I should have known it wasn’t going to last.

My first mistake was in making a reservation at a nicer restaurant.  The kind of restaurant that’s kind of quiet, and has dim lighting and tiny tables.  This is not the kind of restaurant that’s going to interest a six month old young man, and there wasn’t enough noise to mask his baby mutterings.

My second mistake was in not realizing that Aidan’s mutterings are loud at home and would be positively explosive in a quiet restaurant.  He’s working on talking, and for Aidan talking means opening his mouth and saying “AHHH” as loud as he can for as long as he has breath.  We have conversations like this at home, and it’s loud enough there.  In a restaurant, though, it’s deafening.

The third mistake was not realizing that the timing just wasn’t going to work.  He goes to bed at 7:30pm, our reservation was for 6pm…Yeah.  He started getting fussy and tired right around when dinner was served, so we all ate very quickly and then Wes took Aidan outside while we waited for the check.

We definitely got some irritated looks from other diners, which I understand.  I should have known better than to bring a baby to a nice restaurant.  I didn’t glare back or get embarrassed though.  I just took care of my baby and let the irritated diners take care of themselves.

My friend and her husband, to their credit, didn’t even bat their respective eyes.  They assured us that our child is adorable (and loud) and we assured them that the next time we go out for dinner we’ll let Aidan hang out with his grandparents.

I guess we just chalk this one up to learning experiences.  I am, after all, still considered a new mom and as such can not possibly be expected to know all things at all times.  Besides, I really don’t think Aidan would be trying hard enough at all if he didn’t routinely change things up and keep me guessing.

He grinned and babbled and wiggled and jumped for his doctor, and she pronounced him beautiful and healthy as can be!  Of course, after she left it was time for shots, which I loathe and dread.  If I weren’t absolutely convinced they were the best thing for him I would refuse them for sure.

Aidan’s such a sweet boy, anything that makes him that sad ought to be kicked into the gutter, you know?  But, I’d rather a momentarily sad baby than a baby with polio so he gets his shots and I comfort him as best I can.

His nurse (we always have the same nurse and she’s awesome) gave him the oral vaccine first, and I warned her that he would try to “help” her with his little baby hands, and to just let him because it’s easier to do that than to try to fend them off.  When he was done, I clapped and cheered for him, which made him smile and wiggle with exuberance.

I explained to his nurse that he likes it when people cheer for him, and she laughed and proceeded to give him the first of his two shots.  He didn’t seem to notice it (she’s fast, you see) and then she gave him the second shot.  He always notices the second shot, and he shrieked and immediately started crying.

I picked him up and held him close, and then his nurse stepped over to where he could see her and started clapping and cheering for him.  He stopped crying, and promptly offered her a huge grin, his teary eyes making the smile even more endearing.  After that, it’s like he forgot he was upset and the rest of the day passed uneventfully.

It’s moments like that that make you so glad other people give a darn about your baby.  Sunday school helpers, teachers, nurses, doctors, family members, all these people don’t really have to care about your baby, but when they do it makes such a difference.  It makes the world feel like a decent place to raise someone you love.

We had the time of our lives though, more on that to come later.  I just wanted to peek my head around the corner and share this photo with you.  Wes and I were apparently not tired enough to pass up the opportunity to photograph Aidan looking like a young Jedi-in-training last night.

He says, “These are not the thumbs you are looking for…”

Then, parenthood happened.  Or, rather, the universal truism that when you make a plan, your child laughs.

For a few weeks now, Wes and I have given Aidan slices of fruits to gnaw on to appease his insatiable gums.  It feels like he’s been teething for about a year now, and he’s much happier when he has something to crush with his pitbull jaws.  He’d prefer to pulverize our fingers, but will just as happily take ice cubes, slices of apple, mango cores, that sort of thing (with, of course, rigid, militant supervision).

On Saturday, Wes shared a little of his fresh farmer’s market nectarine with Aidan and Aidan just looked so happy gumming it that we thought we’d steam and puree some more and then see how it went.

We steamed, we pureed, we sat Aidan down in his bouncy chair, and grabbed the wee baby spoon.  Aidan looked on with interest while I settled myself in front of him with the food and Wes took up a position off to the side for optimal photo-taking.

I loaded up a tiny bit of food on the spoon, brought it close to Aidan’s mouth and…He opened his mouth and ate it.  Just slurped it right off the spoon.  No funny faces, no pushing it out with his tongue.

He opened his mouth, swallowed what was on the spoon, and then opened his mouth again.  Easy peasy.

In retrospect, the writing’s been on the wall for awhile that Aidan was ready for solid foods.  He’s pointedly interested in whatever we put in our mouths, he will grab whatever he can reach and cram it into his mouth, and he’s getting increasingly squirmy and disinterested while breastfeeding.

I told Wes this weekend that I think this will be my last month of breastfeeding.  Aidan’s just so busy, and interested in the world around him, that breastfeeding him is less a time of bonding and more a time of child wrangling and milk dripping all over the both of us.  I think I’ll give him the benefit of a solid six months of exclusive breastfeeding, and then we’ll go to bottles, defrosting the supply from the freezer until it’s all gone.

I’m considering continuing to pump, and just giving Aidan bottles of the pumped milk, but I have my doubts about how long I’ll do that.  We’ll see.  The only thing I know for certain is that my little baby is growing up faster every day, and I am completely ill-equipped to deal with it.  I feel like I wake up every day and wonder who the little boy is who’s squealing with delight at me from my wee baby’s crib.

Tasty feet and toys make Aidan's face look like this.

Aidan really and truly discovered his feet last night.  The previous week held the discovery of the presence of vaguely hand-like apparatuses at the ends of his legs, but he broke the wrapper off those tootsies last night and started trying in earnest to get them into his mouth.

He also started work on mastering the art of bringing toys to his mouth last week.  He’s still more likely to end up with a toy in his eye or conked against the side of his head, but maybe 2/5 attempts ends with a vigorously bitten and drooled on toy in his mouth.

In other words, my baby is ever-faster learning the mechanics of being a big kid and leaving more and more of his babyhood in the dust.  I keep looking at him pulling himself up to a sitting position, avidly watching me eat, and taking stompy little baby steps when I hold him up on his feet, and I wonder exactly how long I have before he’s moving around the house on his own, feeding himself and saying ‘No thank you’ to breastmilk the minute he discovers beef.

It was in the midst of all this discovery (on Aidan’s part) and wonder (on my part) that Wes proposed a vacation.  We’re pretty close to Victoria B.C., and we’ve visited before, and the local ship that takes people there was offering a 50% discount so long as you booked before September 26, 2010.

Wes asked me if I wanted to take a weekend vacation with him, maybe having Aidan stay with his parents while we escaped and took wine tours and ate leisurely meals.  On the one hand, I practically started salivating at the prospect of all that relaxation and time with my husband.  The more I started thinking about it, though, the more anxious I got.

The prospect of me leaving him for days makes Aidan's face look like this.

Not only would I have to bring a breast pump with me on vacation (which sounds exactly as fun as having a troupe of kittens kick litter right in my face), I’d be leaving my baby for days.  Days.  For all I know, he’d have learned how to walk and solve quadratic equations by the time we got back.

The more I thought about that, the more anxious I got, and I realized that spending money to go on a vacation where in all likelihood I would spend the majority of my time uncomfortable and anxious was probably a pretty dumb idea.  I’m just plain not ready, I guess.

I have no doubt that there will come a day when I will be ready.  This will likely be when Aidan’s weaned and I won’t have to bring my breast pump on vacations with me.  I guess all the change just freaked me out a bit.  Aidan’s figuring stuff out and growing so quickly, and now we’re discussing vacations, my poor brain just slammed on the brakes and put the kibosh on any more nonsense for a bit.

I did promise Wes that we would take another vacation to Victoria B.C. next summer, and that it would probably be the last vacation we took before starting to try to get pregnant with baby numero dos.  He agreed, and now we have something fun to look forward to!  But still, all these changes, they’ll likely be the end of me.

Wes and I make the most of these by taking a walk after dinner every evening that we can.  We strap Aidan into his Baby Bjorn (which he loves) and perambulating we go, three Mitchells taking in a summer evening.  I’m absolutely certain that these walks in no way atone for the amount of cheese we gleefully consume in our household, but it gets us some much-needed Vitamin D.  Surely the Vitamin D cancels out the cholesterol, no?

Anyway.  We walk in the evenings, and during the course of these walks we meet a good many people from around our neighborhood.  We passed a mother of two elementary school-aged kids, and she stopped to coo over Aidan, exclaiming, “I remember the Bjorn stage!”

She then asked us what his name was, and when we replied that his name is Aidan, she laughed and pointed to her son, telling us that his name was Aidan too.  We all laughed over the shared name, and she said that she has a neighbor whose child is named Aidan, and that she was pretty sure there was another Aidan in the neighborhood too.

As we walked away, I chided Wes, saying, “This is why you don’t name your child with the #1 most popular boy name in America!”  He shrugged and said he didn’t really care, while I equivocated that at least this meant our son wouldn’t get mocked by schoolmates for having a strange name.

The thing with Aidan’s name is that, when we picked it, it wasn’t the most popular name in America.  Aidan’s name has been picked out since 2002, when Wes and I first started dating.  We were on the phone late one night, talking about whether either of us wanted to have kids.

I told Wes I couldn’t see myself having kids, as I had no experience with little ones and was pretty certain I’d be a shoddy mother.  He said he fully intended to have kids someday, and that he’d want them to have cool Irish names (Wes is part Irish, and loves his Irish heritage).

I asked him if he had any names in mind, and he said the only one he was certain of was the name of his first son, whom he wanted to name Aidan.  When I asked if he had a middle name picked out, he said he’d probably want to name his first son after his father and use his father’s first name as Aidan’s middle name.

And so it was.  Aidan’s name, spelled out and well-loved well before his parents got their act together enough to get hitched.  Of course, we have other names picked out and ready to go.  Whether the next baby is a boy or girl, his or her name is ready to go, with a name from my side of the family ready to serve as a middle name.

While we waited to have babies, the rest of the country fell in love with the name Aidan and now there are Aidans everywhere.  The nice thing is, at least we won’t have to worry about no one knowing how to spell our son’s name…

The first thing I keep mulling over in my mind is how many kids I want to have.  Wes is content to have two and then see how we feel.  I can already tell how I’m going to feel: Right after baby two is born, I’ll be certain we’re done.  When baby two is a few months old, however, I’ll panic at the prospect of not having any more babies to snuggle and want more.

Trying to figure out how many kids to have is a huge responsibility!  We’re essentially deciding how many people we want to bring into the world, how many tiny humans we want to watch take their first breaths and then raise in a loving, stable home.

I’ve always seen myself as the kind of person who has a lot of love to give, and therefore would be at ease with three kids.  A hectic but happy household.  Now that I have a little baby, though, I see how much work it is!  The thought of doing this not once but twice more makes me want to take a 20 year nap.

Then there are the mechanics of having more than two kids.  From what I hear, having two kids is do-able, but when the kids start outnumbering the parents things turn into a bit of a circus.  But I like circuses!

The second issue I’ve been chewing on like the proverbial old bone is when to start Aidan on solid foods.  He’s been exclusively breastfed, and I don’t know why but I’ve always had it in my head that he’d be weaned by the time he was six months and on solid foods then.

After researching the issue, however, I’ve learned that almost everyone in the world recommends exclusive breastmilk/formula for the first six months, and then introducing solid foods but still providing the bulk of nutrition with breastmilk/formula until one year.  Then there are all these studies showing correlations (which, thanks to my psych degree, I know means nothing much until more research is done) between introducing solid foods prior to six months of age and diabetes/childhood obesity.

I was all gung-ho to start mashing up food and smearing it all over Aidan’s face.  I bought a Beaba, bought some wee baby spoons, and plotted his first meal.  Now, however, I’m getting cold feet.

After discussing the issue with Wes last night, I decided we’re just going to wait until Aidan’s six months old to introduce solid foods.  It will just make me feel better, and sometimes your mother’s intuition is all you have to go on.

Now, to merge the two hamsters…A spin-off question then becomes: If we do have three kids, will I fret over when to introduce solid foods to the third kid as much as I am for Aidan?  Almost assuredly not, for by the third kid I shall be wise and competent…Or else so subsumed by laundry as to no longer have the capacity to care so much.  Either or.

Well, there’s nothing for it but to just rip the Band-Aid off, so here goes: I am referring to letting your baby cry it out.

First, I’ll start with some back story.  Since he was about 1.5 weeks old, he’s always been a fantastic nighttime sleeper (I credit the miraculous swing for that).  Daytime sleeping, however?  Not his cup of tea.

Difficult to get him to sleep in the first place (despite heavy eyes and fussing, he’d always assure me a nap wasn’t necessary), and he’d inevitably wake up every 15-30 minutes, and take another 20 minutes of shushing, rocking, swaying, bouncing, and walking around to get him back down.

What should have been a three hour nap (he’s always needed a one hour nap in the morning, and a three hour nap in the afternoon, I’m so lucky!) would stretch into five hours of exhausting soothing on my part, exhausted wailing on his part.  Wes would come home and find me with a sore back and frayed nerves.

He wasn’t getting much rest (how can you get any good sleep when you’re awake every 30 minutes?) and I was starting to feel like I was going to lose it.  I dreaded every afternoon nap, especially when I started to feel like he was just manipulating me.  I’d walk into his room when I heard him screaming, and the minute he saw my face he’d stop screaming and give me big, goofy smiles.

That was when I decided to do some research.  I started asking a bunch of moms I know what they would do, and the answer was nearly unanimous: Let him cry it out.

Now, crying it out has such a bad reputation on the Internet.  This post, which I read while I was researching crying it out, was particularly condemning.  For every article or post I saw that warned against the method, however, I saw hundreds of other posts from parents saying that with a loving approach it was great.

I weighed the pros and cons, and decided to try it for a week, starting when he was four months old and using the original Ferber method, not just locking Aidan in a room and letting him cry for as long as it took.  When I knew Aidan was tired, I would make sure his diaper was fresh, make sure his belly was full, and then rock and cuddle him until he was nearly asleep.

Then, I put him in his crib, tucked him in with his blanket, and closed the door.  He’d immediately start crying, so I went in after one minute and shushed and held his hands, then left the room again.  He’d start crying again, so I went in after two minutes.  Wash, rinse, repeat at increasing one minute intervals until he was asleep.

After about a week of this, he started putting himself to sleep, and self-soothing himself back to sleep during his daytime naps.  He stopped waking up every 15-30 minutes, and waking up from his naps happier and better rested.  The amount of time he spent crying before each nap decreased, to the point we’re at today, where he grumbles for about a minute before falling right to sleep.

I’m certain that crying it out isn’t best for every parent and baby, but I just thought I’d throw this out so that if you want to try it you won’t feel like your child will become a sociopath because of it.  I asked a bunch of moms, and of the ones who did it, none of their kids seemed to me to be less secure, less empathetic, or more aloof.

So there we go.  Let the tomato throwing commence.