I gawts thawts!

Hey hey! I'm here! And I'm donut powered! Props to Owlie and blueberry cake donuts!

I'm feeling much better than I have in a long ole while- the move was chaotically busy as well as physically taxing. Bebeface of course realized that we were moving, so he decided to work harder- at being demanding. I have never tried to move while also minding a bebe. It's Difficult. I capitalized that D on purpose.

And then the day before yesterday I gave myself minor food poisoning. I call it Chicken Fingers. It's what happens when you cut and prepare chicken and the germs get on your fingers and somehow your fingers transfer the germs to your stomach, which then goes into a state of violent political upheaval and nationwide strike to protest the incursion of foreign elements.

I was in bed all day except for when I was in the bathroom. I woke up the next morning feeling miserable and desperate and worse, so I reached into my bedside table drawer, found a blister pack of amoxicillin left over from my wisdom tooth removal and popped one in my mouth. Yes, all of my doctor friends will scold me for dosing myself with antibiotics, and HF pulled my ear and glared at me, and yes, amoxicillin is typically for ENT and uncomplicated skin infections, but it's also sometimes used to treat stomach ulcers caused by the baceria H. Pylori, so I figured that its presence in my politically unstable stomach couldn't go completely unnoticed. Then I went back to sleep for another six hours.

And woke up feeling like a newer, less toxic man. And today I moved some boxes around, finished up a design project, found out I have another one lined up (Alhamdulillah!) and met Owlie for donuts at the City Center. And now I have thawts! As well as the ability to keep food down! SubhanAllah, health is such a blessing!

Bebeface is six months old now, and I don't know where the time went. Honestly. One day he's this little pink blob, the next he's a big, chubby, heavy, cooing, impossibly cute bundle of giggles and spitbubbles and cramming of slobbery fingers into my mouth. His mouth too, but he's realized that I have a mouth and it's a great place to hold on. He calls for attention and then revels in it, he bounces himself u and down in laps, and even bestows slobbery bebe-kisses on me. Only one other person has been honored with a bebe-kiss, and that's Lil Grey. Khalid's version of a kiss is to smile and then grab you by the face with both hands, and then press his mouth into your cheek. And it makes him exceedingly happy. It's not a 'Hi mom, lemme suck on your cheek,' it's definitely a kiss, and it's definitely reserved for when he's happy and content.

And then when he's not happy there's the ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma of 'momma, help!' or the bbbbbb of the self-defense raspberry. A good indicator of whether Khalid's nose is being cleaned is whether he's blowing raspberries- when I poke a q-tip up there he frowns and goes BBBBBBB with such force that if the q-tip were in his mouth it would have been shot across the room.

And then there's the singing- Khalid sings. He does opera, mostly. He fills the new halls with aaaaaahs and oooohs and waaa waaa waaaas that he enjoys immensely. He experiments with volume, he smiles, and out of his gummy, wet mouth comes an ear-shattering EEEEEEE that might be B-minor, or more likely, EEEEE-major. hehe. My son could shatter glass.

Also, he could probably eat whole chickens. Well, he would if he knew what they were. MashaAllah, Khalid is in the 95th percentile for his height and weight, which means that's he's bigger than 95 percent of other kids his age. Which, for me, means an aching back, but muscle definition on my arms comparable to when I used to lift weights, and for Khalid, it means comments from guests like, "Whoa, Olympic sized!" and Hbiddy's hysterical "Oh my God, that baby is huge!"

(Also, "What an adorable one year old!")

You know, it's interesting seeing how people who haven't been around babies react to Bebeface. I've heard questions that immediately mark the questioner as complete baby-amateur, like "Wow, he's 3/4th Pakistani and 1/4th white, so what does he call you?"

(Well, he's four months old, so he mostly just calls me waaaanh.)

"Cute kid, so what language does he speak?"

(He's a baby, he speaks all languages and they all sound like crying.)

And then there are the exciting babysitting tactics from people who have never babysat before. A group of family friends (we shall call them 'The Four A's) consisting of three very cool dudes and one very cool chick were left to their own devices with Khalid for all of ten minutes. I returned to find the baby strangely quiet. The dudes were sticking small balls of tape onto Khalid's hands, feet and clothing. Khalid thought the crinkly sounds were fantastic. I give that new game a nine out of ten, and it loses one point only for not taping Khalid's arms and legs to each other.

So yeah, Bebeface rocks, but I currently stink. I am a Ramadan nothing this year. But I'll blog about that next time. It's 11:50 right now and Bebeface has just gone to sleep. I'm going to run and do grown-up things like wash my face and maybe reply to my email.

Peace & Chikken Grease! And Ramadan Kareem!

posted by Abez @ 9/27/2006 10:13:00 PM