And we’re mere days away from yet another picture and it’ll have a “10″ in the sign. 10! 10 months! Double digits! This baby’s almost a year old! He’s supposed to still be a little fetusy, floppy peanut and instead he feeds himself cheerios and waves “bye-bye”. He crawls faster than I can walk and stands on his own (unassisted… just standing there) and sometimes he can walk all on his own (holding onto a little walker-thingie). He sleeps (occasionally) for 11+ hours at night. He has no time whatsoever for mah boobs although I continue to try and force him to breastfeed every so often (there’s no milk left, I don’t think… it’s really just about me not being able to let go and is all very tiresome and I should really give it up). He “plays” with his brother – chases him around. He thinks it’s hilarious if you put something on his head and call it a hat. He turns toward the door when I say “daddy’s home”. He KNOWS stuff. He’s there, turning into a toddler, a person, and I’m just… in disbelief. How can a year go by so quickly? Shouldn’t I still be pregnant? Shouldn’t he still be new? And while we’re at it? Who gave Julian the right to turn four? FOUR?

(here he is at his 4th birthday “transformer” party. As you can see he had just a teeny bit of fun)

(here’s Kieran at Julian’s 4th birthday party trying to steal the show in his rock ‘n’ roll t-shirt. He missed but only by a narrow margin)

So yeeeah, I wanted babies. BABIES. And here I am with a nearly-one-year-old and a real-person-hair, almost-starting-school FOUR-YEAR-OLD? What gives? Good thing they are the cutest ever or I’d be really annoyed.

Weather has been hot, city workers no longer on strike, which means lots of time spent in wading pools

(it’s a little cold at first but once you get used to it it makes you pull your hat off and go CUH-RAZY)

Kieran’s been doing all KINDS of stuff like sitting up on his own (propped on his hands of course). If he’s in the mood he can do this for quite a long period of time but if he gets at all distracted he keels over which Julian finds endlessly amusing to watch.

It’s also pretty hard to get him to practice this skill because he just doesn’t want to BEND. He wants to STAND. ALL. THE. TIME. And I really, really think this kid is looking forward to being mobile. In fact, he’s kinda getting there. When I put him down on his back he always flips over immediately and will lather, rinse, repeat said roll until he gets to some abstract place or another. I was trying to get a picture today of his latest skill which is pulling his little legs up underneath him and sticking his bum in the air but instead got a pretty good tableau of his pseudo-mobility (sorry for the gratuitous picturing of K’s bum… actually, I’m not sorry at all. Every blog post should be so lucky as to feature such a cute little butt… I am sorry to Kieran and his future psychologist for posting naked-butt pictures on the internet)

What? I’m sooo just lying here.

One full rotation later and he’s off the blanket

One rotation after that and he’s under the table gnawing on the table leg (that’s Jules’s hand trying to pry him off and convince him that it’s not such a good idea… or maybe just that it’s his turn) (please note the mini drink umbrella on top of the table. I bought these for Jules and I to have in our drinks in the hopes that it would make the unbearable heat feel a little more Club Med… it doesn’t)

Uhhh… I’m trying to roll but my head doesn’t appear to be coming with me. What’s next?

(Did I mention that I’m really, really not ready to have a mobile baby in the house? My livingroom floor is littered with electrical cords and sharpie markers and eleventy gajillion swallowable transformer heads and helmets and turbo boosters and wheels. And, while we’re talking about it, the lactation consultant I spoke with mentioned that solids are only about a month away… A month… until solids? Really? We’re there already? I was supposed to be in my new house before solids so now where do I put a high chair? Do I just get one of those trays for the bumbo chair and lie myself on the ground to feed him? These are the questions I ask myself late at night when I should be sleeping. That is all.)

I guess being 4 months old is awesome

No, I mean AWESOME

No, like, TOTALLY FREAKING FACE-ACHINGLY AWWWWWWWESOME!

What a difference a month makes!

Just to truly make up for 3 weeks without a computer I’d like to really inundate you with pictures so here are a few more from our little photo session and proof that these “lying next to a little sign with number of months written on it” are going to get more challenging as time passes.

wait a sec…how’s my hair? is it doing that little standy-uppy thing at the top? My arms are too short to check.

Mmm… they may be short but they sure do taste good

Weeee! This is fun, I think I’ll just keep going and roll all over the little sign Boobie Lady made and turn it into a crumpled mess to put an end to this “photoshoot”

Huh? What’s going on with the other kid? What other kid? OH YA RIGHT, there IS another one. He’s fine. Still long-haired and hippy-like and obsessed with Transformers so if there’s anything any of you need to know about either autobots OR decepticons and their eternal battle between good and evil don’t hesitate to ask. I’m pretty sure I’ll know the answer.

I took pics but it’s really late and I can’t bring myself to fire up the OTHER computer (our computer broke, went to the fixy-computer-people-store and returned today. I’ve been using my old laptop that I thought was busted but I guess where there’s a will there IS a way so somehow – read: elaborate summoning of internet gods – John and I ressurected it kinda sorta but sometimes it just decides to stop working and shows pretty little blocks of colour on the screen and it doesn’t have a USB doo-hickey so I can’t download the pics on this one and… what was I talking about?)

Okay, so, tomorrow is project download pics & take baby for four-month vaccine. Good times.

Now, I’ve done this “baby” thing before and thus I know better than to assume that any consistent sleep pattern would remain consistent so I was not surprised but also not thrilled when a couple of days ago Kieran decided that he would, instead, SCUH-REEEEEEEM the second we stepped into the room for a nap. And this was not a regular scream. He’s unleased a lot of screams since he was born and I thought I’d heard them all. But this scream was otherworldly. It wasn’t human. This was a dolby-digital-velociraptor-on-steriods-using-microphone scream. It hurt my ears. If I may, I’ll give you a little taste of exactly what happened:

**********

Woman and baby enter bedroom. Lights dim.

Baby: “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Woman: “Oh ma gah baby! What’s wrong? What in the world? Are you okay? I know you’re not hungry because you just ate.”

Baby: “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Woman: “Are you gassy? I’ll hold you upright and pat your back.”

Baby: “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Woman: “Guess it’s not gas. Does something hurt? I’ll search your entire body for something that might be poking you.”

Baby: “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Woman: “I can’t see anything that might be hurting you but damn my ears are starting to hurt from this sound. Do you want to rock? I’ll cuddle and rock you.”

Baby: “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Woman: “Here, take a pacifer. Just take it. It’ll make you feel better.”

Baby: “Are you kidding me with this sh*t? REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Woman: “Huh… this isn’t working. Want to walk? Jiggle? Bounce? Want me to sing? Shush? Recite abstract poetry?”

Baby: “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Woman: “Must. Make. Sound. Stop… maybe I’ll try plugging up the hole with a boob”

Baby: *snuffle, slurp, sigh, snuffle zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

*******

Wash, rinse, repeat every few hours. It took about three times before I realized that I was being MANIPULATED! This is no ordinary baby! No no no noooooo, he’s a new upgraded model. He’s smart. He KNOWS that nobody could ever stand listening to that sound! He’s trying to phase out the barely-tolerated pacifier and turn ME into his new pacifier! Rapscallion! So I vowed that I would NOT just morph into the human pacifier and go down without a fight. Mah Super Baby is smart but I’m SMARTER! I’ll wait him out and eventually he’ll realize that he’s met his match. So the next nap time rolled around and I just continued with the bouncing and the jiggling and soon that Thing started to emerge. Moms know the Thing. The feeling of panic and pain seeing how horribly upset your sweet little loin-fruit is but simultaneous claustrophobia because must. escape. sound. ears. hurt. can’t. take. much. more. I was just getting to the point where I was going to have to put him in his bed and walk away for a while lest I hurl him out the window (but I do HATE the put-down-walk-away maneuver because I feel like I’m abandoning mah baby in his time of need. In fact I don’t believe I’ve ever done the put-down-walk-away… but this time I was close. Very close). Then in a moment of parenting brilliance I remembered my husband’s EAR PLUGS! I threw them in and I was like a new woman. Taking that ear-drum-vibrating edge off the velociraptor sound made all the difference and they are now what I’m going to give every new mother at baby showers (you asked for bibs and onesies and hooded towels? Here, have some $2 ear plugs from Shoppers Drug Mart. You’re welcome).

Anyhoo, that was a long pointless story. But at least it wasn’t about my diapers.

Uhhhh… that’s all I’ve got. Here, have some video footage of Kieran’s debut into the world of Jolly Jumping. Also big brother watches from the Bumbo chair and raises the roof in support.

So lets put it to a vote. Here’s a comparison between the freshly-cut hair and the current longish hair. To cut or not to cut? Is it actually cute long or am I just doing that thing where you love something about your kid that everyone else thinks is annoying/strange and it’s time to become self-aware? Oh, and I’m not trying to influence you by the fact that the short hair picture sucks and he’s got chocolate all over his face. I did something like…. oh… had a baby the day after his last haircut so there wasn’t a lot of care taken in photographing Jules around that time.

Oh, and also the wispy part at the back sticking out from behind his ears…

it gets really curly when he sweats and sometimes those little boy curls get less curly as they get older so maybe there’s a time limit and that’s it I’ll stop trying to influence you. You go.

Yeeeeeeaaaaah I’m 100 days old. Pass the lucky bean cake, yo.

So, Kieran my baby, here’s what was going on with you when you were 100 days old:

You’re all about the extremes – if you’re not miserable  you’re smiling the most enormous, drooly, gummy smile I’ve ever seen. It looks as if you’re actually straining to grace us with the widest smile possible. You’re still not sold on the pacifier and I wonder if you’ll morph into a thumb-sucker. When I offer it to you you make a “what the hell’s this?” face and decide if you’re going to take it or express your noisy distain. You do loooove to suck on your fingers and hands and you always have your little hands clasped in front of you like you’re praying to the lawd for mercy. You seem happiest when we’re out doing things. You love to check everything out and are happy to sleep strapped to me in the moby wrap. When we spend too much time inside you start to get antsy and grumpy but are happier if you’re near a window. You still hate the car seat but we’ve discovered that if I wedge myself in between your seat and your brother’s in the back and sing and talk and jump through hoops you can be pacified (somewhat). You’re really strong and love to stand on peoples’ laps and sit up in the bumbo instead of leaning back in a bouncy chair. When I lie you on your stomach you hold your head right up and look around. I feel as if you look much older than your wee three months when you look around like that. You’re a quick eater, a good sleeper (sometimes you can fall asleep on your own in the bassinette when I put you down and I think, I think, you can get overstimulated and occasionally you prefer to be put down and left alone) (although I can’t ever leave you alone – I hover). You seem to get happier every day and I love the new smiley you. I can feel your little personality coming to life and I can’t wait to get to know you better and really find out who you’re going to be. Will you eat anything and everything or will you test and taste and turn your nose up? Will you be shy and cautious or the  life of the party? Will you be sporty? Artsy? Musical? Will you like cars? Will you get into trouble? Climb everything? But finding all of that out requires you to get bigger and grow older and I’m so not ready for that. I want to get to know all those things but I also don’t want to get into solid foods and crawling and growing. I love your teeny tiny self. I love carrying you and cuddling you and kissing sniffing your balding head. I’m not ready to be finished with the baby thing and yet I can’t wait for what’s to come…. *sigh* I want both – big and small – but no matter what I say I know you’re going to do it anyway. You’re going to grow. You’re going to get big. You’re going to walk. You’re going to talk and laugh and run and ask me questions I won’t be able to answer. Oy. I’m blabbing about nothing. I love you so much.

*this post is for adoptive parents and I assure you that I did actually birth mah Korean baby and have the enormous bellied pics to prove it

** uh… until I read this link I didn’t know about the praying. I didn’t do any praying (unless “HOLY JEBUS PLEEEEEASE LET THE WAX BE OVER SOON” counts) I also didn’t know about sending the bean cake to 100 people so don’t be checkin your mailboxes for your portion of bean cake. Sorry. To be honest I find the bean cake to be quite dry and I don’t think you’re missing much.

It’s a little louder and more high-maintenance than my other bags but it is, nonetheless, one of my faves. Sorry it’s not a better pic but right after this one was taken the bag barfed all over itself, my feet, the sink, the mirror and everything else within a 10 foot radius. It was also full of a pile of runny yellow poop that I totally don’t even remember putting in there (see what I’m sayin about the high-maintenance aspect? A bag that produces its own waste? C’mon).

This was a very exciting day. I pulled out Julian’s old baby book to look up when some “stuff” happened (not that I’m, ya know, BORED with Kieran or anything. I’m hardly sitting at the side of his basinette sighing and rolling my eyes and demanding to know if “GOD are you ready to, like, CRAWL or something yet?” Quite the opposite in fact. Since he’s likely my last baby I’m willing him to stay tiny and STOP! Did you grow again? STOOOOOOOOP! But when I had Jules I used to read books and websites about babies and what to expect from them at certain stages and this time around I don’t. I guess in lieu of that I have busted out Baby No 1′s book to see what he was up to and when). Julian first gave a real honest-to-goodness laugh when he was 14 weeks old and he rolled from his back to his front at 4 months. Kieran hasn’t laughed yet (at 13 weeks) although he does let out those “I’m waaaaaay excited, yo!” squealy noises and then… today… just hours ago… he rolled from his back to his front. I was changing his diaper and one minute he was lying in front of me and then he kinda grabbed his feet and fell over onto his side and then suddenly he was giving me the full moon with his squishy little bum! Jules saw it all so he’ll back me up. 3 months! An entire month earlier than his brother. He’s kicking baby Jules’s ass… (before you call Child Services, of course I’m joking. I’m the least competitive person you’ll ever meet and will always go way out of my way to ensure that mah boyz don’t feel the need to compete with one another m’kay?)

But rolling! Almost as exciting as a free cloth diaper, I tell ya!

It’s just too bad that…

Waaaanh! Being 3 months old SUCKS!

Except when I stretch my legs out like this to show you just how long I have become

Plus I am old enough now to rub my hands together while I hatch an evil plan to–

Uh, actually… nevermind. Dum dee dum, nothing to see here

Perhaps I will distract you with a fake smile  so you forget all about that whole “evil plan” thing

Anyway, the Ahn family has been up to all kinds of fun. John’s family is visiting from Korea so we’ve been to the cottage where Julian fished and fed a chipmunk a mountain of peanuts and blew a thousand bubbles and splashed in an inflatable pool in his underwear and we’ve been to Niagara Falls and did some cross-border shopping for matchy-match big brother/little brother pajamas and went to waterpark where little son went in a pool for the first time in his gorgeous swim diaper and big son went on a “real” waterslide with a big splashy finish for the first time and frollicked in fake waves for hours on end and folded in half and fell through the middle of an innertube and was under the water for a good few seconds before i managed to fish him backout but I don’t have a single picture of any of the aforementioned excitement because… I just… kinda… forgot.

BUUUUUUUUT I do have a picture of…

Drooling glazey face! You forget all about the missed milestone moments when you have drooling glazey face to look at instead.

Okay so now the really big news. As anyone who read the previous entry knows, I am cloth diaper poor and this makes me very sad as cloth diapering has become my new all consuming obsession hobby. Well, since I can’t afford to BUY any more cloth diapers I’ve started entering contests to WIN cloth diapers and lo, I have, in fact, WON A DIAPER! WHOO HOOOOOOO! It’s an all kinds of fancy one, too – almost a $30 value people. $30! I think this may be the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me and that is very sad because I’m not even joking.

Okay this one-handed typing is wearing me out. Bye!

PAH! Of course I kid (washing machine doesn’t have time for children, it is used almost exclusively for washing my one day’s supply of cloth diapers) (instead put kids on balcony and hosed them down with power washer).

What’s that Marigold? Speaking of cloth diapers how’s it all going you ask? Well, let me tell you. I have officially become the trollop of the cloth diapering world. If only the planets had aligned and my name was “Debbie” I’d have made a low-budget film called Debbie Does Diapers – one woman cloth diapering her way around the southern United States with any and every brand of cloth diapers available on the market today. Because you’re DYING to know, here’s what my stash is looking like:

2 Applecheeks (Applecheeks and I have made up. I do like these diapers. I’ve figured out how to put them on so that they fit nicely and don’t leave red marks and by using different inserts than the ones they are sold with I’ve decided that I dig them. I would love to get a couple more but have run out of diaper money.)

5 BumGenius (still my favourites by far. They never leak. They are cute. They grow as he grows. The ONLY down sides are: 1) I’ve read that the velcro on ANY cloth diaper can start to get weak over time; 2) colour selection is limited; 3) I love them so much that they’ve become my “overnight” diaper. I can leave him in this one for 12 hrs but I don’t like to so I generally change him when I wake him up at 10:00 to feed him which means I use 2 of my 5 at night and no one gets to witness the cuteness in the DARK. God.)

(speaking of cuteness – this is likely my favourite BG colour. I think it’s called “clementine”. He’s manly enough that he can pull it off)

1 FuzziBunz (I don’t feel strongly about this diaper but there’s no reason to NOT like it. It doesn’t leak… I dunno… I just find it is usually the diaper I have left over at the end of the day) (perhaps because the orange colour depicted below as seen on Internet turned out to be a “put on sunglasses lest this diaper burn your retinas” brilliant florescent orange).

NOW the twist in this compelling story of adventure and intrigue… Kieran had a yeast-infectiony diaper rash (thrush that moved south, essentially) and I had to keep him diaper-free as much as possible to “air out” the diaper zone. This is not as easy as it sounds with a newborn as they don’t like to be left alone on a blanket for very long and I ended up getting peed and pooped on… a lot. I mean A LOT. REALLY A LOT. So I pulled out the old cotton flats I used as burp rags with Jules and started kinda loosely pulling them around his zone when I was feeding him, etc. but (shocking) I still got peed and pooped on… a lot. And I shook my fists at the heavens and shouted “if ONLY there was a way to solve the mystery of how to make this piece of cloth stay on my child…” well, turns out those “flat diapers” are actually, you know, diapers. I remembered the existence of the Snappi and went out and got me one and VOILA! And THEN I realized that while I was giving Kieran breathy-diaper-zone time I wasn’t going through all of my cloth diapers in a day and while I still couldn’t go 2 days wtihout washing them, I was a lot closer and that’s when I came up with the new Plan of using folded cotton diapers/covers when I’m at home. THUS I also have in the rotation:

1 Bambino Mio cover

1 Bummi Super Whisper Wrap (in “celery dots” print… seriously with the colours? the prints? the cute names for the prints? it’s taking Adorable Baby Dressing to a whole new level)

a bunch of cotton flats

1 cotton prefold

a bunch of fleece liners & inserts and doublers and random stuff

AND have ordered from Ye Olde Internet (but have not yet arrived):

1 Happy Heinys one-size pocket (appears to be similar to the BumGenius, had to try it)

(can’t find worthwhile picture. I’m sure you are very disappointed)

1 Thirsties diaper cover

BUT now that I’m implementing the Plan for increasing my diaper supply without going completely broke I think I need to spring the $30 or $40 to get myself a dozen prefolds because they’re so much easier to use than Jules’s old burp-raggy flats with all the balancing child on lap while folding blah de blah (wha? I should put him DOWN? or get some kind of an official “baby changing station”? Pah. That’s waaaay too sensible) so maybe next month I’ll try to scrape together the money for the prefolds (and, if I come in to some unexpected money, maybe another couple of Applecheeks covers… and omg a couple more BumGenius and OH DARE TO DREAM, KIRSTIN. DARE. TO. DREAM). Anyhoo, the bottom line is that one of these days I’ll be paying for my own hydro and I’ll definitely have to space out the laundry and so from here on out and until Kieran is potty trained I will always ask for diapers and diaper accessories (and maybe some BabyLegs) for christmas and birthday (both mine and Kieran’s). I know… Lame… But I love my diapers an unreasonable amount. As evidenced by this post. About diapers. Am lame. But at least I know this and knowing is half the battle.