Sink Your Teeth Into This

In honor of the new year Aleck has something brand new for 2013, teeth!  It’s only taken 14 plus months to show any sign of pearly whites, and in true Aleck form instead of one or two he got four right away and we couldn’t be more thrilled.  After all, with every other surprise that comes with our little man, we felt that we couldn’t just take for granted that getting teeth was going to be a normal process.   In all honesty, the people around us were more concerned with Aleck’s lack of pearly whites than we were.  Someone even asked us if we were going to have X-Rays taken just to make sure that they are in there somewhere.  Crazy.  We just kept saying to ourselves that we weren’t going to worry unless we got to 18 months without them, so now we can all let out those sighs of relief.

He’s probably been teething for almost 6 weeks and we thought we had it made.  Not a peep of discomfort out of our little man.  So we figured he’s just a tough little dude.  I mean, you would be really tough if you had to endure everything he’s had to endure in his first year of life.  Let’s be fair, some measely teeth poking through gums has to be nothing compared to open reduction hip surgery and having your femur shaved down right…right?  Wrong.  The two bottom teeth didn’t bother him at all, but the back ones coming in give all of us a rude awakening, or the plural for how many times he’s waking us up.  But once we figured out the right timing of Tylenol and Orajel, things have been much easier.

In fact things, in general, have been much easier.  Aleck is developing into such a fun little guy it’s a pleasure to just hang out with him, run errands with him, and go out to meals with him.  Although he’s still wobbly in a shopping cart or a high chair, he’s getting better and we are getting better at finding ways to make him more comfortable. Unlike most babies he can’t rely on his hands to grab hold of the carts or the high chairs to keep his balance so it’s taking creative positioning and a lot of core strength to put him in these otherwise baby friendly devices.   Lately he’s made dinner appearances in Greektown and at the Gage for my birthday without a fuss, and he was all the rage at Tony’s Finer Foods sitting up in their shopping cart flirting with all the Latin ladies.  We even did New Year’s Day in Chinatown for Dim Sum and although they only had a booster seat Aleck was perfectly content.  And all the while he’s eating whatever we give him from our plate.  Dim Sum was easy since it’s so mushy, hummus got mixed reviews, pizza has been a big hit, eggs are a favorite, Cherrios are a go to treat, but apple juice is where it’s at, especially since it’s his first real word “apple”.

Not “mom” though he said nothing but “mamamamama” for about 2 months when he was eight months old, and not “dada” either.  He says “apple” all the time and “up”, and not necessarily because he wants apple juice or he wants me to pick him up.  The funny thing is he didn’t start drinking apple juice until he started saying “apple”.  It all happened because I was playing a speech game with him while hanging out in Nordstrom’s eating an apple.  I simply encouraged him to vocalize anything before I let him suck on my apple, and I kept repeating the word.  Eventually he said it and it’s stuck right to his mouth.  Now his babbling goes something like this, “apple apple apple apple uppa uppa app appa apple up up up.”  And since most babies say “dada” before “mama” I’m going full tilt boogie to get him to say “dadda” so we can get that out of the way and go on to “mama”, the word I’ve been dying to hear since he was born.

Food in general has become a lot more fun, being able to explore so much more with our new teeth, bringing the baby food but knowing that we can experiment with him by giving him tastes of what we are eating.  The most exciting part of all of this is that since he’s more interested in food he’s also more interested in getting food to his mouth with his hands.That’s right, I said “get it to his mouth”, because someone’s elbows are doing so well!  We went to Shriner’s last week and they got an 85 degree bend in his elbows which is amazing.  I’m sure at home we are getting at least a 90 degree bend and the doctor is confident that he’ll continue to loosen up, which means no upper body surgery on the horizon for now.  We’ve been practicing getting Cheerios into the mouth, we have to hold his arm and guide it to his mouth, but even that is a huge step for Aleck.  He used to resist that movement so much, turn his head away and power through his arms straightening them out whenever we would try to encourage him to feed himself.  But now he thinks it’s a game and it helps that we cheer so loudly when he does get that Cheerio in his mouth.  There isn’t much he won’t do for some good old fashion applause.  So let’s all clap loudly since our little man may still need our help, but he’s eating the food right out of his own hand which is the biggest progression of them all.