Lions and Tigers and Goats, Oh my!

Before you read any further, please look at the above picture, think about petting zoos and tell me what animal Anthony is looking at. More on that later.

Anthony took his first trip to the zoo this weekend!

He saw a Florida fave, flamingos...

Rode the carousel with daddy...

Checked out the elephants with mommy...

and much, much more...

Anthony was pretty much take-it-or-leave it regarding the zoo -- he didn't hate it, but he wasn't exactly jumping up and down (I know he can't jump up and down yet, but if he could, he wouldn't have been, I could just tell) -- but he definitely perked up when we visited the petting zoo. There, he giggled and grinned as he got up close and personal with this creature.

As we were leaving the petting zoo, a zoo employee asked us how our little boy was enjoying the zoo. Not wanting to call out the zoo for more or less boring my child to sleep (actually, had the zoo put Anthony to sleep, I wouldn't call it out, I would bow at its feet) I just said, "Oh, he really loved petting the goat."

The zoo employee fixed me with a condescending gaze, and said, "Well, he would have loved it, if that were a goat. But it's actually a (insert variety of exotic, obscure goat-looking sheep) sheep from (insert exotic, obscure country where they call their goats sheep). "

Then she proceeded to give Anthony a baseball card-type thing about the GOAT (ha! take that, zoo lady!) which he of course thrust in his mouth and chewed on until it fell apart and threatened to choke him. Gracias, zoo lady!!!

Anyway, like I said, aside from petting the GOAT (ha!) Anthony was just kind of OK with the zoo. Still, it was a nice family outing on a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning. I'm sure we'll be back and that Anthony will enjoy the zoo more in the future, like when he's old enough to walk up and feed the GOAT (ha!)

Laughter

No one can make Anthony laugh like his Grandmas.

Months ago, when Anthony had just "learned" how to laugh and Brandon and I would do just about anything, usually in vain, to prompt that precious sound, my mom had him in such stitches from a game of Peek-A-Boo that I thought he'd pee his pants.

Oh wait...

This past weekend it was Grandma Char's turn, and she had the little guy going CRAZY with more Peek-A-Boo and rounds of "How big is Anthony? Soooo big!"

Which, as you can see from the following video, he's totally learned how to play, and loves until something horrible happens, like he drops his toy.

(That video's a little deceiving...sometimes it takes him a while to catch on, but you can tell he's having fun nonetheless. Mom and grandma ask that you ignore their hijinks in the background)

I love watching Anthony interact with other adults, and not just because it means I get a break from being the entertainment committee. OK, that is why, but Mother's Day is coming up and I want to make it sound like my child's happiness is the ONLY thing I ever think about.

One reason it's fun is that Anthony LOVES the attention. He LIT UP every time Grandma Char played with him. I can't wait til my mom and dad are here next month because (I won't have to be the entertainment committee) I know he'll be so happy. It's like he knows I'm gonna play with him because I'm his mom and I have to, but he thinks it's so cool when another grownup wants to be his playmate. Or maybe the grandparents are just more fun than me, who knows.

One thing's for sure, Anthony is really fun these days because he's getting more and more social, and seems to really be developing a sense of humor (people always say that about babies, and before I had one I used to smirk dubiously, but now I think it's true).

Anyway, go ahead an smirk dubiously if you want, but Anthony really seems to get the joke.

When we laugh at something, he'll laugh too (OK, this actually deserves the dubious smirk, as we're usually laughing at The Daily Show or some crazy video Brandon found on YouTube, which isn't exactly baby-friendly). Still, whenever it's Anthony that makes us laugh (cause we're always laughing WITH Anthony, not at him, right?) he gets a big grin on his face and repeats whatever he did to make us laugh in the first place. So much fun!

Anthony is 10 Months Old Today!

It's been a month of crawling (Anthony's), chasing (ours) and running away (Javier's); as well as -- drum roll, please -- no visits to the pediatrician!!!!! Yay!!!!

Now that I've totally jinxed my child, here's what Anthony's been up to this month:

He actually slept through the night. Once. He made it from about 8 p.m. to nearly 5 a.m. (my interpretation of "through the night" is as liberal as my politics) at which point I gave him a bottle to try to coax him back to sleep. No dice, so I lay down on the guest bed with him, where he played happily for about 15 minutes. Then, he let out an alarming belch, and promptly threw up all over the place. Needless to say, he has not come close to sleeping through the night since: ("I slept through the night once, but it made me puke, so I'm not gonna do THAT again!")


He became the poster child for baby-proofing...

...crawling at breakneck speed (this morning he chased after me, screaming, as I left him at daycare...so cute and so sad at the same time)...turning lights and TVs on and off (we are bad parents and allow...OK, encourage...the watching of cartoons because sometimes it's seriously the only way to get to work both on time and fully clothed)...climbing the stairs; apparently, Anthony didn't inherent Brandon's dislike of open heights...opening drawers
..continuing his campaign of terror against the cat

...and tossing hand grenades -- INCOMING!!!
OK, it's really a giant "pop bead" that Grandma and Grandpa Lantau sent him for Easter, but it does look disturbingly like a hand grenade, you can't deny me that.

With that frightening image of baby warfare in our minds, Brandon and I finally got smart, and bought a gate that keeps Anthony away from the stairs, kitchen and bathroom and keeps us from having to jump up and give chase every 30 seconds. Anthony seems OK with it as long as someone is with him on "his" side of the gate. As soon as he's alone in there and we're both in the kitchen or something, he realizes he's being left out and starts to protest.

Anthony also said his first word this month! That's right -- one day as I got him out of his car seat to head into daycare, he looked me straight in the eye and said the word every parent longs to hear: "dada." OK, obviously I'm being sarastic here and I don't really think that counts as a first word, unless I also want to believe Anthony suffers from major gender confusion. Or that after nine years of marriage, I'm starting to look like Brandon.

Anyway, the little guy had a good month (did I mention we didn't visit the doctor ONCE???!!!) and is becoming more his own person all the time. Now, he (by which I mean Brandon and I) are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Grandma Char this week and Grandma and Grandpa Lantau next month.

What our society is coming to

So I'm in Publix today grabbing a few groceries (actually, all I needed was formula and wine, but you can't go in and buy only formula and wine, it's just wrong, so I threw in some avocados, cereal bars and index cards for good measure) when something kind of depresssing happened.

As the clerk rang up my purchases, she commented on how expensive the formula is. I said something nonchalant, like, "Yeah, the stuff's not cheap," because I'm not really that appalled by what it costs to provide my first-born's major source of nutrition.

Anyway, she proceeded to tell me I should "get the WIC." I explained both my husband and I are working, so we're not really what the government had in mind when it set up WIC. She continued, "Oh, you can still get it even if you work." For some reason, I felt the need to defend myself for not "getting the WIC," so I explained that not "getting the WIC" is kind of one of the reasons why we work in the first place. She seemed genuinely confused by this, but said, "Oh, I guess."

It reminds me of one of our all-time favorite parenting moments. We were in the pediatrician's office when Anthony was just a newborn, and two moms were complaining about the cost of baby goods. One of them said she didn't qualify for any government aid, then announced, with all the righteous indignation a person can muster, "So I'm going to have to BUY his milk."

Now, I'm all for our government helping people who are genuinely in need, especially when those in need are little babies. And heaven knows, in this economy, there are plenty of people who truly need assistance, often through no fault of their own. But maybe we are going a little too far with this culture of bailout... should someone who is fortunate enough to still be employed and therefore really doesn't need federal assistance be told to go out and get it anyway?

Should that even be an option?

Shouldn't a person instead to be encouraged to, if possible, find a way to pay for what they need -- whether that means cutting back on their spending, or putting their kid in daycare so they can go to work, thereby ensuring that the kid is sick all the time and the parents are in turn also sick all the time and no one ever sleeps and everyone's kind of miserable for a couple years?

Ummm...where do I get those WIC forms? And does it cover my wine?

A Day at the Park

With six months of heat and humidity approaching, I decided to take advantage of a reasonably pleasant day to introduce Anthony to the park. I mean, what kind of kid doesn't love the park?

Mine, apparently. The new surroundings must have been a little too overwhelming, because Anthony -- who is not known for holding back and never met a person/object/animal/electronic device/etc. that he didn't want to grab and stick in his mouth -- was suddenly extremely tentative. Despite being exposed to all the fun a (small) park has to offer, he pretty much stayed in one place and clung to my keys and/or the bottle of baby sunscreen we brought along.

Here are some pictures from our day at the park (as you can see, I couldn't even get Mr. Serious to crack a smile!):

Taking a tumble in the grass...


A trip down the slide (with mommy as copilot, of course)...


I thought for sure he's want to play with the rollers behind him, but no dice...

The rock wall...a perfect place to practic pulling up, one would have thought...

Is that the barest hint of a smile on the bouncy horse?

The swing was definitely his favorite...

4 a.m.

a.k.a. Anthony's new wakeup time. Yay! There's our little go-getter above...no, I didn't give him that plastic bag in hopes of getting revenge...

The 4 a.m. rising has been the case since Thursday, I think, I'm too tired to say for sure. We'd been able to get him back to sleep after an hour or so, until today, when it became clear around 5 or so that it just wasn't gonna happen. This charming development, among others, indicate Anthony is developing a major will of his own, and that he will truly give new meaning to the words "a handful" in the weeks (years?) ahead.

It really hit home Friday, my work-at-home day, suggesting my ability to work from home and get anything done are numbered, if not over.

This Friday, following the 4 a.m. wakeup call, I hit up the world's most fabulous coffee institution (I'm not even being sarcastic...even though I hate world-dominating mega-corporations like WalMart and McDonalds, I love, love, LOVE everything about Starbucks and its overpriced product) in hopes of staying awake long enough to accomplish something; anything.

After having two (yes, two) of my fellow latte-buyers slam the same door in my face (only in Miami is it possible for two different individuals to slam the same door in the face of the same woman carrying two full beverages and a baby...they call it the Magic City because it magically manages take random acts of rudeness and multiplies them), waiting five minutes to back out of my parking space because the line of cars waiting at the drive-thru was blocking my path, and cursing at a woman who blared her horn at me as she sped into said drive-thru line even though it was soooo obvious that I'd been trying to back out for five minutes (I swear the fact that we live in Miami makes it inevitable that Anthony's first word is going to be a curse word), I looked at my coffee cup and saw the following quote:

(inspirational quotes...one MORE reason to love Starbucks! the four shots of espresso in that cup don't hurt either...)

I don't know about beauty, but Anthony can certainly be described as chaos these days.

This past Friday alone, he managed to climb up the stairs (I did not help but did follow -- OK, hover -- close behind to avoid any disasters); pull the babyproofing outlet covers out of the outlet (ummm...are those things worthless, or what?); grab a metal picture frame, the camera, a glass, the remote, my work folder and the cat in the three minutes it took me to make a phone call, this despite the 300 baby toys scattered across the living room floor for his enjoyment; protest so much when I dared to force upon him the indignity of eating breakfast that it took forever to complete the meal; etc., etc.

Here's some photographic proof of what we're up against:

Anyone who knows our house knows one of its classiest features is its all-mirror bathroom. Anthony loves this. I find myself chilled to the bone by the image of four Anthonys.

Terrorizing the cat continues to be a favorite. Sometimes Anthony gets so excited by Javier, he interrupts important business (third photo). But the sheer joy (fourth photo) is worth it.

Luckily for Anthony, we still think he's pretty cute:

9 month checkup

We hit the doctor's office today for Anthony's 9-month checkup, spending the typical hour-and-a-half waiting for 10 minutes with the doctor.

We confirmed that the little guy does the things he's supposed to be doing...

Like sitting...





Pulling himself up (constantly, he is single-mindedly obsessed with this new skill, and is now starting to "cruise" just a little, which means hundreds of sticky little fingerprints on the glass top of the very non-babyproof coffee table)...



Crawling for real (sometimes)...





And feeding himself (but not nearly often enough for our liking)...





We also told the doc that Anthony seems to be ahead of the game in several areas...

He's already taking an active interest in planning his first globe-trotting trip with Aunt Kerry...

(Looks like he's eyeing China, Kerry, is that OK?)

And is learning the value of a dollar (my favorite part of this video is that he totally eschews the ones for the big bills. That's my boy!)

For his part, the doctor checked Anthony's measurements (19 pounds, 6 ounces and 29 inches "tall"), reiterated the heartwarming news that our little daycare dweller will get a cold every two or three weeks, and ordered up more finger foods for the little guy's palate (please, please let this mean an impending end to the puree-shoveling phase of parenthood).

But overall, he said we're doing a "good job" with the little guy, and that all seems normal.