Five months

Tomorrow the boy will be five months old.  In lieu of updated photos (... Ahem, Speedy.  Ahem!!) a list:

• The boy is a prodigious eater (has not found a food he doesn't like, though we are still only in the tasting, not feeding, zone.) 
• He can sit for minutes at a time, diligently working to bring all the toys within sight in a tight pile around him.  That he occasionally spastically flings one away just adds suspense and excitement to the game.  
• He can roll over both ways and has for months, but he vastly prefers to roll from his back to his stomach and then will flail and kick angrily until we put him on his back, only for him to roll over again.  
• He can pull to standing on his crib (which is really where he plays while I fold laundry-- he has spent mayyyybe an hour in total actually sleeping in the thing.) But he prefers to use our fingers to hoist himself up from a prone position, bypassing sitting altogether.  His new-found verticality has introduced a well-deserved new perspective.  He can now grab at the mobile that he used to watch passively from below.  But it also comes with new frustrations.  He wants to move but cannot master being both upright and moving at the same time.  Sometimes this leads to toppling over, which may or may not include a bumped head and tears.  Also, he is a afraid to sit down once standing, so will cling to the edge of the crib with an increasingly forlorn expression until we help him down. 
• He thinks peekaboo is hilarious, and starts giggling before we even uncover our faces.
• One of his favorite games is a homespun game I like to call "Where da baby?"in which he lies on his back and I unfurl a sheet over him and let it drift slowly down.  He giggles and kicks and twists as it comes closer, squealing in pleasure.
• He is extremely munchable and ticklish, a delectable combination.
• He is coming out of his no-neck phase, and is becoming even cuter than ever.
• We are still sleeping in the family bed, something I am still shocked that we decided to do (in a mostly good way) because we had never intended to.  However, I have to say that despite the obvious drawbacks (the 24/7 mommy milk bar; lack of space; lack of, er, privacy) it feels 100 percent natural and positive.  We will put him in his own bed soon, but we feel like, for us, providing him (and us) with this safe, nutrturing, bonding environment will only be a good thing for all of us in years to come.
• We are in process of reactivating our donor at CCB.*   Fingers crossed.

*Edited to add: the reactivation process can take a year or longer, including the mandatory six-month quarantine period.  Since I am staring down both barrels at 40 (October, 2012), we thought we better get the process rolling.

*Edited FURTHER to add:...and rolling it is.  No long drama here.  Our donor said YES :-)  Jacques, it turns out, is game to give!  A faxed-in form and a credit card payment ,and we're officially in the sperm-procurement phase of Project Speetus 2.0. 


On Ozzie:  Thank you so much for your support and understanding.  I am still devastated.  In fact, I partly did this post just to move the post about Ozzie down.  Every time I see that picture I start crying. 

I know this is not losing a child or a pregnancy, but I can't stop.  The grief is real.

She was a quiet wheel among many squeaky ones.  She was supremely lazy and most content to lie on her bed, knowing that the treats would come to her. Instead of hovering two millimeters outside of the forbidden kitchen zone along with the rest of them, she would wait on her bed, occasionally thumping her tail, just to remind us she was still there.  We always brought her treats to her, and if she could manage to use her tongue to reach whatever tasty item was proffered, she would not even raise her head fully off the bed.  She made laziness an artform.  When she would see friends in the park, she would do this slow, loping loop around them, windmilling her tail in a joyful greeting. When we came home, or when friends would come by, she would greet us or them at the door, carrying her favorite orangutan toy, the only time she would deign to leave her bed when inside. For months, she carried an oversize tennis ball that she had found in the around like it was a puppy.  If I said "Ozzie, where's Wilson?" she would go and lie next to the book case or the couch or the coffee table, wherever the ball had gotten stuck.  Long after Wilson #1 mysteriously vanished, she had a procession of favorite balls, all also named Wilson.


With so many animals, it is hard not to feel like my time and attention is too divided, that we could have or should have done better by Ozzie. She did not spend much time on the couch or within easy reach, so perhaps did not get as many pets as the others, though we tried to fairly distribute them.  I am obsessed with how we might have made her life better, even though I know she had a damn good one.  It is just hard to know that there will be no more pets and treats to give her, and I can't help wishing I had given more when I had the chance.