Or rather two cakes, since he’s having two birthday parties.

Birthday party the first is for a few of my friends who are moms and have babies around Jonah’s age, a.k.a. his friends. We’re calling that one the playdate.

Birthday party the second is a brunch for my adult friends who are like aunties to Jonah. No other kids. He’s the star, and I get to spend some time with people who knew me way before I was anything like married or a mother.

So: two cakes. Banana cakes with cream cheese frosting, because the boy loves bananas and cheese.

Fortunately, my parents came into town for the event(s), so I had help. My mom has baked cakes before. I was always more a cookies/brownies kind of baker.

We followed this recipe, but with the frosting from this recipe. I made one sheet cake, and one layer cake. Just because. I wanted to try a layer cake. And I wanted a sheet cake for Scott to draw “Little Gorilla” on but now that I’ve made it, I don’t want to mar the flavor of the organic cream cheese frosting with that hydrogenated and colored stuff from the tube.

Drat.

Here’s the photo essay of my baking journey, from start to finish.

Ingredients prep / Mise en Place:

Let the batter begin:

Cream cheese frosting parts:

Recipe said to stick the cake(s) in the freezer for 45 minutes right after you take them out of the oven. That required some serious rearranging, and the sacrificing of much stored cubed ice.

Layer cake:

I forgot until after the baking that our oven is on a slant, so both layers are tilted, but by lining them up thinner side facing thicker, we got a straight across cake.

Thank you, Leila, for the late evening loaning of the cake dome! Good excuse to run out and socialize while my parents babysat.

(We got the flat cake covered via careful application of toothpicks and foil.)

The aftermath:

Scott ran a little test, showing the boy pictures of cows and then pictures of cats. Because up to now, the boy has been clear on cats, and then has called many other animals “Ca” — although lately he’s been adding a gutteral almost t-like sound to the end of it.

He distinctly called one cat and the other cow, and correctly each time.

Later this morning I said “Cow,” and then “mooooooo.”

He thought this was hilarious.

He’s also mostly, but not always, saying “Hoo, hoo” whenever an owl shows up in one of his picture or storybooks.

I know, he’s a genus.

That’s pretty much a nightly ritual. One or the other of us calls — Are you on the bus? I’m still on the bridge. I’ll be home in 20. Etc. Although tonight, fortunately for tired, mucous-y, Rudolf-the-raw-red-nosed me, the answer was “I’m on the stairs.”

Jonah heard the amplified voice and said “Da!”

I pushed the high chair to the kitchen doorway with the boy facing out so that he would see his daddy as soon as he came through the front door.

Door opens. Boy starts wiggling and laughing with joy. “Da?” I whisper, encouragingly.

“Da! Da!” and another “Da!”

Tadaaaaaaaa!

He’s a genius. And he loves his daddy.

(Note, I’m transitioning here to a sleep update. If you, dear reader, are well and truly sick of these, scroll down to the three asterisks.)

We’re on a new bedtime routine where I nurse him earlier, preferably before his bath, and he spends most of the evening with his dad. I try to get the boy fed so they can just play when Scott gets home, though tonight I hadn’t had it together to defrost a cube of veg, so Da took over dinner duties. Then there were books, the bath, quieter books, and then, instead of me singing to him before putting him down, the last two nights Scott did it. Good for us I think to have Jonah associate more than one singer with bedtime.

On that topic, he’s still only fussing a few seconds total after we put him down, though we’re also still struggling with that 4-ish a.m. wake-up. This morning he was screaming like he was on fire. Scott went in and held and talked to him and put him back down.

No, he is not that easily convinced. But eventually, he did go back to sleep and again, like previous similar occasions, he woke up around six-ish in a positively delightful mood. I think we could all do without the 4-ish melt-down. Hopefully it will stop one day.

His naps are still akimbo. No morning nap the last couple of days, except three days ago when his one nap of the day was at 10 a.m. Some days with no naps a-tall. Yesterday he stood and cried in his crib during both “naps,” and then in frustration I threw him in the car and headed to Tumble and Tea — where I was meeting a friend and her daughter; it’s much better in these situations to get out among people. He, of course, fell asleep in the car and I tried to transfer him to the stroller so I could go meet my friend that woke him up and then I wanted to kill myself.

Today I got him to fall asleep in the car and so I parked and sat in Trader Joe’s parking lot for 1-1/2 hours. No risking a transfer two days in a row. I made some calls, read a few pages in the manual for my DSLR that I’m still trying to learn how to use. Played the free versions of Tetris and Wheel of Fortune on my cell phone.

* * *

Jonah’s language is definitely expanding. He’s been playing with new sounds. He’s got “Pah” which doesn’t seem to have an association yet. And “Liyah” which may have something to do with going down the slide, and anything fun like a slide.

The “Gah,” which he shouted so emphatically at the fish in the waiting room at the doctor’s on Thursday got even more air time on Friday when we met our friends Elina and Lazlo at the new Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.

Another no-nap day, so the already excitable boy was therefore completely, utterly, movie-star dramatic, adrenaline-fueled, BESIDE HIMSELF looking at those fish. GAH GAH GAH GAH! he shouted, waved his arms, and tried to escape the stroller, ergo, or my arms pretty much nonstop for three hours.

Inside the gigantic, multi-storied rainforest dome, where only a metal railing about 4 feet high stops anyone from diving into the pool full of huge, black, lumbering fish (if fish could lumber) below, I had a ridiculously challenging time trying to prevent Jonah from leaping over. I was holding him so he could see and he was gripping the top bar, pulling with all his might. He has a lot of might for such a little guy.

The man next to us accidentally dropped his facility map into the water. The fish devoured it.

As we traveled up the ramp to the higher levels of the forest canopy we saw more and more butterflies. One lit on the railing next to us, so big, if it had landed on Jonah’s nose, it would have covered most of his face. I held him back from petting the brown fuzzy wing with its one big “eye.” The butterfly took off, open wings revealing shades of sky blue on the top sides.

At the top, an elevator takes you down to underneath that pool of map-hungry fish, into the aquarium.

Was it good?

Jonah says: GAH GAH GAH GAH!!!!!!! — i.e.: Yes.

We also visited the “living roof” and then on our way out we stopped by the white alligator, glowing in near darkness, perched on black rocks in a recessed area of the floor, veiled by mists. Quiet, elegant, ghostly.

We are very lucky our friend Elina has a membership that allows her to bring guests because the place is not cheap. But it’s well and truly fabulous. A beautiful building, great stuff for Jonah to Gah over.

It struck me that day that becoming a mother has turned me into a tourist. Not the poorly dressed camera toting kind (though I am pretty poorly dressed most days and I’d do well to actually tote my darn camera a little more often). The fun kind — what they like to call a “staycationer” in an economic downturn — taking in what my hometown has to offer. There are so very many sights — not just the kid-focused stuff — I’ve never seen even though I’ve lived in the Bay Area for 21 years.

The next day, Scott and I took Jonah to the Oakland Zoo. Another first, for all of us. Of course he loved it. Bonus attraction: They had a petting zoo with super sweet and friendly goats. We’ll be back. We bought a membership that allows us to bring friends, and gives us reciprocal privelges into other zoos, including Los Angeles (hello, grandparents and auntie!) and San Francisco.

Not that we have to go anywhere. The boy can get all Gah-ed up over the flowers in the front garden too. He’s into all sorts of experiences. But it is fun for me to have this new reason to get out and see new and different places more often.

Where next? Fairyland, Habitot, The Discovery Museum, Alcatraz…

No nap in the morning, even though the boy was tired, rubbed his eyes, yawned, etc. I tried, people. You know I did. But no dice.

I called a mom friend who’s been having a rough time with her not-sleeping 3 month old — at all ever; well, maybe for two hours at a time. She and her husband trade off half the nights each staying up with the baby trying to soothe him or keep him company. Stopped by her house and just took the walk with her to her yoga class. So we could talk, hug, have company. Have I mentioned how easy it is to isolate and get lonely in this momming business?

Then Jonah and I went to the pediatrician’s office for her monthly bag lunch Q&A to ask her all our questions. Yes, Jonah’s army crawl is perfectly normal. No, she doesn’t think he’s ready to give up the morning nap. Try heavier curtains to darken the room. Yes, he’ll probably grow out of his incredible skin sensitivity to EVERYTHING.

There was an aquarium in the waiting room where the gathering was taking place. Jonah stood on a chair (with me guarding of course) so as to be eye level with the fish, and yelled at them: GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH! His voice ragged with excitement. I’m wondering if maybe the g-sound is for “goldfish” since many of those appear in his various books.

I left there at 1:30, charging home to get the boy to the crib and a-nappin’. He was clearly showing the signs (oh, those signs). But then I saw Laura and Flann on a street corner and I had to stop because A) Laura doesn’t live anywhere near me or this particular corner and she doesn’t drive, so what the heck was she doing there? and B) She usually works on Thursdays. Doubly intriguing and what a happy accidental meeting. I pull over and find out that she’s running Flann back and forth to doctor’s appointments. So I get Jonah out of the carseat, back into the stroller, and walk with her to her destination (after we stop at Bakesale Betty’s for Lemon Ices first).

Jonah falls asleep in the stroller and I decide that transferring him to the car and driving home and transferring him up the stairs would severely be pushing my luck. So I stay on foot, park us at a cafe, which I then realize is around the corner from another friend’s house. One of my pre-baby non-kid-ed friends. I call her but she’s at work but she hasn’t had lunch so she comes and meets me and has a BLT and we catch up for over an hour and then I see Laura and Flann again — across the street.

So for the second time that day, I shout out to her. And she comes to where I’m sitting and my other friend goes back to work, and socializing with L and F resumes.

Then Laura has to go, and I’m alone again. The cell phone rings. Friend number four of the day. Her new beau has flaked on their evening plans due to sudden arising of unfortunate work-related events and she’s left with a spare ticket for a live theater show. She doesn’t tell me the name or what it’s about, only the name of the director. But he’s good. Very good.

I call Scott to ask for permission for a girls night out and he says yes.

Get home, feed the boy, start preparing dinner. Scott gets home, takes over bedtime routine while I slip the marinating-since-yesterday tri-tip into the oven. Boy is in bed by 6:30, and we’re eating an exquisite meal.

At 7-ish, I sprint across the bridge into San Francisco, find street parking not too far away from the venue, but far enough that I get blisters on my feet from my fancy suede platform clogs that I never get to wear (chastise self for forsaking trusty quotidian running shoes). Locate building. Can’t find door. Notice blue-haired and pierced types walking in opposite direction from me. Turn around and follow. Destination reached.

It turns out to even be good theater. (So rare.) Really good — tear up three times from the truths told and stand in ovation at the end good.

Thank friend’s boyfriend over cell phone afterward for staying home and giving me my first real night out in a year and a half. He laughs and says something about schadenfreude.  Ooops! I didn’t mean… Oh well.

And then I’m home by 10, and the boy sleeps through till 6:45 this morning.

That said, there’s a sense of wanting to post a wrap-up to the latest round of sleep training.

This time, it was like the books said. Three nights of crying. And then the fourth night he cried for less than five minutes. And the last two nights, more of a complaining whimper that lasted only a few seconds, maybe a minute.

On that fourth night, Scott wasn’t home. It was me and the nanny. Which presented a quandary of sorts since up to that point, we’d been having Scott do the final steps of the bedtime routine to help break Jonah of the nursing-himself-to-sleep habit.

Nanny was going to do it. I stood outside of the nursery, listening to her read him books, my heart aching. She’d been with him all afternoon. I’d barely seen him at all since lunch. This didn’t feel right. I was pacing my office when I heard her exit the nursery with him in arms. “Maybe you could sing to him a little?” she suggested.

Thank goodness.

That boy squirmed like a mad greased monkey trying to get at my boobs, but I held on, sang, swayed a little. (Rather than the hard swingy-rocking we had been doing in the past to practically knock him unconscious. Aside from the fact that the efficacy had passed its due date on that technique, my body has passed the threshold of its ability to hold him and swing back and forth for that long, at his current size.)

Eventually he gave up and nestled his face into my neck. After a few rounds of “Angels Watching Over Me,” “Lov-er-ly” and “Don’t Fence Me In” (just wait till he’s old enough to get the irony of that one), I put him down, gamely trying to rub his back as he crawled around in little circles, face into mattress, pushing up to all fours, rolling sideways, pushing up again, reaching for the crib bars. Trying to protest, and just too tired.

Tonight, Scott was home, but I took the singing duties again. Mere minutes after book time with daddy ended and singing began, the boy was down, and out.

And each of these four nights, he’s slept through till at least 5:45 a.m. About 11 hours without night waking (after we stopped going in at 4:30 a.m. on the second night).

In retrospect, I think this is how we went off the rails:

Putting him down without any rocking or singing involved letting him cry. We got sick of hearing him cry, fell back on our habit of rocking him to sleep. He was waking maybe once a night which was fine, especially when Scott was willing to give him a bottle and get him back down, and he was willing to take said bottle. Then his night waking started to increase in frequency over the course of an evening, but that seemed developmentally appropriate given the teething and learning to crawl and standing in his crib. Then our ability to get him to fall asleep, and fall back to sleep started falling apart. Then I panicked about letting him cry ever at all and started going to him whenever, giving him the boob if he seemed to want it. Especially because he seems like such a little guy, I was convinced that he was hungry. Then someone in my moms group said that at this age you’re supposed to respond to night waking because it’s separation anxiety. Which meant more nursing, soothing, etc.

Somewhere in there, I had also started letting the boy nurse himself to sleep. I think that was what finally derailed us. I’m no expert. I’m guessing here. It seems like after that, he was unable to fall asleep unless he nursed himself there. So, if he nursed and didn’t fall asleep, then he was frustrated, tired, and still awake. Which led to the sudden evolution of the late-night refusing to take the bottle and the three hour crying sessions broken up by nursing but not solved by nursing, in the wee hours.

Weissbluth says it’s okay to nurse to sleep but for us, at this age, that wasn’t the case. Mindell says if you let them nurse to sleep, they’ll wake themselves up later because they’ll rouse slightly over the course of a sleep cycle and be surprised at the boob’s seemingly sudden absence. That seemed true for Jonah as he’d begun waking 1-2 hours after nursing to sleep, which he’d never done before.

I can’t say exactly when, but in the midst of all this, the boy also started rejecting his pacifier. Just not into it anymore. He used to suck on it at various times throughout the day, as well as at night, during book time, but then he’d frequently spit it out to cry when we put him down in the crib anyway. So that may have led to more dependence on the boob…

There. I’m my own sleep consultant. I’ll just pay me that $125/hour fee. Actually, I owe part of that to all of you who have shared your stories and offered encouragement. And my pediatrician, whom I just decided to finally believe and do what she said.

Now naps are still elusive. I’m going to hold on to my little shred of faith that eventually those will come online, whether it’s two short or one long (cross fingers, knock wood).

Color us amazed. Scott had so much energy today — he thought it was nerves and then realized it was just that he hasn’t had enough sleep in so long, he’d forgotten what it felt like.

The naps seem to still be MIA. Don’t tell me once this boy has night sleep he’ll never sleep during the day again. Crossing our fingers that naps will return soon.

Tonight it would have been only 13 minutes of crying, had I not gotten antsy in the silence and checked to make sure he hadn’t fallen asleep standing up. He roused when I walked in and cried for 10 minutes more. Cue self-hatred.

It’s hard. And imperfect. But the well-rested boy that we get in the morning is worth it.

Meanwhile, the language universe continues to expand. There’s Ba! (like “aaahh” for banana, and Ba! (like “ack”) for bath. And seemingly Liacht, for light although that may have been accidental just yet. And, well, I knew this would happen sometime… as of yesterday, he’s figured out how to communicate his desire to nurse.

He taps on my chest like he’s trying to get the bartender’s attention, thwap thwap thwap, looks me in the eye and says, “Boo?”

After last nights’ crying session, he slept till 4:30 a.m. That’s better than it’s been most nights lately. But here’s the really wild part:

I got up, Scott brought him to bed, I nursed till 5:15 — the usual routine. The boy started getting active, wanting to crawl all over daddy. Time to get up! But daddy’s still sick and wouldn’t budge.

I was also pretty damn tired. Boy slept, but husband was up and down all night long. Took boy to nursery, held him on lap in vice-like hug grip, rocked and shushed in rocker. And the crazy thing? He fell back to sleep. I put him in the crib and he didn’t get up again until 6:45!!!!!!

O.M.G.

Also, the 4:30 wake-up was the angry yowling cry kind, but the post-6 wake-up was the tweedle-dee I’m just going to hang out in my crib and talk to myself until the others arrive kind. The well-rested baby kind. Hurray!

The ped had said to only tackle one issue at a time: bedtime first, then the night waking. Could it be that the 4:30 wake-up is a night-waking, that may one day fade?

In related news — the folks at Dr. Greene’s website got wind of our struggles and gave us a shout out. Woke up today to find yet more encouragement on the web. Thanks Ms. Greene!

For a lot of interesting comments from moms who’ve been there, check out this post at Her Bad Mother — which helped me during the melee last night.

I’m falling behind, people. On emails, on responding to commenters, on getting my next post written for WEtv.com. I called in reinforcements for tomorrow — nanny care for the boy so I will be able to focus for a few hours. Everyone says how great it is, how lucky I am, to do the work-at-home thing. I am. Yes, and it’s really hard, especially when I have a day like today — and yesterday — when both husband and baby have been sick and it’s not just the mothering and the working but someone had to do the dishes and the laundry and the sad fact is that Scott does way more of that stuff than I do most weeks, so with him down for the count — at least he could watch the boy from his prone position on the couch while I got the chores done.

And I was inordinately proud of myself for doing the chores. Been meaning to contribute more. Surprised I had the energy for it.

Which leads me to:

Falling… asleep.

As far as I can trace back, the boy started to develop a night waking habit while we were in L.A. and all sleeping in the same room (a.k.a.: next to the taco truck — as in if you were sleeping… you’d smell the meat cooking and get hungry too.). That coincided nicely with more teething, and learning how to stand up in the crib, and a possible fear of the dark, and getting better and better at yelling expressing himself verbally.

And then I wrote about it and got into that “Thing” with that other mom which threw me into a wasn’t-I-supposed-to-be-an-attachment-mother-? panic.

And then he decided (he’s the DECIDER) that although this was never true before, now he would ONLY go to sleep if he nursed himself there. Period.

Fast forward to this past week or so, and the worst nights we’ve EVER had. Three hour crying/fighting sessions with him refusing to sleep from midnight to three a.m. one night, one to four another. Waking up at 3 and staying awake till 10 a.m. Nursing several times throughout the night, and if he can’t nurse himself to sleep, not sleeping.

Scott started doing mid-night bottle feedings which worked for a few nights — getting the boy back to sleep right after. And then, the boy decided he didn’t want the bottle any more.

Today we called the pediatrician. And for better or worse, we decided to follow her advice. No more nursing him down; no nighttime feedings.

It was time to sleep train again.

We swapped the routine, explaining it to him as we went. Tonight he nursed first, then had his bath, then books, then bed.

He stood in the crib and screamed. Scott checked on him at the 5 minute mark, 10 minutes, 20, 40, returning the boy to the lying down position, only to have him flip over and pop back up again. Whenever it seemed like the crying stopped, I begged him to go in and make sure Jonah wasn’t sleeping standing up. I knew if I went in to check, console, reposition, it wouldn’t work (boobs = taco truck). At one hour and fifteen minutes, the boy was finally asleep.

Now, we wait…

Kind of a bust.

The boy loves to pull it apart. Put the smaller bits in his mouth (probably not a good idea — definitely not strong enough to withstand his new teeth). And when he fell over this morning? Missed the mat.

Still, it’s cute.

* * *

Boom (box): Click here to read my interview with Cynical Dad about soothing songs.

The costume didn’t exactly look like the photo in the online catalogue. But I kept it anyway because I couldn’t be bothered to go through the whole return this and risk not liking the next one either thing. I’m a new mom (still playing that card, ahem) and a to-do-list item to-done is worth more to me than you can possibly know.

However, I’d just like to point out that if you changed the colors in photoshop, that’s just mean. And besides, I think you added the plush banana-in-pocket because you knew it didn’t actually look like a monkey.

Thanks anyway.

Julie

* * *

This post has the pic of what I thought I’d ordered.

Here, is what he wore. And of course he made it work, because he’s adorable. Also, we gave him a real banana. Vive la verite.

I think, therefore I hold a banana…

mmmmmmellow yellow

whatchu talkin bout banana?

* * *

And then we took the show on the road…

…to a Halloween for Tots party at the Berkeley YMCA

with Laura and Flann en bear costume (and our respective husbands of course).

The ball pit was very popular.

We all four stayed in it until our time was up and just as we were climbing out, Scott said, “Has anyone else noticed that it smells faintly of pee?”

Yummy.

(Chants to self: good for the immune system immune system immune syst…)