This is how we actually referred to our child in the early months of his life. He wasn’t much of a crier and was generally pretty happy, but he made lots of sounds that to us sounded more like a little billy goat, than a small human baby. So much so, we kind of started calling him Billy, or Bill-e-goat. To me there was also a bit of a South Park reference in there (Stan’s grandfather would always call him Billy) but my wife never really caught on to that. I would think to myself, well we did say we wanted a “kid”, but we meant a baby, not a baby goat. Over time, as he reached six months or so, and I assume his vocal cords matured some, he grew out of that phase and started making different noises. I think his first word was Meah. And he just repeated it a lot, Meah, Meah, Meah, usually accompanied with a very soft almost slapping motion, which truly was his way of showing affection coupled with excitement and or happiness. Unbelievably cute, my wife and I would walk up to each other and imitate him. Meah, Meah, Meah.
Then there was floppy fish. For the first 3 months or so, babies are sooo small. He was in the higher end of the band for weight and height so from a developmental point of view he was fine, but man, infants are just so tiny. And along with that, they are just kinda floppy. You really have to support their head, and make sure they can breathe, and they just kind of lay there and can’t really move around or do that much. That phase didn’t last long, and by 4 months he was starting to get strong, roll over and everything just took off from there. Which brings us to WIGGLE WORM! As he continued to develop, get stronger, and gain more control over his body movements, we realized he was very good at utilizing his body control to make tasks like dressing him, cleaning his nose, giving him antibiotics, or anything else he generally wasn’t in the mood for, very difficult to accomplish. Giving this baby any kind of medicine when he was between about 4-10 months was one of the most frustrating yet hilarious things I’ve ever had to do. It was a 2 person operation, one of us holding him in a way that wouldn’t hurt him or overly constrain him, while the other one tried to give him a syringe full of medicine while trying to avoid impaling him with it as he thrashed about, all while we sang some song in the hopes of keeping him (and ourselves) calm. It was really nerve racking because you’re so afraid he’s going to zig while you zag and end up impaling himself with that stupid syringe. When you’re done, you just kind of laugh and think to yourself, that would have been so much easier if you would just hold bloody still. We sing a lot! 🙂 And it helps!