Milestones and Moments

I haven't felt like I've had something significant to blog about for a while now (as I'm sure you've all noticed). So of course today was just chock-full of blog-worthiness. This might be a long one folks, I'm feeling a little proud-momma and sappy all at the same time.

We've entered the phase where Dylan repeats words like a faithful little parrot. It's pretty awesome and so far is only limited by our own ability to think of words for him to parrot back at us. G's favorite game of late is picking ridiculously difficult words for Dylan to mangle back at him. The current #1 pick? Gullydeckel. (German for manhole cover). Since Dylan's starting to get close to a reasonable approximation of that one, G added "Abflussrohr" (waste pipe) to the lineup today. It's kind of entertaining and exasperating all at the same time.

So that's a terrifically long lead-in to this morning's story. We were playing the repeat-after-me game this morning as I changed him out of his PJs, brushed my teeth, etc. While I was in the bathroom Dylan was playing in the living room and discovered my pile o' necklaces scheduled for repair. Just as I'd almost made it to the rescue, he pulled 'em all out onto the floor. And of course the chain-links decided to fuse with the carpet fibers when I went to pick it up. So I uttered an unthinking (and I thought under-my-breath) "scheisse." Which was followed by a perfect rendition of baby-voiced "scheisse." What can I say, my kid's great at the repeat game. So yes, this morning began with the milestone of my baby's first cuss word. At a whopping 17 months. I think that may be a record. Oops.

The next milestone of the day was Dylan's second haircut. My dad trimmed the back while we were in the States over Christmas, but today my baby sat in the big-boy chair for his first full-headed haircut. Since my hairstylist is a little freaky, this is what he looked like when we were done. (Actually it was more of a mohawk but had flattened out before I got us home to the camera).



He sat perfectly still for the entire thing. Also did not say one word the entire time from when we walked in the door til we walked back out. No amount of prompting could get him to open his mouth. Then we went to McDonald's for lunch and the little stinker proceeds to start chatting up the people from the other tables. He said, "hi" to a random guy at the next table. Tried to offer another random dude a piece of his chicken nugget. And screamed loud enough for the entire restaurant to hear him every time a car drove past. (And it's the main road, so the exclamations were legion.) Contrary little bugger.

Then mommy had a "moment" while I was feeding Dylan his middle-of-the-night bottle tonight. As I'm holding Dylan and listening to him eat, it occurs to me that I'm holding both my babies in our little rocking chair. Pretty sure that was my first moment of real bonding with the Schnegglet, the first realization that there's actually another baby on the way. It made me all sorts of gooey. Of course the gooiness sparked more gooiness and I started reflecting about how much I love the middle-of-the-night feedings with Dylan (that's probably part of the reason why we still have middle of the night feedings). One of my favorite moments of the day is when he's finished that bottle and I put him up on my shoulder to burp him. He's already back asleep by that point and just lies boneless on my chest. It's about the only cuddling that my boy allows. (Not to say I don't get kisses and hugs and the like, I certainly do - but full on snuggling? No, there's none of that). So I just sat there for a few extra minutes and reveled in the warm weight of my big baby while the lil' baby kicked happily to make sure I knew I was cuddling both my babies at the same time.

God, I love being a mother.