Food, Pride, and Poop

It is finally becoming more normal for me to feel comfortable giving Jonah food that we're eating. I think it started a couple of weeks ago when he and I were at IHOP having free pancakes with my mom. He really seemed to want some of mine, so I gave him some plain pancake. He touched it to his lips and threw it on the ground. He refused to try it. Since then I have offered him a pickle and grapefruit with the same result (both times because he seemed to want them). He tried an orange tonight and seemed to like it though. One night last week we were having lasagna for dinner and so did he. He didn't seem to like it very much (possibly because I gave it to him cold), but he tried some of it. This is still the area where I feel least competent, so I'm afraid he's probably behind what other kids his age are eating, but we're getting there. He does seem to be liking cow's milk though, which will allow us to start weaning him from breastfeeding any day now (more on that later).

I have been amazed at how proud I have become of Jonah in the past couple of weeks. There have been countless occasions when he does something and I am filled with pride that he is able to do it. It is truly a wonder to watch him make connections and learn about his world. I suppose that I am somewhat of a typical first-time mom in this regard, being proud of him for things that are probably not a big deal to any other adult. I do realize that these achievements do not make him a genius, they do not make him smarter than other babies, and they probably do not predict future greatness. They do however make him a normal one-year-old, and that makes me very happy. All along he seems to have done almost everything "on schedule." I could not ask for more. It reassures me to know that he is "normal." I get so proud of him because I have been with him every day of his life and watched him change so much over the past year. These surges of pride happen at moments when I can see him expressing what he has learned about his world. He has learned that cows say "moo" (or "mmmm" as he says), he has learned that when someone says "high five" it means they want you to hit your hand against theirs, he has learned that when people say "bye" you should wave your hand at them. When he hears the word "hippo" he will look around and point to his hippopotamus puppet and when I start to sing "I want to be your personal penguin" he will go find that book. He has learned that when there is music on, you sway back and forth. And tonight, when I was reading him Goodnight Moon (we have read this to him every night before bed since he was a couple of weeks old, and always replace "goodnight nobody" with "goodnight Jonah"), I said "goodnight Jonah" and he patted his belly and looked like he knew what he was doing. These are just some of the simple things Jonah has done recently that have brought me such pride. Simple things, with big implications. He is learning. We have not actively tried to teach him some of these concepts, but he has learned them anyway. Jonah has been soaking up this world for the past 13 months, and he is really starting to show us what he has learned. I hope this continues to be his normal, because I am so excited to watch him make more connections and more discoveries.

And now on to the poop. We use cloth diapers and I wash them every other day. Four times in a row, Jonah has pooped in the first diaper he wears after I start the load of laundry. I think he's doing it on purpose. (Not really.) We flush the actual poop, but the diaper still smells, and there is poop on the cloth wipes sitting in the pail for a full two days when he does this. It seems like it should be statistically impossible that this is just a coincidence, but I won't do the actual math. I told Peter about how many times Jonah had done this and he pointed out that it seems to have become normal, which is why that tidbit has made it here. On a different poop note, I wrote a couple of weeks ago about giving Jonah cow's milk and how we weren't sure if he was lactose intolerant. I stopped giving it to him for a week and let him get back to normal again. Then I gave it to him again, one cup a day for the past week. At first, his poop went right back to being weird, but now it seems to be back to normal, and I'm still giving him the milk. So I think we may be okay in the lactose department, and maybe the poop changes were related to his teething (this doesn't seem likely) or to the slight fever he kept running off and on during the past few weeks. Anyway, I am going to assume that it's not the milk upsetting him, and plan to officially begin the process of weaning him from breastfeeding him this week.