Lord of the Dance

Update on our Hand-some Guy

Hello, dear reader, bet you thought I had disappeared. Not the case. I've just been busy feeding, entertaining, changing, bathing, and otherwise caring for Peter ... and occasionally finding time to spend with the other people who occupied me pre-Peanut. But I've found a few minutes to give you a quick update on how we've been keeping.

Those of you who had discussions with me a month or so ago about Peter's development (your favourite topic, I'm sure) will know that I was pretty much obsessed with his hands. In particular, with Peter becoming able to bring his hands - both of them - to the middle of his body and use them to do primitive stuff like bat at objects and "self-soothe" (child development-speak for putting one's hands in one's mouth). At that time this seemed an impossible feat, in the way that all things that aren't yet possible seem impossible, and Mark and I spent an embarassing amount of time standing in front of the Peanut sloooowly saying "Hands ... Together" while sloooowly bringing our own hands to midline, as the young man grinned at us and looked puzzled. All of which is an overly lengthy introduction to the following photo, which I'm calling, "How'd ya like 'dem hands?!?":

Yes, that's right, it gives me great joy to announce that Peter can put his hands in his mouth (what can I say - I'm a simple girl).

In other news (parents of Problem Sleepers, read on at your peril), Peter sleeps. And sleeps. Like a champ, in fact. Yes, despite a particularly rocky start to the nocturnal facts of home life, our little former night owl now sleeps like, well, a baby (in the "sleeps like a baby" sense, not in the way that most babies actually sleep). He sleeps through the night, sometimes for as many as ten hours in a row. Who knew? So I feel a little sheepish about tugging on your heartstrings with my whole "boo hoo, I've been subsisting on two hour-and-a-half-naps a day for six weeks" routine. My bad.

That's about it from our end. Peter is now a little more than three months corrected age, which means he's a little more than six months actual age, and as of last week weighed in at 5.02 kg (or just over 11 lbs for those who refuse to accept the obvious superiority of the metric system). And I promise to get better at posting, and to take some uber-cute pictures in the near future.

Out in the cold and on the grid

Oh, dear reader, what a day! We awoke this morning to a very cold house. Those of you who reside in or around the T dot will know that it has suddenly become unseasonably chilly out there. Turns out that this counts as a problem if your furnace isn't working. Also turns out that our furnace isn't working. It further turns out that when it's suddenly unseasonably chilly out there, lots of people look to heat contractors to come and service their furnaces. So it's still cold in here. Thank goodness for fire; Peter and I spent the better part of the day cuddling in front of ours. The bright side was that he got to look ravishing in a still-too-large hat with ears (courtesy of Auntie Megg) and a cosy sleeper.

In other news, the provincial government has finally, finally acknowledged Peter's existence! (No such luck with the federal government so far, but I'm hoping there'll be a ripple effect.) You see, for the last nearly six months, I have been trying to secure some proof of the young lad's identity, the better to get him a valid OHIP number and pay those pesky hospital tabs he's been running. I have finally succeeded, and Peter is the proud owner of (1) a statement of live birth, (2) a birth certificate, and (3) a (temporary) health card. Hooray! Now I don't have to dodge daily phone calls from "patient accounts" at five different institutions!

In other other news, I think that Peter laughed this morning. You see, he smiles and full-body-wiggles at us all the time, but so far no real laugh noises. Until I stood with him in front of a full-length mirror and, ahem, shook my tail feather, whilst saying "Shake your tail feather." This, apparently, is a joke so hilariously irresistible that Peter responded with a big smile and an audible "ha". I'm hoping I can recreate the magic with some of my other dance moves.