Growing pains

So the nanny is a bit of a bust, it turns out. Last week, we paid for 8 hours of share-care, which in addition to costing us $50 also stressed out B. to such an extent that we had to spend about 7 of those hours calming him down, rocking his hysterically sobbing body in undulatory figure-eights as we cooed nursery rhymes and tried to edge him back from the brink of total systemic collapse. The experience also stressed out the nanny, who responded by not showing up for work yesterday. Oh, yeah, the babies, sorry guys, I guess it slipped my mind. Unfathomably, she's back on the job today, with Catalina running shotgun and I minding the gati and the bread at the homestead. I have a hunch, however, that at some point we will tire of paying upwards of $250 a month for the pleasure of waking up on someone else's schedule and watching our child explode.

Galloping separation anxiety aside, Bensoosco's latest developments have been uniformly wonderful. He happily nibbles his way through the entire spectrum of Allowable Baby Foods, which at this juncture consist of only two items, bananas and rice-goop. At first he thought that the approaching green spoon was being offered as a toy, and he would reach up with both hands to grab the mush-covered tip as soon as it got within lunging distance. Since he shoves everything in his mouth (which is where we wanted the spoon to go anyway) this independence streak should have been fine, but it ended up producing some curious psychological dynamics on our part: we seem to have wanted the spoon in his mouth exactly as long as he didn't want it, and as soon as he started grabbing for it, we started pulling it away. That was the cycle, then: spoon goes forward, chubby arms go up, spoon goes back, chubby arms go down, repeat ad-impatience, da capo. Feeding became something of a basketball game, Parents vs. The Blob, and our goal was to send the spoon racing past the waving hands of the defense into the gaping hole before the blob got wise and closed the basket. Fun, but tedious. Just as we were on the brink of letting Benjamin feed himself, however, he learned that it was actually easier to cease resisting and have us do all the work. So these days he keeps his arms conspicuously pressed to his sides and plays the Obedient Baby, happily opening his mouth on queue and smacking his lips when he's done.

Actually, this lip smacking seems to be morphing into lip blowing, though we only noticed this behavior yesterday and it may be too soon to add it to his permanent repertoire. Here's a video clip of the Lip Blower in action. Observe the social and gastronomic commentary implicit in the gesture, the ho-hum, another meal of mushed grains and vapid conversation forcibly expressed with the spittle and airplane sounds. The child has a gift for communication; I expect him to be a great artist some day.

Other developments: Catalina assures me he is 'babbling', which is apparently a very particular phonetic exercise children do to loosen the palate and prepare for speech. If I didn't know any better, I would say he's been babbling for about six months now, but I'm willing to follow C.'s lead on this and pronounce this a milestone. (There is something of the Emperor's New Sound in all of this.) He can sit up by himself quite well, when he puts his mind to it, but he often forgets himself and goes toppling over, his great pumpkin head bearing him down and no bracing impulse to shield his landing. The art of inserting his own chupo is old hat: we hand him the device, and he can find a way to get it in his mouth, sometimes even even with the right orientation. His enormity has not ebbed: recently graduated from the 6-9 month clothing size, he now clads himself exclusively in 1 year +'s. He likes to read with the family. He wiggles his legs when he's happy. He chuckles like a hyena in his sleep.