He is definitely gaining personality along with mobility, and he definitely has his likes and dislikes. Whereas when he first began eating solids, he didn’t appreciate the taste of fruit at all, now he is all about the sweet stuff and doesn’t want the veggies much anymore. He also loves cords, remote controls, and anything that he can get ahold of to chew and teeth on. I have decided that maybe a little bit of dirt won’t hurt him, and I’ve relaxed about him roaming around on the floor and licking things that have recently touched the ground.

These days he is no longer saying “dada” a lot, but saying “baba” and other varied syllables. We think he is definitely trying to communicate, but we can’t really understand him except by tone. He is also pulling up to a stand easily and sometimes cruises along things. He also tries to take little steps, but he is still hesitant. It won’t be long now before he starts walking, which is a new level of scary. The other day he actually made his way up one of the small steps, then fell backwards and started crying. Those types of things are probably going to increase in frequency soon.

We got a “new” used car for me, and I’m slowly getting used to it. Aidan also started at a new daycare, as my work’s daycare finally has a spot open, which was unexpected. I had put our name on the waiting list ever since we found out at around 5 or 6 weeks, so we’ve been waiting for about a year and half. That did mean that Aidan had to stop going to the lady that we had been going to, and she had bonded to Aidan a lot. It was emotional for all of us, but we’ll still see her at least once a month, since she has agreed to do some babysitting.

The first few days at the new daycare were a bit rough, and he didn’t nap at all. He also seemed to have had a little bit of separation anxiety. In the short term it was a difficult decision to move him, but in the long run I think it will be good for him. It is very close to both of our workplaces and takes kids up to 5 years of age and pre-kindergarten. They have teachers that are specialized in young children’s education, and many of my coworkers have had kids there and speak highly of them.

Oh, and his pediatrician’s check-up for 9 months went quite well. He is apparently under 50th percentile for weight, but around 75% percentile for length or height, which means he’s a “skinny” baby. I don’t think he’s skinny at all, what with his double/triple chin and little chubby thighs, but apparently other babies these days are huge. I’ll have to feed him more, I guess!

He is incredibly adorable when he is crawling, making excited noises and looking happy as he gets around. He is also pulling up on furniture and trying to stand, so maybe not too long from now he will be standing and walking. The other major development is that he is saying “dada,” which seems to be his favorite phrase as he says “dada…da da dada” over and over again. He hasn’t really said “mama” yet, but that’s okay. The good thing is that he seems to be understanding us a bit more and is gaining more linguistic acuity.

These days he is eating a lot more solids, but he’s drinking a bit less milk and seems to dislike it now, which makes me a little sad. But he is still gaining weight well and was 18.5 pounds last time we checked. He is teething and drooling a lot, and probably working on his upper two sets of front teeth, and so in the evenings he is often fussy and unhappy. Still most of the time he sleeps well at night, which has been wonderful.

Aside from that, I’ve been somewhat stressed out about money. Two weeks ago I got into a car accident when someone turned left in front of me at a yellow light, and I did not have enough time to stop. Fortunately Aidan was not in the car with me. The cop that came to the scene of the accident ruled it the other driver’s fault, but the insurance did a split negligence at 80% his and 20% mine. The car was totaled, but it was a rather old 1998 Subaru, and we were planning on getting another car when we paid off the newer Subaru. That just happened to be sooner than we had planned, which means two car payments.

Regardless, I’m grateful that I walked away from the accident without injury, and just a few days of whiplash, neck pain and headaches. It was terrifying, but it’s a reminder that I need to drive more carefully and pay more attention. Even if I don’t do anything reckless, I still need to watch out for other people.

Getting my two and a half year old daughter out of the bath one night, my wife and I were briefing her on how important it was she kept her privates clean. She casually replied “Oh, nobody ‘scroofs’ me there. They tried one night. They kicked the door in and tried but I fought back. I died and now I’m here.” She said this like it was nothing. My wife and I were catatonic.

The rare occasions in which small children have alluded to having violent experiences that led to previous deaths freak me the fuck out.

The most detailed one I ever heard was actually delivered second-hand through my friend’s mother. Apparently beginning around the time my friend could form sentences until he was little more than 2, he would go on and on about how he was a Native American named Conchon and that after his wife and son got sick and died, he moved to a mountain to live by himself with his horse. He died of a broken neck when he fell into a ravine. Weird shit, man.

One of the common things (who was that famous researcher at harvard who did all the hypnosis?) is really young children remembering past lives. I used to not buy into all that, but now I’m not sure.

A kid up the block who’s only 5 remembed a past life where he claimed his house caught fire, and he died when he was a teenager. Sure enough a little digging we found the story and he was able to tell us things that we could ONLY find on the public library microfilm.

My son was two. He was in a pattern of waking us up at about 5:00 am every morning. One morning I took him downstairs and plopped him in front of the TV so I could try to go back to sleep for about 30 minutes on the couch (right by him).

I woke up a few minutes later and he was standing in the foyer, pointing into the kitchen, laughing. He then said, “Mommy is floating in the kitchen.”

I didn’t think much of it…went back to sleep for a bit.

About 30 minutes later his mom came downstairs having just woken up, saying she “had one of those weird dreams where she flew out of her body, went downstairs and found herself in the kitchen.”
Freekay.

My great grandfather died, and because I was so young no one told me. My mom took me to his grave a few weeks after it happened, and let me play amongst the gravestones while she lay flowers. As we were leaving, I stopped and asked “why is great grandpa sitting in the tree?” I then pointed to what appeared to my mom as an empty tree, and waved. The tree was planted so the branches hung right above where he was buried. TL; DR: Pointed out my great grandfather to my mother without knowing he had died.

When my nephew was 3 or 4, he would stare at the window in my parents’ kitchen. One day, my mom asked him what he was looking at, and he said, “When I lived here before, my name was Alphonse, and I was bigger than you.” My mom was slightly creeped out and eventually told my stepdad. My stepdad just kind of blinked and said, “Hmm. That was my grandfather’s name, but we don’t talk about him.”

I’ve been trying to remember the details but I just can’t. Basically when I was about 6/7 I went through a phase like this. Kept telling my parents I used to be a woman, they thought I was gay. I was having half memories of things. Probably just the mind playing tricks, but it was creepy how real it seemed.

As someone who frequently gave details of a past life, I can confirm I have absolutely no recollection of the life I supposedly lived before this one, but I do remember one time when I was about five giving a detailed story of being a viking executing someone. I used to always give very detailed stories of when I ‘was a viking on the ship’ and they always went together. I said that I was part of the same family and what not. Later found out that my family actually was vikings hundreds of years ago, and the names I gave were real people. Again, I have absolutely no memories of the viking days, just the one time I told the story.

The interesting thing that he noted is that all these children claimed to have died from freak accidents. According to what my dad believes, he claims that a child will remember his past life more vividly if the person beforehand died suddenly. When someone ages and dies peacefully, in most cases their memory is already gone (ie. Alzheimer’s, dementia, etc) so the next life (the child) really doesn’t have any specific memory…just thought I’d share! It’s truly an interesting phenomenon, especially in cases where young children are talking about things they have never been exposed to before.

[This one made me laugh] You call them fantasies. Maybe the “white light at the end of the tunnel” is the opening of your next mothers vag

Aidan likes to stare off into space a lot of times, and when I mentioned this, my mother-in-law said that many young kids are supposedly able to “see” more things than adults see. It is like their separation from the veil is less strong, and they are not as strongly tied to the “physical” world as grown-ups are.

These are some of the comments that caught my eye:

When I was a kid “Mr. Rand” used to come into my room 4 or 5 times a week. He’d talk to me and tell me about ‘stuff’ and how he was killed in WW2. See Ol’ mate Rand was a figment of my 4 year old imagination. Any way one day when I was 9 or so Mr. Rand stopped showing up.

Fast forward to about 3 years ago and my son, who is about 5 at the time, walks out of his room one night at about 11:30and says there’s a man in his room. I flip out And run in his room to find nobody to which he then says “Mr. Rand said you can’t see him anymore, but he’s ok!”. The kids got his own imaginary mate called Mr. Rand, but they only chat once or twice a year.

[Later] Mr. Rand died on 5th Feb 1942 – we both agree. Cats are the devils advocate(ammo’cap – is how my son said it), Mr. Rand said the same to me too, me and the young Lad both like cats.

Mr. Rand woke me up one night I swear to you I saw him clear as if he was real. Standing beside my bed. I reached out to touch him and got naught but the cold night air in my bedroom. He hung out almost every night for ages, then one night nothing. I remember we spoke about death one night, that was a strange conversation.

My daughter keeps telling me stories about when she was big and I was little. She talks about taking care of me when I was little.

Probably just a kid being a kid.

My older sister was born the year my Dad’s mom died. According to my dad, as soon as my sister was old enough to say the words, she said “I am your mother.”

When I was about 3 or 4 I would tell my dad stories about how I was good friends with his grandfather. I provided names and traits that had never been said around me before. I also claimed to have ghost brothers who were buried in a cemetery we often drove past.

When I was young, like maybe two years old, my grandma was in the hospital, dying of cancer. Obviously i had no idea what was going on, but apparently one day when my mother and aunt were watching me, I suddenly looked at them and said “Only one Grandma”

they kept trying to convince me otherwise, that no, i had two grandmas, but I kept repeating that line over and over

Then the phone rang. It was my uncle calling to tell my mother that my grandma had passed a few minutes ago

My brother had a similar experience as a child. We had gone to visit my grandparents earlier in the day and everything was fine. When it was time to go to bed my brother, he was about 5 at the time, started crying and saying he wanted to “talk to Papa because he’s sick”. My mom and dad kept assuring him that he was fine as we were just over there earlier in the day. My brother wouldn’t stop screaming so my mom called my grandparents. My grandma was awake and said my grandpa was asleep but she decided to take the phone into his room so he could talk to my grandpa. When she went in to the room my grandpa was unresponsive and had just had a heart attack. Fortunately for him my psycho brother knew somehow and he was able to survive. That was 23 years ago and my grandpa just passed 2 years ago.

Not any relation to me, but I used to go to this family run comic book shop. The owner who I was close friends with had a few kids the oldest of which was about 5 or 6 at the time. Some of my friends and I had just moved the shop to a new location in the historical part of the city. We were putting some stuff in the finished basement. There was a door that lead to an unfinished tunnel that went on for a very long time. It was very old and dark and creepy with a single light bulb. My friend’s son says, “That’s where the ghosts live” and his father said “There’s no ghosts in there!” The kid just looks at his father, stone cold serious and replies, “They’re in there…you just can’t see ‘em…” My friend and I looked at each other and chuckled nervously.

When I was about 5ish my dads cousin shot his 7 year old son and then shot himself (his wife filed for divorce and wanted custody of their son and he went crazy). Well after this happened my dad and his brothers had to clean out their cousins house. Since I was the youngest one at the time they all decided, “Oh! Jess should get this dead child’s toys! That’s great!”

So I ended up with one of those Little Tikes outdoor play castle. You know the one that was like a little plastic castle tower and you could sit inside? Sucha cool fort.

Anyway, The one day I was sitting inside the tower part and my mom was on the deck and she heard me talking to myself. So she comes over and asks who I’m talking to this time (I had a lot of imaginary friends). I told her I was talking to the little boy whose castle it was and told him not to cry because my mommy could be his mommy. My mom promptly had my dad throw the castle out.

TL;DR – I told my mom that a dead little boy would be her child now too.

Edit – Heres another fun part of the story! When my dad was packing the boys stuffed animals and stuff into his truck to bring them for donation, he heard a little boys voice say, “What are you doing with my toys?” Now my dad is the manliest man I’ve ever met and he said that he got freaked out by the voice because it was so clear. You’d think this would be a good sign to not give me any of his toys.

My mother took my son to an antique car show; I think he was maybe 3 or 4 at the time. He looked at a Model T Ford and said “My brother had one of those!”. He doesn’t have a brother.

When I was little (so young I don’t remember it, but I had just started talking), my parents were watching something on tv or something (like I said, I don’t remember, this is just what I’ve been told) and I was playing on my own not really paying attention. My dad said something like “Hey, look at that old record player!”, to which I responded “That’s not a record player. That’s a gramophone.” My mom asked me how I knew that, and I casually replied “I used to have one” and went back to playing with my alphabet blocks or whatever.

Between the ages of two and six my son would tell me the same story of how he picked me to be his mother. He said something about being with a man in a suit and picking a mother that would help him accomplish his souls mission (I’m atheist, so we didn’t discuss spirituality at that point, nor was he raised in any sort of religious environment). The way he described it was that it was similar to grocery shopping, that he was in a bright room with people who were lined up like dolls, and that he picked me. The man in the suit asked him if he was sure, he replied that he was, and then he was born.

My son also had an early fascination with WWII era planes. He could identify them, their parts, what region they were used in and the like. I still have no idea where he got that information. I’m a science gal, his dad is a math guy.

We have always called him “Grandpa” because of his peaceful and gingerly demeanor. This kid seriously has an old soul.

Just a few days ago I came down with full-blown mastitis that caught me by total surprise. Pumping had been going well, and I thought that my schedule of pumping three times a day with over 30 ounces was great. What I had read about mastitis was that it was much more common during the first month postpartum. But then just before Aidan turned 7 months, I came down with awful flu-like symptoms of chills, fever, body aches and intense pain in my right breast. My fever spiked above 100 degrees even with ibuprofen, and I had to go to urgent care the next day to get some antibiotics.

The cause was probably a combination of disrupted sleep, my hormones changing, feeling exhausted, fatigued and stressed a lot, as well as my carelessness in not checking for plugged ducts and not being very careful about bacteria entering my body. It was extremely painful to get that lump out, and for a while there I was worried it was going to turn into an abscess. After lots of heat and pressure and increased pumping, every 3-5 hours instead of 6-8 hours, I finally managed to get over most of the symptoms.

Now I’m re-evaluating my original plan to pump for the long term, but I don’t want to deprive our boy of the benefits of breastmilk. I would have to supplement with formula, and it is not something I wanted to do. I do know that my husband was breastfed for 6 months then weaned onto formula, and he is just fine. Maybe I’m just having a ton of mommy guilt. We are not getting the “full experience” of breastfeeding since I am only pumping and bottle-feeding the milk, and maybe that is why I feel more ambivalent about it. But I was proud of the fact that I could satisfy our baby’s hunger and didn’t have to give up on it altogether. In any case, I’ll give it another month or two and see how I feel then.

Someday, when you become a parent yourself, you will also understand. Until then, you probably won’t know just how much I cherish you.

People say that having a child changes you. I never knew just how much it would until you arrived.

It’s not just sleepless nights and endless cries. Becoming a parent is like having your heart carved out of you and walking around outside of you. Every little bump, bruise and pain you feel, I feel a million times more.

You are always on my mind. I miss you so much when I am away from you, and I worry about you constantly.

When I hear news stories involving kids, I can’t help but think, what if that had been you? I can no longer think about it in the abstract, and I am haunted by every car crash, every shooting, every hospitalization, every accident.

When I look at you, I feel so grateful that your father and I met, fell in love and created you. I feel like everything we have done now pales in comparison to you.

You are so indescribably beautiful. The way you look with curiosity at everything fills me with joy. I want to show you all the wonders of the world, but I also want to protect you from all the terrible things in the world.

When you smile, it’s like your face is the sun that has come out shining. When you laugh in your infectious little giggle, I can’t help but giggle with you. When you frown or cry, I just want to hold you and take your pain away. When you fall asleep with your adorable little lips half-parted, you look just like a peaceful angel.

I feel so lucky and blessed to have you. I hope with all my heart that I can watch you grow older, be happy, find love and have your own children.

I love you little cutie. I hope someday you will know just how much.

He is growing remarkably quickly, becoming increasingly aware and dexterous. He isn’t crawling yet, but he is using his hands to scoop things, reaching out to objects and grabbing them, and putting everything he handles into his mouth. He babbles a lot with adorable-sounding syllables, and he is eating solid foods including mashed carrots, peas and pears.

I took him in to work last week for a few hours and introduced him to my coworkers. It was the first time he had been around so many new people at once, and he handled it like a champ. He never cried or fussed, and was just fine being held by various people. He was a little charmer, smiling at all the ladies cooing at him, and looking around alertly at everything.

My boss said that he is really great, and that a lot of babies would not be that calm or relaxed around so many strangers. She has seen more babies than me, so I am inclined to believe her. It made me very happy to see him be such a chill little guy with people, and even though it felt like “showing off,” it’s not just us who think he’s super cute, sweet and wonderful.

You, too, are a beautifully flawed human being. You, too, cause needless suffering in others. You are sometimes cruel. But you exist, and you have consciousness. That is an amazing thing if you step back and realize it.

Nobody is perfect. Not you. Not me. Not anyone. We are mere mortals. We cannot fix everything. We can only make small strides towards some impossible ideal.

This madness is just another part of life. It’s senseless, but it’s the life we have, and we might as well cherish living it.

Instead of focusing on how others make you feel, try to give a little bit of yourself to other people. Do good for others, and treat others the way you would like to be treated.

You might falter, just as we all do. But at the very least using your empathy and trying to feel how another person might feel, will make the madness seem a little more tolerable.

Stop viewing the cause-and-effect of reality from a tiny, ego-centric perspective. Pan out and see that the world is more vast and open than the time and place from which you are viewing these words.

Obstacles exist not solely in the externalities that one meets. The problems with which a single life consistently confronts for the entire duration of its existence are within oneself.

If you wallow in passivity, you will miss the point of your own life. Life passes you by more quickly by the hour.

Those who do not participate but confine themselves to observation often whine and complain. They refuse to see that they themselves created the ball and chain by which they are trapped. They are beholden to their own prison of reality, though it is easy to escape.

The path is, as always, yours to choose.

When you find patterns, you have already made progress. Awareness of the pattern is the first in the chain of events to changing it.

Life is what you make of it. The elegant simplicity of this advice is not changed by life’s subtle complexities.

If you give yourself to anger, you will find that everything around you gives more fuel for anger. The source of this anger is your ego.

If you give yourself to love, you will find that everything around you gives more fuel for love. The source of this love is… everything.

The universe is what it is. To accept it in both its infinite ugliness and beauty, darkness and light, and all the permutations thereof, brings an indescribable spiritual feeling all its own.

To become a spiritualist is to engage in a fundamental re-alignment of your perspective — rather than to focus on what you do not have, to be grateful and thankful for what you do.

To be a spiritualist is to live with love, compassion and understanding, to forgive past transgressions, to transmute the darkness with light. Your light. The light that lives within all of us.

Think of the world as a giant classroom. We are here to learn lessons, and the things that happen are the result of our own choices and the choices of others.

Some of us are more advanced and further along in our education than others, but we are still stuck here in this existence with those who are still struggling with the basics. We should not denigrate those students nor feel superior to them, because we were in that same place once. Rather, we should look on them with compassion and understanding, and not be too impatient with them.

Seek out other students who are trying to learn the same lessons that you are, and when you have time, try to show guidance to those who are learning lessons that you have already mastered. They may have a thing or two to teach you as well, as the student/teacher relationship is not one-way but reciprocal.

In this world we are co-creators of the whole of experience. We are simultaneously teachers and students. We each take a part in creating a vast and enormously complex fabric of reality. Some parts of this fabric will be organized, colorful and bright, while other parts will be chaotic, strange and dark. The contrast is another part of the beauty of the whole.

Without knowing alienation and emptiness, we cannot know fulfillment and wholeness. We learn from both the absence and presence. Just like babies learning to walk will inevitably fall, many of us learning to love will fail before succeeding.

And that’s okay. We will repeat the lessons as many times as it takes to master them. There is always time, for our souls are eternal.

He has really grown by leaps and bounds lately. He is playing with toys, grabbing onto things, sitting quite well with assistance, and being a lot more interactive and social. He is such a happy and sweet little boy most of the time, which makes the more difficult times worth all the difficulties.

He has started squealing, both when unhappy and also in delight. When my friend came by to visit with her two-year-old and six-year-old, Aidan looked at them so intently and would smile, laugh, giggle and squeal at them. Watching the two kids play and run around with each other also made me a bit more interested in having another baby.

But we don’t want to do that right away. We will most likely wait another year or so. I did get off the mini-pill, which is progesterone-only, because it was making me irritable, moody and depressed. My husband commented that I didn’t act myself, and I didn’t feel like myself either. I felt so much better within days of stopping. In the meantime, hopefully the pulling out method continues to work for us.

Here’s a video of Aidan, just after he turned 5 months, playing, babbling and being generally cute!