First Snow, Sharing, Touching the Pump, and Baby Hovercrafts

Espen has been busy for the last month. He has grown two great top front teeth, experienced his first snow, and discovered the joy of sharing.  I can say with great certainty that the first thing he ever offered to share with me was slightly chewed beef jerky.  Nothing says love like, "Here mom! I've gotten this hard meat nice and softer for you! Try it!"

As an aside, before becoming a parent, I admit I was rather off-put by stories of parents consuming or pre-chewing their offspring's food.  Not so anymore. Now I gleefully gnaw on a piece of dead cow that has been in Espen's sweet, drooly mouth only seconds before.  While my ability to nurture and run on little sleep has increased exponentially, my sense of interpersonal hygiene has leapt straight back to the Stone Age.  Me mom. You baby. We eat foods.

Yes we do.

In slightly cleaner (appearing) adventures, it snowed three days ago.  It has completely shut down the city of Portland. Only Thai restaurants and Home Depot seem to be open, so we've been stocking up on take-out and light bulbs when we get cabin fever.

Espen was not impressed with his first run-in with the fluffy white stuff that kids of all ages adore.  Normally, he likes to sit at the open sliding door and laugh at the outside world.  When he realized that the outside world was a new color and COLD, he wept.

As good parents, we decided that a bit of warmer clothing and a nice sledding expedition would be just the thing to introduce him to the fun side of white cold.  To his credit, he learned to sit a snow glider very quickly and managed to tucker himself out from all the brisk aired excitement.  Still, as we drove our trusty Subaru Brian to the store later that day, his little face showed great concern over the monochromatic world whizzing along outside his window.  The baby has opinions and snow seems to have settled in somewhere between "WHA!? and hmmmmmmmm."

And now a statement that may be TMI.
I have been exclusively pumping breastmilk for Espen for the last four months.  Those of you who are following this blog may recall the challenges we have had with breast-feeding and I will simply refer to earlier posts for those who want to know what I'm talking about. The upshot of this is that I spend many hours a day strapped to the pump, sitting on the couch while Espen amuses himself at my feet.  Or tries to dismantle the Oh-So-Fascinating array of tubes that seem to run from a growling box to mum's boobs.  Recently, I have had to start sitting on top of the couch so he cannot reach the tubes. He's getting tall.

Finally, this weekend, I realized that the mystique of the pump had to be addressed or I would be hanging from the ceiling in an attempt to keep my statuesque, curious baby away from the milk horns.  I let him explore the pump.  He was overjoyed.  I'm still not certain whether it has increased his excitement over the milk machine or desensitized him to it, but we're going to continue having supervised play dates with the apparatus until he either stops caring, or gets weaned. Either way, it will all end in about a month and a half when he becomes a big baby and we move to solid food exclusively.

Espen has started to remove his hands from whatever he is supporting himself with while standing and HOVER.  It's fairly exciting and not a little shocking when I look down and see him free-standing beside me just long enough to smile and then plop down on his bum.  I know, I know, babies do this all the time, but that's what makes parenthood so damn wild.  It REALLY feels like it's the first time anything like this has happened. EVER.  It's like being a kid with the ability to drive and get into debt.  SO CRAZY.

Needless to say, I'll be showering and preparing for the day now in hopes that Espen will have another delicious snack to share with me.

As an aside, his first share with Tobias was a carefully rolled diaper. And yes, it was dirty.