Shannon Phillips

• He’s learned how to wave, and now it’s something he does dozens of times every day.  It just tickles him pink when he waves at people and they wave back.  He points at things too.
• He’s eating more and more solid food.  I try to feed him three regular meals a day.  Breakfast is always fresh fruit with iron-fortified cereal, but lunch and dinner are generally just small portions of whatever we’re eating.  He’s very enthusiastic about most foods; the only thing I can remember that wasn’t a hit was a tomato salad dressed with fresh rosemary and red onions.  Too strongly flavored I think.  But he loves plain tomatoes!
• He had another modeling gig, but he was just the back-up model so they didn’t take any pictures.  He got paid anyway though.
• I’m eighty percent certain that he’s right-handed.
• He will take steps as long as he’s holding onto something, but he’s yet to balance upright on his own.  He can crawl up stairs but his method of getting back down involves a headfirst sort of dive that—if I ever let him go through with it—would probably result in a nasty tumble.  Nevertheless he really likes the stairs.
• He especially likes this one game where he throws his ball down a flight of stairs, and then I go get it for him.  We have played many, many iterations of this game.
• Yesterday he chased a little girl around the park, crawling after her while she scampered away laughing.
• Somewhere along the way he’s changed from a helpless baby into a spirited little boy, communicative and social, full of curiosity and affection.  I sure do love my little buddy.

So the other day I’m pushing Robin in his stroller, and we’re crossing the street, and we pass these two ladies going the other way. And as we do so one looks to the other and she says:

“Hey that’s the baby I was telling you about!”

Honestly, I try to keep in mind that probably I’m totally besotted with this baby and he only seems so extraordinary to me, because I’m his mommy. But it’s hard to cling to that when stuff like this keeps happening.

…Was fun! There were four other boys there of various sizes; Robin was the youngest. He loved being part of the group and interacting with the older boys. He didn’t even mind the clothes-changing aspect: it was only three pairs of shorts, and he was so happily distracted by the presence of other children that he didn’t seem to mind it when I put them on or took them off.

There were a panel of five Gymboree representatives there.  They would examine each boy in his shorts and make notes about the fit.  The older boys seemed a little embarrassed by the scrutiny but Robin lapped it up.

The closest kid to Robin’s age was a todder named Zel, who was kind of hilarious.  He zeroed in right away on Robin’s toys.  Robin watched in calm, slightly baffled interest as Zel grabbed all his toys away.  I think he was really quite happy to watch what an older boy did with these things: sometimes he would pick up a toy just to hand it back to Zel.  Zel, for his part, at the urging of his mommy, was pretty good about sharing his own toys, although then I had to watch and make sure they didn’t go into Robin’s mouth.  But the whole delicate situation fell apart when Zel tried to hand Robin his pacifier.  While praising this as a very nice gesture, I showed Zel that Robin had his own pacifier.  Well!  This proved UNacceptable to Zel who immediately tried to grab it away.  And when the mommies thwarted this maneuver he had a total meltdown and had to be temporarily carried from the room.

Afterwards one of the Gymboree people told me that Robin had been really well behaved.  “But Zel was a nightmare,” the other one remarked.

“Oh well,” I said, “showbusiness types, you know?”

I want to tell you about a couple of recent moments that I think illustrate Robin’s essentially sweet and generous nature. It’s sort of hard as they were completely gestural and I don’t have any pictures, so bear with me.

Okay, so, Robin loves playing with our remote control (it lights up when he presses the buttons!) but its battery casing is broken, so the batteries are apt to fall out. We don’t like him sucking on batteries so we generally take the batteries out before we let him play with the remote—which of course diminishes the remote’s attraction as a toy, since then it no longer lights up. Anyway, Robin is magnetically drawn to the batteries and will grab them any chance he gets.

So the other day he got the remote before I quite noticed it was within his grasp, and had instantly managed to extract the batteries, and one of them was on its way to his mouth. I grabbed it out of his hand and said, encouragingly, “Thank you!” Which is what I usually say when I take something away from him—it seems to take the sting out a little.

So then he turned and grabbed the other battery—and handed it to me, smiling. I was astounded! He wanted the batteries but he knew I also wanted them, and so he gave one to me. Such a good boy!

The other moment happened just this very instant which is why I’m writing this post. I had been feeding him apricot slices and he was absolutely filthy after—sticky hands, sticky face. So I marched him over to the sink to wash his hands. I’ve done this before and he’s been pretty passive about it. I stuck his left hand under the running tap water, washing it off. When I was done I let it go and reached for his right hand—but he had figured out how this routine goes, and already put his hand under the stream!

What a smart, sweet boy!

…was a quick and easy affair. We went to the Gymboree offices: they’re nice, with a little play area in the lobby that Robin got pretty excited about—Gymboree knows how to make babies happy I guess. We met with the client (Gloria) and she took some measurements (which Robin interpreted as a new and interesting kind of game, possibly one called “Eat the Measuring Tape”). The gig in question is not any kind of an ad campaign but just a fitting—Gymboree wants to hire four models to come in and try on a bunch of clothes from their new product line, just to see how they look. Gloria said that Robin was “really a close match” to the size of child they’re looking for, so we’ll see.

I actually won’t be at all sorry if he doesn’t get the job. He still doesn’t really like having his clothes changed, so doing it over and over might not be fun for him. On the other hand he loves other children and being the center of attention, so maybe those aspects would be enough to compensate for all the dressing and undressing. I really can’t predict; we’ll just have to see.

Anyway it was a fun morning. The best part of it from Robin’s perspective was the lobby, but he enjoyed the walk over and “playing” with Gloria as well.

UPDATE: The agency just called—Robin booked the job. The actual gig is Wednesday morning and he’ll be paid $82.50 per hour. I have no idea how long it’s supposed to go but he’s certainly not going to tolerate more than an hour of having his clothes constantly changed.

I’m going to have to talk to our credit union about opening a savings account for Robin!

This flower arrangement is currently making me inordinately happy. We got fresh lavender in our CSA delivery box so I went to the store and picked out a few other things that I thought would complement. It’s very simple but it just works really well—it brings me a little thrill of aesthetic pleasure every time I see it. Yes, I am easily amused.

I have three pieces of news to report—two personal, one professional. On the professional side: Robin has a go-see! (Those of you who watch America’s Next Top Model will recognize the lingo: a “go-see” is kind of like an audition. It’s a chance for the client to meet with the model, and often have them go through a fitting, before deciding whether to book them). It’s on Monday in SoMa, and the client is Gymboree. I’m all excited! But also worried because Robin seems to be developing a pimple on his cheek! I am going to wash it obsessively and hope it goes away before Monday.

On the personal side: Robin is now crawling properly, although only about half the time. He’ll still lapse into scootching if he has a long way to go. And he really likes to practice standing up.

Oh, and also, he had his first time-out yesterday, after he bit me. I don’t really think he meant to—he’s cutting another tooth, and he was sort of nipping at my shirt. But he got me pretty good so I yelled (involuntarily) and stuck him in his playpen for a minute. So that’s a milestone of a sort…

Robin had his nine-month checkup with the vet pediatrician yesterday. He checks in at 29 inches and 18 pounds 4 ounces of pure delicious baby. That’s still tall for his age, though on the lean side. Everything looks good developmentally, although when we talked about diet the doctor warned us that he might not be getting enough iron. So we’re going to pick up some supplemental iron drops and start adding them to his baby food.

Was an abomination. Sorry to get all political on you folks but the articles I’ve been (to be honest) mostly trying to avoid are having a cumulative effect, until this one set me off weeping:

Shelly Greco, a court-appointed lawyer for a 14-month-old girl removed from the ranch, says the child had been up crying uncontrollably many nights because she was so abruptly weaned.

Tearing nursing children from their mother’s arms is reprehensible. Child Protective Services is an out-of-control juggernaut of bureaucratic evil and must be reined in. Child abuse should be investigated, yes, but the state should never have the power to take children from their families without very solid proof that abuse is occurring.

If you want to donate to help the mothers in their fight, the website is here.

We let Robin have one friend and now he has a runny nose. This is why you should keep them locked in their rooms until they’re twenty-one. I mean, how is this going to impact his career?

Actually, though perhaps I should have kept him quarantined for public health, I took him back to the park today. His friend Jake from yesterday was not there, but another little boy named Leo was with his mother Natasha, and also a different mom and her older son Dino, who we had actually met before. Leo and Dino knew each other too. So it seems that despite my general grumpy misanthropy and reluctance to be “a joiner,” I may be stumbling into something of a playgroup. All the moms seem cool, and Robin really likes the other kids, so chances are that we will see them pretty frequently.

Natasha had a very cool baby-carrier for Leo: it was a structured backpack but it looked a lot cuter than the (to my mind) ugly-ass Baby Bjorn. I asked her about it and she said it was an Ergo, and that she had switched to it from the Baby Bjorn, after the latter had started hurting her back. She had only good things to say about the Ergo.

I was somewhat shamed on another mommy forum after I admitted that I had given up babywearing after only six months. The consensus was that this made me a wimp. But I just couldn’t hack the Moby sling anymore, and neither could Sam—it was killing our backs. Robin really liked it though, and there are supposed to be all kinds of benefits to keeping your child cuddled up to you when you’re out and about. It makes intuitive sense to me that small children need as much cuddling as possible. But the fabric-only slings, while visually attractive, just don’t give the kind of structured support that a pack-style carrier can.

So I think we are probably going to order an Ergo carrier. They’re supposed to work for babies up to three years old. I’ll give a full review when we try it out!