As of Friday, Liam has been mooching off us for four months. I hear this can last for years, with only an occasional pencil-holder-made-from-a-can-of-peaches as repayment. We are rethinking our arrangement.

This past month has been a challenge, although if I were being completely honest, certainly moreso for us than for you, little guy. You have rolled from your tummy to your back, although you haven’t figured out how useful such a feat could be as of yet, and for that we are thankful. You now happily gnaw on your fingers most of the day, usually resulting in the entire front half of your t-shirt being drenched in drool. Those fingers have also gained in dexterity, and you can grab ahold of nearly anything we offer you. You enjoy (eating) most of your stuffed animals, as well as your friend Sophie the giraffe, although you can’t quite get Sophie to your mouth in an organized manner, so often you just end up banging yourself in the head with it. Toward the end of the month, you discovered the cheapest, most easilily accessible toy there is… your feet. Before or after a nap, we can often see you grabbing at them and giggling.

Yes, I said nap! You nap now, somewhat, albeit very short naps that rarely last more than an hour on a good day, a half hour when we’re not so lucky. You are so much more enjoyable when well-rested, although your dear mother would really appreciate it if you would work on sleeping a bit longer. Especially since some days she could really use a nap too, and a half-hour is barely long enough for her to approach the gates of dreamland.

In not-so-fun news, your VCUG test in follow-up to your UTI was this past month, and if we never have to do that again, I think it will still be too soon. Whoever had the idea of strapping a baby to a board and then forceably filling his bladder multiple times while taking xrays of him was a sadistic bastard. You spent nearly the entire time bawling, and the nurses kept instructing us to give you glucose to calm you down, which seems like a really bad idea -hey guys, this baby is freaking out!  Let’s pump him full of sugar, that’ll make it better!

 By the time the test was done, your eyes were so puffy they were little more than slits. The xrays showed that you did indeed have a reflux between your bladder and your kidneys; not a horrendously bad one, but enough to keep us pumping you full of antibiotics in prevention of another possible infection. I didn’t personally like this idea very much, and when the doctor admitted, after my questioning, that there were no studies on the matter but they “thought it seemed like it helped” she liked it even less.  But you know your father, all about the science and what not, so the decision was made.  In two months, you’ll have an ultrasound of your kidneys and we’ll see where we go from there.

 Sleep has also become a nightmare these past few weeks, with your father often having to resort to ridiculously long walks in the stroller to get you to so much as consider sleeping, and even then, sometimes when he comes homes an hour later looking all defeated, you have definitely considered the matter, but the jury is still out.  You’ve also taken to having nightmares these last few nights, which require not much more than a word or two from a parent and sometimes a binky, but it’s exhausting enough at that.  Sleep, glorious sleep, come back to us!

Your other reflux (ie fun, projectile vomiting) has taken a turn for the worse as well in recent times, but the doctor has given us a new medicine to try, so fingers crossed.

All in all, you aren’t all that bad. We think we’ll keep you.