Golden Pig Tales

Ezra and I are having a New Year’s Eve Party.

The party begins at 6 P.M. with The Dinner. After The Dinner is The Dance Party. The Dance Party will only last until Sleep Time or Write Time. Ezra will be sleeping. I will be writing.

After Sleep Time or Write Time will be Happy New Year. Ezra may not be awake for Happy New Year for he may be sleeping. We have a bet that he will sleep through Happy New Year. He seems to think he will be awake for Happy New Year. If Ezra loses the bet then he has to go sleep in his own room the day after the curtains are hung in his room. If I lose, and Ezra is awake, I may not need to do anything because Ezra hasn’t told me what I need to do if I lose the bet.

After the coming of Frankenstein Jaw has came Ezra’s tongue, which is something I noticed last night when I was watching Ezra make talkie sounds. Every time he lowered his jaw to make a talkie sound the tongue would wiggle here and there. I began to wonder if Ezra was trying to chew off his tongue or catch it between his gums.

I seen the same crazy tongue action this morning. The tongue use to appear to be stuck to the lower jaw. Now when Frankenstein Jaw moves, so moves the tongue probing and poking at the roof of the mouth or along the gum line. The tongue has become a more active component of the mouth. Even the sounds he is making are now being altered with his chaotic tongue movement.

It is exciting. It is kind of weird to see. I can not take credit for the new tongue movement. This tongue movement is probably a result of growing and because of Grandma O, who -v- says she saw opening her mouth at Ezra and sticking tongue out. I am now trying to do my part in showing him how to use his tongue by sticking my tongue out and blowing.

Ezra is now beating on surfaces with his hands or objects in his hands. Today has been a good example of this. During stand practice, he was smiling and beating on top of the coffee table like it was his own personal drum set. Later, when sitting on the floor, Ezra was holding his stuffed animal giraffe by the neck and banging it on the ground and on his head. During the walk around with Ezra, his fists hit chest and arms. While breast feeding, his arm not pinned between his body and the Boppy was flailing like a loose fire hose slapping against -v-’s chest. He was also laying on the floor hitting the floor with hands and feet making sounds with the hardwood floor like a pro wrestler makes when simulating getting hit by another wrestler. We can only hope this hitting doesn’t continue and lead to a life as a pro wrestler because the length of a pro wrestler’s career is too short and wrecks the body. If he does become a pro wrestler, I will be the first help him with his pro wrestling costume and name.

Ezra is shuffling his feet forward while stand practicing. If his stomach muscles were a little more built, he could be walking. Ezra is almost crawling…Sort of. When he does move across the ground while on all fours, he looks more like a caterpillar and doesn’t get very far. The rolling over from front to back is easy now for Ezra, but the rolling from back to front is always stopped by one of his arms.

Or maybe it was more like Cro-Magnon Man Forehead.

The way Ezra’s tired eyes and lowered forehead and brow were when he first woke this morning made him look like he had a huge almost protruding forehead and brow, but it was just a sign of a Travel Weary Ezra after another holiday of traveling; lots of Grandparent Attention; and lots of new things to see (and as -v- wrote yesterday) and put in his mouth.

Travel Weary Ezra didn’t try to put any thing into his mouth this morning. Forty minutes later when Travel Weary Ezra became Smiling Ezra, Smiling Ezra had his hand in his mouth.

Christmas with Ezra meant more presents for me…to open. He’s still a little too uncoordinated to open his own gifts, so I served as unofficial gift-opener yesterday. He got some new toys (to put in his mouth), and some new books (to put in his mouth), and only a couple little outfits (to put in his mouth) (Some family members want Ezra to be a 49ers fan…but that ain’t gonna happen - he’s already got his own cheesehead!). He did show some interest in some of the wrapping paper, but only so much as it was something else to put in his mouth.

Ezra showed a lot of interest in the tree with all the ornaments and lights - though he was always kept far enough away so that he couldn’t pull anything off and put in his mouth.

Teething is now another cause of fussiness, so it too must be inserted officially into Ezra’s Fussiness Discussion Chart

Bored? —> Yes —————> Play
    |
    No
    |
Hungry? —> Yes ————–> Feed
    |
    No
    |
Need Burping? —> Yes ——-> Burp
    |
    No
    |
Diaper Change? —> Yes ——> Change Diaper
    |
    No
    |
Tired? —> Yes ————–> Nap or Sleep
    |
    No
    |
Snotty Nose? —> Yes  ——-> Suck Snot From Nose
    |
    No
    |
Teething? —> Yes ———–> Clean Up Drool; Find Teething Toys; WAIT!
    |
    No
    |
Fever? —> Yes ————–> Call Doctor
    |
    No
    |
Other? —> Yes ————–> Call -v-

Pools of drool now ooze from Ezra’s mouth. His hands and cheeks get covered with drool in a matter of seconds. Holding Ezra on a shoulder is a guaranteed way to get a shirt with a wet shoulder. During stand practice, long drips of saliva drop from lip and leave a path of drool strings. The drool string is much like a spider web in that it difficult to break a single strand and it sticks to everything. When Ezra makes his new sound or just exhales with lips purse, he creates big and small drool bubbles.

As -v- said yesterday, „It’s like Ezra discovered he had a lower jaw today.”

When he moves his lower jaw, his lips almost form a rectangle. If he had teeth, they would be showing.

The jaw movements look more like exorcising or exercise than talking. The movements look more like a mouth workout than movements for effects for the stories he tells with his beatbox sounds and gesticulation. His talk has more bass and sounds more like Human talking than whistles or Humpback Whale talking.

The Golden Alarm began with a few morning cries waking -v-. The Golden Alarm changed from cries to soft whines and talkie noises after a diaper change. I took the Golden Alarm downstairs to play with the Golden Alarm while mom went back to bed. After a few minutes of holding and walking around the house, the Golden Alarm was talkie noises and beatbox sounds. During stand practice, the Golden Alarm smiled and squealed with joy. The Golden Alarm even hopped around working out its growing strong legs. The Golden Alarm talked and talked and talked and talked and talked until the Golden Alarm was fed. Then the Golden Alarm became fussy whines that went silent. The Golden Alarm’s snooze button had been reset. The Golden Alarm went back to bed.

We’ve already established that little Ezra may have an affinity for ducks, but I am wondering now if he is going to be a night owl or early bird. For a while, I was pretty sure that he was definitely going to be an early bird, like his dad.

For the last 6 weeks or so, Ezra’s been tired and put down to sleep anywhere from 5:30 - 7:00. Those weeks, it was normal for him to go to sleep and not wake up again until 5 or 6 in the morning, aside from maybe a snack here and there. But now, what was normal is possibly becoming not normal. What’s been normal the last 5 nights is Ezra getting fussy and then going to sleep at about 6, but then waking up after about 2 hours and wanting to eat and talk, or cry and then eat and talk, maybe do a little stand practicing, maybe get in a diaper change, before finally agreeing (2 hours later) to fall asleep again. So far, this hasn’t been accompanied by any middle-of-the-night periods of extreme wakefulness, and it also hasn’t been accompanied by much difference in the time that Ezra wakes up. But the fact that he isn’t totally ready to call it a night at 6pm makes me think that maybe he could still become a night owl like his mom (used to be).

Ezra woke, played, ate, played, napped, woke, ate, played, napped, woke, ate, played, napped, woke, ate, played, napped, woke, slept, woke, fussed, slept…

It appears Ezra doesn’t have Viral Meningitis, but he does have a snotty nose again. A snotty nose that had -v- and I waking four times (that I remember) last night to suck the snot from Ezra’s nose.

Every time we were woken by loud snotty exhales mixed with fussy cries of Ezra . Once awake, -v- would grab Ezra from the bassinet and lay him face-up over her lap. Then she would push in on the base of the snot sucker, aim and insert the tip of snot sucker up Ezra’s nose. Then she would release the base of the snot sucker creating a vacuum that filled the snot sucker with air and snot of Ezra.

I did wake up each time. I gave encouragement and told Ezra we are sorry about sucking snot from his nose and that we had to do it, so we could all sleep. A couple of times, early in the morning, I had to gently hold his head, so he could not turn head side to side to evade the snot sucker from entering his nose.

We all woke up tired.

We watched another movie today with Ezra. Ezra lost interest after a few minutes. I think because there was too much dialog and not enough action. Or maybe he found it to be as pointless as I did. For what ever reason, Ezra didn’t become hypnotized by the movie as he has the few times Ezra has watched Football. When he has watched Football, he has gotten that blank stare and partially open mouth that many adults I know get when watching Football. He just looks lost when looking at the screen as the players attack each other because of some ball.

-v- and I are not Football haters, we just prefer other sports, and we both have this deep down fear Ezra will want to play Football then get too many concussions and be unable to become beatbox master or a sane old man.

EZ-O has been learning new beatbox skillz from his mentor -v-. (Yes, that’s skills with z.) His latest technique is improvement upon a fundamental skill of beatboxing that has been around since the early days of beatboxing.

EZ-O is so dedicated to perfection of his art that he is willing to practice this new sound morning, noon and night. There is nothing like waking up to this sound when it’s four in the morning knowing my son is giving it his all to become a beatbox master.

I was going through some of Ezra’s clothes and found this outfit:

Woah! He looks like some little elfin lord of baby duckies - little Ezra McQuackers. Also, you can’t quite see it, but he’s wearing socks that have little duck faces on them. I got those for him when I was out shopping with Auntie M last weekend. I hope Ezra doesn’t grow up with a fear of ducks because of this…

P S - Still no signs of viral meningitis!