Anthony at Nine Months
by Melanie Bettinelli on December 14, 2011
Caught in the act. Anthony climbs on a box to get to the remote controls.
Anthony had his official checkup on Tuesday (and I haven’t been able to finish this post until today) and the official stats are in. He’s now 26 pounds and 9 ounces. And he’s 28 and 3/4 inches long… more or less, he was pretty wiggly when the doctor tried to stretch him out. He’s gained a couple of pounds and maybe a couple of inches. Still at about 90th percentile in weight and 70th for height. Not a small child. But I already knew that.
Anthony in the fireplace.
Dom says he thinks I’m the thinnest I’ve been since Bella was born. I have no way of verifying that because our scale battery died right before Anthony was born and I haven’t got round to replacing it. Still, I did a little rough math recently trying to figure out how many calories a day Anthony might be consuming. Somehow I had it stuck in my head that for a breastfeeding baby one only needed to consume perhaps an extra 300 calories a day. I have no idea where I got that figure from. Some book, I suppose. But then it occurred to me that there was no way that Anthony at about 25 pounds was only consuming 300 calories a day. I decided to find a better figure. I looked around and the estimates I saw were for a mean of about 50 calories a day per pound and it could vary from as little as 35 calories to as much as 75 calories per pound. But if we went with the 50 calories per pound that would mean that Anthony was consuming 1250 calories a day. Given that until the past few weeks when he’s grown much more interested in trying various solids about 90% of his intake was breastmilk, that means I’ve been burning calories like mad. No wonder the sweets don’t seem to be sticking! I don’t feel slim by any means, but I haven’t been very good at keeping my hands off the chocolate and cookies and the like. Of course the ideal would still be to get those extra calories from better foods, but still…
Anthony makes a grab for the Christmas tree.
Anyway, enough about how his eating has effected my diet, this was a blog post about Anthony.
In addition to crawling like crazy from one room to the next, especially the mad dash to the bathroom the second he hears the door open, Anthony has also has figured out how to climb. I’ve had to rescue him from the inside of the fireplace (non-functional, mostly used for storage of toys) and from the top of the kitchen step stool. Also, he climbed onto a box left in front of the television.
The good news is that he’s much more self-sufficient and able to entertain himself for longer periods of time without needing me to hold him. The bad news is that he is into everything, pulling books off of shelves and ripping the covers apart and shredding pages—in one week he destroyed five library books—dragging the clothes out of his sister’s and brother’s bins, the lids and utensil out of the kitchen drawers, dumping the toys out of baskets and onto the floor. He’s always into the television wires and now he’s absolutely entranced with the Christmas tree. I’m constantly having to push things away from the edge of the dining room table because his little hands love to grab things off. Especially the cups of milk that Sophie, Bella, and Ben leave right where he can reach them. I am not doing such a good job keeping him away from all the things he’s not supposed to eat before he’s one. Cow’s milk, peanut butter, honey…. he grabs them away from his siblings plates or picks up scraps off the floor.
He’s still a pretty jolly little guy. Even tempered and friendly. He still reacts very little to getting an injection. Just a second or so of fussing and then he was back to smiling and playing with the stethoscope hanging on the wall and wrinkling the paper on the exam table. None of the other kids has been nearly so blase about shots.
He’s developed his own sign for food. He makes the finger open and shut sign for milk but holds his hand up high in the air, like an elementary school child begging a teacher to call on him. This isn’t really when he wants to nurse (that’s when he bites at whatever part of me he can reach) but when he wants a solid food.
Anthony pulls the table over his head. It was standing down below where his feet are. The basket was on top of the table.
Yesterday my sister and I composed a little rhyme:
Anthony Ignatius is really quite tenacious
Our house is not quite spacious enough for Anthony Ignatius.
Comments
Melanie, that’s a great rhyme!
I have 2 younger brothers, and I remember when they were in that stage of grabbing at everything in sight, and pulling it towards themselves, having no knowledge of the consequences (it’s going to break, there are other things on it, it’s dangerous to put in your mouth, etc.). It is a hassle to deal with all the disorder that can result and to have to baby-proof the entire area. But I wanted to thank you for describing Anthony’s ‘hijinks’, all the same.
a) It was just fun to look through his eyes as I read your description, and realize how intrigued he must have been not only with all the new things he was encountering, but also with learning how he could interact with them. I think children that young are all-out fascinated with the world around them and they are not shy about exploring it and finding out how to participate in this cool place they’ve come to.
b) I was recently advised by one of the fine priests in our diocese to explore a gift God has given me, like a child. I’ve been trying to think of what that means, “like a little girl, like a child,” and asking Him to help me see how to explore this gift like His little girl. He’s helped me see, in my imagination, what that wd be like….but it was helpful, too, to read about Anthony exploring the world around him. Now I have a picture for how this ‘explore as a child’ thing works!
So - thanks for writing about life at the Bettinelli household, and today, especially about that cutie, Anthony!
Posted by MargoB on 12/17/11 at 04:28 PM
Thanks, Margo.
When I’m not utterly frustrated by how hard it can be to get things done—dinner still needs to be made! even when Anthony insists that I hold him so that he can see what is going on in that mysterious realm of counter- and stove-top—it is delightful to see the world through Anthony’s eyes. Everything is new and he wants to not only to see, but to touch and taste the world. I suppose in that sense there is something Eucharistic about the way they explore. If we want to truly know Christ we don’t just listen to his words but to know him fully we must eat his Body. I think Anthony would get that.
Also, I remember what John Holt wrote about observing the way children explore their world. He says that a child is not afraid of being wrong (until he has been taught that there are bad consequences when he guesses wrong). He makes a guess, tries one way and then another until he gets it right. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, he’ll keep attacking a problem until he solves it. Anthony is not afraid of falling when he climbs, of tasting something bad, of being yelled at for trespassing. He boldly goes where ever his imagination leads him and doesn’t worry about consequences or what people will think. Those are all beautiful traits. Of course it is necessary that eventually we learn caution; but to recover that childish disregard can also be freeing.
Thank you for helping me to remember to pause and marvel at the littlest member of my family, to remember that his explorations are a beautiful and exciting quest even as they exasperate me.
Posted by Melanie Bettinelli on 12/17/11 at 05:17 PM
This baby is going to change the world! I think you have an Ignatius or Dominic on your hands, Melanie.
Posted by Erika on 12/18/11 at 02:07 PM
Melanie, Anthony sounds like he’s active in the way that used to inspire my mother-in-law to give glowing lectures on the benefits of playpens. Not that I had any success with using the one I had for a brief time. A friend used to cook dinner with her youngest of the moment in a backpack, but I would get too frustrated by the baby swinging from side to side or grabbing my hair. Soon Anthony will want to build rather than destroy, and then your place will be a little saner. Enjoy this special Christmas!
Posted by scotch meg on 12/18/11 at 02:19 PM
Erika, I can only pray.
Scotch Meg, Yes, I fear Anthony’s response to a playpen would be screaming, screaming, and more screaming. Only mildly better than having him grabbing my leg and screaming. Especially as there would be no place to put it that would be line of sight to me in the kitchen. I agree about the frustrations of a backpack, though I think Anthony might like it. I fear that when Anthony is older Ben will start to see him as a partner and then who knows what we’ll be in for; but I like your vision of a saner existence . I’ll try to hold on to that hope.
Posted by Melanie Bettinelli on 12/18/11 at 02:37 PM
Too cute, and I love that rhyme!
Posted by Kate Wicker on 12/19/11 at 11:06 PM