We have a set of blue play mats we use for padding the floor. On Thursday morning we stacked them up for cleaning. On Thursday afternoon Griffin rounded the corner and got suspiciously quiet. I came into the playroom to find this scene:

He was even working on the deadbolt, the kid doesn’t miss a thing.

Getting some comments about this recently, so I was happy to see there’s another study out showing that breastmilk is still nutritionally important after a year. With Griffin’s dairy allergy I’m in no rush to wean him, it’s just not a problem for us. Most of the other moms I know are nursing past a year; for everyone else I’m thinking of getting this shirt, or maybe this one.

It was a blazing full moon tonight and after months of thinking about it, I finally got to experiment with my lil’ digicam on a tripod. It was pretty hilarious, as the tripod attachment shoe is nearly as big as the camera. The full set-up is scarcely more than a tripod with a pimple.

I just went to town, shooting with all kinds of different manual exposures, some up to 30 seconds long. The camera’s zoom isn’t powerful enough to get the actual shot I was gunning for, but there were some nifty ones none-the-less.

Bonus points if you can pinpoint the source of the title of this blog entry (without Googling it!).

Today Griffin went out to his first movie. Well, 20 minutes of his first movie. Madagascar. He has a book for it, and from that he’s learned to say “wa-oh wa-oh wa-oh” on sight of penguin (waddle waddle waddle). So the penguins turn up and its “wa-oh wa-oh wa-oh”. And when a crowd in the movie clapped their hands, Griffin clapped as well. It was all dandy for while, but then he got restless, so we opted out (no big loss as we’d gone to the local 2nd run theater).

Last night was my 3rd soccer game of the season. I played goalie the first 2 games, but last night I hit the field running. For about 90 seconds. Then subbed out. I never did the running or lose the weight I’d planned to, so it was fun, but very humbling.

Griffin’s partaking in the body parts game with us, where we say or point at parts of our bodies and he points or says appropriate or at least appropriately cute things back to us. “Griffin, where’s your ears?”, and he nearly pulls his ears off his head and says “Eeeeeee”. “Bellybutton!” gets him to either pull up his shirt or your shirt and poke his lil’ finger in the lint receptacle.

Now, you really have to be on your toes when it comes to “eyes!”… if he’s in reach, he, without hesitation, sticks his finger in your eye. Very clever. Also works excellently as an emergency defence maneuver.

Seems to be something in the air. Or up there.

We knew last night was going to be rough so we gave Griffin Motrin before bed and he slept pretty well from 8:00 until around midnight. Then all hell broke loose. I’m not really sure how to describe the middle-of-the-night screaming fests, they may seem worse when I’m in the middle of them because I’m usually very tired. We have a routine for this now, we put on the lullaby CD to try to help with the soothing, but he was screaming so loudly and continuously that he couldn’t hear it anyway.

I seem to be lacking in mother’s intuition. I honestly could not tell what was going on. Was he in pain? Certainly from the teeth, but was it more than that? I had everything running through my head, reaction to food, gas, growing pains? Was he angry? Certainly he was angry and lashing out at me, but was it because I wouldn’t get up with him and bring him to the other room? Because I couldn’t help him feel better? He was flinging himself on the floor and kicking his feet, several times I had to physically restrain him to keep him from injuring himself by banging his head into the wall or into the dresser.

After half an hour he settled down into sobbing and let me hold him, then an hour of sobbing and restless thrashing about until he finally fell asleep.

As his mother I’m responsible for him, and I really feel a need to fix this. But how when I can’t even figure out what’s wrong? Several people have suggested alternative practitioners to me. A friend pointed out that trying something at least wouldn’t do any harm. But how do I choose among things I don’t believe in? Chiropractor, cranio-sacral therapist, exorcist? And how do I know if something’s working? Because if there’s anything I’ve learned about babies, it’s that whatever’s happening now will be different next month no matter what I do. Ack.

And then after all that we had an amazingly pleasant morning. Griffin went to the park with his dad while I showered, and then we went to Carandale and stocked up on apples, grapes, cider, and the strawberry-rhubarb pies that Julian loves. Griffin snacked on half an apple and then fell fast asleep, he’s napping now and I guess I’ll go join him.

Griffin’s blues (1.6MB, 26sec).

My first video using my lil’ Sony cam (the one i use for all the photos here). In retrospect, it’s probably way too high a bitrate, but i’ll get better at it with more practice.

On Sunday late afternoon, Griffin went on his first canoe outing. He had a little life vest and sat right at the front of the boat while Mom & Dad paddled the pint-sized pirate out to sea (lake). He braved it well and had a dandy time… until he finally rejected the notion of life vests and we had to skeeter back to shore.

He’s also discovered the many wonders of corn on the cob.

The morning walks are getting more adventurous, as I’m letting him make his own way up the steps of the play structure, across the bridge and down the slide on his own. Sometimes we play a game of beep-beep, beep along the way. He runs over to a railing, leans over, and goes “beep!”, and I run under the bridge behind him and go “beep! beep!” and hilarity ensues.

I know I rarely do these anymore, maybe it should be “Griffin this quarter” or something. He’s doing all kinds of amazing things these days.