vanity, vanity

is it vain to be secretly flattered when your child who looks like you is complimented on his beauty?

how about to think your child who looks like you is just damn pretty? hopelessly vain of me?

when milo was born, he looked 100% like justin. he looked so much like justin and not at all like me that justin joked about wanting maternity tests to confirm i was the mother. but when milo finally started to pork up, his likeness to me started to show up. now that he's completely baby-porky, he looks incredibly like my baby pictures. and when he cries - definitely my child.

fat and crying. that's my side of the family, all right.

the thing is, he got the best of both of us. and he is one pretty baby. people stop us to tell us so all the time. we agree. i know to a certain extent almost every parent thinks their kid is gorgeous, but is there something more? are we genetically programmed to find our own likeness likeable? it just feels weird, the more he grows to look like me, to get compliments on his appearance. poor kid should enjoy it now, i suppose; between my genes and justin's, the poor boy is going to have serious peter gallagher-ish brows when he hits puberty.

*****
don't let my ravings distract you from having a merry, merry christmas. love, joy, peace and fertility to all, and to all a good night.

4 months, part 2

a few hours before we left for barcelona, milo went in for his four month checkup, which i want to record here, at least until i get around to properly recording his vital stats. after ascending from below the charts to the fifth percentile at his two month checkup, young milo has now hit the 20th percentile for weight (13 lbs 12 oz), the 24th percentile for head size (something - does 35 cm sound right?), and the 25th percentile for height (24.5 in). the pediatrician remarked several times on how social he is, which is a nice way of saying he can't shut up - not that we'd want him to, of course. i love, love, love his chatter, full of inflection and shrieks and laughs and demands and a few emerging consonants, like "m" and "d" and that coughing-up-a-hairball sound. i am daily amazed at how freaking big he is, and how much he knows already, and how sweet he is - as well as how much work he is. i didn't get that before. how does anyone stay home fulltime? how does anyone voluntarily work in child care? these people deserve big, fat, trumpian salaries.

on another note, but a familiar one - i want hans back. milo is the sunshine of my soul and i wouldn't trade him for the world, but he does not make up for hans. he is not a replacement boy. he is separate in all his fabulousness and poopiness, and frankly a little scary in his fierceness, and he needs his older brother's mellowness to balance him out. hans should be here, getting to play with his cousin the exact same age who arrives on friday for what would probably be the first time they would really play with each other and not just at or around each other. he should be unwinding the lights from the bannister and freaking me out by presenting me with tightly clutched fistfuls of glass ornaments pulled from the tree and forbidden poinsettia leaves. he should be freaking out on the mall santa. he should be climbing in my lap when he's worn out from all the holiday overstimulation. he should be kissing his brother, and collecting kisses from his parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. christmas is not right without him. i don't know what to do about it. all i want to do is crawl in bed and cry, but i can't afford that behavior. i'm trying not to think about him and to just get holiday stuff done, but i'm sucking at it. we did buy both our boys christmas stockings last night; i'm hoping that i'll feel a little better after i hang them tonight.

the highlight reel

milo takes spain

we're back from barcelona, and let me just say that carting around an infant in a santa suit opens doors: hosts want to seat you immediately, airline agents escort you to the express lane, ticket takers bring you to the front of the line, and subway riders fight over who will give up their seat to you. would it be creepy to dress him as santa year-round?



milo was mostly fabulous (and why wouldn't he be, with both parents and both grandmothers constantly giving him their undivided attention?), and we had a lovely time eating, drinking and sightseeing our way around town. after much gnashing of teeth, we've put together a highlight reel; what it lacks in metro pictures (because although we spent large chunks of time on trains, i didn't want to flash the camera there) and pictures of the picasso museum (because of course cameras aren't allowed inside, and outside there's nothing to see), it makes up for in pictures of pure miloliciousness. if i can ever finish posting it online, i'll post the link here.

the dark, seamy underbelly of this trip is that the thing about which i'd been repeatedly warned, the thing i thought i had escaped - the realization of what i'm missing with hans as a result of milo's fabulousness - hit me like a hurricane, beginning on the ride across the atlantic, accompanied by a side of death-ultrasound-flashbacks, and kept slamming me in waves of alternating horror and self-pity throughout the trip. why now? i don't know. but i've had enough, thank you. i need some peace.

peace will be hard-earned the next couple of weeks: my brother arrives from florida wednesday, to stay, on our couch, until he finds a job and an apartment or a house to buy here; my sister and her family arrive friday for christmas; we're doing christmas eve at home AND at my mother-in-law's, and christmas day both at home AND at justin's grandmother's; my father-in-law and his second-ex-wife-now-new-girlfriend (yes, that's right) arrive the day after christmas; and the friday after christmas we do it all again with my father-in-law's side of the family. that takes us right up to new year's, when we ALWAYS have a party, but i have no idea when or how that will happen, god help us.

i need a nap.

i can't believe i ate the whole thing

ready for rice, baby

thursday is rice day. he's so ready. he supports his head. he sits with support. he watches everything we eat. he can't get no satisfaction in the evenings. i don't think he's quite doubled his birthweight, but he's doubled his low-point weight. so we've been letting him "practice" with his dishes to get used to the idea (see above), and i've been letting him put his mouth on my glass (hey, we have the same cooties, okay?). organic rice cereal has been purchased. the video function on the new camera has been tested with the new flash card big enough to support video. the feed is going down thursday. wish us all luck.

4 months

milo was four months old on friday, and no one is more surprised than me. he is insanely beautiful, an incessant chatterbox, willful and charming, and the sunshine of my soul. he's also getting quite tubby; he looks like a regular baby now and not like a marathon runner, which was interesting but scary for the first three months. after not wanting to put him in his crib because he seemed lost in it, he now seems almost too big for it; he can't roll over without getting himself tangled in the spindles or rolling into his aquarium mounted on the side. and he's starting to outgrow his three-month sized clothes - who would have ever thought we'd get to this point??? despite the fact that he thrives, i'm continually amazed that he isn't dead. does this neurosis ever end?

he is fascinated by the christmas trees and the lights; i bought a three-foot tree for him and decorated it in plastic ornaments, tied with short ribbons and no wire hangers, and we put him in the bumbo seat and pull him right up into the tree, and he rubs the satiny stars and pulls the metallic snowflakes to his mouth and lets the branches brush his arms, and he squeals in delight at all of it.

his new trick is that when i hold his hand while he reclines, he can pull himself up to sitting. and he's so, so interested in what we eat and drink; this week i started to put my glass to his mouth, to get used to the feel of it, and to play with a fat plastic spoon, and this morning i put his froggy dishes on his highchair tray while my mom and i ate breakfast, and he talked with great insistence about who-knows-what to the big eyes on the frog bowl.

as i write, he rests in the play yard in the next room, satiated from both of his beloved boobie-friends and a bottle chaser, talking to the brown bears in red overalls hanging from the mobile. the world is haywire right now - not just the world at large, but my own little world, with the daily drama of the execution of my father's will and my struggle to deal with the fallout - but i still have unbelievable joy, courtesy of the boy formerly known as little z. i may be the luckiest person on the planet.

*****

we have finally purchased a new camera, one more worthy of milo's gorgeousness than the piece of crap we've been carrying around on our travels because it would be no big loss if it were stolen or lost. the new picture quality is estupendo, but i'm waiting to work with them on my brand-new, custom-configured macbook, which should arrive on tuesday. our old laptop is dead, dead, dead, so we needed a new one anyway, and my mom and her desktop computer won't be with us forever, and getting an apple is my one splurge from the proceeds of my father's life insurance. i'm being completely responsible with the rest of my inheritance, such as it is - i promise. so look for new, completely fabulous pictures of milo to be posted by the end of the week.

milo has decided in his infinite wisdom to forego the nap he needs, and since justin is at work and my mom is at church, i alone am at his beck and call. i'm off to read "the snowy day" for the 80th time.