Friends and Germs

I am feeling myself musing yet again on that parenting issue of how to deal with childhood illnesses. That Lo has a cough. I chose to keep him home from swim/gym yesterday. But am sort of thinking to go to playgroup tomorrow...and realizing now why some parents become casual about letting their sick children go out and about--because more often than not, children seem to have some sort of sickness and I am going crazy trying to decide what socializing to expose him to or not. We cannot stay quarantined for 100% of the times in question. I am starting to regard illness by degrees. Is he low-level sick? Extremely ill? etc. And his friends who are potential share-ers of disease: are they low level or highly contagious? And do I care if that Lo catches what they've got? aaaaah! I feel consternation yet again. This thing called parenting leaves me frequently humbled by how often I have to say "hmmm...I'm not sure what I think." I did a hypnobabies fear release session while falling asleep last night (Jerry actually loves that track and listens to it almost every night). I tried to release fears related to doing "the right thing" for parenting. I think it helped. Though obviously I still have insomnia, as evidenced by the fact that I am blogging this post in the middle of the night. But anyway I'm feeling more peaceful now. Because really that Lo is basically healthy, and we live in a part of the world with good access to medical care, and life has challenges like sickness and pain...but we can gain from experiences both good and bad. So I'll just try to go back to sleep now.

p.s. That photo above is a recent playdate Lo had with some neighbor boys. They have this little tent which Lo Lo loved so much, he kept going into their bedroom to sit in the tent all by himself. (the rest of us were playing in the living room). So we brought the tent out to the living room after that and Lo squished in it with the other two boys. All three of them stuffed their cheeks with snacks, huddled together in this tiniest tent, and it was a darling moment.

Growing

That Lo is blossoming lately. Just over the past couple days, he figured out how to pull himself up to a standing position against the couch or on just about anything. It has resulted in a few instances of bumping head, as he does not know how to get down from the standing position very smoothly yet. Another milestone is crawling, which I need to catch on camera soon before he morphs out of this cutest beginning stage. He does a true crawl, with a good rhythm alternating opposing hands and knees--and though it is a bit slow for now, he has gained steadiness so rapidly that I fear he will be speed crawling any day now. The video posted here is him discovering grass a couple weeks ago. I love how the wheels in his head seem obviously spinning as he experiments with poking and patting the prickly green grass. I can see both physical and mental gains this month that seem to really make him "more human" (as Jerry puts it).

I remember my mom saying "Oh, 4 months is so fun," and while it was nice to have him start smiling and cooing more regularly around that time, it was also the time his sleep issues began and it took me a solid month to figure those out. I would have to say all things considered, 7 months is my favorite age so far. He is interactive, playful, and cute with his new little teethies, but at the same time not developing too quick for me to catch up (which is what I think happened at 4 months, and what may happen next month around the time he begins to move more quickly...starting to really need those babyproofing supplies).

Anyway, I'm just musing here. No real point to this entry, but figured I should get that grass video on here before it got too belated.