home.

Well, we're home from the beach. I think Ben's molars are going to cut through any day now. He's a drooling machine, and he is the crankiest I've ever seen him. He woke up a bunch of times last night screaming bloody murder. I felt bad for him.

When he's really tired, Ben likes to chew on his blanket. On the ride home, he fell asleep with it in his mouth. I got a picture.

give me back my son!

Years ago, someone I know did a great impression of Mel Gibson yelling, "give me back my son!" from the movie Ransom. We're talking practicing in front of the mirror and stuff. You know who you are.


That's how I feel right now about Ben. I look at him and ask, 'who are you and what have you done with Ben?'

I don't know what it is, but for the past 4 nights he's been up multiple times, standing in his crib and crying. He's not taking the naps he's supposed to. He's generally cranky.

I had trouble like this awhile back with him, and I found a site which explained things in layman's terms.

Your baby is also going through enormous developmental spurts that you can't see, because they're dealing with cognitive processes. They work through these spurts the same way they work through the physical spurts, but when your baby is practicing recognizing patterns, you can't see that. Leading up to the actual new skill the baby is going to go through several weeks of intense brain work and prep that you can't necessarily see (unless you know specifically what to look for). One of the side effects of this brain work is that they don't sleep as well as they do during times in which they're not about to master a new skill. They may seem restless in the night (like they do sometimes when mastering a physical skill) but it's just nothing you can see and label. So we call it a sleep regression.

Once a baby has learned the new skill, s/he will often sleep through the entire night for 1-3 nights after mastering the skill. Which is freaky from the parents' perspective, because you go from waking 10 times one night to sleeping 12 hours the next. But it makes complete sense if you know that the baby was working on this really tough challenge and couldn't help but wake up so often (in fact it's probably a miracle that the baby could even fall asleep in the first place with so much going on in the noggin), and then once they've got it they relax and sleep it off for a couple of days, like sleeping off a crazy party. Then they'll most likely go back to sleeping the way they were before they started working on the new developmental skill.

I cant feel any new teeth or anything, but I'm guessing it's some sort of sleep regression - something he's working on (walking? standing up? doing his times tables? who knows?). This explanation makes sense to me, and makes me feel better - if for no other reason than that it gives me some hope that things will go back to 'normal.'

saturday.

We had a nice day here in South Philly. After Ben woke up for the day, we went for a walk around the neighborhood. Chris got to push Ben in his car for the first time. Ben had a ball. Its so fun watching him.

Then this afternoon Chris blew up the baby pool we got for Ben. It's bigger than it looked on Amazon, so we had to move our patio furniture out of the way to help it fit out back. While I fed Ben lunch, Chris used the pump to blow up the pool and fill it with water.

It's nice that there's a little canopy over the pool, so Ben wasn't in the sun too much.


He loves the water. He also loves Sophie, so he tried convincing her to come into the pool with him.


But as usual, she was having none of it.


We love seeing him happy. He's a fun kid. Below, you'll see the smile we love.


If you look closely, though, you'll also see the reason(s) that Ben's pediatrician suggested we make an appointment with a pediatric dentist. Two of Ben's top teeth came in with some enamel missing. Not only is the enamel missing, but they're kind of gross and discolored. I'm pretty bummed about it, but it's how they grew in. I heard that sometimes the antibiotics that babies are given in the NICU can discolor teeth, so maybe that's what happened here.

No amount of brushing on my part can get rid of this. It's a shame because the teeth are just going to become more and more noticeable as he gets older. The one good thing is that they're his baby teeth, and they'll eventually fall out. But I hate the fact that people might look at him funny once they see his teeth. But yes, I am completely aware that this is a very small problem in the grand scheme of things.

So now you know my 'secret' - I haven't mentioned The Teeth here because I'd hoped they would eventually be pearly white like his others. And you can think good thoughts for us when we go to the dentist on 7/25, if you wouldn't mind. When I made the appointment, the receptionist said, 'umm, we usually don't see children until at least two years old....' so we'll see how the dentist is with a squirmy 11 month-old.

big boy

Ben had a doctor's appointment today, his 10-month checkup.


He's now 24 pounds, 6 ounces. For a boy his age, the pediatrician told us, he's in the 90th percentile for weight and the 97th for height. He again remarked that he couldn't believe Ben was a preemie. Ben, of course, gave him a toothy grin (he has two more coming in on the bottom). He's pretty proud of himself.