It’s been hard to juggle baby care with everything else that I’ve had going on. That’s why I’ve been an on-and-off blogger lately. I have a lot of catching up to do on blog reading.
But I am happy that the baby is doing well. He’s now 4.5 months old and started to teethe. He actually started Thursday afternoon. He was cranky, which is unusual for him as he’s a very chill little soul. Mid-morning he chewed in his sleep. He drooled. Awake he put his hand in his mouth. His bib in his mouth. The burp cloth. His toys. His books. My clothes. Then he wouldn’t sleep, but just fussed. Finally the thought of teething hit me. So I soaked a baby washcloth in very cold water and put a corner of it in his mouth. Within a minute or so he fell asleep! That’s when I was 99.9% sure he was teething. Before he went home I felt his gums and sure enough on his top gum I found a little sharp point . . . .
I’ve been watching him for over three months now! Hope I can keep this up as he gets heavier. He weighs 15 1/2 pounds now. You might think that I would get stronger with the gradual increase of weight, but NO HAHA.
On another note, why do babies need such massive amounts of equipment and supplies?! The gardener keeps saying, that’s enough now, but it’s never enough because he keeps growing and developing.
Unfortunately, I introduced Hudson to the original Baby Shark song, and now I can’t get it out of my mind. EAR WORM. If I ask him if he’s Baby Shark, he laughs. If I say, “I’m Grandma Shark,” he laughs even harder.
I did participate in something this weekend that was not very time-consuming. That is the Flash Flood 2024 Write-In. Have you ever heard of Flash Flood? https://www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/index.php/flash-flood/ If you write flash stories you can submit early in the year (check website for dates) and then a weekend they publish them one at a time. That weekend was this past one this year.
Then they also have the write-in where they post a writing prompt every hour for 24 hours. https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/ I decided to do that this year, although I couldn’t do all 24 as we had a big family party for the baby. I wrote ten stories and was pretty excited that they chose nine of ten to publish. Keep in mind, I spent about 15 minutes on each story, so they are really more like highly pressurized rough drafts. But I feel pretty good about how I did. Here they are:
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/why-wind-laughs-by-luanne-castle.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-princess-and-peanut-by-luann-castle.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/elemental-ghosting-by-luanne-castle.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/list-for-involved-grandparenting-by.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/grounding-by-luanne-castle.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/a-is-for-accolade-by-luanne-castle.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/in-manner-of-fairy-tales-by-luanne.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/i-am-whole-and-ubiquitous-by-luanne.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/marianne-examines-physics-of-prolonged.html
Doesn’t it sound fun to participate? You should try it next time!
Just as I go to hit PUBLISH on this post, I feel the symptoms coming on of a bug that the Gardener has been wrestling with since Saturday night. Oh no.