brood

literally. though jody had been telling me about wee levi and his new laughing habit, i hadn’t really witnessed it first hand. i mean, we had learned a way to get him into a little tizzy of smiles and this kind of call and response of hoots, squawks, and woops. but tonight i tried an old trick probably everyone has seen or experienced first hand – there should be a name for it, but i’ll have to settle by describing. i put my face against levi’s belly and blow out a big breath so his skin makes this resounding flatulent sound. i’ve tried this before and there has been no effect, but this time, he opened his mouth with a big grin, and let our a satisfying ha-ha-ha! Each time i did it the laughs would get stronger and funnier to us both. i was laughing, and ladyjoanna came in and joined us. it was so funny, practically as funny as the sounds he makes when he is pooping (that certainly could be another blog entry altogether) but the funniest part was levi’s own reaction to his laugh. he kind of sounded like a little kid, not an infant, and it seemed like that startled him. he would stop after his laugh and get this rather perplexed look on his face, until i did it again.

all said, levi seems like a different boy now. not only that… he can roll over!

not so long ago you were only napping in our slings
not so long ago you were only 7, only 8, only 9, only 10 … only 15 pounds
not so long ago it was so hot, it was so hot, no one needed clothes
not so long ago you seemed to have such terrible belly aches
not so long ago you didn’t suck your thumb

last night you slept for 7.5 hours straight without waking to eat. it was remarkable, but one should not overemphasize this feat of yours, as it may take the focus off all the other aspects of your being. people are downright obsessed with the “sleeping through the night” statistic, and it is understandable to be concerned about it. there is no doubt that sleep or lack thereof has a direct relationship with the quality of life for parent and child. however, it is not fair to assume a certain threshold for sleeplessness that parents should have. getting up 1, 2, 3, or whatever times a night is not a barometer of parent-child health. in fact, i will miss it if levi never gets up. sometimes those are special times that we have with him. of course, i only say that because we’ve been having a decent go of it for the last couple of weeks. nothing terribly consistent about his sleep, except that he does fairly well at night with good stretches that allow myself and ladyjoanna to restore our energy.

so, i put up more pictures, and i think they can say far more than i can, at the moment.

it’s not as bad as the title sounds; i think levi james is officially over his colic stage, at least in the technical sense. (i guess colic is defined as 3 hours of inconsolable crying 3 times a week for 3 weeks, or something similarly kooky.) it’s silly to reduce our little fellow’s disposition, one that is both richly dynamic, and utterly fascinating, to a word that basically describes the state of his colon.

although, the health of one’s colon can really have a profound effect on one’s personality – that might be said for any internal organ, or more generally about one’s health, but having crohn’s has left me experienced coping with a flakey apparato digestivo. We do think wee levi’s even more wee belly hurts him – there is no question of this. but, i guess my point is that things have improved and everyone is happier, we think.

the weather has improved as well. an “honest to god” cold-front came in and made the outdoors so inviting – cool at night and in the 80s during the day. we spent most of the day outside. this has also given the opportunity to dress the lad in all of these wondrous outfits, or parts thereof, that were given to us over the last 6 months. (Pictures are forthcoming!) He looks so cute in these get-ups, and just when you are already melting over his sheer charm, you put a little hat on him and you are just a puddle on the floor.

now, back to the title for a minute. levi did scream when he woke up this morning – after a near 12 hours of sleeping – not straight though of course! he does sleep 4-5, sometimes even 6 hours stretches now fairly regularly, and this is nice for us. getting him to sleep is either a 2 minute non-event or an hour long fuss-fest. tonight it leaned toward the latter, and culminated in the aforementioned scream. it is an unusual and fundamentally upsetting feeling to hear your baby scream at the very top of his lungs. there wasn’t much i could do, as i was already holding him, which adds to the frustration. but, it seemed as though the scream served some therapeutic purpose for when it was done, i swayed with levi for a few minutes and put him back down to sleep, which is what he’s been doing ever since i started typing about 10 minutes ago.

so, maybe he did just need to let off some steam as some baby experts suggest. if that is the case, perhaps we should all give it a try. my neighbor says he does it every morning. i’m not sure he was kidding. i’m going to try it tomorrow. maybe you should to.