"Now, if we could get him to chew gum at the same time..."

It’s no secret that Sutton and I are both fairly anxious for our son to start walking – although our motivations are slightly different. Sutton’s afraid, like any working mom or dad, that he won’t be here to see it, so he practices walking with him every night and on the weekends in the hopes that he’ll get to witness those first few elusive steps. In fact, he’s instructed me to push Suttie down every time he tries to stand up during the day. My motivations are slightly less honorable. Do I want him reach important milestones? Sure. But what I really want is to not have to shop in the men’s big and tall section this time next year. There’s a rumor afloat that, when children start to walk, they shed some of those extra baby pounds. We’re looking to lose about twelve.

In all seriousness, it is hard to buy clothes for a child that has consistently reached the 98th percentile in height and the 99th percentile in weight. He just turned one and is currently rocking a size 3T (requiring the pants to be hemmed up about a foot). So, we’ve been working on the walking thing as the only alternative to making his clothes, and, if they can’t be put together with a hot-glue gun, then it ain’t happening. Now, we’ve gotten lots of advice on the subject (some solicited, some not), and so far, nothing has worked. We tried the most obvious choice first – bribing him with food. First, we get him to stand up using one of his play tables, and then one of us holds out a cracker or cookie just in front of him and high enough that he can’t reach it sitting down. We wait with bated breath as he rises onto his toes and shifts his weight…and that’s when he starts to scream. As he stands there, wailing for whatever Gerber bait we have, his feet remain cemented to the floor. We’ve tried this several times, all of which end with zero steps taken and Suttie eating the cookie.

The next trick was to position ourselves so close to each other that he wouldn’t have room to go down into a crawling stance. So, he’d be forced to walk, right? Wrong. Instead of walking from his dad into my waiting arms, he just fell forward, straight into my lap, since the distance was short enough that he could fall and still reach me. The kid’s vertically impaired, but he ain’t no dummy.

We’ve worked on the walking thing every day for at least a month, and a few days ago, I was certain that I’d be carrying him into kindergarten. But yesterday, the unexpected happened. We were in the playroom – Suttie was moving from toy to toy and I was on the elliptical, trying to set a good fitness example for him because, at the rate we’re going, he’ll need it. He pulled up at his activity table, something he's done a million times at least, and then he noticed a Mother Goose book that he wanted, laying a foot or so in front of him. So, he let go of the table, took a single step, realized what he was doing, and quickly plopped down onto his butt.

Here I was, on the elliptical, not in front of him coaxing him along or dangling treats. There he was, not in his Stride Rite shoes, which I thought were crucial to moving those feet, but in a one-piece sleeper with legs that were too long and footies that didn’t quite fit – taking his very first step. I got him to do it once more immediately after that, but not since. And while he may be Easter egg hunting on all fours this year, I have a renewed sense of hope that, by the end of the summer, he’ll be running away from me in public.

"Bailey, you have to sign the ballot or else it's no good..."

Naptime Update: Well, Operation 2 Naps to 1 has failed. Suttie still requires a morning nap unless we all want to be miserable until 1:00pm. Bailey (our dog) and I have both voted, and the morning nap has been reinstated (let the band play and the confetti fly). At first, I thought that we were taking a step back, but then I realized that we never really took a step forward. He wasn’t ready to move to one nap a day; instead, his schedule just got out of whack for a week. But that’s okay. I’m happy to be a passive observer as my son decides for himself when and if he’s going to do certain things. Take walking for instance. When I say “we never really took a step forward,” I mean that literally. Sure, he has the capability to walk, but he’s figured out that being carried around all day isn’t a bad gig. I mean, why else would we have Hoverounds, with their bad-ass commercials, or Segways. If anything, it just shows that, while his language-development is on the low end of “poor,” his manipulation skills are hitting genius level. And say, in a year, he totally rejects potty training as a matter of principle. That’s cool, too. So what if he doesn’t conform to a society of lemmings bent on disposing of waste properly? While your kids are eagerly waving their hands for the bathroom pass, trying to hold it in, Suttie will calmly look them in the eye and crap his pants with authority. And when his father and I get that call telling us that he needs yet another change of clothes, we’ll be proud of our little individual...completely mortified….but proud.

Where's the Baby Book Page for "First ER Visit"?

For most people, when they imagine the first time that their children have to go to the emergency room, they think about broken bones or cuts that need stitches. But in the O’Neal household, we know that, if something bizarre is gonna happen, it’s gonna happen to us. Which is why, on Thursday afternoon, Sutton and I found ourselves racing to the hospital, as our one-year old was strapped in the back seat with his top lip stuck between his teeth.

It all started when Suttie woke up from his nap. I went upstairs with a basketful of laundry to put away in his room. As I was hanging up his clothes, he stood in his crib, like he’s done at least 200 times before, and started to cruise around the rails. However, if my son is anything, it’s definitely not sure-footed because, within a few moments, he had face planted into the end railing. As soon as I picked him up, I noticed that his mouth was bleeding, and, man, was it bleeding! He looked like an extra from Roadhouse. Now, I know that everyone thinks that their kids are tough, but my kid is really pretty tough. I mean, he’ll wail if you try to eat something in front of him, but he crawls over piles of hard plastic toys instead of going around them (I said tough, not smart). Within a few minutes, he stopped crying, and I thought that he had just busted his lip. But, on further examination, we realized that his frenulum (the bit of skin that attaches your lips to your gums) was actually caught in the gap between his two front teeth.

So, off we went to the ER, with Mommy riding in the back with Suttie while he seemed totally unconcerned about the whole affair. And thank God for it because, if he had been freaking out and crying hysterically, I would have been forced to morph into my ugly cry face, and nobody wants to see that. Instead, my time was spent trying to keep him from sticking things into his mouth, which, if you know my son, is a lost cause.

The emergency room was pretty standard – people moaning in corners, guys with dislocated kneecaps watching Judge Judy, and a kid with his lip stuck in his teeth – you know, the usual. When we got back to the exam room, Suttie started to get a little antsy because he recognized the doctor-visit setting, having had his one-year check up the week before. Of course, he cried when the doctor laid him down and started checking out his mouth, but it was more of a heartbreaking, “I wish I was strong enough to stop this” cry than a “I’m gonna tear you up when the nurse lets go of my arms” cry. And the diagnosis? In the time between the waiting room and the doctor arriving in the exam room, his lip had torn free, and he was fine. No stitches, no medicine required. So, essentially, Suttie ended up with a $150 popsicle. It was grape, and, according to him, it was totally worth it. We think so, too, because, at the end of the day, if a trip to the ER is what stands between us and peace of mind about our kid, we’ll pay for that popsicle all day long.

Fare Thee Well, Morning Nap

I hate change. I think that I was the only kid who would wax sentimental when moving from third to fourth grade. So, this week has been a bit challenging for me as we transition Suttie from two naps to one and from bottles to sippy cups. It all started two days ago when my husband returned from a week-long business trip. If I haven’t mentioned it before, my husband and son are the same person, except that one’s less mature and in diapers and one is a year old (zing!). The entire time that Sutton was gone, Suttie got up at 6:00am on the dot, unless he decided that he had so much to do that he needed to wake up at 5:30am. But as soon as his father is home and starts handling morning routine again, my child decides to sleep until 8:00am as a sign of male solidarity. Now, because of this later start time, my child no longer wants to take an afternoon nap, even though he knows that Mommy has a date with General Hospital at 2:00pm. So, something has to give, and that something is his morning nap.

I knew that this day would come when I had to entertain my child for more than a two-hour block of time. Was I prepared? No. Was I willing? No; that’s why we invested in the playroom TV. But I was going to give it the old college try and see if, for one day, I could do nothing but play with a dancing Mickey Mouse and hammer a peg board. And after a day that felt like a week, it was finally the hour of salvation, 1:00 pm – time for the afternoon nap. Two and a half hours later, he was ready to go again, but we were both refreshed enough to survive until his dad made it home.

So, today, we’re taking it easy. He’s crawling around the playroom and entertaining himself, while I blog and occasionally turn around to say things like, “Be careful…Get down from there…Let go of the dog!” In a minute, I’ll shut down the computer and go help him destroy the place, but in this moment, we’re doing our own things and that’s okay. And at 1:00pm, I’ll regather my marbles and maybe even work in a shower.


Disclaimer: When I say, “we’re doing our own things,” I mean, “we’re doing our own things in a safe, child-proofed environment.” Please do not let your kid loose in a McDonald’s play area while you get a mani-pedi and then say, “Well, Kate did it.”

Raise your Juice Boxes...

Well, we made it! Suttie is now an entire year old. Suck it, SIDS…bring on the blankets and the pillows! Yes, not only did March 4th mark my son’s big day, but it also celebrated a whole year that his father and I have managed to keep him alive - well fed (as if you doubted), well clothed, well loved, and moderately cleaned. So to commemorate our achievement, we decided to add a final trial to our first-year parenting stress test - we had a party.

Now, being a card-carrying Type A personality, I booked this party at the local children’s museum when Suttie was 5 months old and came to set up on Saturday with a pre-designed room layout and a flowchart of objectives. However, my careful planning did not account for the fact that another 1 year old’s party was running late. Obviously, they did not have a room layout or a flowchart. So, we sat impatiently in the lobby waiting for little Skippy or Dana or whatever his name was to blow out his candle and mosey his Strausburg-covered butt out of the space. Finally, the museum workers had to ask them to vacate, leaving us 15 whole minutes to set up 6-months worth of party planning. Thanks, guys.

Now, I’m going to skip over the parts where I lost my cool, snapped at almost everyone, and dropped a bowl of goldfish on the carpet. With help from my parents and a couple of friends, the party was back on track and guests started to arrive. Then came the standard party run-down: we ate, Suttie massacred a piece of cake and his face in the process, he opened presents, he cried about opening presents – you know the drill. Finally, it was time for the kids to go into the museum and completely wear themselves out, which is the whole reason why anyone takes their kids to birthday parties to begin with. At this point, I’m going to plug Biscuit’s Backyard, which is the toddler-specific area at Early Works. It is an awesome play place for little ones! And I’m not anywhere near important enough to get paid for plugs, so you know it’s true. Since my child refuses to walk on the principle that it burns too many calories, he and a couple of the other tiny littles crawled amongst and over each other in a padded playpen, which seemed to be a form of Nirvana for them. He also pretended to be a farmer in a potato patch, getting back to his poor Irish roots and rode a life-size cow. If that doesn’t spell “Happy Birthday,” I honestly don’t know what does.

The only hiccup was when we visited a large talking tree, which completely freaked him out and, coupled with the fact that he was exhausted, signaled that the ship was beginning to list and the party was nearing an end. So, am I glad it’s over? Hell, yes! Have I thought about next year? Of course, I have – who do you think this is. But, no matter what we do, I’m going to be looking to farm the whole thing out, so prepare yourself, Chuck E., cause we may be heading your way. You better start stocking up on pizza now.