One Year Minus 11 Days

Our bizarre little eleven-and-a-half-month old is less than two weeks away from her birthday. What an odd duck she is. There are many things she can't do, things that a typical baby her age can. But there's so much more she does that just kind of stuns me.

I'm about 95% sure she's said her first word, although "word" is really a very generous way of describing it. To be honest, I don't understand how any parent can tell what their child's first word is. She's been yammering away since she was a few months old; about six weeks ago she picked up mimicry, and since then it's just been a steady chug towards full sentences.

If you were wondering what the word was, it's "doggie."

It's the result of me ceaselessly pointing at the dogs, petting the dogs, letting the dogs lick her face, all the while inanely repeating, "Nice doggies! See the doggies? Love the doggies! Kiss the doggies! No, don't pull on the doggie. The doggie doesn't like that. Please let go of the doggie, you're hurting her."

I suffered and the dogs suffered (and Sadie suffered, going into hysterics every time I prevented her from ripping Pepper's beard out of her head. Luckily, Pepper is very stupid and interprets pain as affection, so she really doesn't mind), but it finally paid off last week when we walked in the door after day care. Sadie saw the dogs and screamed "DA DA DA DA" at the top of her lungs and I was like, "DONE! IT COUNTS!"

By the way, as I type this, Sadie is sitting next to me in the Jumparoo making a sound that I can only approximate as this:

"RRRRNNNNGH. Hic Hic Hic ARRRRRRNGH."

This means she's concentrating on laying a giant turd. And, okay, not to hijack my own blog with poop stories, but about two hours ago she made this sound and then started crying incredibly pathetically. I took her over to the changing table and saw why: there was the saddest little poop sitting in her diaper, looking all lonely and friendless.

I'm used to a softer poop, so I was a little hasty in pulling her diaper off. As I balled it up, the piece of poop flew off the diaper, sailed through the air and landed softly on the surface of her dresser, moulding to its shape like a piece of Silly Putty.

Because there wasn't anything better to do in that moment, I screamed, "EW."

Sadie looked at me and said, "Ew!"

So I guess technically, she can say two words.

5 month 2 week 3 day check in

Right now I've just put Sadie down for a mid-day nap, and instead of sleeping she's decided to make vowel sounds at her mobile. Since I'm paranoid about going in to take a shower before she's fully asleep, I've decided to kill time by inhaling an entire box of Tagalongs having a quick snack and posting on the baby blog.

Life has been eventful lately. We have a new sitter starting tomorrow, since we got hung out to dry by our old sitter. I have a hard time talking about it. It still hurts. She decided to devote herself full time to growing her photography business (she took the adorable close-up of Sadie, a few posts down), and informed me of this decision about three days after I'd approached her about upping her hours because she'd been so invaluable to us. Scott can attest to the fact that I didn't take the news well. To be specific, I called him crying from the parking lot of a Del Taco. I think my exact words were, "It's like I pulled out an engagement ring, and she dumped me. I need to eat some chili cheese fries." Now that I've somewhat recovered, I've found someone new. I think it's going to work out well -- she has promised to deal kindly with my nervous text messaging habit.

We went over to my parents' house yesterday to celebrate both of their birthdays, which fall 10 days apart. As we all sat around on the couch, Sadie next to me on her back, she waited for me to turn my attention to the window and chose that moment to try to roll herself headlong off the couch. Between Scott and my mother, I have never, ever seen reflexes that lightning quick. Y'all should be major league baseball players with reflexes like that. Of course I felt terrible -- she doesn't roll, guys! I swear! That was a one time thing! This morning I placed her on her belly and waited forever for her to roll, but still no dice.

She does scooch, though, which is kind of funny. She only does it when we're not looking. A few mornings ago I went into the bedroom to get her, and she'd scooched herself backwards into a corner of the crib, actually under a throw blanket I put there to use as decoration. Er...USED as decoration. I've decided to put that throw blanket somewhere else. So the girl can definitely get places when she wants to.

And how are things on the poop front, you ask? You want to know about poop? While sitting in the Jumparoo this morning, she took a poop that went off like a gunshot and when I went to change her diaper I found it had gone as far up as her NECK. Her changing pad is now being sanitized in the washing machine. As for her cute white onesie with the little yellow duckies on it...well, my suspicion is that it will never be quite the same again.

Overall, complaining aside, these days are so joyful and fun that I wish they'd never end. She's the perfect size, she's happy nearly all the time, she still sleeps like a dream, and her little personality emerges more every day. She's curious and grabby, she loves beards and eyeglasses and iPhones. And the handle of my coffeepot, which I need to watch out for. She thinks dogs are the funniest toys ever invented. She loves having her diaper changed but hates having her hands put through sleeves. She loves bath time but hates being taken out of the tub. She smiles big at me and even bigger at her dad. She is my joy in life and I never, ever get tired of loving on her. I don't know how we got this lucky, but we must be doing something right. 

Oh. Crap.

Sadie started solids four days ago. She has not had a bowl movement in as many days. Until today.

Yes, I am now that woman who blogs about her child's poop. But y'all. This was no average poop.

The first sign I got that something was amiss was after I put Sadie in the Bumbo chair and she got that faraway look in her eyes, and before I knew it her pants were making burbling sounds. Usually this is cause for celebration. I picked her up and, in a move that I hope no one ever, ever sees me do, sniffed her pants to see if she'd really pooped.

Holy shit. It almost knocked me over.

I took her to the bedroom and opened up her diaper, almost afraid of what I might find. And what I found --

No, wait. First let me describe a bit what a milkfed baby's poop is usually like. It's kind of runny. And bright yellow. It doesn't usually smell terrible (I mean, it's not like a rose garden but at least the scent doesn't linger), and it wipes off quickly and easily. Someone once whimsically described milkfed baby poop as smelling like "buttermilk." It doesn't, but it's fairly inoffensive.

Compare this with what I discovered today, when I opened Sadie's diaper and for a moment was under the mistaken impression that somehow, an overweight trucker with 13 beers and a 7-layer burrito from Taco Bell in his system found my daughter's diaper and decided to take a crap in it. I reeled. I retched. I used five wet wipes and when it was done and the offending diaper was in the Diaper Genie, the room still reeked.

Is this my future? Is this what it will be like from now on? Have other moms been dealing with this forever and I only now just figured out that real baby poop is like this, not the buttermilky manna from heaven with which I was previously dealing? Because if so...Not. Cool.