For those of you who desire vids of the little guy, here’s a bunch.  You can see him sitting on the floor, sitting in the stroller, sitting next to me… so many fun and exciting options.

We got his last hip checkup the other day. Here in Serbia they have a very high incident of hip displacement among babies and Maja herself had issues when she was a wee bairn. She wasn’t allowed to stand or attempt to stand until 10 months. In order to combat this, they have babies wear extra cloth diaper layers for months and we ourselves kept Adam in these bulky extra layers for a long time. (I never was huge fan and we sort of let it slide a couple weeks ago.)

With the little guy trying to stand it was crucial that we go for the appointment to confirm that his hips were properly developed. It took WEEKS to get an appointment. See, you can’t just call and make an appointment. You have to call the guy who knows the guy, who then has to call you back. (you also need to get the guy who knows the guy a gift). The guy who knows the guy calls you, tells you what the deal is, and bing, you have an appointment.

We showed up, had to wait for awhile, and while waiting, a father and daughter showed up and waltzed right in ahead of us. This i because they had a better connection then we did. Their guy who knows the guy was clearly a more important guy than ours.

This “guy who knows a guy” system has been going on for every step of our pregnancy/baby experience. From maja’s first pregnancy checkups, to her pregnancy doctor, to the little guy’s hip specialist, we have only been able to see anybody because someone knew someone. And while this has all been technically free, or close, the gifts really add up. Bottles of alcohol, gift cards for Sephora, etc.

Ah, socialist health care.

Next on our list of items to scrounge up some cash for, some kind of fence thing. We need to cordon off a chunk of the living room so he can have a good sized play area to move around in. The bed isn’t going to cut it much more (and, in answer to janell’s question, he consistently tries to LUNGE over the side, so you can’t leave him for even a minute) and while we have a play area already set up here in the living room, he is most interested in crawling over to the most dangerous part of the room and trying to execute his most daring gymnastics there.

In fact, he has real psychic powers. I’m convinced. He can sense, with eerie supernatural accuracy, whatever object or area you most don’t want him to play with or play IN, and will ALWAYS want THAT object more than aaaaaaaaany other, or go STRAIGHT to corner of the room that’s the most dangerous. And the dangerous corner of the room even CHANGES. When we had the FAN around, he wanted to go THERE. Take away the fan, BING he wants to go to the corner with the sharp metal corner of the tv stand he can bang his little, tiny head  upon thereby utterly devastating his poor, fragile mother, who can herself see death and disfigurement lurking in any otherwise benign household object.

Right then. Without further ado, i give you a bunch of little Adam videos to sigh and coo over if sighing and cooing over babies is your thing. (otherwise what kind of heartless bastard ARE you?)

WTF?!?! He just did his first crawl like… a week ago. Two weeks?  And now, he’s jumped on straight ahead to trying to stand. (successfully as long as he has support)

How is this possible? It took him over 3 months to just ROLL OVER. Seriously. It took him 6 months just to SIT. And now, all of a sudden, after sitting he’s like: Crawl, check. Stand… check. Screech like a frog when i’m happy… check.

Once again, i don’t expect you to take my word for it. Check this s*** out:

Damn. What’s next? Algebra?

And we got his first go on video!

We were smucking about on the bed. He saw the Prized Ipod (he’s been wanting to get ahold of it for months) and simply… started crawling across the bed towars it. Awkward crawling, but definitely crawling. Not the usual straddle, straddle, lunge he does to propel himself forward, this was actually one step after the other.

This was REALLY exciting for us. Just like that. So we grabbed to camera, he did it again, and now today, (the next day), he still does it. So that’s that. Just like sitting up, one day, after trying awkwardly forever, he just suddenly starts doing it.

But don’t take MY word for it (i mean let’s face it, are you really fool enough to believe a word that comes out of my mouth? Trust me, the check’s in the mail) i’ve got video evidence! Yay fun baby video! And cut him some slack. I know it doesn’t look all that impressive his first time, but trust me (again), although it seems like he’s barely doing anything, this simple, awkward shuffle forward is atcually a big deal. It was pretty big when Y’ALL did it too. After this you had The Power Of Motion.

(camera pans over belgrade. Zooms into apartment on the river.

Standing on edge of ledge is scruffy man with rope tied around his neck. On ground 5 stories below is bed of sharpened spikes and prowling around bed are 2 famished wilderbeasts who are being forced to listen to an audio reading of the Twilight book series and are understandably very, very annoyed.

As camera settles in man he looks at camera and scowls)

Don’t interrupt me. Seriously.  I have thought through my options and really, trust me, this is best.

If all this (he gestures to elaborate suicide setup) seems a bit over the top, well… Lord knows i’ve GOT the free time on me hands while i sit UP ALL NIGHT with the baby.

There will be a few days of normalcy. He’ll be okay, the usual this and that. But THEN… one day he’ll have a lot of drool. And that means it’s coming. For the next few nights he wakes UP, middle of night. 3-5 am, maybe 1-3 am, maybe 2-4 am. Middle of the night. Up. No SIGN of being interested in sleep. But needy. and crying. And uncomfortable.

Problems GOING to sleep sometimes, appetite really down some days, up for HOURS at any odd time of the night.

Dealing with teething baby for two hours from 2-4 or 3-5… folks…

When i was growing up, my mother didn’t really drink. Not a big drinker, maybe some wine with dinner during a holiday meal.

But every now and then, real blue moon, when she had a day from Hell, at the tail end of it she would take out one of the bottles of something and pour herself a drink. (i don’t even know if she even finished it… i think it was the first couple sips she liked)

Last night, night 3 in a thrilling world series of baby insomnia, at 4 am when the little guy FINALLY decided to go back to sleep, i decided “Screw it. I’m going for a stiff one.” Crawling my way out on the terrace with a glass of scotch, even THAT was a disaster. I think i managed to take about 3 sips, shaking my head and grimacing nastily through each one (certainly if i was at a bar i would have held together more macho-ly, but alone on my terrace i can be as girly man about scotch as i want) before i gave up. I’m no teetotaler, but i only really drink beer and have lost the ability to do the hard stuff. Damn that was nasty.

So no solace for the besieged Daddy. No solace for the poor, uncomfortable baby, and Mama gets solace and sleep until like, 6 am, when she has to drag HERself out of bed and become a Baby Entertainment System.

Now if you’ll excuse me i have to go organize some wilderbeasts.

The truth is, of course, i AM a hippy, have long been a hippy, i just buried it for a spell. But no more! Phish is back together and touring again and my hippy flag is flying high once again! I even have a new tie dye shirt i got from Milos to prove it. Dude… a tie dye, that’s like a tux to James Bond.

So here’s the deal. Maja and Milos are a big part of this little group that does health and wellness stuff, yoga kind of stuff, homeopathy (which to be honest i’m still undecided upon) and other freaky deaky new agey stuff. Okay, it’s not all THAT new agey but it can be a little freaky deaky.

For years now there’s been talk about opening a…. wellness center. I’m using English translation words so maybe i’m making it sound a little… new agey. I’ll work on that. A health and wellness center that also contains a focus on sustainable living.

Some members of this group (and by group i mean about 10 people. Not quite cult level, although if you ask Milos’ ex girlfriend she’ll tell you it’s a sect. A dangerous sect as it diverges (uh, wildly) from Orthodox teaching. She’ll also tell you that Jews are secretly controlling the economic crisis. Alas, we don’t see much of her anymore…) have been working towards some aspect of this goal for some time now, but recently things have started to suddenly bubble and move. The group has been given a nice piece of land in Muzinac, southern serbia near the famous mountain Rtanj. Some connections have also arisen and some grants have come to light.

So suddenly everyone is pulling together in a massive effort to get some grants. One of the focuses, the one that has been handed to me in particular, is eco housing. Maja, who is the point person for the grant writing, smartly did this knowing that i’ve fantasized about building my own eco house since my mid 20s. (used to read Mother Earth magazine for the home building articles all the time back in the day. So long ago it seems. Before the dark times. Before the Empire…)

Anyway, i’ve been tasked with spearheading this effort as well as writing an eco housing section for the proposals (which maja will subsequently rewrite as she needs). We have a very talented french architect who specializes in eco building (who you can view helping me translate a Cyrillic children’s book) who, along with a native serb builder in the area itself will actually TEACH us this stuff (not that surfing the net for a few days hasn’t earned me a PhD in the subject)

For the moment of course it’s all about the grant writing, so i’m just trying to do my part. And then we’ll see. Maybe tis will all turn out to be something and we’ll move to some serbian village and i’ll build eco houses. that look like this:

Or this:

Or, uh….

Uh……

Dude, give me another toke of the bowl. Ahhhh……. hey, it looks better already!

Ah, nothing like a long weekend at the weekend house.

And this weekend was particularly satisfying because ENGLISH SPEAKING friends came! YAY!

Normally, when people come for the weekend, they’re all serbian and i mostly sit off to the side and read a book. Heck, when visitors DON’T come i ALSO sit around and read a book, although it should be mentioned i got a LOT more reading done while Maja was pregnant. Post delivery i really don’t get serious reading time until around, say, 8 pm. But i digress…

No, wait, let me digress again. After our guests left (yes i’m getting to part where we all had a great time chilling the weekend away), maja and i stayed an extra day and a half, so i got some reading in. Why do you care?

I know you DON’T care that the book i read, in it’s entirety, was called The Road, by the same guy who wrote ‘No Country For Old Men’ (so you get the diea that this is real Feel Good kind of author here) and is in a nutshell  ” a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civilization and, apparently, most life on earth.”

Why am i mentioning this? Because i know that the guy who lent this to me, Shaun, occasionally reads this blog. And he may read this bit i am writing now. And i just wanted him to know that i am on to his insidious and nefarious plot to MAKE ME KILL MYSELF by sending me books whose main effect is to make the reader, particularly if he is father, want to take his own life out of complete and total existential despair. If you hear that i’ve done myself in, be sure to check what book i’ve just finished and WHO gave it to me.

Right. Anyway.

English speaking friends… check.  Great long weekend…. check. Oh yeah, i probably should have given them more warning about the Mosquito swarms that plague the house like an old testament Smiting, but what the hey. Baptism by fire i always say. Or at least i will start always saying. Well, i’m saying now.

So hopefully i can get to do this again sometime.  What do we do up at the house? Eat, lounge about, play ping pong, maja’s mom bakes some cake, i take care of baby in the afternoon while maja naps, more lounging, reading, beer and rakia come out, dinner gets made, dinner gets eaten, beer and rakia get properly attacked, chat chat, everyone goes to bed except me who listens to a concert and THEN goes to bed.

Yay. So here are some photos and a video for your perusement. The video should be somewhat amusing as it depicts me and my french friend, Tibo, attempting to read the baby a book in Cyrillic. (you know, those funny looking russian letters? Well, serbs use them too. The cyrillic alphabet was invented in the 9th century by two macedonian monks who were brothers.) It’s a bit tricky even just sounding the damn baby book out phonetically.

(we DO have some books in english to read the little one, although we can ALWAYS use more hint hint)

And here are some photos of him in his little tub one afternoon after the guests left.

Yesterday when i was gushing about how sitting up is such a monumental moment, the aspect of it i did not mention is the fact that it also signifies that he is ready for solids.

And thus, we have sat him down and fed him his first little solids. Yay!

Of course, the word “solid” is a bit word. If someone served that to ME and claimed it resembled anything solid, i petty much throw the plate against the wall and leave the restaurant. No, for something claiming to be solid, it looks a lot like liquid. But unlike breastmilk which is archetypal liquid, this is more “gooey” liquid.

You take rice, barley, carrots, etc (that’s what we’ve been using). You grind it. You then strain it. (the straining part is a pain in the ass). Then you take what is at that point immensely fine sand, add water, and heat. You also stir the living bejeezus out of it. What results is Goo.

You put the Goo into and ice cube tray. Ice cube sized portions are perfect.

When you want to feed him, you take the Ice Cube of Goo, add breastmilk (breastmilk is like the hydrogen molecule of Baby World), stir aGAIN into liquid Goo and feed him.

You should buy an ice cube tray that make really big ice cubes. This is because you’ll be lucky if half the Goo Cube actually ends up in his mouth.

He loves to touch the spoon as you put it near his mouth and dunk his fingers in the goo. Once his fingers are nice and gooed up, he then loves to touch his feet. After this he will wave his arms around in delight at eating the Goo and proceed to suck his fingers WHILE attempting to eat another spoonful. And to top it off every now and then he will get so excited he will just blow a raspberry so that he can share the spray of Goo with you and anything else dumb enough to be in range.

Seriously, after “eating” which is more a process of attempting to shovel food in his mouth and just letting the law of averages dictate that at least X percent will actually wind up IN there, his little face is COVERED in Goo gunk. Just to be a dick, i may one day take a photo of this glorious face in this glorious moment, and keep it to show future girlfriends who i don’t feel he should be dating.

NO one could possible entertain the thought of making out with a face covered in half eaten Goo. Smiling like there’s not a care in the world and attempting to suck on his Goo drenched toes as a dessert.

On the bright side, he LOVES to eat this solids. No finicky baby we have here (yet…). And we love try different Goo Types. We just did carrots today. Went over smashingly.

Out of mercy for you i will NOT include photos of Post-Goo bliss. (i sadly don’t any. I assure you if i did i would not attempt to preserve his dignity for a second. I’d post ‘em.) Here ’s just some some random cute ones.

]]> http://thebodaciousbelgradeblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/eating-solids/feed/ 2 bunitingi IMG_0010 IMG_0011 IMG_0014 http://thebodaciousbelgradeblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/sitting-up/ http://thebodaciousbelgradeblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/sitting-up/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:09:25 +0000 bunitingi http://thebodaciousbelgradeblog.wordpress.com/?p=1617 ]]>

And then one day, everything changes forever.

The impact of the baby sitting up cannot be overstated. And not just because he’s been trying DESperately to do it for the past 2 months.

(” Uh, Paul, if he wants to sit up so bad why don’t you just… sit him up?”) No, i mean… STAY sitting up. You can prop him up but he just falls right over. See those photos we took awhile back of him holding the beer to see what i mean.

One day, almost exactly at the 6 month mark, he sits up and STAYS sitting up, and immediately things change REAL fast. It’s truly one of those milestone, like when he started smiling and laughing.

First, he is MUCH less frustrated. Lying on your back all day gets REALLY old. REALLY old. So you look for some bloody entertainment to take your mind off it. Like Daddy. Hey where IS Daddy anyway? Is he sitting down again? I better freak out get some action happening around here.

But with sitting up, suddenly everything’s… nicer. Cooler. Wow. The world looks kinda great from a sitting up position. Yeah. Awesome.

Second, he will play by HIMSELF now. I mean don’t start planning any vacations or trips to the movie theater quite yet, you’re lucky if you get 15 – 20 minutes at a time. But 10 – 15 minutes of self play is a BIG DEAL. You try entertaining a baby who is basically a paraplegic with ADD for 6 months straight and you’ll see how ********* glorious 10 – 15 minutes can be.

Third, after wanting nothing more in life then to sit up by himself for 2 months, as soon as he was able to, he promptly lost interest in it and began lunging forward out of a sitting position onto all fours. What makes this really noteworthy is that along with this comes: Rolling over this way and that way (he needs an entire double bed of playspace when he gets going. The boy can COVER ground), and straddling on all fours, rocking back and forth and basically preparing the way for crawling.

An example of the straddling is here:

Alongside all this, he suddenly hit ANOTHER growth spurt, and developed an even sharper look of… conscious presence. You know, being… present. Aware. Cognitive.

To wit:

Now, the disadvantages.

Diaper changing used to be a LOT easier. He lay there. You could leave and get a diaper, turn your back, whatever. Now he will not stay still to save his life. He used to HATE being on his stomach. Now, it’s like he figured out he can get little puff of crack every time he rolls on over to his tummy.

In order to turn your back on him, what with all this lunging forward and trying to crawl over everything, you have got to WALL him up. This crib/playpen that used to just be his nighttime crib… well, now the walled in nature of its playpen area is beginning to come in REAL handy. His days of freedom, of being exposed to open air all around him when Daddy had to turn his back of run out of the room is OVER.

WALLS.

This is how and why walls begin.

Sorry kid, it’s for your own good…

(wide camera shot above belgrade.

Camera zooms into walkway along river. Sweeps along and reached long apartment building. Sweep and zoom into 3rd floor apartment.

Man sits in living room with shotgun in mouth. Camera rests on him.

Man sees “audience”. Removes shotgun and gives big smile. Waves.)

Oh hi folks! Sorry, you caught me in the middle of something. Well shucks, as long as you’re here might as well tell you the news. It looks like the little one has started teething.

Yeah, he was sleeping better, longer, crying less. We were staring to get sleep again. Mm, sleep. It was so nice. Sooo….. very….. nice…..

Yeah, that’s all over now.

Teething. Just when you were beginning to think about sleeping through the night… bend over and grab your ankles.

It started when he started drooling BIG time. First sign. Then came the days of HIGH irritation, fussiness and neediness. And then came the nights where he will not sleep more than 2 hours and i’m picking him up all night long.

Now granted, this comes and goes. He gets a teething spell that lasts about 3 days, then it kind of goes away. When he’s having a spell he LOVES to chomp on stuff, particularly a finger that’s been under cold water or a bib that’s been wet and put in the freezer. This and a pacifier dunked in chamomile are the things that will really relieve him.

So, welcome back sleepless nights.

In an effort to catch up with pictures of his current development, i’m posting some more, general spring photos from his 5th month. We’ll be onto current photos in the next day or 2.

I suck.

We were at the weekend house. We had just come back from an afternoon trip to some nice park and were loading him out of the car. His little buckle that straps him in his little car seat had been undone. I picked up the seat with him in it and proceeded to climb down these rocky conrete things. The seat tipped forward (which never used to happen because he always fit so snugly in it) and DOWN he WENT, face first onto the GRAVEL.

He was sleeping. Or had been at least…

Screams. Maja’s mom was right there and she scooped him up. We took him inside and maja and her mother fussed over him and cleaned his wound in the bedroom while i sat in the room outside listening to his cries. Every cry he made a tear fell down my face.

I hated myself. At that moment, had he not in fact needed a father, i would gladly have committed hari kari. You think i’m joking, but no, i really would have sliced my own stomach with a sharpened samurai sword. Hell, a samurai sword would have been too cool for the likes of me. A rusty tin can. Would have been a bit more difficult, but i would have persevered so that in my sacrifice i could spare him further harm from his dipshit father.

The WORST moment… So maja and her mom have cleaned and bandaged the wound and he’s STILL crying bloody murder. So i pull myself together (i was a wreck…), went in there, picked him up and started singing to him.

He immediately stopped crying and nuzzled into my arm. I kept singing and 10 minutes later he was asleep.

That was the worst moment. I thought i would REALLY lose it. After i totally **** up and cause him the greatest pain and scare he’s yet known in his short life, and directly afterwards he just goes right on trusting me implicitly and feeling safe in my arms.

I would have gone right for that rusty tin can expect in my moment of painful death i would have invariably dropped the baby aGAIN, so, in the words of Dorothy Parker: I might as well live.

See! Look! He smiles even in the hands of his tormentor: