The Cultured Pooper

Robbie pulled himself up on his crib. He's been flirting with the idea for quite awhile, but finally succeeded after an unsuccessful attempt to give him a nap. Forget TV, Jim and I stick him on the bed between us and just watch him squirl around like a drunken pinball.

Charlie is sick today. We're hoping it's just a cold, but the regurgitated applesauce spewed all over the floor suggests it's the"F" word... The three letter one that ends with "u". No one wants to say it for fear we'll jinx ourselves.

We started a food cleanse today. I won't call it a diet, since that conjures up visions of points and low fat cottage cheese or something. It's largely for Jamie, who's a hefty 37 lbs and could stand to lose a few of those holiday pounds.... Jk. I'm trying a grain free... Sugar free... Almost-everything-free, in hopes it might help his attention span and slightly (and totally adorable) neurotic behavior. (that he definitely does not get from either of his parents). *cough *cough* We're on day two, and while I'm sure it's too soon to tell, he did sleep almost twelve hours last night instead of his usual seven or eight, so maybe it was that good ol' high fructose corn syrup and red number five that was keeping him up.

Since I didn't want to go grocery shopping with the sick McGnarles (one of Jim's many nicknames for Charlie). I raided our dead garden in hopes of finding something gluten/sugar/dairy free, like a shriveled up, forgotten squash or bell pepper. Instead I found the heirloom tomatoes we planted last year had gone all zombie-fied and refused to die. They had taken over the garden, choking out the mint and threatening the all-mighty rosemary. *gasp*
Now I have a bumper crop of green tomatoes I don't have time to deal with. But hey! I did get creamy, green tomato soup out of it for lunch, and Jamie didn't bat an eyelash at the strange, non-matching color/taste.

Robbie learned how to do a manly yell that does not belong on a baby. Charlie continues to happily impress his siblings with his vast dinosaur vocabulary, even though he often insists the dinosaurs are dragons. And Jamie is probably not the first kid nor the last to act like the iPad is surgically implanted to his hands.

The Wailing Lobster

The babes is six months now, and like most third-borns his mother is sucking it up majorly on the "recording major milestones" front.

So this post goes out to our Robster the Lobster...thus coined because he turns beat red when he's mad.   He's almost as adorable when he's mad as when he's happy, which unfortunately (or fortunately) doesn't happen that often.   It's not that he's an easy going baby, he's got very strong baby opinions, it just so happens he really truly loves just about everything.  ... except baths.

He loves people, he adores his brothers.  Toys fascinate him, food is his best friend.  He sleeps, farts and poops easily, and thinks his mommy and daddy hung the moon.   Mention the b-word though and he starts to look vaguely uneasy.   Pull out the baby bath tub and he gets very worried.  Actually try to put him in the bath and he suddenly develops baby ninja skills.   I swear he's more canine than human baby when he's near a bath.   Yesterday, I was undressing him and he was all smiles, belly laughs, and happy, wiggling baby chub.   Then he saw the dread B.A.T.H. and I literally almost lost him.   He somehow wedged a toe in one of my ribs and used that as leverage to launch himself over my shoulder.   His pediatrician says he's abnormally strong for a baby his age, but it's only because his brothers have him in a daily bootcamp specifically designed to build muscles and maximize survival skillz.    Mostly they're skills like "how to stay upright while being spun around 158 times in an exersaucer"  or "how many pushups and leg thrusts does it take to reach the toy my older brother keeps moving just out of my reach."  but apparently it also includes "emergency ejection plans for avoiding B.A.T.H.S." 

Seriously, even when he's in a gently warmed jacuzzi...safe in his mother's arms as she softly coos and plays with him.   It's defcon 10.

What do I do?  Is there hope for my waterless lobster?  I'm a little worried because both my other two were water babies from the get go.  They both learned to swim easily and spend more of their Summer in the pool than out of it.   What am I going to do next year if I have one child who won't so much as dip a toe in the water, and two other children who would prefer to be merchildren?

Do I give him more baths?   Or less?  Right now he gets one once or twice a week because baby torture isn't high up on my list of life ambitions. 

Any advice would be appreciated... even if we sort of think he looks like a Peanuts character when he cries.