El, 10 Months Old

Wow, double digits.

She's dying to walk - has the cruising thing down pat, and has the bumps and bruises to prove it.  Makes a bee-line to the most dangerous thing she can find, whenever possible.  That means if someone has left a toilet lid up, she rushes in to go "potty-diving" as Av calls it.  If the toilet lid is down but the bathroom door is open, it's the next best thing as far as El is concerned.  She can still get in there and fish in the trash can  or at the very least, unwind a roll of toilet paper.  God help you if you've left a space heater on in a cold room somewhere - she can smell it.  She can hear a piece of hard candy drop from the kitchen table, from upstairs on the opposite end of the house.  Her head whiplashes around and she hits the floor to run-crawl toward it.  She can psychically divine where the dirtiest corner of any floor is.  Her favorite cabinet to try to open is the one under the sink where all the cleaning stuff is.  Dead bugs within her reach call out to her like she's Jennifer Love-Hewitt.

I read recently that you can tell how smart a baby is by how exhausted the parents are.  I think El might be a genius, judging by that.  She is one tough kid to keep up with.

Other little things are changing, too.  She still loves to unload stuff out of a container or drawer, but recently she figured out that if she puts it back in, she can have the thrill of taking it out again.  She has started to imitate words and sounds she hears more often.  The funniest example is when she emits a deep, grunting "Aaaaahhh" of satisfaction after nursing, the way a person might after downing a refreshing glass of ice water on a hot day.  She gets that from her father.  She's learned what "no" means, and like most kids her age she finds it hilarious.  She's very social, loves people.  Even the crappiest of her moods can be fixed by a trip to the store, where she can smile and play peek-a-boo with everyone, or by a few minutes at Av's school when we drop her off in the morning and El gets fawned over by kids and parents alike. 

She's got four teeth - the top two just came in and it looks like two more are on deck (the top eye teeth).  She's eating a little more food now with less gastric upset.

I'll think of more later and continue this, with pictures.

Choppin' Brok-a-lehhh

Well, cabbage.  Gotta make potstickers for the kid's school Thanksgiving festival.  That is not to imply that I myself am doing the chopping.  Nay, it is GW's job to chop cabbage in this house.  Does anyone remember Dana Carvey's piano composition on SNL about a hundred years ago?

Could this post be any more non-sequitur? Don't blame me, I have a four-year-old snapping me in the arm with a pad of note paper and a baby trying to jam a fork in her nostril.

...But Other Than That, Everything's Great

Uhg.  It's 9:30 am and baby is finally down for her first nap.  Av is off to school with our carpool buddy - miraculous, wonderful, sweet, kind, angelic car pool buddy.  Thank God for her.  I don't think I could have managed to get everyone out the door to drive to school this morning.  I don't have any crystal meth handy, and that's what it would have taken.  Four hours of (frequently interrupted) sleep last night.  Again.  I can't go on like this.

I swore I wouldn't use this blog to complain about parenting, but sometimes you just gotta.  Maybe it's healthy, even.  My children shouldn't grow up with illusions about this job being easy....should they?  I mean, it's still the best thing that ever happened to me, being their mommy.  I still feel like the luckiest person who ever lived.  Complaining about the hard stuff doesn't take away of the good stuff.  So here goes.

I know why we're having bad nights - if I think about it, it makes sense.  El's been sick for over a month, really.  She got her first cold at the end of September, and it turned into ear infections which antibiotics have yet to resolve for her.  We're almost done with the second one now.  Of course they cause diarrhea, which typically explodes around 5:30 am.  After the diaper and inevitable outfit change, she's too awake to fall back asleep, but she's still tired enough to be enormously cranky.  Plus she's cutting two more teeth.  Plus she's in the throws of some really intense separation anxiety.  This poor child - when will she get a break?  It's hard to know what to do at night when she wakes up for the fifth time and wants to nurse, and I feel sorry for her and know that nursing her is the best way to soothe her, but at the same time I'm having bizarre fantasies like jumping up and breaking off a blade of the ceiling fan and gutting myself with it.  That's what I'd rather do than nurse, at 2:30am after sleeping for three 35 minute chunks.  On the heels of weeks of nights like that.  It really does mess with your head.

Oh, and the dishwasher's busted - good timing, we're hosting Thanksgiving.  We certainly don't have the money to fix or replace it.  I have an appointment with our accountant in a couple hours to find out how f**ked we are on our taxes this year - we haven't paid much of them yet, GW being self-employed now and all.  Of course we didn't make any money this year, so I'm sure that will help.  But we will owe something.  And there's Av's surgery to pay off and the bill for our next door neighbor's pool and GW's licensure renewal and car insurance and my new health insurance (if you can call it that) and we need a termite inspection and possibly treatment and there is some loose siding on the house and really how much longer can the Saturn last?  Maybe a new car soon.  Where will the money come from for that?  Wait, lemme just....pull it out of my butt here....oh, there it is.  My house is in such disarray I can never find anything, and I feel like I can't let the baby crawl around on the floor, at least not downstairs.  But no time to do anything about that.  My blood pressure is back up, but I can't go to the doctor - no health insurance this month.  Is any of this sounding familiar?  I'm sure I'm describing the experience of many parents these days.  It helps to know I'm certainly not alone, although I wish I was not alone in my wealth and leisure and perfect health and well-organized home.

Writing this is making me feel a little better.  See?  Complaining can be good. There are plenty of silver linings, when I look at it with my reasoning skills intact.  The baby will get better, and will sleep better soon.  I probably won't have a stroke in the next few months.  Not being able to go to the doctor has forced me to do stuff to protect my health, so I'm eating really clean and exercising a little and not drinking beer and actually losing a few pounds.  The neighbor's pool didn't need repairs, just a check-up.  GW's a rock star at his new job and starting to make more money.  The dishwasher sucked anyway.

We'll get through.

Good Weekend, With Pictures

Saturday: shopping, arranging flowers for a neighbor, making pumpkin bread, splitting and stacking fire wood (Av and GW), building a fire on top of an old pine tree stump to burn it out, later roasting hot dogs for dinner over said stump, exploring the woods outside our back fence until it got too dark and cold to be out there anymore.  Can it possibly get any more awesome than that?  I don't think so, either.

Hanging out in princess garb.  What else are you going to wear to eat lunch in?

It's fun to be buried in leaves!

El looks cute in her hoodie.

 

Hmm...something's weird about these leaves I'm crawling on...

Roasting kosher dogs over the stump.

El helpfully unloads the bathroom cabinet.

Sunday: Cleaning, cleaning....uhm, cleaning....did I mention cleaning?  There was vacuuming...oh,  yeah, and we went to this festival called "Touch-A-Truck,"  where you can climb on an ambulance, a tow truck, a dump truck, a fire engine, a cement truck, a military jeep, a helicopter, and oddly, someone's restored Austin Healey.  And there was music and blow-up bounce houses.  Av spent a good deal of time on the bounce house with slide.  She loves those things, and she's always the one scream-laughing all the way down.  As always, it's a pleasure to witness her joy.  The guitar-playing guy was set up right next to the bounce house, and when he invited the kids in the audience to grab a shaker out of a big bucket in front of the stage and shake along to his next number, Av grabbed one and jumped right on stage with him and danced away.  We ran into friends, and after we'd maxed out on touching trucks I stuck El in the sling to nurse and fall asleep, and we hiked over to a nearby sushi place and had a snack.  Av decided not long ago that she likes shrimp - although the last time she had shrimp was, like, never.  So I'm not sure exactly where this came from, but I do know my daughter, and if she says she likes shrimp, she likes them.  She ordered a shrimp appetizer, which turned out to be freakin awesome, and assertively sent her lemonade back to the kitchen when she sipped it and found it to be watery.  The waitress investigated and discovered that indeed, the mixture was weak, and she promptly replaced the lemonade and even gave her a free refill before we left.  You go, girl.

Belly slide

We've got this hella pink limo all to ourselves.

El takes it all in.

New Stuff

El: can remove her diaper by herself if she's not locked into a onsie.  Oh, good.

Av: can count to 100, with only a little help.

El: is cruising holding onto the couch, or anything else.

Av: blew her teachers away this week by "reading" one of her books to them ("A Case of the Creepy Crawlies") - she memorized it and performed it for the class.  Totally her idea and initiative.

El: is shifting her (until now) set in stone nap schedule.  No longer are we hiking up the stairs to lay down precisely two hours after she wakes up.  Lately it's 3-4 hours, and the nap is shorter - an hour, tops.  Afternoon nap is becoming more important.

Av: made her mother proud by handling a recent episode of bad behavior perpetrated on a neighbor with empathy, contrition, and eagerness to make amends.

Co-Sleeping is Awesome, Even When it Sucks

Maybe I'm being overly sentimental, because I know El is my last baby.  But practically speaking, sleeping with her is the only way I can get even the smidgen of rest I do get.  I can't imagine how I would do it, getting out of bed several times a night (or even twice, which is her normal awakening routine), spending twenty minutes rocking or nursing her back to sleep, then putting her down and crawling back into bed to spend another twenty minutes getting myself to sleep, only to be awakened an hour later to do it all over again.  Some might say (and have said, ad nauseum) that she'd sleep longer if left in a crib.  I call b.s. on that - just because I know my kids and neither one of them cottoned to sleeping by themselves, except, thankfully, for daytime naps.

I don't know, call me crazy if you want.  It has been awful lately, with her going through whatever phase she's going through these days, and waking up every five seconds at night.  Don't get me wrong, I am human and I'm not a very nice one when I haven't had enough rest.  There's something primal in the brain, something that can't help but feel hostile toward any creature that threatens your survival in one way or another.  It's just part of the deal.  At those times, you pass your baby off to the other adult in your household, assuming you're lucky enough to have one.  But many nights I lay there with her, even after I've lost count of how many times she's woken up, and enjoy the feel of her little weight sprawled across me, the softness of her head, the happiness of being able to make her feel better after she wakes up with her little face all scrunched up and sad.  I wait until she's sufficiently unconscious, then ease her over to her side of the bed.  Then she's all peaceful, angelic baby face.  Sometimes I watch her for a bit, but never for long because sleep takes me over pretty fast once my body is free and I know that my baby is safe and content.  When she wakes up again, I won't have to move very far to help her.  And it'll all be over a nanosecond from now.

Okay, So It's Not All Cotton Candy and Fluffy Bunnies...

Ssoooooooooooooo   ssssssleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy.  So why the hell aren't I in bed?  Obviously my baby is, or I wouldn't be writing this.  It's just that even moms need a few minutes to just be themselves once in a while.  Plus I need to vent, and to say a few things about how awesome Av is.


The day started at 7am after the second night in a row of El waking up every 20 minutes (I'm not exaggerating), crying and/or wanting to nurse.  GW was downstairs with her last night for a couple hours, probably at about 3am, I don't know.  This morning was probably the worst I've felt since El was born.  She's really, on average, not a bad sleeper - the past few nights have been unusual.  You never really know for sure what the deal is with babies this young, but our guess is a combination of developmental stuff and tummy trouble.  Anyway, this morning I felt like I'd spent the night being chased by rhinos while running uphill dodging a rock slide.  I subtly hinted to GW that it might be a good idea for him to take the day off.  By subtly hinting I mean I begged him outright.  He said no, too bad, you're on your own, and it serves you right for all the cruel stuff you did to your mother when you were a baby.  Yep, that's what he said.  There I go, being sarcastic again.  Hey, it makes me feel better.  When  you're this tired, you get license to do things you wouldn't normally get away with, like aggressively blaming others for your problems and disabusing the people you claim to love.

My wonderful friend E. rescued me from a morning of feeling sorry for myself.  She came over with a playmate for Av (her beyond-cute 2 year-old daughter) and fudge.  She kept me company and poured me green tea until I started to feel a little less like a bug squashed under somebody's shoe.  Her visit was so rejuvenating that I later mustered the energy for a short grocery run.  Of course, that went without a hitch.  Oh, wait.  No it didn't.  See, it was sprinkling out, and supposed to rain harder later, so I swept up the kids pretty quickly after lunch and got everybody's shoes on, if not hair brushed.  I opened the door to go out to the car and somebody opened the Great Fawcet In The Sky right at that moment, but I soldiered on, knowing that if I kept my big mouth shut on my complaints, Av would be delighted to go out in the rain.  I did, and she was.  Get the baby in, buckle up, drive drive drive and here we are at the grocery store, rain's back to a light drizzle, yay.  Open the side door to a smiling baby and a really big smell.  Yep, the little babe who hasn't crapped for a week has finally voided her bowels.  It's a wonderful thing, really, something I would have celebrated in a big way if we'd been at home - lots of clapping and excitement and praise, maybe even streamers.  But we're at the grocery store and it's raining and of course I didn't bring the diaper bag.  Well.....I just made it a really fast shopping trip, and poor little El didn't get as many admirers as she's used to on an outing like that, because the smell around her was like a force field about eight feet in diameter, keeping her would-be friends at smiling distance.  I know, I'm a bad mommy.  Tell me something I don't know.

Other than my angelic friend coming over this morning, what got me through today was Av's little girl wit.  When I can't find my keys, she's like, "This is a job for Diamond Bat Girl!!" (one of her alter-egos) and goes running off somewhere to help me find them.  When she catches me looking forlorn as I bring a sobbing El downstairs after my eleventh attempt to put her down for a nap, Av runs over and tries (in vain, but still) to make her laugh.  She cracks these clever jokes that I can only imagine she picks up at school, or maybe she watches more Jimmy Neutron than I know about.  One of them I have to share - this was at bedtime, and we'd gotten through most of the routine but had apparently forgotten to have her go to the bathroom.  She comes up to the bed where I'm nursing El and says, "If you're having a tea party?  Remember not to drink too much tea or you'll have to.....have to.....I'll be right back!" and she dashes off down the hall.  I mean, that is damn funny, is it not?  Where does she get this stuff?  I love it.  Thanks, Av, for being such an awesome kid.  I don't know what I did to deserve you, but I'm glad you're mine.

Now, How to Keep Them from Eating 626 Pieces of Candy a Day....

Too much sugar is bad for your body in so many ways.  It messes with your endocrine system, causing you to gain weight faster than eating too many calories of another kind.  It's hard on the immune system.  It can actually raise your blood pressure.  It can contribute to the proliferation of cancer cells.

I read this stuff - it interests me.  I like knowing exactly what horrendous things the stuff I eat is doing inside me - it helps motivate me to eat healthy.  I also like knowing what wonderful things food can do - and ditto about the motivation.  I have more to say about motivation to eat healthy, but it's more appropriate for the other blog.  I'll get to it later.  Right now what concerns me more than my own eating habits is my kids'.  Has anyone ever solved the mystery of how to keep kids from eating too much sugar?  I try really hard.  I don't buy sugary stuff, normally.  At birthday parties you're allowed to have a piece of cake, a little ice cream if it's served, but no seconds.  I send your little butt to a co-op preschool where healthy food is one of the most cherished principles.  You have to eat the approved amount of vegetables at dinner to be considered for dessert.  Aren't I following all the rules here?  How does this crap constantly seem to sneak in?

I do know how it sneaks in.  That was a rhetorical question, because we all know how it works - the over-availability of junk food and the evils of advertising to children, et cetera.  It's a huge problem.  It might be THE problem.  I plan to just stick with my rule book, know that I'm doing my best, and leave it to the superhero vigilantes to fight our battle in the streets (you know, the battle to get "fruit" roll-ups and Hot Pockets off our supermarket shelves.  No?  Never heard of it?  Maybe it's all in my head).

In the meantime, I hope someone will come along and tell me how to deal with a begging, whining, pleading, crying, tantruming four-and-a-half year-old who can't go one more minute without that bag of Reese's pieces from her Halloween stash.

Halloween!! Part II: Trick-or-Treat

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahye  LOVE Halloween.

This year, for the first time ever, we left home for trick-or-treat.  Our good friends M. and family, with whom we've spent the past several Halloweens, recently moved to a beautiful new house in a great neighborhood, and they invited us over for the evening.  Despite our minor worries about having the baby out late, a wonderful time was had by all.  As an added bonus, M.'s neighborhood really kicked a whole lot of butt when it came to Halloween to-do.  There were haunted houses in people's garages, over-the-top costumes (on the homeowners, even more than the trick-or-treaters), spooky music blasted from attic rooms, elaborate yard displays. It was super cool.  Av and M. got tons of attention, being among the youngest of the trick-or-treaters out there.  It didn't hurt that they were dressed as Buzz Lightyear and Jessie from Toy Story - both girls were beyond cute.  I so love watching Av enjoy herself so thoroughly.  It's a feeling we grown-ups don't get to have all that often - I guess that's why it's often called the "kid on Christmas morning" feeling.  It's nice to experience it vicariously.

Buzz and Jessie strike up a duet on the piano before heading out for trick-or-treat.

My little lamb (I was Bo Peep) - not too happy about the headpiece, she.

That's better.

Av emerges from the mist with another awesome loot.

Earlier in the day, Av and I decorated cookies to share with our pals:

And since I'm going backwards in time here, might as well put up some cute ones from the day before, when we carved pumpkins:

El accompanies the carving with a homemade shaker.

Av is already looking forward to next Halloween.  Me, too.

Halloween!!

I consider it a point of pride that my daughter has never had chewing gum before today.  Now that trick-or-treat is over, she's allowed three pieces of her Halloween candy per day, four max.  One of her picks today was a piece of bubble gum, the ones that are the color of pepto bismol.  Yum.  "Exactly why is it called bubble gum?" she asks me as she unwraps it, examines it for a moment, then pops it in and gingerly starts to chew.  I explain it's because you can blow bubbles with it, which I offer to teach her, but we can't find another piece of gum, so it'll have to wait until next Halloween.

The festivities started on Friday with the Halloween concert, play, and party at school.  I took video which I'm not going to post here because everyone else's kids are in it too.  Av is of course one of the most enthusiastic participants if it has to do with being on stage in front of people, so it makes for good video, although production value is pretty low due to Mom's lack of prowess with the camera.

She got her face painted - she's a vampire.

 

Have I said before that I love Av's school?  What a wonderful place it is.  I'm going to miss it when Av's done.  Maybe we'll be back when El is old enough, who knows.  I hope so.  Anyway, they have a concert for the parents at the end of every month, where they sing all the little songs they've learned, but the Halloween concert is probably the biggest deal.  The songs are so cute and creative, and the kids sing them in costumes they've helped make over the past few weeks.  Av being a second-year student knows the songs by heart, complete with all the motions, and always tacks on a bow at the end of each piece (she's been doing that since last year - it's her signature).  Plus at Halloween there's a play after the concert's over, which is priceless.  There are ghosts and pumpkins and bats and witches. This year there was dry ice in a cauldron - which unbeknownst to the general audience, had almost frozen one of the kids' hands off earlier in the day.  Av mentioned it casually to me later and I had a quiet panic attack before I realized that had a child's hand actually been injured, the festivities would not have gone on as if all was well.  Upon investigation, it turned out that a little girl had in fact stuck her hand in the bucket of dry ice before the production began, acting on a dare from a little troublemaker in the group (a boy, of course!;).  There was hullabaloo about who to call first, the parent or the pediatrician or the hospital nurse-line, but the little girl was back to playing happily with her friends way before the adults stopped wringing their hands.  The show must go on.

After the play, food and games and prizes.  Then home, bathtub, crash.

Oh, and I forgot - Halloween actually began for Av on Thursday with a party with her play-group friends.  She got to be Buzz Lightyear for that one.  I went in GW's Woody costume. With shorts on (it was hot out).  I looked every bit as stupid as I thought I would.  But my Bo Peep costume wasn't done yet - I still had some sewing to do - and I wasn't about to put El's fuzzy costume on her in the 80-some degree muggy weather.

To infinity and beyond!  Actually, I think she's looking at a squirrel.

Looking in the mirror at her heart-and-rainbow face painting, by my friend A.

 
Here's a few of Av and El hanging out at home, trying on costumes and playing and stuff - I think this was last week sometime when I was still working on pulling costume elements together for everyone - it's a lot of work dressing everyone as Toy Story characters.

Av in GW's Woody costume

Let's put the cowboy hat on the baby!  El moves too fast for the camera.

Get this damn thing off me.

I'll have to post about trick-or-treat later.  Haven't got those pictures off the camera yet.....

She Sings

The baby.  Whenever she hears music, she "sings" along.  And Av taught her to clap her hands, so now she does that, too.  She sits up and holds one hand out and slaps it with the other. 

"The Land of Rainbows"

in watercolor, by Av, this morning:

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

Last night I dreamed I looked at my younger daughter and noticed her hair had grown long, her eyes were an emerald green instead of cobalt blue like they are now, and she was running and talking.  My dream self panicked - omg, when did this happen?  I missed so much all of a sudden she looks like Av and I can't tell them apart except one's a little shorter than the other!

It's not hard to guess the psychological origin of this dream.  It captures how I feel on a daily basis.  Yesterday I was noticing El's hair starting to thicken a little and lengthen into tiny curls in the back.  Someone had commented on her blue eyes and I tried to remember when Av's eyes had started to slowly change.  I've been noticing how much more complex El's "language" is getting, how good she's getting at pulling herself up to standing, even taking a step or two now and then, holding onto the couch or table.  Every day she changes.  I wish I had time to write every day, but it's hard, as everyone knows.  Taking care of kids is time-consuming.  Sometimes something will happen in the middle of the day and I'll try to imprint it on my brain, try to start right away forming the sentences I will use to describe it, in an attempt to hold it in my memory.  That's what this blog is really for, anyway - so that I won't forget.  Because you do forget.  And I'm not sure why it seems important to remember the details, but it does.  Maybe because everybody loves to hear stories about themselves when they were kids.  I mean, as long as those stories are mostly positive and not, "Remember when you were six and you wouldn't eat anything but boogers and cat food?"  That might not be so nice to be reminded of.  But just in case my memory is not the steel trap I wish it was, or God forbid I'm drooling in a wheelchair by the time my kids start wanting to hear this stuff, I'm putting down as much as I can.  On the other hand, I guess you could argue that you can go overboard taking pictures and video and writing about the stuff you do - I mean when do you fit actual living into your schedule, right?  And then later when you're looking at pictures and watching video and reading journal entries, you're sacrificing your valuable time remembering the past instead of doing stuff in the present.

I might be over-thinking this a tad.

After all, it's not every day your crawling baby says her first inappropriate word.  Surely that ought to be recorded for all time in some public forum.  Okay, sure, I'll tell the story, you don't have to beg.  It was this past Saturday, and we were all bumbling around the house getting ready to go somewhere.  I happened to be standing at the bottom of the staircase when El climbed up one step.  This was the first time she had done this.  GW was standing at the top and we caught each other's eye, both of our expressions saying "Oh, boy, here we go!"  I said it out loud: "Oh, man, we've gotta go out and buy a gate today!"  We had already talked about doing it soon, but we'd thought we had more time.  "Crap!" I muttered absent-mindedly.  "Wap!" yelled the baby in exactly the same tone.  We burst out laughing, of course, and El beamed, quite proud of herself.

Her babbles over the past week have been more multisyllabic, and are starting to sound like real words and phrases.  Her favorites now are "Ooo-at!"  which of course sounds like "Who dat?" and "Uh-dat!" and "Ooooooh, yuh!"  Sometimes she belts them all out together in a long string.  She does say "Uh, oh" although she doesn't necessarily associate it with something dropping or some other calamity, she just likes to say it.  She does have "Bye-bye" down pat, though, and always accompanies it with her twisty wristy wave.  Bye-bye is probably her official first word.  She's growing up, already.

Even with Av, it can be hard to keep up with the changes.  Once they go to school or somewhere and they're gone from you for a period of time during the day, being influenced by other people, things move impossibly fast.  Av is a super senior at pre-school now, and it's like her second home.  One of their teachers from last year showed up the other day to say hello, and she was mobbed by the kids like she was Madonna in 1988.  I hadn't really thought about how attached they had become to her after just one school year - you forget what teachers meant to you when you were young.  They're like aunts and uncles, really.  Anyway on the way home from school that day, Teacher M was al Av talked about.  So sweet, how big her heart is.  I'm impressed by it almost on a daily basis, watching her with her little sis.  Although  it's obvious that in some ways it's been hard on Av, the baby coming, she always treats El so kindly.  Sometimes Av is lonely and I feel terrible about that.  Not guilty, exactly, but it's painful to see and I want to be able to do something about it.  I'm never sure if there isn't something I can do, some way I could be a better parent.  There probably is.  I know that someday I'll be apologizing to her for this year, the year Mom was so exhausted from taking care of our little baby that I missed out on a lot of play time and other stuff with my first baby.  But that's the way it goes, and I know that every parent in this position feels exactly the same way, at least sometimes, and I know that most of the time everything turns out alright.  Not to go all Hallmark, but the trick, I think, is gratitude.  And boy, oh boy, am I grateful for these two girls.

Some Highlights of El's Personality, 8 months

*Wrists and ankle roll.  Two wrists going means "Pick me up!"  One wrist going is a friendly wave, usually accompanied by "Dah dah!" which is her way of saying bye-bye.
*Bite-a-kiss.  This is when she dives at your face with mouth wide open, usually hell-bent for your nose.  If she gets it she bites it (gently, gotta give her some credit) and slobbers on it.  If you manage to turn your head away in time, she giggles and tries again.  Repeat. Sometimes she'll finally settle for your cheek, if you're persistent enough about keeping your nose out of reach, but in that case she'll bite you harder.  Punishment, I guess. 
*Loves an echo.  She yells in stairwells, vocalizes into plastic cups, etc. 
*Tongue sticks out between lips when concentrating.
*Favorite toy: sunglasses, especially when they can be pulled from someone's face.
*Fascinated by people's hair, since birth.
*Favorite thing to do outdoors:  rake up handfuls of grass and quickly stuff them in her mouth.
*Points and yells "That!"
*Big open-mouth smile.  Heart-melting when it's directed at you, but somehow even cuter in profile.
*Current raison d'etre: standing up.

Yeah, You're Gonna See These on Your Christmas Card This Year.

What a Weird Day

Weird good...mostly.  The bad part is we had flooding rains - a really unusual trailing line-up of storms that dumped almost 2 feet of rain on us over the past couple days.  That's a third of the amount of rain we usually get in a year.  And none of the storms were hurricanes or even tropical storm-grade.  The last time we had this much rain was during the one-two punch of Dennis and Floyd back in 1999.  Before that, the last rain this big was in 1871.  Our town has been all over the weather channel today.  Fortunately we have not been personally affected other than GW not being able to go to work and Av being home from school.  In fact we got to have a fun romp in the "rivers" on the sides of our street, and later we saw a huge double rainbow.  I tried to get a picture of it but my camera couldn't capture the colors.

Today was me & GW's 10th wedding anniversary.  The whole family is getting over a stomach virus, in addition to being trapped in the house because of the rain, so we didn't go out.  We broke out our wedding and honeymoon pictures and paraphrenalia and looked through it all with Av.  She thought that was pretty cool.  She's trying to understand what a wedding is, what it means to get married.  Later we made cupcakes.

After we put the kids to bed I came back downstairs to check my email.  Being one of the presidents of the board at Av's school this year means that I have to help decide whether the kids will have school tomorrow, and I knew people would be emailing to ask what the deal is.  Anyway I was greeted in the family room by three tiny baby tree frogs, perched in various places near the back door.  One of them was no bigger than my pinky finger nail. They must have snuck in while we were outside playing in the lake where our back yard used to be.  I thought about finding something to keep them in so Av could see them tomorrow, but I don't really have anything that would serve that purpose and I was afraid I'd end up hurting them.  So I got them to jump into a water cup one by one and set them outside on the patio.  I think it's good luck when frogs get in your house.  Right?  Or is it just that they lower your bug population?  Gee, a rainbow, tree frogs, big anniversary, weird storms....weird day.  Oh, and a poltergeist stole our Bumbo seat.

A Great Big Red Mad Mad Baby Head

I wrote this somewhere around September 10th.  Not sure why I didn't put it up, but here it is now.  Jeez - out of order posts.  How sloppy of me.


Having one's tonsils out comes with many privileges: eating lots of popsicles and ice cream, watching lots of movies, getting dibs on the computer to play games, having your grandmother travel 500 miles to help serve your every need, to name a few.  Playing on your parents' sympathies in the week following surgery is bound to work, so you might eek out many other little bonuses along the way.  Tonight Av cashed in a bunch of her bargaining chips and offered to forego bedtime stories in exchange for being allowed to stay up an extra half hour to watch Diego.  She knew I would cave, seeing as how Daddy was working late and I was on my own with her and a tired 7-month-old with pooping problems.  All she had to do was crank her voice up an octave and let it waver a bit.  She was fully prepared to squeeze out a couple of tears, if necessary, but since I immediately rolled over like a hound dog with heat stroke, she didn't have to go that far.  But something on Diego didn't sit right with her.  I don't know what it was, but she complained that it didn't make any sense and started making up alternate endings for this apparently inadequate episode, which she turned off about 15 minutes in.  I wish I'd done a better job of recording the things she said.  I was dealing with El and not paying close enough attention, but all of a sudden I realized that Av was rolling out all this wildly creative stuff.  She has a way of talking off the top of her head like a rapper on open mic night.  She looks around the room while she's doing it, taking whatever she sees and riffing on it - hence the great big red mad mad baby head that ended up in her story as a bizarre creature that Diego had to rescue from a pit of hot lava.  I think she gets this ability from GW - he's creative off the top of his head like that.  Pulls stuff from God-knows-where and works it into something hilarious.

Well, El sure is a great big red mad mad baby head today.  Poor little girl.  As much as she wants to eat solid food, it seems her digestive system isn't ready yet.  It makes weaning her off the nursing-five-times-a-night thing a hard sell.  Good thing she's so damn cute and cuddly.

El the Baby, Baby-ing, in Pictures

"Heyyyyyy!"

7.5 months old and already has a weird sense of humor.

"Give. Me. The. Camera."

  

Av took the rest of these...

    

                                                           

                                       
Please don't fault me for the formatting of these pictures.  Blogger kind of put them wherever the hell it felt like.  Leaving now to go pick up a copy of HTML for Dummies.   Btw, Av's not a bad photographer, eh?                                                                     

Av the Superhero (What's the Buzz II)

Last year, during the months before Halloween, Av changed her mind about her costume about six times, and two of those changes happened the morning of trick-or-treat.  This year, not so.  She has decided, and it has been written in stone, and so it shall be.  The costume has been purchased and played in several times already, and there is no turning back.  Personally, I love her choice almost as much as she does. 

Her baby sister is impressed.  Of course, El is enthralled with just about everything Av does.  Av is El's superhero, quite literally, and I gotta say Av pulls off the role pretty well.  The pictures say it better.

Because I Can't Not Write This Down

El has a word for me.  It's "Nyeh-nyeh."  I realized it the other day, as she was crawling around the house after me, saying it over and over.  It dawned on me, suddenly, that that's what she always says when she's following me around or when she's in someone else's arms and she wants to be in mine.  She says a lot of sounds now, including "Dah, dah, dehd," and "Ma, ma, ma," but this is the first sound she's made that specifically refers to something or someone.  That I know of.

Avery started around this age, making sounds that meant something.  Her first word was "Daddy," and for the longest time she referred to both GW and me as Daddy.  It was so cute we didn't want to correct her.

Here are both my little girls, around 8 months old:

 

 

What's the Buzz?

Av identifies with heroes. Wants to be one when she grows up. Early this summer, GW took her to see the movie "Toy Story 3" (in 3-D, of course) at the movie theater.  It was a huge deal for her - the first big-screen experience she's had that really made an impact on her.  She's been to the movie theater before, to see stuff like "Ponyo" and "Up," but TS3 was different.  Maybe the 3D element had something to do with it, but probably it was more her developmental level, intersecting with the fact that those amoral, high-paid manipulators at Disney did their job really, really well. Oops - I mean, it was a great story, with lots of fun action and great characters and a very worthy continuation of a really quality movie series.

So ever since then, she's been into Buzz Lightyear.  She has two "Buzzes" now, each about six inches tall and bearing the exact same colors and costume, but with different poses.  Av loves to pretend she's doing superhero stuff, like saving people and beating up monsters, and when she thinks I'm not looking, she practices her kung-fu.  Some of her moves actually look...well, like kung fu. 

I bought her the movies.  She's partial to the second one right now.  We watch the beginning together, and I gasp with worry as Buzz falls down a long hollow shaft during his attempt to hijack the evil Zurg's power source.  Av puts a hand up to soothe me.  "Wait for it...." she says, her wide eyes on the screen, "Wait for it...." Buzz presses a button on his utility belt in free fall and a glowing protective orb immediately forms around him, floating him safely back up to face his nemesis.  Av looks at me with a big grin.  "See?"  I am relieved.

Yet Another Milestone For The New Kid

Today El pulled herself up to a standing position, all by her little self.  She's been working on it for about a week or so.  I gotta say it's been hilarious, in a beyond-cute kind of way, to be sitting on the bed reading Av a story, and watching El try her stunt.  You suddenly see her pink head wobble up from the bottom of the bed, her face a mixture of surprise, delight, and concentration.  She grins big when she makes eye contact with somebody, then she teeters and drops out of sight.  It's the best thing ever.  Well, except for the other thousand things about her that are the best thing ever.  So tonight she pulled herself up and stayed up for a good minute or two.  Av walked at 11 months; maybe El will be a little early too.  She's really getting fast with the crawling, though, so maybe she won't bother for a while.  Who knows.  She does seem to be hitting a lot of milestones all at once - why is she in such a hurry to grow up?  I guess having an older sibling to catch up with is pretty motivating.  I wouldn't know, only had younger.

Now, if we could only convince you that food does not enter the body through one's fist, little Miss Spoon-Grabber!

Av-isms: A Cosmic Kind of Morning

"Who would take care of you if you were the first person born in the world?"

Uhm....

Earlier we were upstairs in the playroom.  We had just finished sewing part of a pillow she's making, and she laid down on the floor for a little rest (we're still recovering from tonsil surgery).  After a moment of staring at the ceiling, contemplating, she sat back up.  "Mom?  If I die, and then I get alive again and I have to get my tonsils out....I have an idea."  She went to her arts & crafts drawers and took out some paper and markers, and started making signs.  We had done this before her surgery, with index cards, in case it hurt her to talk and she needed another way to communicate the things she wanted.  Really it was a way to prepare her for the surgery - I wasn't sure she'd actually need the signs, but the process of making them opened up conversation about the various aspects of recovery and what she was likely to experience.  We drew stuff like popsicles, applesauce, juice, the TV, her Leapster, some board games, the bed.  So this morning, for whatever reason, she decided she needed a repeat session of sign-making.  She drew the computer, to indicate she wanted to play a computer game, and her Toy Story II movie, which she is watching as I write this. 

On the couch a few minutes ago is where & when she asked the question about being the first person born in the world.  GW and I looked at each other wide-eyed, and answered that people have been asking that question, in various ways, since the dawn of time.  She decided that astronauts would take care of you, were you to find yourself in that situation, and went back to her movie.

If You Need To Lose 4 Ounces Really Fast...

Have your tonsils and adenoids out.  No, really.

Av had hers done yesterday.  It's the end of a long journey of borderline sleep apnea, constant trouble breathing through her nose, and a couple of bouts of tonsilitis.  I can already tell a difference in the way she breathes, and her voice is a little different - higher and sing-songy.  Was it difficult watching the burly anesthesiologist carry her off to the O.R., with a Buzz Lightyear doll clenched in each little fist and a trepidatious slant to her mouth?  Well...

I went out for coffee, while GW stayed behind in the waiting room.  On the way back in the van my coffee cup exploded for some reason - lid came off as I picked it up to take a sip and all 24 ounces of vanilla soy frapp (thank goodness it was cold, not hot) spewed all over the inside of the car and all over me.  Yeah.  So I swung into Rite Aid to buy some paper towels, thinking I'd try to clean up a little, but by the time I was finished at the checkout I was feeling a distinct urgency to get back to the surgery center.  So I bagged the clean-up, raced back and found out my instincts were on target: GW had already been called back to the recovery room.  I hurried in, directed by the nurses.  I heard the horrible sound of some poor child screaming at the top of his or her lungs, a really primal, angry, traumatized sound.  As I got closer I realized it was my kid.  I pulled back the curtain and found her flailing on GW's lap in a reclining chair, howling, her eyes blank and staring into space.  They had warned us about this in pre-op.  It still kinda made me wonder if they had actually given her the anesthesia before the surgery.  Anyway, I just wrapped my arms around her as best I could and tried to soothe her, although it quickly became apparent that she needed to do this crying and raging, and after a few minutes I was glad she was doing it.  She was clearing out the ballast, and letting the world know how super-pissed she was that this had happened to her. There was a little bleeding, which pissed her off even more; now she was messy on top of everything else.  She yelled at the nurse who tried to wipe her face and batted the cloth away.  GW tried to restrain her a bit to let the nurse do her job, and Av yelled at him, too.  I translated for everyone; she was howling out her words and no one could understand her but me, for whatever reason.  She started screaming that she wanted to go home.  GW told me later that when he'd been called back and they were taking her off the gurney and putting her into his lap in the chair, one of the nurses had suggested she hug her "Moo Moo" (referring to the stuffed cow she had brought from home along with her Buzz Lightyears).  Avery bellowed at her:  "HIS NAME IS MOO COW!!!" You go, girl. We just did the best we could to keep her comfortable.  After a bit they gave her a shot of hydrocodone, and she fell asleep.  She woke up twenty minutes later completely herself again and drank a bunch of Sprite.

.....And The First Two Teeth Have Made An Appearance.....

Two days ago I felt two little jagged bumps on her bottom gums, and saw the tell-tale white spots.  I have to say I was shocked.  Av didn't get any teeth until she was 13 months old, so I guess I was expecting something along those lines with El, seeing how they're so much alike.  Surprise!

That big adorable smile won't be toothless much longer.