Adam turns seven months old
Dear Adam,
OWW! Ouch. WOW! Honey, come take this (aaugh) baby!
Where was I? Oh yes. Dear Adam,
What is with this sudden Punisher thing of yours? You do not appear to be angry, yet you seem to wish to destroy us, we who gave you life. It seems that you would do this in the most painful way possible, The Death of A Thousand Cuts except that in this case it is A Thousand Pinches. And Hair-Pullings. And Nostril-Tearings. Ear-Rippings.
During the last month we have noticed that your grip has become stronger than ever, more dextrous, clever, refined, subtle. And painful. Very very painful. When we hold you, you want nothing more than to see if our ears can be removed by those clever little hands of yours. Hmmm, maybe these fleshy outer-mouth coverings of my care-giver are not necessary and should be torn off and discarded.
Your favorite new game is the investigation of our bodies, mostly our heads. You seem to be learning about what an amazing tool the human hand is, and you relish every opportunity to employ it. Painfully. You insert your fingers, fish-hook style, into our mouths and see what you can dredge out. You giggle helplessly when we put our lips to your tummy, and convulse like an anemone around our heads. Your knees come up to crush our trachea, your hands grasp huge handfuls of hair and ear, and your laughing face digs into the top of our skull, sucking and slobbering and giggling with destructive joy.
You awake early, sometimes much too early, which is a normal baby thing, I suppose, and you greet the day with deep happiness. Your eyes are especially clear and deep and intelligent in the morning light, and in them we think we can read your thoughts and plans for the day’s learning activities: Today is the day I will remove every shred of flesh from my mama’s skull, you think, and your face lights up as you set to the task before she is even out of bed. This morning you merrily smashed her in the face with your terrycloth zajček bunny-rattle so hard that I had to say, “Jesus, honey, are you okay?” She just laughed and asked me to bring her some tissue for her bloody nose.
You talk all the time. You keep up a running commentary in what sounds like Tasmanian Devilese, which I suppose is appropriate. You tell little stories to yourself even when we are not listening, but like the Tasmanian Devil you demand attention much of the time.
Your mother is coming to terms with the fact that you don’t want her tits anymore. This happened quite abruptly, and she was in a bit of shock for a time. You don’t want any milk at all it seems. You snub both breast and bottle now. Some evenings it’s damn difficult to get you to eat. This is not all bad, though, because it means you will be weakened and less able to destroy us.
Now could you let go of my chest hair?
We didn’t take many pictures during the last month, what with the moving and the bandaging and cleaning up all the scattered hair. So no slide show this month, you little monster. Just a few pictures with captions:
So seems to be in the same phase, although he is particularly fixated on our noses and lips. Our ears do not yet hold any joy for him. He does also love knocking things to the floor (already?), such as my glasses or the yogurt smoothie I am attempting to drink. No bloody noses yet, but he has nicked my gums with his little fingernails a time or two.
Comment by jdog — Wednesday 13 July 05 @ 20.22 MDT+2.00