Avtalyon

Avtalyon is asleep now, with his first dose of Cefprozil (twice a day for two weeks) inside him. Fortunately he loves this kind of medicine too, although as with the Amoxicillin he tries to grab the empty medicine dropper so he can chew on the bulb.

I know I haven't been blogging much lately. I've been busy with work, the kids need and deserve my attention, and I'm still knitting more than I really should. And both Barak and Iyyar were sick last week--fevers, stomachaches, etc. So... yeah. Not much with the blogging.

I feel bad, though, not documenting this incredibly cute and funny phase in Avtalyon's rapidly-vanishing babyhood. He's sixteen months old, and just stopped nursing this week--a couple of days ago, in fact. He's still so much a baby in so many ways--he weighs 25 lb as of his last checkup, he's still got hardly any hair, and he just got in his seventh tooth (bottom left). And he's still really little and soft, and has a hilarious potbelly, and gives great kisses, and is just amazing to snuggle.

He's just enough of a baby that when he does non-baby things it still really startles me. Mostly, probably, because of the contrast between him and Iyyar and Barak. Today, I had to take Barak and Iyyar with me to the pediatrician, because of the short notice and all. Barak is still feeling under the weather and was not thrilled about the walk; Iyyar and Avtalyon were busily pestering each other in the double stroller, and even the really short wait we had in the exam room before the doctor came in was too long. Barak and Iyyar both wanted to climb up on the exam table, Iyyar was pushing the stroller around, Avtalyon wanted to bang the mouse on the keyboard, etc. It was already a little hairy in there when the doctor came in, and Avtalyon was in no mood to have his ear poked at. When the doctor was done looking at him, he (Avtalyon, not doctor) wiggled out of my arms and hustled across the room--to get my large, pink, quite heavy backpack, haul it back across the floor, and push the handle into my hand. Subtle, isn't he?

He's also been mimicking things the boys say, usually with no apparent idea of what those things mean. That's why we often here a phrase that sounds suspiciously like, "I needa go potty!" Other favorites are "I want it!" and "I don't want it!" ("Ah na wa na!") Today, though, when he went over to grab Iyyar's Batman car, it was pretty clear that he knew what he was saying: "Mine!"

Right now he seems to want nothing more than to be big, or at least, big enough to play with his brothers. Sometimes they let him in on their Lego and block activity--sometimes not. Sometimes he is forced to resort to grabbing a kippa and running away with it to get them to pay attention to him. (That one works really well.) He loves fruit, and cucumbers, and grated cheese, and noodles, but not his high chair--as soon as he's done eating, or has emptied a bowl, or has no further need of something on his tray, over the side it goes. "No" has proved unproductive, so I've resorted to removing his entire tray instantly upon the first infraction. We'll see how that one goes, but I'm not about to mop my floor after every meal and snack.

Oh, and he loves shoes. I think it's more the association with going out--often, after he's got his shoes on, he'll go straight to the back door and wait there. Sometimes he picks up his sun hat on the way, which is kind of funny because when the sun hat is on his head, outside, the sun hat immediately becomes the bane of his existence. It's kind of, "Okay, here's my sun hat, let's go!"--but that doesn't mean I'm going to wear it once I'm out there, you understand.

Pretty soon he'll be too big for me to want to post pictures of him on this blog, but here's one from yesterday, of him modeling the engineer's cap sent to us by Grandpa M a couple of years ago.


Pretty cute, if I do say so myself.