The new baby: November 2009 Archives

Babies and toddlers get up overnight for lots of reasons: to eat or drink (depending on the age), because of a dirty diaper that needs to be changed, because they're afraid of the dark or had a bad dream.

Why does my Noah get up three or four times a night right now? For love.

When he cries, all he needs is for me to go in, pick him up out of his crib and give him a hug for a minute or so. Then he pulls his head back and -- while he's all warm and snuggly and his eyes are puffy from sleeping -- he plants a kiss on my lips.

Then he points into his crib, and I lay him down, cover him up and go back to bed.

It's very sweet. It's also very disruptive to my already-screwed-up sleep patterns, but I'm pretty sure I'll live.

Noah has found the sky.

Last night, on our way home, I heard Noah in the backseat saying, "Whoa! Mommy, ky! ky!" I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw he was pointing out the window, up toward the sky.

"It IS beautiful!" I said, looking at the horizon. The sun was beginning to set behind the mountain, and it cast a pink-and-purple tinge across the sky. The fluffy clouds, lilac and cotton candy dotted with white, were almost glowing. "Look at those beautiful clouds!"

"Whoa!" he said again. "Mom, whoa! Ky!"

Even Sam chimed in on the momentous occasion. "Mom, he's talking about the sky! Good job, buddy!"

This morning, as we were headed to the sitter's, he pointed it out again: "Mom, ky! Bwoo ky."

He was right: It was a baby-blue sky, with stringy white clouds wafting across it.

Not even 2 yet, and my son's already an aesthete. I love it.

One day last week, as I was cleaning all the rooms upstairs and returning furniture moved during our home-wreckage project to their proper places, little Mr. Noah was wandering around helping me.

Except by "helping" I mean that he was taking things I was returning into their rightful places and putting them back to where they didn't belong.

At one point, he came barreling into the bathroom, yelling "Mom Mom!" and carrying an open box of baking soda.

Noah helped me with my work ensemble today.

I've got smushed Pop Tart on my left shoulder and the inside crook of my right elbow. I've also got a faint air of milk and brown-sugar Pop Tart, too -- hmmmm, wonder if I could bottle this smell and sell it as Eau de Mommy?

I'll admit that, even in one of my recent posts, I've been a little snarky about swine flu.

I mean, it's a flu. People get the flu all the time. My household even had a collective bout of flu last month.

But the news today that a Littlestown kindergartner died because of complications from swine flu scared the bejesus out of me.