Doctor Jeckyl and Mister Baby

You know how I mentioned that World's Cutest has been a little....needy, lately? A little demanding?

A little...horrible?

Okay, I know I didn't say 'horrible'; I would never say that. And he's not consistantly horrible, not at all. He's as charming as ever, smiling and laughing, flinging his arms out in excitement when he sees one of us, giving badly-aimed, wide-open-mouth kisses.

Just as charming as ever.
Precisely 50% of the time.

And it's impossible to guess what triggers the change. I honestly can't think of a thing. One minute, he's Sweetie Baby, and the next, he's yelling as if someone's stabbing him. He can't stand to be left alone for a moment, when he's in this state, but picking him up doesn't necessarily stop the howling - just puts the source closer to your ear.

Plus, he's so active - within a muscle twitch of actually crawling - that it's risky to turn your back for long, even when he's asleep. Which mean that, if I need to do so much as turn a page or answer the phone, he needs to go into one of the containment devices (crib, pen, saucer.) It's really important to me that he not grow to hate his crib, but that seems to be the road that we're going down now.

Last night he woke up 4 times. I'm dyin' here.

I've said before that motherhood has made me much more aware of my mortality, much more aware of my life as a physical being generally. Ah, yes...I remember the days when I lived in the ether almost all the time, the voicemail/email/mp3/philosphy and theology world....but pregnancy jostled me right out, right into a world of fluids and leaky parts and insane starving hunger and taking up way too much room....And of course that was nothing compared to parenthood, the pumping and the pee and the diaper cheese and the chipping of the dried peas out of the eyebrow - his, not mine, usually.

And the tireness, the previously unimaginable bone tireness, the mornings when even your skin is tired. That's what makes me think about death - not about my own death particularly, and certainly not about killing myself or anything. Just about the fact that I live in a body, and bodies have their limits.

And Mister Baby is bumping me up against mine.

He's hungry all the time, on account of another growth spurt; he's capable of over-peeing a super-absorbent overnight diaper. He's been teething continuously for about 4 months, swamped in drool, which is turn creates a rash on his creasy neck, but no teeth yet.

Boy oh boy, do I need a night off.