the weaning process. Last week I successfully cut out a whole feeding. It was kind of like a snack in the early evening before dinner, so now we play the distract-the-baby game until dinner where she sits up at the table with us and gets a full meal. And I do mean full. Three courses plus dessert. A protein, a starch, a vegetable, and fruit for her treat. Really, I have no idea where she puts everything. She’s so little, and the amount of food she can put away is astonishing.

So that’s our biggest success so far. Maggie also now gets solid food of whatever sort before nursing at every meal. Breakfast she has oatmeal and then breastfeeds. First lunch salad and cheese and then nursing. Second lunch after her nap, yogurt and fruit and then breastmilk. Dinner courses. Bedtime snack nursing. The plan is to put cow’s milk in between the real food and nursing, each time increasing the amount of milk and decreasing the amount of breastmilk. Before you know it, a fully weaned baby! Hmm. We’ll see how that goes.

She had her first taste of straight cow’s milk this morning. She’s been having milk cooked in oatmeal for awhile now, but this was her first “raw” experience. She wasn’t too keen on the taste. She made a big face and just let it dribble down her chin. No amount of Mommy pretending to drink it and like it was going to convince her otherwise. Okay. Try again later. As an appetizer before first lunch I mixed three spoonfuls of banana puree with a generous splash of milk and she gobbled that up out of her sippy cup right away. And so far, hours later, no digestive ills.

I’m encouraged. Maggie is such a bright, confident baby. Pretty soon she’ll be a bright, confident little girl.

So far Bill has had four telephone interviews. Newville College never contacted him back, so we’re thinking they were looking for someone with a different specialty and found him or her. There’s also been Southplace U (which went fairly well but has neglected further contact so far). Kory U turned out to be a bust; halfway through the interview Bill realized this was nooooooot the institution for him and so he threw the game (it’s a glorified community college with very limited research opportunities in a depressed community with a poor public education system). Jones College looks to be promising. It’s the most recent; the best prepared for; the smoothest experience; and very attractive as a school.

There have been another round of openings since he applied to all of these. A few gems are in this new list, so there will be another period of all this junk, assuming he’s not offered something concrete that seems better than the possibility of Portland, Oregon. We’ll keep you updated!

**This Just In: Bill got an email inviting him for an on-site interview with Jones College. It’s a only short drive away, so next week or the one after that (depending on how much polishing is required after this trip to Illinois), off to Jones he’ll go! Wow! Pretty exciting!

Ah. Being the parent of a one-year-old trick-or-treater is the best. You go to all these people’s houses and they squeal over what an adorable turkey you have, they give you whatever candy you say you like best, and no one even mentions how you’re abusing the system. Maggie did great trick-or-treating. She even waved at a couple closed doors and said “boo” once while walking down a driveway. It was a cool evening, so it was a good thing she had on a couple layers and was stuffed with bunting and then covered in down. By the end of the evening she had less feathers and half her turkey waddle, but it was super fun. She loves going for walks, so this was just another variety of late afternoon stroll for her.

One of the funniest things that happened this week involved Maggie finding a new toy to play with. She pretty much has the run of the house now. We close the bathroom door and keep an eye on the kitchen and everything else has been babyproofed for our crawling monster. So she’s playing independently in the second bedroom where there’s a full length mirror. Totally normal; she loves the baby in the mirror. A quick peek to check on her after a while revealed not a conversation with the baby but a game of peek-a-boo. Fun! Except. Remember that weekend where we tie-dyed underwear? Boy, are they colorful items of clothing — really stand out to a little person. Especially when they’re down at her level. In the dirty clothes hamper. After being worn on a nice long bicycle ride. Gross!