Week 10: Standing and bathing

Eli hit an incredibly important milestone this week, which I’ll get to in a moment. First, here’s a look at his latest fun game, “standing with Mommy.” Note: no babies were injured during filming of this video.

Ok, on to the milestone. Check it out:

That, my friends, is Eli in the bathtub … NOT screaming! You don’t understand. This is a kid who, while getting his very first bath in the hospital, screamed so hard we thought they were secretly circumcising him. This is a baby for whom the bath has previously been a 90-second, two-person affair that left me, at least, near tears and Eli breathless, red-faced, and enraged for at least an hour afterwards. Now, granted, he doesn’t look entirely happy here, but trust me. For him, this is loving it.

Here are some other insights into life with Eli.

1. He got a super-cool new Australian hammock to sleep in (that’s mommy’s pajama shirt over the mattress, to provide that familiar milk-and-body-odor scent — yummy), and in the two nights he’s used it, he’s gone a whopping seven hours, and looked like an adorable little burrito doing it!

2. Sometimes, when Eli’s super fussy at night, the dishwasher puts him right to sleep. Ok, not this night, but at least he’s resting there in the papasan, which is better than the other nights where we’ve hunkered down on a stool, holding his head right up next to the loud, womb-like swooshing Machine of Magic.

3. The Baby Bjorn is by far the most valuable bit of baby equipment we own. Heck, he’s sleeping in it as I type this!

4. Did I mention that he did not cry in the bath on Sunday? At all? Not even after? What a great baby.