7 months

8 months

9 months

Indoors, Ethan is moving on his own, expertly navigating whatever obstacles are in his way. He has his section of the living room demarcated with a padded area of the floor. A set of strategically-placed pillows used to suffice as barriers, but he started to crawl over and around them to wander off the “reservation”.

To protect Ethan and our home from each other, we decided to get some gates, but Ethan has proven to be more than a match for them; we might need to get a second set to form a complete enclosure of reasonable size:

9 months

Before installing the gates

After installing the gates

Finally, he is learning that he doesn’t like peas, but that he likes squash, carrots, and sweet potatoes.

• Baby catching a fever within the first 30 days of life gets an automatic spinal tap to check for meningitis.
• Baby catching a fever within the first 90 days of life gets a blood draw and urine test (catheter).

We didn’t want any of those procedures if we could help it, so we stayed inside for awhile. Staying in for the first 30 days is considered conservative, and staying in for the first 90 days is considered paranoid. But that’s us. Day 90 finally arrived! And even then, we brought him outside, rather than another indoor place, to minimize his chances of catching anything from anyone.

The streets were eerily empty. On a sunny day such as today, the sidewalks would normally be crowded with people walking their babies, baby strollers, and pets. The federal holiday, many stores being closed, and many people opting to spend their day at friends’ barbecues probably contributed to the dearth of foot traffic. This was a good thing for us, because it means we didn’t have to worry about crowds on Ethan’s first day out.

We had two options for Ethan-transport:

• Graco SnugRider Infant Car Seat Stroller Frame
• Moby D Baby Carrier

Your stroller is too big

We opted for the Moby D:

• We live on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator. Less gear being carried up and down the stairs is better.
• We were not planning on being out for very long. We were so confident on not being out that long that we didn’t even bring the diaper bag.
• I feel more secure about the baby being worn next to me than sitting in a top-heavy stroller being pushed over cracked sidewalks and up and down street curbs. And we refuse to get a bottom-heavy Hummer stroller.

We spent some time getting acquainted with the Moby D. The instruction manual was a little daunting; the Moby D is a long sash-like piece of cloth that (a) gets tied around your body with knots that appear to require sailor-level skills, and (b) putting the baby into the Moby D at first glance requires an amount of coordination rivaling that of an operating room surgical team.

Napping in the Sun

In the end, the daunting wasn’t that bad, thanks to some decent instructional videos on YouTube (I hope Moby gave them some free carriers or something). Ethan complained a lot at first, but it turned out it was mostly due to his being woken up for his field trip rather than to being stuffed into the baby-carrier (the Moby website claims, of course, that babies enjoy being in the carrier). Once he was in, he slept for the entire stroll around the neighborhood.

The baby-wearing experience gave me a few insights:

• Ten pounds of baby is a lot. I don’t see how some mothers carry ten-pound babies to term.
• Ten pounds of baby is a lot. How do expectant mothers get anything done? When we got back home, I could barely reach the faucet to wash my hands. I was wearing sandals; otherwise, I could not have untied my shoes.
• Ten pounts of baby is a lot. There was no way Patrika was going to carry Ethan all the way to full term.
• The Moby D actually works pretty well. I was comfortably hands-free, and did not feel burdened by Ethan’s weight at all; the cloth straps distributed his weight quite evenly across my shoulders, hips, and back.