First teeth and more

Kate just got her first 2 teeth. Both of my kids have been early teethers. It's such a vindication when teeth first come in. In my experience, when this happens, the baby has been fussing more than normal for a few days at least, and possibly drooling a lot and chewing on his/her fingers. You've been telling yourself "Maybe he/she's teething" without any real sense of whether that explains the extra long time it takes to put him down to bed or the sudden bursts of crying when nothing apparent has happened to her. So when teeth finally show up, you silently say to yourself "YES!" and then go on with the rest of your business.

An extraordinary event occurred yesterday morning. Finn had blood drawn without a single fuss or tear or fidget or anything! It was miraculous. He and I both needed to have blood drawn, so it made sense to me to get it all done at once. I had mine done first, naturally, and I'm really pretty good with giving blood, so I tried to get him to watch the fact that I was not bothered by it. I was much more tense, myself, when it was his turn. I consider myself a pretty relaxed mom when it comes to the bumps and bangs of childhood, but I was honestly dreading the idea of sitting through a 3-year-old giving blood.

For Finn's turn, he sat on my lap. They tied the blue rubber thingy around his arm and asked him to squeeze his hand really tight. I had him hold my other hand and squeeze that really tight, too. An interesting fact about children (mine at least) is that they are better at doing things with their whole body rather than just part-way--better at squeezing both hands than just one. This fact was illustrated for us during swimming lessons. The difficulty our 3-year-old had with moving his hands at a slow crawl-pace while kicking his legs quickly was comical. As soon as the kicking began, the arms would speed right up to match the legs. Really, though, we're all familiar with this phenomenon, even as adults--think of the pat your head and rub your tummy scenario, which is pretty hard at first for everyone.

Anyway, he squeezed his hands and he watched the needle the whole time. Just like Mommy--I hate it when someone tells me not to look at the needle. Thanks for the tip, but I know how I want to do it. I am absolutely fine having a needle as long as I can watch the whole process.

So the needle goes in, and you could practically hear all four adults in the room holding our breath, waiting... and nothing happened. No movement, no noise--no crying, no flinch... nothing! For a second, the blood wasn't coming up through the tube, and I saw the phlebotomist just barely moving the needle. I know we were both thinking how much we didn't want to have to do the stick again... and then next thing you knew, the blood was flowing through. I said to Finn, "Look, there it goes. That's your blood." He said "Yeah", and that was all there was to it. When we were all done, Finn had a whole bunch of stickers (they gave him 6 or 7, I think because they were so happy that it was an easy job), and a bandaid on his arm to match Mommy's.

Wow... I can't imagine it will ever happen so smoothly again!

One of the lesser-known side-effects of potty training...

is when your son says to your hubby while he (hubby) is on the toilet: "Good job, Daddy! I'm so proud of you!" Who knows, possibly when hubby gets much older, he'll appreciate that kind of encouragement!

One of Finn's very common word errors, which he has had for a while and doesn't seem to be getting past yet, is to say "They don't rhyme!" when something doesn't match. It can be a rhyme-related mismatch, or something completely non-vocal, so that the idea of rhyming doesn't fit at all. Sometimes he even says it when he just means that something isn't right. For example, if I say: "Does the kitty wear a hat?" (while holding a hat on the kitty), Finn is liable to say, "Mommy, that doesn't rhyme!"


Kate discovered an important new fact about the world on Friday. She very distinctly told us that "Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya." I'm so glad to have her here to tell me these things. How else would I ever know?!