Shannon Phillips

A lazy afternoon in The Pharaoh apartments…

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!

So we just got a call from the modeling agency saying they would like to offer Robin representation. He’s nine months old and he has an agent! Hilarity!

The way this works, apparently, is with very little notice. We’ll get a phone call for a booking the next day. So I have no idea when his first job might be, but I will be sure to give you all the details when it happens.

I’m pleased, of course, that the cuteness of my baby has been independently verified by a professional agency. But I didn’t really need the validation: I get plenty of it everywhere I go. Last Friday the boy and I were in a restaurant and a man came up to us to say “Excuse me, I just have to tell you—usually I don’t even like babies but that one—that one is really cute.” At which point the lady behind the counter chimed in: “That’s because most babies aren’t like that one! Most babies cry and scream!”

I did not tell her that Robin does those things too, because right at that moment he was giving his best starry-eyes-and-six-toothed-smile to the busboy, who had completely given up on bussing anybody’s table in favor of making silly faces at Robin and tickling his toes. So I held court over my little corner of the restaurant, feeling basically like the mother of the Dauphin.

Right now the Dauphin is crawling around under the table making little shrieking sounds, so I think it may be time to check His Highness’s stinky butt. After all good skin care is essential for a working model!

Robin made a friend at the park today!

And here’s one just of the boy:

It’s been hot here, so this afternoon Robin’s hanging out in his underwear. I managed to get a shot of him sitting up:

The group casting call was packed with children and parents—SOME people chose to ignore the advisory that only one parent per child was invited. But everybody was really nice. I sat next to a mom from Berkeley with a boy only a few months older than Robin, who was, like me, doing the whole thing on a complete whim. Robin’s new favorite thing in the whole world is other children, so he was in heaven. He smiled at everybody while we waited, played in his own limited way with any other small person who came near (mostly by reaching for them and, if allowed, patting them gently), and grinned like a loon as soon as a camera was pointed in his direction. I think he charmed the socks off the talent scout. She interacted with him a little; asked me some questions about his development (whether he scootches, crawls, sits, etc.: the answers are respectively yes, no, and yes); snapped a couple pictures; then told me he was very cute and friendly and that we’d hear back by Friday.

I have no big expectations, but we had fun today, and I think Robin did as well as could be asked.

Robin sat up twice today, just like it ain’t no thang, looked around for a few seconds, and then bellied down to the ground again for some serious motoring. I think he’s been able to sit up for at least a few weeks, but I can’t be entirely sure—because he never holds any one position for long. Sitting really doesn’t interest him. Rolling, or rocking, or scootching, or grabbing: these things interest him. As soon as he’s made his way to one place he’s looking for where he can get to from there.

We had a really nice Mother’s Day weekend. We celebrated on Saturday since Sam works Sundays: Robin had picked out (presumably with plenty of help from his daddy) a really cute card and book, and we had brunch at the Cafe Majestic, which many of you will remember from our rehearsal dinner. I had french toast with strawberries and crème fraîche. It was delicious!

Yesterday I gave Robin some apple juice in a sippy cup. He took to it immediately, and within a few seconds was holding and maneuvering the cup by himself. “He’s so smart!” I marveled to Sam. “He’s like—octopus-level smart!”

“He’s a hominid,” Sam reminded me. “He’s probably smarter than an octopus.” Which kind of blew my mind. I guess Robin doesn’t have much opportunity to demonstrate his intelligence, since he can usually get whatever he wants just by being cute. But the little wheels are turning pretty quick in there.