Random stuff

My mellow man is back for the moment. Yesterday I came home from work and he was sitting on my mother-in-law's lap - she was sitting on a dining room chair in his bedroom. Apparently he was good for her so I guess it all worked out. Although she did feed him one bottle and then heated up a second, fed a few sips and put it back in the fridge, which means 3 oz of breastmilk down the drain... boo! Anyone who hates pumping knows how much that sucks.

When I took him from MIL he snuggled into my neck and face, which made me feel so good. Of course since he was born my son has always needed me, but it's only in the last few weeks that he's shown affection toward me like that, and I just love it. I do like that he is so even-keeled (most of the time) and adaptable and is fine with different caretakers, but obviously it is nice to feel loved.

On the feeding front, I started giving him a bit of cereal in the morning before daycare/daddy, since he's not terribly hungry at that hour and will usually only have a snack at the booby bar if I offer it. I figure it's a good way to get a morning meal routine going if he's not that ravenous.

He definitely is not impressed by cereal nor most of the foods I have given him - so far, pureed prunes, applesauce, mashed sweet potato, avocado, green beans. The big winner is bananas. For the past two days at dinnertime I peeled an entire banana, broke it in half, and put it on his tray. It is still somewhat difficult for him to handle, especially as it tends to break apart in his death grip, but he went at it with some enthusiasm and definitely gave it a lot more time/effort than any other food so far. I'm not doing "baby led solids" exclusively as it seems reasonable to me to introduce both finger-feeding and spoon-feeding at the same time (though not in the same meal).

I sold my stash of gDiapers and ordered a day pack of Flip Diapers, which comes with two covers and six inserts. I'm super excited for these. They seem similar to the G's except that the cover/liner is all of a piece, and also they are one size fits all... and get much better reviews. I'm still attached to the "hybrid" cloth diaper system, even though we don't use disposable inserts, because it's so economical. I will probably need (the equivalent of) three day packs, totaling $150, which is quite a bit less than I would spend if I were to buy 18 of most other cloth diaper types. Also, I'm thinking that for our big trip in September I could pack these with some disposable inserts and not have to lug/buy disposables nor do a lot of laundry.

Lastly, my mom is confirmed for her visit this weekend, arriving tomorrow afternoon. I'm super excited. My mom is going to completely flip her lid over Miles. There really is nothing like family for being as into your kid as you are.

Incidentally, a conversation came up on one of the boards yesterday and I was too late to comment there but will comment here. Several of the child-free women were complaining both about how their parental friends talk so much about their kids, and also about the way that parents get super excited to meet other parents, as though we are in some special club. Hello, the reason we get excited is because other parents can stand to hear us talk about our kids! I don't see what's so mysterious or damnable about this. People spend 40 hours a week at their jobs and talk about work incessantly - we are parents 24/7 and it takes up a lot of head space, how could we not want to talk about it?