Griffin and the Storm of Doom

So many things have happened with Griffin that I keep procrastinating on a post. The more I procrastinate, the worse it gets! I think I had better do a complete sum up, so I can give a complete picture.

On May 18th, 2005, I gave birth to the wee Griffin. At the time all he did was sleep,cry, and suck on me. Now he can:

• Walk. He's gone very quickly from mostly crawling to mostly walking.
  
• Understand what we're saying to him. He understands "no" most definately. He understands that a ball has the name 'ball', and recognizes when someone else has a ball (ie: When a Teletubby has one). He will go and get the ball when requested, most of the time. He understands that he likes cheese, and that if I promise him that an object is cheese, that he'll like it.
  
• Climb almost anything. Regrettably, he can no longer play in his room unsupervised, because he climbs up onto the window seat, and then onto the window sill, and then onto the window. Then he tries to get onto his dresser top, or hang from the blind cords. He's also climbed onto the dining table, the back of the couch, and into his high chair.
  
• Reach almost anything on the counter in a rather large area. Since the day I found him with a kitchen utensil, I've been watching things in there like a hawk. I suspect we'll have to get a burner guard soon. We DO have the kitchen gated off, but he'll get in there sometimes when we're using it, anyhow.
• Open the oven and the dishwasher's locks. Eric caught him using the oven door as a ride the other day, thankfully it was not in use.
  
• Bring me a book when he wants me to read. His favourite right now is one of those tactile books about animals. He likes touching the 'snake skin' in the book.
• Eat what we eat. We don't buy him baby food so much anymore. He eats what we do, or we make him food extra when we're having something like steak, or something with a lot of heat. He doesn't drink formula either, but does drink whole milk.
• Get himself to sleep, at night. This goes with the understanding what we're saying to him. Eric discovered one night, that if you say "lie down, it's time to sleep", he will. Moreover, he'll play with us. He'll lie down, and then roll from side to side with a cute little kid look on his face that says 'I'm lying dooown, haha!" He'll get serious, though, and really try to get to sleep. Obnoxiously, he won't do this in the daytime. I can't get him off the breast for naps, which will become problematic when my mother comes to watch him for 4 days.
• Become bored. He never used to be bored. Now, he can clearly see the outside, and he wants to go there. He loves being outdoors, he loves playing on the grass. He loves going for walks in his carriage. It's good, it gets me off of my ass, and I go for walks with him in the afternoon. This only helps my knee to heal.:)
• Ask me what things are. He has a quizzical baby talk phrase that sounds like "what's that?" ("wuzzat?"), and seems to mean exactly that. He'll ask a million times what something is, and I feel sure that he is trying to ask seperate questions. Like "what's that".. then "what does it do?" etc. Some day he'll stop speaking his crazy moon language.
• Recognize things on tv. He now sees the things he's watching as seperate from each other, him and me. They also are people, too, and have a relationship to him.. such as the Teletubby with the ball. He gets excited when he sees animals, and asks me what they are over and over.
  
• Recognize images of babies and actual babies as something like him, and therefore worth a "wuzzat?". He does it with older kids, too.
  
• Manipulate us. He knows that if he makes loud obnoxious noises, that we will occasionally give in to him. Taking away the cellphone from moist little hands? Not that easy.:P I will have to endure endless tantrums until I either give it back, or distract him. Not easy.
• Tell when I'm lying to him, and learn from his mistakes. I don't carry Griffin around unless it's an emergency, due to the knees, so I've until a little while ago, gotten him to go where I want with manipulation. Mostly, this is with his diaper changes. He hates having his diaper changed, and so I've had to bribe him with a forbidden object to get him to come over. Some times, it's with the bathroom. His changing table is right next to the bathroom door, so I'll open it a crack. When Griffin goes in to look, I grab him. Now he's wise, and won't come any more.
  

We've also brought him swimming with us, which has had mixed reviews. While he loves splashing the water, and kicking in it, he doesn't like the temperature change. I think he really wants to swim, though. He keeps attempting to float, and lunging out into the water once he gets comfortable. I truly enjoy the time we all have in the pool. It's one of the few outdoor things I can do with him, and still participate (almost) as fully as his "da".

Griffin's Aunt Nisha and Uncle Matt have been very kind to us lately, and have watched Griffin while we go to all day Live Action Roleplaying (eric runs around with a foam sword, and I tell fortunes!). Griffin has prime opportunity to play with his fantastic cousins. Sadly, his lack of siblings shows. They excell at keeping toys away from Griffin, having practiced at each other. Griffin, not really having this kind of resistance in his life, gets frustrated and cries. I'm amused at this, and I know I sound evil, but I'm not. The little guy is going to need this kind of reality check in life, and I also know that in the scheme of things, these small frustrations melt away.

One night I was rocking him to sleep. The light in the room was that lovely deep sunset orange. He was sucking on the end of my braid, mostly asleep, the only other sound was the creak of the rocking chair. All I could think, all I could feel was 'This is a gift'. I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world right then. I don't think I've felt that kind of peace but once or twice in my life. It made everything else okay; the crying, aggravation, the uncertainty, the loss of freedoms. I know, I vowed not to get like this, and I'm not going to go much further. I just wanted to share.

This past Saturday, it started to rain. Then the rain, thunder, and lightning reached a fever pitch outside. We went onto the (covered) patio, and Griffin LOVED it. The rain and wind were too hard to stand outside, the lightning and the thunder raged above us, and he had the biggest grin on his face, and was flapping his hands around the way he does when he's really excited. The noises didn't bother him at all, and I know that next summer, we'll all be going to fireworks! I love storms, I always have. I was so happy to realize that even this young, we have so many things in common.
Now, it's late, and Griffin has a knack for waking up very early on nights that I stay up till 2am.
Be good to each other.
Autumn

Griffin and the fortress of solitude

Moving is accomplished. We frantically packed in the weeks before the move, and still weren't finished. Moving is always about seeing the invisible things in your life. Sure, you know to pack the books, the computer and the clothing, but there are small things that exist in every house that we don't even notice until it's time to clear it away and put it in a box. Things like the salt and pepper shakers, scissors. Thumb tacks. Rubber bands. Menus for take out places. Refrigerator magnets.

We had our shit together for the first day of moving, we thought. Our apartment was so packed with boxes that we couldn't move. Griffin and I went to the new apartment early (7am!) to recieve all the various people. Telephone, cable, new furniture, santa, and the new movers. The new place looked huge, and Griffin quite enjoyed the giant open space to crawl around in.

The sun came through the sliding door, and Griffin crawled in circles, trying to catch the light and his shadow. I hung out there with him until Eric came with the movers. With great efficiency a group of about 5 men brought out belongings into the new place. They were a group of younger men with their father/uncle, and were quipping with each other the whole time. We gave them water and soda, they put together our bed, and moved everything in faster than I thought possible. I have never been so willing to part with $400 in my life. It was worth it. In our pasts, moving was a matter of getting all our friends together for a mass moving operation that would take all day, and too much energy. This still happened the next day, though, when our friends descended en masse to help us move the invisible stuff. I thank everything for my friends. They went above and beyond to help us get finished on time. The next day, Eric spent all his energy cleaning the wreckage of our former abode. Then we no longer lived at 1623. That took some getting used to. I loved that apartment, and it had been our home for 5 ish years. When we go by it I still get a little teary.

The first thing we set up completely was his room. In 1623 he shared his room with our computers, and this arrangement was great when he was too young to care about typing noises, or even us being in the room while he slept. As time wore on, this became a weight on all of us, and was our primary impetus for moving. We were so excited to put his room together, that we unpacked the entire thing before we even got our clothing out of boxes. I'm still excited about it. I wanted to get a hanging of the Gryffindor crest for his door (even though it has a lion and not a Griffin on it, just for the pun's sake.), but I couldn't find one! It took him a long time to get used to his own room, but now he goes in and plays with his toys whenever he wants to.

It took a long time for him to acclimate himself to the new apartment. In some ways, he's still adjusting. Part of this is our new lifestyle. Since we have this great new open floorplan, and a bathroom that you can get to without going through either his bedroom or ours, we can have more friends over. And we do, quite a bit. He's not really happy with that, but we're hoping he'll adjust to it soon. The other part is that because the floorplan is so open, he can go (almost) anyplace in the apartment without me trying to grab him and put him someplace else. Primarily, he's allowed in the kitchen and his bedroom, which were two places completely forbidden earlier because the kitchen was a mess, and the bedroom filled with computer equipment. Neither are true now.

He loves bouncing his balls on the tile floor in the kitchen. They make loud clattering noises, and bounce pretty high. My father recently got him a wiffle ball, so it makes a different sound, and bounces funny. Plus, he gets his fingers stuck in it, which amuses him to no end.

We have our old table still in the apartment, next to the chair. There was enough room for it, and we just couldn't figure out what else to do with it. There are still piles of boxes behind the chair, which makes a small fort for him under the table. He likes to go into his fortress of solitude and play, or eat the carpet lint I haven't managed to get out of his mouth yet. I think it's kind of cool.

I will update again soon, as there is much more to tell. Hopefully the next time we move we will be moving into our own house. Hopefully it'll be in better repair than this apartment. While it IS updated, a lot of things keep going wrong. Toilet seats keep coming off, water pressure is unreliable, things keep falling off the sink and the door. Other than having the repair man in all the time, this is a great place.
(now if only there would be less spiders)

Until I next update, be well.
Autumn