Behold the adorableness that is an authentic Tahitian dancing girl outfit sent to Ronin from my pregnant sailor buddy Antonia, who bravely puked her way into the wilds of the South Pacific, where tubs of Deep Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream are few and far between, and who is now living in New Zealand. (And who is also no longer pregnant, by the way.) Upon opening the gift I immediately started lactating over The Cute.

Ronin was sort of crawling last night around, oh, 4:26am in her cradle. First she’d rock violently, making the structure squeak and quake, then she’d lift her butt into a ‘downward dog’ yoga pose a few times, and finally she’d crawl back and forth, all the while crying miserably with her eyes squeezed shut. We didn’t know whether to shrivel up and die from the horrific assault on our nerves or get out the video camera to record this special moment. In the end, Joshua crawled down to the foot of the bed to suffocate himself under the bedclothes and I got up and nursed her. She sacked back out shortly thereafter.

While I’m bitching about sleep habits, I think I’ll chime in on this teething thing because I think it’s going to kill me. Half the time I can’t tell if the tylenol is even doing anything because she is still frantically screeching and generally behaving like a rabid animal. I went to the store today and picked up some Hyland’s teething tablets, which are basically chamomile, sugar, and monkey oil or some such. As far as I can tell, they are not working either. I sincerely hope the remaining 18 teeth all break through at once so we can be done already.

Another (non) bonus: with the teeth, I get bit. I don’t know how to discourage the biting thing; she just wants to tear into pretty much anything that gets near her face. My boob is of course NOT an appropriate teether. Hollering in pain, telling her not to bite me, and what the books say to do (mash her face into your boob so that her nose is covered and she lets go–I’m totally serious, that’s what they say) do not work. She finds it all hilarious and just bites harder.

On the plus side, I have discovered a way to get actual non-milk food into the baby: a straw. She’ll suck anything down a straw. It’s quite miraculous. She still objects to spoon feeding the majority of the time but has finally figured out how to pick up food bits and put them into her own mouth. You would think this might be second nature, what with everything else she touches immediately going straight into the mouth. However, she just knows when something is food and when something is not and the thing that she wants in her mouth is the dirt clod/sock/pebble and not the pea/apple/sweet potato. But at last, she made the leap (or decision) and stuck a bit of freeze-dried pineapple in her mouth. And then more and more until she had a mouthful of dessicated fruit bits sticking all over. We’re working now on the actual ingestion of the food.

Ronin is surprisingly mobile for not yet really crawling (she only does that in the wee hours) and I’ve been working on “baby-proofing” the place. Basically I let her have the run of the room and everything she goes for, I take away and put in a higher place. I turned back around after putting the last of the floor debris (Joshua’s gnarly old slippers) on a shelf to see her gnawing on the corner of our iron bed. Also, what IS is about outlets that fascinate babies so? She spots these from across the room and just beelines right for them; today I saw her eyeing the flashing power strip with curiosity. Unfortunately, I think the likelihood of growing a second set of eyes in the back of my head is more realistic than making the entire apartment completely safe for a baby.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 10:28 am and is filed under ronin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.