"T" is for teeth

Hurrah, hurrah, two more have broken through! Unfortunately, it's the top middle ones, so within a week he'll have a nice, aligned set of four, in perfect position for biting or scraping the hell out of my breast while nursing. I've heard some babies let their teeth get in the way and others never do. Let's just hope he's of the latter set, because I hadn't planned to wean till he's a year old but am NOT going to suffer nipple bites on his behalf. I know motherhood is all about the sacrifice and shit, but I'm not being bitten. Unmedicated labor is enough, I've paid my dues. ;)

I have no photos of his teeth, just the cute one above of his bib-clad, drooling self attacking the camera, and the one below of him engaged in his relentless chewing. I consider them both to be tooth related photos. Otherwise I just have a lot of short video clips to share, but not enough patience to load them on blogger. Go to flickr to see them.

You'll find him playing on the floor, attacking the small barricade I erected in front of the television set, bothering Goran while he attempts to read a paper, and goofing off in general.

Other than growing two new teeth, he has been perfecting his crawling technique. He uses his right leg the way a snail or clam might, to push the rest of him along. The left leg is pulled up, so he is on his knee (like a normal crawling baby) but the right one slides out and pushes him, and then he draws the left knee back up again. It's amusing, and he's getting faster by the day. He's actually stopped trying to stagger across short distances by foot, and now drops down to all fours and crawls between things he can pull up on. This may mean that walking will be a while yet, which is fine as I really don't want to deal with a walking baby in this particular apartment.

He also seems to understand that particular things and areas of the apartment are off limits. This doesn't mean he avoids them, but that he waits till I'm not looking to try and go there; when he sees me watching or I stand up, he drops to all fours and frantically speeds up in an attempt to reach whatever power cord or outlet or TV equipment has caught his eye. On occasion he laughs maniacally when I catch him and take him away. It's very, very funny, and very, very exhausting.

I was a slacker mom for Halloween and did not costume him. The English are not super into trick or treating, and since you can't get into our building without a key, we don't get random kids. No one came, and now I have two bags of fun sized Mars bars to deal with. I'm not even a Mars bar fan, so I'm at a bit of a loss. For the record, American readers, your Mars is not my Mars, as the link I've included will show. Think Milkyway.

Anyway, I couldn't find anything baby-friendly to do with Alexander, Goran was exhausted from all the work he's been doing and I just couldn't get excited about sitting around in the apartment in costume for no reason. Plus A goes to bed early... anyhow, we skipped it. Two friends came over for dinner (in full Regency garb, so at least someone was in costume) after Alexander was sleeping so it wasn't even like it was worth dressing him up for them. So I officially flubbed his first Halloween. You all can remind me to make it up to him next year, when he's going to be almost two and might have some clue about what is going on.

That is all. Hopefully I will have something interesting to share next week.