More Teeth; More Blood...

What an ominous title. Aren't you curious? Well, you should be.

Hello again, everyone. Welcome back to this week's installment of Theo's blog. Glad to have you all back. We sure have had an interesting week here at the Carroll household. Let's get to it, shall we?

First off, I hate winter. Oh, I like the concept of winter, but the actual exectution of it sucks. We had a big snowstorm yesterday (Sunday), the result of which was me having to shovel my front porch and sidewalk. Fun times. Now, we're just in a nice cold snap. Today it got up to -2 for the high, and that was at 6:00 this morning. And the wind, oy, the wind! It cuts right through you. It's the kind of weather that cabin fever was made for. At least the snow here is light, not like that really heavy snow we get on the west coast. Shovelling isn't a back-breaking endeavour, as if that makes it any better. Nothing like a white Halloween.

Needless to say, there hasn't been a lot of outside time this week. I think Theo would really like the snow, but I also think he has to be a bit older, if for no other reason than he can't fit into his snowsuit very snugly right now. Not snugly enough to facilitate walking, anyway. Besides, he isn't good enough at walking yet to make it worth trying to walk in the snow. Maybe next year. Oh wait, next year I hope not to be in a place with a winter as cold as this! Brr.

There's a classic picture of me standing in my backyard in the winter of 1980 when we had a big snowfall (probably the last time the Lower Mainland saw a big snowfall, now that I think of it). I'm standing on the picnic table in the backyard at my parents' house, and I'm up to (almost) my waist in snow. It's a good one. I was hoping to replicate it this year with Theo, but I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunity for that.

This week has also seen its fair share of accidents. Now that we've got some serious walking going on around here, the amount of falling has also increased exponentially. In fact, we're a little scared to take Theo out now because he's got so many bruises on his face that it looks like we beat him. Of course, when we beat him, we only do it in places you can't see easily. Duh! I mean, um, let's move on.

It's not just the falling that's been going on, either. In our house, there are two metal bi-fold doors in the kitchen--one is the broom closet, the other the pantry. Of course, these doors fascinate Theo to no end, and he just can't help but touch them. It's like a big magnet; no matter where he is, he always goes to these doors. And with the sort-of "open concept" plan of the house, it's not really possible to put a gate up and keep him away from the doors.

Anyway, since these doors are metal, they have some sharp edges. And who finds these sharp edges? Theo! Or, more correctly, Theo's finger! The good thing is that we have no doubt that he's not a hemopheliac. The bad news is that cuts to the finger sure do bleed! And have you tried to put a band-aid on an infant? Not the easiest thing in the world. And keeping it on? Forget it. Just stopping the bleeding was hard enough with him squirming around. But no crying, which was kind of weird. I sometimes worry about the pain threshold this kid has. It seems that some things that should just hurt like a mofo don't phase him at all. We'll see where that leads.

Anyway, no sooner did we get that crisis sorted out than we had the second of the top teeth decide to make a break for the surface. I was wrong in my initial estimate that it wouldn't be far behind the first one--it was. But now it's out. And although the process wasn't as difficult this time, it was painful.

In fact, just yesterday, Theo was getting set to wake up from his nap, when all of a sudden we heard an absolutely piercing cry. It's the kind of cry that instantly signals trouble in a parent's mind. We got him, but couldn't see anything immediately wrong, so we comforted him and went to change his diaper. When we laid him down, we saw it--a bloody mess in his mouth.

We've managed to piece together a likely chain of events that caused it. We figure that Theo was pulling his "prison break" routine in his crib (see last week's post), but he lost his balance and somehow fell forward, cracking his face on a spindle in his crib. And since this tooth hadn't quite cut the gum yet, if you lead with the mouth, it's going to be forced to come through the gum. The end result? It looked like he was in a bar fight. Or like I looked when I took a hockey stick to the face several years ago. Fortunately, there's no damage to the tooth. Damage to the mother? Oh yes. The thing that gets me is that he's only 8 months old (well, almost nine). What kind of trouble is he going to get into later in life? Oy vey!

All in all, though, a good week. This Saturday was daddy and Theo time, as mommy was off at a womens' conference held at the school. As I mentioned on my Three Hills blog, much hugging and crying was done. But it was really a great conference, and she got to get out of the house for a whole day without having to worry about Theo. Personally, I'm taking the same approach my dad took when I was a kid. When my mom had to work the night shift and I was at home with my dad, he'd always get out the old tape recorder and just talk to me. I'm not sure when the earliest one is, but he's got lots of them. And of course, there are some classic moments there, too. I, in fact, have several memories of sitting with my dad in the back room at my parents' house, on the grey carpet, chatting about my day and all the things that were important to a young lad. Good times. So I figure that when Theo and I are alone together, we'll get out the camera and take some candid videos, and, when he starts talking, record some MP3's. The technology may have changed, but the sentiment doesn't.

Before we get to the pictures, I need to tell you a story of the picture we didn't get. Tonight we went to Red Deer to hit the Super Store. Of course, being the day before Halloween, their costume selection is picked dry, but we figured we'd see if there was anything super-cute for infants. Sure enough, there wasn't really anything there. But we did see some super-hero costumes made for older kids. The one that really got us was the Batman costume. No, not the "new" Batman, clad all in neoprene. This was the comic book colour scheme--grey and black, with the yellow belt. A classic. The kicker was the mask.

Since Theo's head is actually the size of a two-year-old, I figured I'd try to get the mask on him to see what he looked like. It fit like a charm. And when I say "like a charm", what I mean is he looked like an 8-month-old in a Batman mask. It was absolutely priceless! And of course, we didn't have our camera! D'oh! We usually do have it, but this time we didn't. So you'll have to be satisfied with my less-than-adequate explanation, and we'll just keep the mental picture between us. It would've been an absolute classic. I'm talking wedding-video calibre. It was that good.

*Sigh* Oh well. You can't get them all.

That said, let's get to the ones we did get in this week's picture parade! Hooray! This week's Norman Rockwell moment came on Sunday when we got home from church. He's just so darned cute in this sweater...

But no matter what, the toes are always there to distract...

"Catch me, daddy!"

"Okay, that's enough, you two." Actually, I include this one not for the funny face he's making, but because it really shows his new (and old) teeth well. The one on his right side (so, it's your left side) has actually come in more than this just today, but no pictures of it made themselves available today.

As you can tell, Theo gets his devestatingly handsome looks from my gorgeous wife. Not to say that she looks like a man, or that he looks like a woman. You know what I'm trying to say. The question is whether or not I know what I'm trying to say.

"What are you laughing at?"

"I have what on my head? How'd that get there?"

Finally, we had a visit from the dreaded cupboard inspector this week. He was just checking to make sure everything was in order in our cupboards. But man, he sure is thorough...

"Just have to make sure everything's okay, ma'am."

"Need to get a better look at this top shelf..."

"I think this one might not be legal..."

"Hmm. Which one of these is the culprit?"

"Ah ha, it's always the strainer. They're sneaky..."

"Okay, I think that about takes care of it. What, you don't like my bill? Don't blame me--I'm just a company man!"

And, of course, last but not least, this week's selection of videos. I have to admit, it was a much better week for videos this week. Managed to take four, well, five if you count the one that was accidentally deleted. Here are three of those videos--the fourth will be up next week. Come on, I can't go giving you four videos in one posting! I can't set that kind of precedent! Besides, the fourth one needs a little editing, and I haven't found adequate (and by that I mean "free") video editing software yet. And I don't have time tonight. And, well, I could think of more excuses, but let's not bother.

Here's the first one, filmed on Saturday when Mommy was away. Theo's really taken to this standing up thing, and in this video, he tries to figure out how to take apart his highchair. Around here, we call him the local HME (Highchair Mechanical Engineer). And he's good at what he does.



Next, we have every infant's best trait: complete and utter narcissism. He has a mirror he likes to look at himself in, and this was filmed while he was in just such a "love for myself" kind of mood. Of course, it was funnier before we got the camera rolling, but I think this does an okay job.



And finally, a Blair Witch-style movie, filmed by Mommy while she was laying on the floor and having Theo crawl all over her. This is actually his new favourite game. While he's crawling all over one of us (a sign of things to come, I'm sure), he also sometimes likes to grab his soother and smack us with it. Unforutnately, we couldn't get any footage of that, but this is pretty darned good. Sorry for the abrupt ending--ran out of space on the memory card, I'm afraid.



And yet again, that is all she wrote. Hope you're having a much warmer winter than we are, and that you have a happy Halloween. No Halloween for us, I'm afraid--the school won't celebrate it. Which is kind of too bad, but whatever. It's not like he'd be out in the -10 weather getting candy anyway. Brr.

See you next week.

Hooray for Mobility!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Okay, I stole that. Isn't it just everyone's lifelong dream to coin a phrase like that? Something that will go down in history; that whenever people hear it, they'll remember your name. Hey wait, I don't remember who wrote that. Okay, it's A Tale of Two Cities. Oh yeah, that guy. How could I forget? Hey, I go to Bible College, alright? It's not like this is required reading. Ask me to list the books of the Bible. Oh wait, not sure I could do that by memory either. Right.

Anyway, hello again, and welcome to this week's installment. I meant to post yesterday, but alas, we put the boy to bed with the camera in his room and no photos downloaded onto the computer. We would've gone back into his room to get it, but you just don't want to mess with a good thing, you know? The floor is so creaky that we didn't want to risk waking him and having to go through the bedtime routine again, just for the sake of a blog posting. Not that we don't appreciate you--we really do. It's just that you're there and we're here, and you can't help us get him to bed.

Oh sure, excuses, excuses. Oh well. It would've been more convenient for me to post yesterday, too, so there. I just stuck my tongue out at you.

How can you tell I'm the parent of an infant? Speaking of infants, we've got a pretty cute one living with us--let me tell you about him. This week, we've discovered what it means to have some independence--he's officially crawling! Hooray! Sort of.

Like I said, best of times, worst of times. Theo's newfound abilities have had us scrambling. As you saw in last week's video, he's taken to walking quite well, and he continues to progress in this department. With walking, it's a little bit easier--if we don't hold his hands, there's no walking to be had. But with crawling, well, it's a little bit different. And the problem is a little bit more acute when we live in a house with no real door frames to block off an area of the house. The kitchen and living room are attached, and, unfortunately, there's no "door" between them, just a big open space. This has meant some creative solutions, including using his playpen and a Rubbermaid container to block access to the rest of the house. Good times.

It's really cool, though, to see him progress into the arena of movement. It's been fun (when my back hasn't been aching) to walk him around the house. For the first time, he's able to choose where he wants to go, which must be really amazing. I mean, for eight months, he's had to go wherever we go. Now, he can wander around and choose. This has led to several very thorough inspections of the house with mommy or daddy in tow. He's funny because he'll be walking along, shrieking with delight, of course, and he'll see something interesting (like a door stop) and just stop, plunk himself down, and investigate. Then, when he's done with that, he holds his arms up, you grab his hands, he pulls himself up, and it's off again. He'll never get sick of it, either.

Again, I find myself reflecting on how wonderful the world is when you see it through the eyes of an infant. Even coiled door stops are exciting new discoveries. Imagine that. Everything's new, everything's exciting, everything represents a new adventure to be had, a new story to be told. I can't wait until he's old enough to want a detailed explanation of what things are and why they do what they do. It'll be even more of an adventure for me to have to explain how things work, even when I don't really know for sure.

On the teething front, things have settled down considerably this week. As I said in the last post, once the pain stopped, so did the drool and snot. Yummy. He's now got a top-left front tooth pushing through the gumline, and, just tonight, the right-front one cut the gumline as well. That brings our running total to four teeth, and we're happy to see them, if a little bit sad. See my last post on teeth if you want more insight into that.

Another thing we've just noticed is how big this kid's getting. Today we stuck him in his bathtub (which is the kitchen sink--see a previous post for a picture), and we realized that it was probably going to be the last time he'd fit in there. It's amazing--a month-and-a-half ago, he could barely see out the top; now, he's too big. What the heck?! What happened to our little baby boy? Well, he's still here, and even more fun than before, but he's not so little anymore. My thoughts go back to Jim Croce and saving time in a bottle. But hey, that's why we have pictures and videos, right? Right?

Oh, get over it, you sap. I know, but it's just so strange. Time is marching on, no matter what we have to say about it. The semester is halfway done now, too (note to self: write essays), so it won't be long before we're back home again for a month. *Sigh.*

Let's move on, shall we? Not sure what else to report, but I'm sure I'll think of something as soon as I publish this posting. Which might mean an edit or two. Check back tomorrow, just in case.

And now, some photos (the part you all come here for). Although it's really tough to capture him crawling (we've tried a video several times with no results to speak of), we managed to grab a couple of stills. Here he is, coiled in the starting blocks...

Getting a little bit closer...

Uh oh. Um, that might be a little bit too close...

And, of course, being a ham (he'll actually watch TV this way)...

This one might capture the crawling pose the best. Plus it's just downright cute...

Since he's learned to pull himself up to standing, he'll do it on pretty much any surface at any time. One of his favourite uses of the standing up is when he wakes up from his nap and wants to get out of his crib. Hey, it's the season premiere of Prison Break...

Here's Theo and Mommy. I was hoping for matching hats, but alas...

I include this shot because it has a funny--okay, sort of scary in a please-don't-call-child-protective-services kind of way. We thought the hat was so cute that we'd get a few shots of him in it. Of course, any photo shoot with Theo takes time, and so as we were snapping pictures, we neglected to realize how close to the edge of the bed he was getting...

You can guess what happened next. Fortunately, the distance from bed to ground is small, and that happens to be the only room in the house with some very plush carpet, so everything was fine. Except a crying fit ensued. But who could blame him? Fortunately, no adverse effects for anyone (except near-fatal heart attacks for mom and dad). I am, however, expecting massive therapy bills at some point later in life.

Now that I'm getting "tsked" at by many (I can almost hear them from here), let's move on. Here he is, just hanging out in the highchair...

This one's a little, well, weird. It reminds me of a somewhat deranged clown...

Is it possible to be "somewhat" deranged? Sounds like a survey; "How deranged do you feel: not at all deranged, somewhat deranged, or very deranged?" I think it's like being pregnant--you are or you aren't; there's no "sort of." Anyway, this next one is one of my favourites for this week. It's his newest expression...

What is this, an R. Kelly video?

"Hey, guys!"

Okay, that last reference might be a little too abstruse--he's in a closet. Get it?

Last but not least, the videos! As I mentioned, I tried to get crawling on video this week, but had no luck. As a result, the video count is low this week--I only have one to share with you. It's a good one, but nonetheless, it's only one. But I know you've come to expect more from this blog in terms of quality, so I've included a little blast from the past in here as well. Enjoy!

Here's this week's video--drinking from a cup. My favourite cup at the house is, well, you'll see it, a nicely colourful striped one. I like it because it holds a lot of water, which means less having to fill it up. Anyway, Theo likes it a lot, too, and because he wants to do everything we do, he wanted to drink from it. It's amazing how well he did, and how excited he gets over simple things like this...



And here's the blast from the past. This is Theo at 20 days old, drinking from his bottle. It's amazing to me (and probably to you) to look back at these videos and think that it was only 8 months ago. Man, does it ever feel like a long time! Check out the size of his bottle in this one, and also the amount of very dark hair he had when he was born. *Note: Steph had no idea that I was filming a video here, which is why her talking doesn't seem to fit in the video. She was talking to her mom, who was off-screeen at the time.*



And that, my friends, concludes this week's tour. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed posting it. Don't forget to check out my Three Hills blog for daily musings about life in general, including incisive rants about TV commercials and other things. In reality, it's just a way for me to blow off steam, but hey, it's a good read, I think. We'll see you all back here next week at this time. Bye for now!

Back in Three Hills Again...

Well, here we are, back at our (temporary) home here in Three Hills. And it's really cold. It snowed when we got back. I think it's nature's way of telling us that we've been spoiled our whole lives living in the Lower Mainland--welcome to the big leagues, son! Oh well, I'm sure there's more of that to come.

On a fun administrative note, we just moved past the 1000-hit mark on this page, and that's only since we've got the counter. Thanks for your continued patronage. It makes me feel good to know that somewhere out there, people are reading this stuff. I work hard on these posts (not to toot my own horn or anything, but ask Steph how much time these take me), so your continued reading of them makes it all worthwhile.

Moving on. Had a fine trip, thanks. Turns out that Theo's just a pleasure on an airplane, which was a great relief not only to his parents, but to the other passengers as well, I'm sure. On the way there, we managed to get a stand-by seat for Theo so that we could take his car seat on board and strap him in (yes, our car seat is certified for air travel. I love that term, "certified." Sounds so official. I happen to be a certified blogger, too. Or maybe I'm confusing that with a different type of "certification."). Although the plane was delayed for an hour, as soon as we started taxiing down the runway, he was sound asleep. Ahh. On the way back, it was the same thing (although this time he had to be in our laps, as there were no standby seats available on the holiday Monday)--as soon as we started taxiing, he was out. Love it. What an awesome baby.

So yeah, we got back last Monday. Why haven't I posted since then? Well, here it is in a nutshell: teething. Yuck. It was bad the first time, but that was nothing compared to this time. For four days, starting on that very holiday Monday, we've had a snotty, screamy mess on our hands (the boy, not the parents, although it's been close, I have to admit). In fact, his teething was so severe that we wondered whether he might have had an ear infection. Well, one way to test that out: go on a plane ride! If he screams and is in excruciating pain due to the change in cabin air pressure, then it's probably an ear infection. Sound cruel? Yeah, probably. But hey, we had to get home, so we had no choice.

Lucky (?) for us, it was just the teething process being particularly nasty. Poor kid. As if he hasn't had enough difficult things to deal with. No matter how much Orajel and Tylenol we pumped into him, the pain never really did subside. It sucked to watch. And knowing that he's looking at you probably wondering why you're not helping also sucks. But it could be worse, and we're well aware of that, and thankful.

Anyway, for four days, he wouldn't really eat because of his pain, which exacerbated things because he was now in pain and hungry. Double-whammy. But on Saturday, I noticed that his top left front tooth has finally broken through the gumline, so it's just a matter of time before the whole thing is out. Going by how this all went down for the bottom teeth, it was terrible until the first tooth poked through, and then within two days they were both there, and the pain tended to subside after the first eruption. Here's hoping.

All that has put a bit of a damper on his solid food eating. In fact, Steph and I just realized the other day that our nurse practitioner told us a while ago that he's supposed to be eating everything we're eating (within reason--no nuts, citrus, or honey) by nine months, which happens to be less than a month away. But wait just a gall-durned minute here, something's amiss. I think the paediatric community needs to get their heads out of their rears and start to think this through a little bit better. For example, we were warned in no uncertain terms that it is most definitely not recommended to start your kid on solid food before he's six months old. And then we're told that for every new food we introduce, we have to do it over a three-day period, gradually increasing the amount he gets, to make sure that he doesn't have a reaction to it (as he did to bananas). Oh, and don't forget that of the four feedings he has during the day, two of them are cereal or grains, one to two is veggies, and one to two is fruits. But since you're introducing food so slowly, you often have two or more different fruits/veggies per day. But then in three months time, he should be fully eating everything you're eating. Okay, let's just stop and do the math here. Start at six months, target nine months; okay, that's three months, or 90 days. If we're trying something new every three days, that means that we can introduce 30 new foods in those three months, theoretically. But that doesn't tell the whole story--if we're spreading out the food introductions between new cereals, fruits, and veggies, we're really only talking 10 of each thing. Okay, there aren't 10 different grains (especially since we're trying to avoid large doses of wheat because of Steph's digestive issues surrounding wheat), so we'll call it 5 grains and 12.5 each of fruits and veggies.

Do you see where I'm going with this? The new qualification for parenting is an advanced degree is nuclear (or perhaps it's nucular) physics with a calculus minor. At what point can we as parents stop being drill sergeants and start, well, just trying different foods with him without worrying that we're not keeping up the pace? If you followed me through that last paragraph, you'll get an idea of how hard this is; we spend more time worrying that we're introducing the wrong foods or somehow messing it up than we do worrying about him. Heck, we even have a food list on our fridge where we write down the results of all the foods we've tried on him and try to schedule ahead what foods we're going to intro next so that we can keep it all straight. Gah!

The other problem with this is that every piece of literature you read is expressly written to make you feel guilty about something you're doing wrong. For example, one of the books we have says that if your child is not allowed to experiment with feeding himself when he wants to, you could be causing serious trouble down the road because he'll never learn to eat for himself. Okay, I understand that he has to learn to feed himself (it's one of those "essentials" in life, I hear), but come on. Isn't that just a little bit too heavy a load to throw at first-time parents? If nothing else, he's a Carroll, and if genetics plays any role in it, I'm sure that he'll have no problem with the food end of things. Sheesh.

Okay, I feel better. Good times. Suffice it to say that I'm sure he's not where he needs to be with food, but GET OFF MY BACK! Sorry. I'm okay. Really.

So, let's get on with some photos, shall we? I think these are carrots on this spoon. I guess I could cross-reference our food chart and compare it to the date the photo was taken to find out for sure (oh, give it a rest, already!). He just loves his spoon so much that it's really hard to get it out of his mouth once it's in there...

Here are a couple of him in his car seat--taken while the car was moving, which explains the trees whizzing by in the background (notice the fond attachment to the soother in the first two shots)...

Last Saturday, Steph and her mom took the Albion Ferry across to Maple Ridge to go see Steph's Nana and Aunt Holly (behold the number of proper nouns in that last sentence--I think that's a personal best). They walked on because the car lineup was way too long, and this gave Theo the chance to survey the water...

And here he is with mommy (if you want a fun game, do a head size comparison; guess who's head Theo has)...

No matter how long I live in the Lower Mainland, I never get tired of shots like this one...

One thing I'm really grateful for is the amount of family Theo has around him. Three grandmas, two grandpas, and two great-grandmas that live here, with one more a short time away in Kamloops. Not to mention his auntie Laura, his great-aunt Holly, his cousins and two uncles and aunts. All in the Lower Mainland. Here's just one of the extended family, Theo's Grand-Nana, as we call her (because Steph calls her Nana)...

"Maestro, strike up the orchestra!"...

"See, I told you it was an eighth note, dad!"

Here's the family over at my mom's place...

...and here with my sister. I include this shot because it shows what Theo really thinks of all the picture-taking he's involved in...

But all good things must come to an end, so we came home...

The trip must have been pretty exhausting for Theo, however, because this is what happened when we got home...

Actually, that was a very monumental thing in our house because it was the first time Theo's ever fallen asleep independent of even being in his crib. One minute he was playing with his toys in there, the next he was asleep. It's the day we've been waiting for! Hooray! Not sure if it will ever happen again, but at least we got the photographic evidence that one day it actually did happen. And we'll hold onto that.

Finally, proof that the box is really more exciting than what's inside (and it ties in with what's below)...


Okay, I set the precedent last week with the videos, so I'm going to have to keep it up again this week. Just like last week, I've got three to share with you this week (one week when I don't have three, I'm going to go back in the vault and pull out some videos from when he was first born--those are classics!). The first one is the tie-in to the box pictures above. He was having so much fun with the box that I thought that pictures alone wouldn't be able to capture it; immediately after those photos were taken, I took a video...



In this one, we've got a new game that I'm teaching Theo--catch. Okay, he hasn't really gotten it yet, but he'll get there eventually...



Finally, for those of you we didn't get to see last weekend, video of him doing his walking thing. The unexpected upside of this one is that you get a little tour of our place, too...



And that, my friends, is all she (or in this case, he) wrote. It was good to go home, but it's good to be back "home" too. We're hoping that by the end of this week we'll be able to get some tooth shots for you, but don't hold your breath. The posting schedule is a little bit off, but for your info, I'm planning on doing the next post late next weekend. See you back here then.