Kicking Kid (and more photos)

In an effort to relieve the gas (or so I suppose), Jaya kicks his little legs...pretty much constantly. Okay, not actually constantly, but what feels like constantly. And since he doesn't much like being put down, like, ever, that means he's constantly kicking me.

Hmmm...why does that feel familiar? Oh yeah, because he was doing the same thing from the inside for about the last five months. I'm trying not to see a pattern here, but it's hard to avoid.

I had no idea how appropriate the title of this blog was until just now.

Apparently Tina Fey referred to the first year of her experience as a mother as being "hit in the face with a hammer every day". I would revise her statement to this: Motherhood is like getting kicked in the shins by a minature pony, repeatedly, and without provocation, every day. (I should say that although everyone is supposed to like minature ponies, I don't, so I don't care if I'm being unfair, to minature ponies).

For those of you who are seasoned parents (and particularly, perhaps, my mother), you may laugh at my realization this week that motherhood is all about being knocked around. Happily, Tina notes, it gets better. At present, Jaya has consented to sleep beside my lap, as opposed to on it, and he's looking super cute all wrapped up in the sling I have so carefully peeled away from my body in order to be able to reach the keyboard. He is only kicking sporadically, and is, in fact, occasionally laughing in his sleep. Which is really super cute.

Speaking of which, there are more photos to be seen on Flickr...(see sidebar)...and if you're a total photo junkie, you can always sign up to be a "follower" of the blog for regular updates...

What babies know

Today we had proof (if we needed it) that babies do not, in fact, know where they begin and end. I was sitting with Jaya on the floor letting him air dry before putting on a new diaper, when all of a sudden he began to scream. Picking him up, I realized that his had nothing to do with me poking his bellybutton. Instead, it was directly related to the fact that he had a big chunk of his own hair clenched tightly in his fist and was pulling on it as hard as he could. The more he screamed, the more he pulled. I can only imagine he was thinking, in some abstract baby way, that this would make it better. Which of course, it didn't.

Perhaps this is a lesson we could all learn from. If you have been having your hair pulled lately, take a minute to unclench your fist and see if that helps. You just never know what you'll learn from babies...