Seven months

Dear Callum,

Today you are seven months old. That means you're closer to being a year than you are to being brand new. Let's not even discuss this, because I haven't wrapped my head around it yet.


You had lots of new experiences this month, chief among them finally getting to meet your cousin Morgan, and then taking your first plane trip and seeing her again at her house. You two weren't super aware of each other, though you did spend some time grabbing at each other, rolling over each other, and making each other cry. They were good first meetings.



By now you are absolutely full-on obsessed with the dog. You stare at her whenever she comes into your line of vision, and track her as she walks across the room. You try to grab her whenever she's anywhere near you, and you laugh loudly when you see her. Once she wagged her tail right in your face--hard--and you laughed hysterically the whole time. She is by far your favorite thing in the world and at this point your dad and I are only debating whether your first word will be "doggie" or "hund."



Physically you are looking more and more like a little kid instead of a baby. You sit fully on your own, and while you do occasionally get bored and tip over, or throw yourself backward, for the most part you can sit for indefinite periods of time with no support. You can spend ages just sitting on the floor happily playing with toys. You've also started banging toys together, and getting more and more enjoyment out of any kind of toy that makes a sound. You had a little "music lesson" this month when we visited a friend who does children's lessons, just things like bouncing rhythmically, singing, clapping, opening and closing your hands, and so forth. You were so into it that you were practically panting, and now you spend a lot of time opening and closing your hands while staring at your fingers, so we signed you up for a casual little baby music class that starts next month. We'll see if you like it as much!


By now you are an expert roller. As soon as we put you on the floor you zoom across the room and are at the other side before we've even processed what was happening. You also rotate in circles on your belly like the hands on a clock, and while you did that before inadvertently, now it's clearly purposeful, as you do it to reach for the dog or a toy that's out of your reach. You've tried to get up on your knees a few times, but not with any regularity, and given your extraordinary size I'm thinking it might be awhile before you start to crawl, though you do occasionally scoot backward. Which is totally OK with me--chasing you down as you roll is hard enough!


You've also developed a more noticeable object permanence this month, which has been really cool to see. Now if you're sitting in your high chair and you drop something on the floor, you lean over the side of the chair to peer after it and see where it's gone. And when someone walks through a room, you turn your head to watch them until they walk out of your line of vision--and then you turn your head the other way to keep watching them. It sounds like such a small thing but the amount of mental processing required for you to understand that if you turn your head the other way, the person will still be there is kind of astounding.


Now that you've passed the six-month mark we've been given permission to move into the world of yogurt and non-pureed food. Yogurt went over great but you are still working on your gag reflex, so solid chunks of fruit, Cheerios, etc. cause you to throw up as often as not. We've actually taken a break from the bite-size food for a couple weeks to see if you just needed some time, and we'll start trying them again soon. You do like to grab the food on your tray but you still have trouble maneuvering it into your mouth from your hand.


You continue to be very social and talkative. You babble constantly, still sticking to your two favorite consonants, ba and ma, and you've started combining them into fast-sounding talk, so instead of slow, deliberate, "beh... beh... beh..." it's more of a strung-together "bababa." A couple weeks ago I watched you have the cutest "conversation" with your dad--you would babble a few syllables, then pause and look at him expectantly, he would babble back at you, then when he stopped you would start again, and so on. I am still trying to get this behavior on video, but it was one of the sweetest things I've ever seen. You do a lot of spitting recently too, and sticking out your tongue--it seems like you're having fun experimenting with what you can do with your mouth. You've also started laughing socially, just because someone else is laughing, even though nothing funny (at least to you) has happened. That's another behavior that just melts my heart.


You continue to sleep great at night, and when we're not on vacation you also nap like a champ during the day. You vary between one long nap or two shorter naps each day, and both schedules are totally fine with us. You are still a happy, calm, laid-back baby whenever you're awake. Almost every compliment we get from a stranger involves some form of "What a happy baby!" (And a comment on the size of your thighs, but that's a different story.) You even got two teeth this month, and they are entirely through, though not entirely up. Teething seemed to bother you very little, if at all, but I've heard that bottom teeth can be easier, so we'll see what happens once some top teeth show up.


You are still positively enormous. You haven't been to the pediatrician for a weigh-in in awhile, but when I did some amateurish measurements at home, I came up with about 30 inches long and 26.5 pounds. If I'm in the ballpark, that's another 2.5 pounds you've gained this past month. In other words, you still show no signs of tapering off. You continue to show that you do things your way and that I do not need to bother looking at growth charts or milestone tables, because all that stuff really has very little to do with you.


You're completely unlike any other baby that I've ever met, in terms of both size and personality. You are so much fun and already, even at this young age, incredibly individual. It is just an amazing joy to be able to spend time with you. You fit so perfectly into our family and into our lives, and we are so privileged to get to spend every day with you.


Love,
Mama

Baby in flight

We returned on Saturday evening from a week in DC. I went there for orientation for my new job, and since I wasn't quite prepared to leave Callum for a whole week, Torsten and Callum came with me. We were really lucky that all the details just kind of fell into place and it turned out to be a pretty straightforward process to get it all booked and scheduled.

I was a little worried about how it would go, not just with the baby on the plane (although definitely also with the baby on the plane... my child is very loud in an exuberant, happy, but still definitely LOUD manner) but with Torsten staying with him in the hotel all day while I went off to work for the first time since he was born (as opposed to staying home to work), the intensive schedule we had planned, the humidity, etc. But it actually all came together quite seamlessly.

Callum slept big chunks of the flight, and was minimally fussy for the rest of it. He continued to rack up the compliments on his thighs, per usual. He waited patiently in his stroller in the late-night humidity while we spent over an hour picking up the rental car and wrestling with the unfamiliar car seat installation. He didn't nap much during the day, but he slept great at night and wasn't fussy despite the lack of naps, so we weren't complaining. He was a great sport about the back-to-back visits, dinners, and meetings that we set up. He was even better behaved on the flight home, sleeping for most of it and contentedly looking around and smiling at the other passengers for the rest of the time.

And we had fun too. My training was great and exceptionally useful, and I met a whole bunch of really interesting, smart coworkers. We spent a couple days with my sister and her family. Callum and Morgan got some more bonding time in, including their favorite activity, tag team crying:



We saw lots of friends, some of whom we hadn't seen since we moved away from DC two and a half years ago. We got in some business meetings with former and/or potential future coworkers. We stayed in a lovely hotel, and went swimming in the hotel pool. We added to the list of states Callum has visited. We did not sleep much, but it was totally worth it.

As with our trip to Santa Fe, it was different than our pre-baby trips, but not in a bad way. In fact, I would go so far as to say it was better. I continue to be impressed with how easily Callum fits into our lifestyle. He's just so easygoing, and it's so much fun to be with him. I know a lot of it has to do with his particular personality, but he never stops surprising me with how easily he adapts to everything we do with him.

Oh, and he has two teeth now. They aren't all the way up yet, but they are there, distinctly visible and startlingly white as soon as he opens his mouth. And those suckers are sharp! If I had been the one growing them, you can bet I would have been VERY grumpy about it. But Callum hardly seemed to notice, and was still a great travel companion.

And completely adorable, naturally. But that really goes without saying.

Career step forward

I started my current job almost exactly four years ago. I do public health communication, currently and previously in a nonprofit setting. I love what I do. And I love my current job. I know that some parents feel like they never want to return to work after they have a baby. I don't feel that way. I definitely had moments when Callum was younger of feeling like I could happily stay home with him forever and never work again. But as he got older those feelings dissipated, and when my five-month maternity leave ended I was feeling more or less ready to return to work.

It helps that I work from home. My current job is what made that possible for me, by offering me the opportunity to stay on and work remotely when I announced we were moving to Denver. I've been working remotely for two and a half years, and loving it.

Four years at this company, and for the first three and a half of them I felt like I'd found my home. Like this was the place I was going to stay for my entire career. Like I was going to be one of those people at the all-staff meetings receiving a plaque for 25 years of service.

Then... well, then a lot of things changed. My company went through a merger. A lot of my coworkers left. Some of the projects that I worked on ended, meaning my work shifted focus slightly. The atmosphere and work environment altered. I didn't write about it here, because, you know, work + blog = bad idea, but it wasn't an awesome time. I was on maternity leave for most of it, which was good in that I was sort of removed from some of the day-to-day complications, but difficult in that I was out of the loop while my coworkers relied on each other during a series of transitions.

The long and short of it is, my perspective changed, and I realized that it was a good time to explore other opportunities. So I did. And recently accepted an amazing job offer from a new firm. So even though now the merger is complete and it looks like my current company is moving in a good direction, my last day with them will be this Friday.

I'll still be doing public health communication, but the new firm is different. They're for-profit, for one thing, which will be a big change for me. They have a very different corporate culture. And I'm really excited about it. The new firm is also based in DC, and I will continue to work remotely, which I'm also really happy about.

The thing is that ultimately this feels like the right next step in my career. And my career is still really important to me. In fact, having a baby and experiencing this merger in my current job made me realize how important it is. There are a lot of things I'm good at, and I want to make a strong, lifelong career out of doing them. And I feel very lucky to have found a field in which my skill set is relevant and useful AND in which I can do work that feels meaningful and important to me. This new firm will allow me a lot of exciting professional opportunities, chances to do really interesting new work with an incredibly talented group of coworkers. Although the field is similar, a lot of the work will be very different. But in the best possible way.

So. Four years down the line, here's to the next big step.

The biggest baby on the block. Any block.

Callum is a large baby. A very large baby. He wasn't always that way, but he certainly is now.

When he was born he weighed 8 pounds, 12 ounces. When we were discharged two days later he he had lost 5 ounces, only 3% of his birth weight. But when he went to the pediatrician the next day, he'd lost another 5 ounces. The pediatrician's brow furrowed. We left with instructions to supplement with formula and come back for another weigh-in the next day. We did. 8 pounds, 10 ounces. Half a pound overnight! We thought oh, he's gaining! Now we can wean him off the formula.

Nice try. The following week, at his well-child visit at 10 days old? 8 pounds, 5 ounces. Again we saw the pediatrician's concerned face. She told us that they wanted him back at birth weight by two weeks old, and suggested that we switch from the syringe to the bottle for his formula supplements. We did. At two weeks old, he weighed 8 pounds, 11 ounces. Close enough, said the pediatrician. Now just keep bringing him in for regular weight checks. As long as he's gaining, I'm happy. Is it possible to gain too much or too little, we asked. No. Any gain is fine, we were told.

And his pediatrician has stuck by that statement. She has zero concerns about how big he's gotten. It's just weird, now, to think back on those times, those looks of concern on the doctors' faces as our baby's weight dropped, as they worried that he wasn't growing enough. It's hard to remember how worried we were about getting him to grow, given how his growth just took off after that.

The usual growth curve for a baby is that they gain a ton of weight in the first few months and then taper off considerably. By 4-6 months, they're usually gaining less. Not Callum. He's gained approximately 2.5 pounds in each of the last three months. There may be a vague pattern of gaining an ounce or two less each subsequent month. But that's it.

It's not a problem, from a health perspective. For one thing, some people say that formula-fed babies taper off later than breastfed babies (though our pediatrician thinks he would be just as big if he were exclusively breastfed). For another, all of his other growth measurements are on pace with his weight. At 23 pounds, 13 ounces, he is off the charts for weight. He's also off the charts for height, at 29.5 inches. And his head circumference is in the 99th percentile too. He's a completely proportionate baby. He's just very large. According to the pediatrician, at six months old he is the size of an average 15-month-old.

I did ask if there were any reason to be concerned about how much he has grown. If he could have some kind of hormonal imbalance or pituitary issue. The pediatrician said no. She said he's just a big baby. And it's no surprise, really. Torsten and I are far from tiny. We're both tall (Torsten especially at 6'4" but I'm also above average at 5'8"). We have big frames, big solid bones with big wrists. And neither of us is exactly skinny. So we knew we'd have a big baby. But we weren't expecting him to be QUITE this big.

People seem to equate "big" with "healthy." We get comments, not just from strangers but also from doctors and nurses, upon first glance, before they know anything about him, "What a healthy baby!" "What a big healthy boy!" "You can see that HE'S healthy!" and so on. And he IS healthy, though I think he'd be just as healthy if he were in, say, the 75th percentile, or even the 25th. I do occasionally worry a little bit about why he's SO very big, but the pediatrician's utter lack of concern helps. And the fact that he's completely proportional reassures me that we aren't inadvertently overfeeding him. I guess SOMEONE has to have the biggest baby, and it might as well be us.

It's just... he's SO big. I mean, he is just very, very large. The pediatrician warned us at our last visit that we may start getting comments from confused strangers who think that he's much older than he is and developmentally delayed. They see a child the size of a 15-month-old who can barely sit up on his own and says bababababababa round the clock and they think that he's an older, delayed child. And then they say something about it.

We haven't gotten any such comments just yet, thank goodness. But I do get the feeling that as he gets older we will start getting more subtle comments. Not so much along the lines of "does he have a delay?" and more along the lines of "he's too old for XYZ." Like strangers who will think he's four when he's actually only two and scold us for letting him ride in a stroller/suck his thumb/generally act his age.

The other thing I wonder about is when the medical conversation about his size will flip from "big = healthy" to "childhood obesity." Given his proportionality, he isn't obese. But at some point will the commentary change from "What a healthy boy!" to "Hm, are you SURE you aren't giving him too much juice?"

The thing about a child of this size is that it's really hard to contemplate just how truly enormous he is unless you've experienced it in person. I kept telling my sister, he's SO big, you won't be able to believe it, but until she saw him herself and held him herself, I don't think she could totally wrap her mind around it. Here we have Callum (~24 pounds) and Morgan (~11 pounds) together, to help you get a better size perspective:


I'm happy with his size, other than the occasional irrational worry that he might somehow be growing too much. And I'm happy that he is a completely healthy baby. I know that there are a lot of people whose babies are growing much more slowly who would be thrilled to have a 24-pound six-month-old. And believe me, I wouldn't trade. I love everything about him, including his giant thighs.

I think the thing is that he's just SO big that it feels like nobody really GETS quite how big he is. Other people say, "Oh, my baby was the same way!" and I think, "Oh! Someone who has been there!" so I say, "Oh, how big was your baby?" and it turns out that it's not even in the same ballpark. Not even close. Callum is literally off the charts. That means that MORE than 99% of babies his age are smaller than he is. He is THE BIGGEST ONE.

And sometimes it's a pain in the ass. He's outgrown his swing. He outgrew his swaddle before we were ready to give it up. He's too heavy to carry around in his car seat, and in fact even though the car seat claims it goes up to 30 pounds, he already fills it out so completely that we will certainly have to invest in a convertible seat well before he hits 30 pounds, because there is clearly NOT room for a 25% bigger baby in that thing. He can't go in his bouncy seat because when he lies in it it goes so far down that it actually touches the floor. The back of his head is flat because he sleeps on his back and the sheer weight of his head is enough to flatten his skull. When my sister was here we watched how she cheerfully carried Morgan around in the crook of her arm with no trouble at all. We can't do that with Callum. You can only carry him for a finite (and short) amount of time before your arm starts to feel like it's about to fall off. So he spends a lot of time on our laps, but not so much being carried around in our arms. Luckily, he's not the type of baby who wants to be held all the time, because at his size, it simply would not be possible. As it is, Torsten and I both have sore arms constantly.

But mostly, it's great. He's sturdy. He grows through each size of clothing so fast that it feels like we are always getting to put him in exciting new outfits we've never seen before. He's growing, he's developmentally on target, and I love his solidity. Plus, he has the cutest baby belly and thigh rolls that I've ever seen.

I guess it's just not what I was expecting. And it's the kind of expectation-flouting where you get a reminder every time you emit an involuntary grunt just from attempting to pick up your baby. And I guess the thing is that I STILL don't know what to expect. I mean, looking at the standard curves on the growth charts, it feels like he HAS to taper off by nine months. It's not possible that he will continue to gain 2.5 pounds per month and weigh 31 pounds by nine months old. But I almost can't believe that he will suddenly only gain one pound per month from here on out. And I find it hard to believe others when they say that their baby was also big and then tapered off, because so far I haven't come across anyone whose baby was as big as ours.

So this is a lesson in expectations. And the futility of having them, at least when it comes to babies. Callum is healthy, and he is growing, and his growth will taper off when his body is ready, and not when the chart says that it will. And that's fine. And in the meantime, we get to enjoy the best chunky thighs I have ever seen: