Area Baby Takes First Steps On First Birthday

Milestoneville, USA:  No kidding.  There was one this morning, when she stood up and took a step while rotating herself toward the couch in order to grab on.  That was her very first.  Then later, after supper, she was playing on the floor with balloons and took a step and a half before grabbing onto Dad.  She's been working up to this for a couple of days: lots of pushing up from a squatting position to stand up, then holding the pose for several seconds before plopping back down or reaching out for something to hang on to.  It's just so cool that the official first steps happened on her birthday.  Av's first steps, out on the front walk, happened on her 11-month anniversary.

It was a good day.  Mostly.  El had some...ahem...bowel trouble this morning, but took a long leisurely nap afterward and woke up in an awesome mood, just in time for the party.  It was nice enough to play outside for a bit, so she got to swing and slide and crawl through her tunnel.  Av made a wish for her and blew out her candle. (I'm not telling what the wish was. It's a cool one, trust me.)  Av also helped her open her present (a pull wagon with blocks in it) and helped her play with it.  By which I mean Av played with it and complained loudly when El knocked down the structures she was trying to build with the blocks.  El later played Manny Pacquiao with her helium balloons, coached by GW.  That was super cute.  It's hard to believe that she's a year old already.  Everybody says that, I know.  But truly, it feels like she was born a few weeks ago.

The night before this day last year, I gave GW his birthday present, twelve days late.  It was a DVD, the second season of Life On Mars, which I'd ordered from the BBC online and it was on back order and arrived way later than expected.  Anyway I wrapped it and gave it to him after Av went to bed and we joked that I could finally go into labor now since his birthday present came (El's due date was GW's birthday, 1-16, hence the joke).  That night I woke up at 2:30am with contractions.  The midwives came within an hour or so, and at 5:59am our second little girl made her entrance.

Loves her swing.

Big Sis is so pretty.

Av made a wish for El, and blew out her candle for her.

Yeah, I made the cake.  And the cookies.  Sure, you can have my autograph.

Yay!

Sis helped her open her present.

So I'm Having Trouble Writing....

It's not that I don't have inspiration.  But as they say, it's been busy lately, what with the holidays and the recovery from the holidays and all.  It does usually take me a good month to get back into some kind of normal groove after all that.  And because there's also a lot of weird stuff going on with various people in our lives, I'm thinking about and working on things like trusting my instincts about people and about how people treat me and my family.  The kids have still been doing noteworthy stuff, every single day.  We are fast approaching El's first birthday and Av's fifth, both of which are really big for me, so there's a lot to do to get ready for both. 

So more later....

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.