And so Charlie has been with us for 45 weeks. Which, considering a full year is 52 weeks, seems like quite a lot. With no teeth or words and only newfound mobility, it’s never hard to remember he’s very much a baby. Yet I can’t say I’m totally surprised his birthday will roll around quickly after the holidays.
Since I last sat down to write at length, Charlie has really developed quite a bit. He has mastered crawling — though scooting occasionally strikes his fancy as a faster mode of transport. He pulls up on anything, including at times things ill-suited for stability, which is why we spend a fair amount of time reminding the older boys what things can’t be left unattended. He can move quickly along a surface, such as shuffling from one end of the couch to the other with his feet on the floor and arms on the cushion. This is especially true if the prize at the other end is an open laptop.
In the last few days he has taken a significant interest in solid foods, notably whatever Kristie happens to be eating. He also enjoys Cheerios and bread, so long as the bread is shredded into tiny, choke-proof pieces. He has little clue what to do with a sippy cup other than lean over the side of his high chair and drop it to the floor. Today he twice ate copious amounts of mashed avocado. On Friday he twice accompanied us to restaurants, once happily eating chunks of a pretzel roll for at least 15 minutes without a peep of discontent.
You’d think with our third kid such average developments would be met with little fanfare or interest. Two things make Charlie stand out in this regard. The first is his strong (though subsiding) preference to take solid foods from me instead of Kristie, which has me paying much more attention to the solid intake than I did with Jack or Max. The second is his disturbing lack of weight gain over the past several weeks, a development that ultimately drove us to a pediatric gastroenterologist Friday at a Children’s Memorial Hospital outpatient clinic in Arlington Heights. The dude threw a lot of information at us and, to be honest, I’m not sure how well I retained it all. I’ll try to boil it down to the essentials.
Looking back at Charlie’s growth chart, his numbers have been cause for some concern since about four months. He has been breastfeeding almost exclusively until trying solids a few months ago, and that’s still how he gets the vast majority of calories. Since Kristie isn’t pumping and bottle feeding as she did with Max, it’s hard to say how much he’s eating each time, though he never acts hungry after he’s finished and often does not seem to exhaust the supply.
While there are several things that need to be ruled out and a few tests still to be pursued (at least one will take us to Children’s Memorial Hospital downtown) just to cover all our bases and start the new year by chipping away heavily at our fresh insurance deductible, the main options for immediate attempts to get the baby fat were: 1. Switch to a specific, prescription (expensive) formula immediately. 2. Have Kristie drop dairy and soy from her diet, suggested because if Charlie’s system does not handle those foods well, it may keep him from maximizing the calories he takes in from breast milk.
We also are to mix oil with his solids to bolster the fat content (I suggested feeding him spoonfuls of Crisco shortening) and also have Kristie pump and fortify the milk with formula (the expensive stuff, of course) to get the calories from 20 per ounce to 24 per ounce. I sense this going down a path to information overload, so I’ll try to cut it short. Suffice it to say shifting abruptly to a dairy free diet, especially without being able to use soy products as substitutes, is not what Kristie was hoping to deal with, especially during one of the busiest baking weeks of the year.
As I sat in the doctor’s officer Friday, watching Charlie in just his orange diaper crawl and walk (holding Kristie’s fingers) all over the place, I was struck with the disconnect between his rapid progress in all other areas of development and his complete stalling on the growth charts. We’d kept hoping someone would say, “Eh, he’s just a bit small, keep doing what you’re doing.” No luck. I’m generally a better safe than sorry kind of guy, especially in terms of parenting. But sometimes the safe road is a sorry journey.
The one other area of development where I’d really like to see some improvement is Charlie’s acceptance of people who are not his parents. And to be fair, he has made some very minor steps in that direction. Our busy December bell choir schedule forced him into some parent-free time at Pops and K’s house. And while he was his usual miserable self for most of the time, he did manage to settle down on occasion (if only briefly) and at one point actually played a bit. While he still cries far more than needed in such situations, literally any sign of progress is worth some parental excitement.
It all starts at home, and Charlie is making great strides in independent play, provided his brothers are giving him enough space to operate safely. He is less and less interested in my thumb for soothing or sleep and instead has grown fond of two of his own fingers. He will happily empty the contents of Kristie’s purse, the diaper bag and whatever floor-level cabinet we don’t have locked up. When we were in Fulton for Thanksgiving he played happily in the living room, provided a parent was always within his sight range or, preferably, arm’s length. I am looking forward to returning there right after Christmas and seeing if he continues to adjust to that environment. I’m also thinking we may need to put the safety gate at the top of the basement stairs, which is sure to aggravate Jack to no end.
Speaking of Christmas, Aunt Kim flew back from California today. Kat is back from college in Philadelphia and no doubt spending as much time with Uncle Matt as possible. And though we haven’t yet seen these lovely ladies yet this week, just thinking today about them being here and the excitement that generates for their loved ones fueled my appreciation for my own brood. It’s near impossible to imagine sending the boys off to college and wondering if they’ll return with significant others, let alone the possibility they might pick up and move all the way across the country. I can barely fathom how we’re all going to fit in this house when the boys are 10, 13 and 17, let alone what happens if they try to bring wives and babies back here for the holidays. But considering my relationship with my own siblings and watching my parents still be parental with adult children is a fine reminder to try to take pleasure in the simple joys of early-stage parenting.
Perhaps some day I will be able to write from experience about how late-stage parenting is taxing on an entirely different level from what we’re doing now, which is primarily attending to basic physical and a few emotional needs. That requires an awful lot of work — laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, getting to the bus on time, changing diapers, making food, doing baths, supervising teeth brushing, bed time routines, breaking up fights, making beds, picking up toys and so on. And so on and so on. A lot of those activities are the kinds of things I may look back on wistfully in 15 years. “I’d gladly make noodles and broth for dinner every night this week,” I might blog, “if it meant Jack were home to eat it.” Of course, current me would like to tell 2026 me this stuff wasn’t always enjoyable and I shouldn’t feel bad about all those times I wished the kids could take care of their own needs a bit more.
Sometimes this job is utterly unbearable. Sometimes the rewards defy description. And sometimes — as in this afternoon when Max threw an incredible tantrum over the most ridiculous premise (he maintained he was unable to walk into the bathroom despite just running up the stairs and flopping on the floor, and this loud, thrashing, full-body fit lasted at least 30 minutes) and, amidst that, Charlie pulled up on the side of my chair and gave me the sweetest little baby smile — those emotions arise simultaneously.
I find myself running out of words at this point. In part because it is late and sleep has been hard to come by in the last week or so for numerous reasons. But also because there isn’t much running through my brain right now aside from “family family family family,” though I could also write at length on the value of some close nonfamily friendships we have developed and deepened, especially throughout 2011. I’ll leave that for another time. For now, I’m going to bed (after I deal with some laundry). I just hope Charlie decides to stay in his crib the entire night once more this week.
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