A sneezy sniffly -- but mobile! -- start to the holidays

People were not kidding when they said having a baby will mean having one nonstop lingering cold. Ronan and I were under the magical spell of good health for the first 8 months -- I chalked it up to all that breastfeeding. Ever since December hit, though, it's been an unfortunate cycle of sneezing, coughing and dribbling for Mom and Babe. Once one of us gets better, the other one gets sick again, and passes it around. Lovely! Right now Ro seems to be on the mend, but Mama is sick as a dog, hacking into handtowels in a feeble attempt to prevent germs from spraying everywhere in the house...

The adorable thing about Ronan is even at his worst (cold, eczema on his cheeks), he's such a jolly guy. He looks up at us with a huge grin, oblivious to the twin rivers of phlegm oozing from his nose to his mouth and off his chin. What a sweetie! He scrambles around the livingroom floor depositing cute little puddles of saliva and mucous. But, ever the helpful baby, he manages to wipe them up because he's still scrambling on his tummy.

I don't think I ever officially blogged this, but Ronan is mobile now! For the past three weeks he has been quite the commando crawler. He started off "swimming" to certain destinations, and now it's more of a belly scramble -- and a fast one at that. We were almost convinced he'd never do the conventional crawl (why be like everyone else?), but then last week he started rocking back and forth on all fours, and actually putting one foot up... Sort of like a football player on the scrimmage line waiting for the hike... At about 7.5 months he could topple over from sitting to scrambling position, and at 8.5 months he could move from scrambling to sitting. Last week nanny Lisa walked into his room and found him sitting up in his crib. Sitting UP! That was the first time! Now, when he has trouble falling asleep, he'll often sit up and play with his crib bars and turn on some Beethoven. We have no idea how he eventually falls asleep, but we're sure it's an adorable process. All of this newfound freedom is addictive for Ronan. He lunges and reaches for everything in sight, and he's frighteningly successful a lot of the time. He's scrambled over to the DVD shelf and pulled out some movies to chew... He has a penchant for wheels, so he's constantly lunging for his highchair wheels, toybox wheels, stroller wheels... He has decided he likes cords, all cords, but especially electrical cords. And since we have a veritable electronics haven in our livingroom, it's become a really risky danger zone. (Note to selves: MUST BABYPROOF HOUSE.)

Ronan's been fascinated with all the giftwrapping going on.... He slithers over to the pile of presents and PATS them. It's too cute. He loves plastic bags, which are obvious suffocation hazards, but we allow him "supervised plastic bag patting time" and he's thrilled with that. Now we know why Pat the Bunny is called that.

So we're hoping this holiday break is a relaxing, rejuvenating one. We have NOTHING social planned other than Christmas dinner with the Jeongs on Sunday, and we're THRILLED. I'll miss seeing Kristine and Nicole in NYC this year, and we'll definitely miss the Bennetts in LA... but with the crazy-busy fall we've had, there is no place like home!! We plan to babyproof the house, sign Ronan up for preschools, download the videos from our digital cam, rebuild our immunity, and relax. Oh and pat the presents, of course. :-)