Louis gets his four-month check-up

One of my favorite things...

One of my favorite things about Louis is his hands. They are delicate, long-fingered and very expressive. When I nap with him I like to drape my arm across his chest--I support my wrist and hand on the other side of him with a pillow so my arm isn't too heavy on his body--and he plucks at my arm with tentative exploration. As if it were a harp string or something. I like to carry him upright with one arm and he puts his little hand at the nape of my neck, his fingers flicking and grasping softly at the short hairs there. The effect is very relaxing, and sometimes I find my eyelids drooping, even as I'm walking around with him, doing laundry or dishes one-handed.


Louis gets his four-month check-up...

Thursday was Louis' 4-month Well Check. I took him out of his carseat in the doctor office's waiting room and let him stand on my lap with my hands supporting him under his armpits. He was wearing his blue jammies with the penguins on them, but I knew what he looked like under all that fleecy comfiness: his knees, locked as he stood rigidly, would have disappeared entirely into the delicious chubbiness of his legs. He has such deep, firm, wonderful rolls on his thighs now that you could probably use them like a chip clip, or an impromptu holder of pens and pencils.

I'm allowed to talk about his chub like this for two reasons: one, I'm his mother. And two, I know from experience that as soon as he begins to crawl all of that sublime baby blubber will, sadly, disappear.

In the doctor's waiting room was another baby, a little girl with a tiny, pert nose, wearing soft pink jammies. She was crawling all over the place and pulling herself up using the waiting-room chairs and end tables. Her mother said she was about ten months old. The mother brought her over and stood her in front of Louis, about a foot from him. He jerked excitedly and grinned at her, drool dangling off his chin. He loves other babies.

The little girl baby stood calmly watching him back, exercising the controlled muscles of an older, and thus more accomplished, baby. Sensing the opportunity to show off, Louis lurched to his full height, his little arms wind-milling. He looked like a skier just conquering the "snowplow." A fleeting look of bravado crossed his face. The girl baby reached a hand out to touch his nose and he abruptly lost all his form, bending at the waist, sagging at the tummy, face going completely slack as his dribbly mouth gaped open, wanting only to catch one of those tiny pink fingers and chew on it until it was prune-y with slime.

Seeing that Louis was a flesh-eater of the highest degree, the girl baby withdrew her little hand in dismay. Louis stood up again. This time, when he was fully upright, he glanced sideways, his eyelashes fluttered briefly, and I thought I saw a more grown-up emotion on his face: bashfulness.

The nurse came to the door and called out our name. I was relieved to see it was our doctor's nurse, the hip one that wears clothes from R.E.I. and always has kind things to say about my hair. The other nurse--the one that helps out when the regular nursing staff is swamped-- always shouts Louis' name in French, even though it's pronounced the American way. When she yells, "Looo-eeey!" I always think of that call, "Sooo-ey!" that pig farmers use to make the pigs come running.

I stripped Louis down to his diaper and we weighed and measured him. He came in at the 93rd percentile for weight and the 98th percentile for height.

While we waited for the doctor, I stood Louis on the examining-room table and let him talk to himself in the mirror next to it. He gurgled and chortled, and then he swayed and swaggered and scolded that baby in the reflection.

After awhile he got tired, and anyway the baby in the mirror didn't seem that scared of him. I sat him down on his bottom. His interest was caught by his foot. Slowly, very slowly, he bent at the waist and brought his mouth down lower and lower, until it enveloped his pink, unsuspecting big toe. His face registered interest, surprise, and then the euphoria of a connoisseur of French food tasting the finest, most expensive truffle.

The doctor came in a few minutes later and examined him. She pronounced him very healthy and cleared him to sleep ten hours a night without eating.

Then came time for the shots. The nurse came in with three syringes and a dropper on a tray. She laid him on the examining table and squeezed Louis' thighs, both to straighten them out and to find a good place in which to poke the needle. Louis, who is VERY ticklish on his thighs, giggled.

"That makes me feel bad," the nurse sighed, getting the first syringe ready. She plunged it in and Louis squalled in shock and fury. "What are you doing?!" he seemed to yell. "First you guys insist on trespassing inside my diaper line and now this..."

However, he calmed down pretty quickly, and even grinned at me a moment later with red, teary eyes. He got three Bandaids, one for each needle wound. One Bandaid was blue, with some kind of cartoon on it, I don't know what. One was black with cool tri-colored flames on it and the other had a skull and crossbones.

Telling the baby in the mirror to, "Get a life!"

Feeling sleepy, sore and kind of feverish after all those shots.

There are fish in the swimming pool

Clara turns three this week, so we enrolled her in swim lessons. Today was her first day. In the locker room of the local Y, we put on her blue gingham bathing suit, tucked Floppy the stuffed dog under her arm and wiped the blackberry jelly -infused snot from her upper lip with the corner of our swim towel. Floppy and I watched the lesson from the pool deck, where we sat in white plastic patio chairs. Louis drowsed on my shoulder, bedazzled and hypnotized by the sunshine streaming through the windows and reflecting off the turquoise pool water.

Clara did great, and even jumped from the edge of the pool afterwards and into the waiting arms of her swim teacher. She put her head underwater, too.

After the lesson, she seemed concerned and distracted. Surprisingly, she declined to splash around in the kiddie pool.

"A fish swimmed into my mouf," she whispered to me, huddling in her towel next to my knees.

"It did? Honey, there are no fish in the swimming pool."

"Yes, there are. I saw her. There's a mama fish."

"Here, come here. Show me." I put Louis in his infant seat and crouched at the edge of the big pool.

"Right rair," she said, pointing to the bottom of the pool, where the concrete was splotched with dozens of yellowish stains. "Oh!" she shouted. "There they are!"

"Those are just stains. Fish can't live in this pool. They put special juice in this pool the fish don't like, so they stay away. They say, 'No, thank-you very much! We're going to stay in the pond!'"

"The mama fish swimmed to the bottom and planted a tree in the dirt," Clara whispered conspiratorially. "And then she swimmed into my mouf. And she wants to go into my belly to be with her baby and big girl."

"Ohhhh-kay," I said, deciding to join her in her reality. "How are you going to get them out?"

"They will come out when I go potty. He will swim in the toilet."

"Alright. Let's go pee then."

We did, in the sodden restroom next to the pool.

The fish didn't come out.

"They will come out with a toofbrush," Clara decided when we found ourselves back on the pool deck. (Louis was an absolute doll. Throughout the fish epiphany he cheerfully sat in his seat, giving Clara his best idolatrous drool-filled grin.)

"We don't have a toothbrush. Shall I scrub your teeth with my pinkie finger?"

That didn't work, either. Back in the girls locker room, Clara stood on the stool in front of the vanity mirror and stared into her mouth.

"He's in there," she confirmed. Then she grimaced hugely, inspecting her teeth.

"Hey, that lady is taking our room!" she said suddenly, pointing to a woman who was undressing and putting her clothes into a nearby locker.

"They're called lockers. They don't belong to anyone in particular. When we come we just find whichever one is open to use. Last time we used the one that she's using. But that doesn't mean it's ours. It's just the one that happened to be open last time. This time we're using this other locker. See?"

The trespassing, villainous woman smiled at Clara. Clara blinked.

"I think the fish are stuck in my teeth. I will try not to eat wem."

We went upstairs and Clara opened her pink My Little Pony lunchbox. I gave her half of her peanut butter and jelly, but withheld the other half until she ate three green beans. She stuffed them all at once into her mouth and chewed deliberately. After a moment she spit them out in a little fibrous, slimy green pile on the table.

"Right rair! The fish is in rair!" she said, pointing to the pile.

"The fish is in the green beans?"

"Yes."

"Well, you're going to have to eat more green beans since you spit those out."

"Okay."

Later in the afternoon I came upon her looming over Louis in his Jolly Jump Up, her mouth gaping.

"I'm giving my fish to Louis. The fish is jumping out of my mouf and into Louis' mouf."

By the time Simon arrived home from work, the fish was back in Clara's body and had worked its way down to her feet. No sign yet of how it'll make its way out.