Nature walk: Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve

Last month when Brian's family was in town, we took them to the Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve for a nature walk and picnic. It was a beautiful, perfect day.





Brian studied the map a bit afterwards and was interested in exploring one of the other trails, so we decided to go back two weeks later. And though dark, drizzly days have their own kind of beauty, Adriana is not a fan of wind in her face, a fact of which she chose to remind us every time there was a gust of wind by screaming and bursting into tears. Half a mile into the walk we opted to turn back.




But this past weekend it was spectacularly sunny and 80 degrees (and not humid!), so we decided to try once more. We did a six-mile walk this time, taking the Ancient Oaks trail to the Mindego trail. The Mindego trail eventually comes out on a fire road, and we opted not to do that last mile as it was not shaded and we were nearly out of water, but Brian's curiosity about the trail was satisfied.

15 months

Last Saturday, Adriana said her first word, declaring "dog" in a loud, staccato voice as she looked at a photo of a dog in a book. We stared at her and glanced at one another. Then she did it again and grinned at us. Now we spend all of our free time trying to get her to say it again. Or to say dad or mama.

"Da da da da da," Adriana babbled on Thursday night, smiling at us.

"Aw, are you saying 'dad?'" Brian asked.

"Um, I think she's just making noises right now, love," I told him. Did I really believe that, or was I just offended that she was saying "dad" instead of "mama?"

"Doesn't matter, I just melted."

"Psssst, kid, now's the time to ask for a pony," I stage whispered to the baby, who started to giggle maniacally, as if she understood.

We're honestly just happy to hear her babbling, as she's never done a great deal of that. Even if she's not talking, she certainly understands a lot. When I say that it's time to feed the cat, she goes into the kitchen and points to the container where the cat's food is kept. She pulls open my dresser drawers and looks to me, waiting for me to ask her to close them, which she then does. If I ask her if she wants to go outside, she runs to the door. A few days ago I misplaced my glasses, and wandered around the house searching for them, repeatedly signing "glasses" and asking Adriana if she knew where mama's glasses were (I was worried that I'd left them within her reach and she'd taken them--not that she would give them back because I was asking). Now whenever she sees me without my glasses (which had fallen behind my dresser), she makes the sign, and then goes to my dresser to point to where they are. I was interested that she learned the sign when I wasn't actually showing her the glasses, since I wasn't sure she would know what I was talking about, but I guess all the times I've requested "Please don't grab mama's glasses" have made an impression. And she manages to communicate fairly well with her sign language. We know when she wants to eat or nurse or get out of her sweater or listen to music. Our favorite new sign is the one she makes now to request a diaper change. Sometimes she doesn't really need a diaper change: she just sees the cat through the baby gate that is on the door to the room where the changing table is and is trying to get us to take her in there. Other times she signs just before she actually needs the change, which we keep thinking holds some sort of promise, although she seems young to be thinking about potty training.

Adriana's favorite thing is to be read to. I am careful not to leave picture books on our nightstands. That's important if I want to eat breakfast and get ready in the morning without constantly reading to her, because as soon as she sees one of her favorite books (these days those are Where the Wild Things Are, The Paper Bag Princess, Pat the Bunny, and some animal books I picked up at the zoo just before she was born) we must sit and read them over and over. And I'm fine with that...after 8 AM. The weather has been beautiful lately, so we've been sitting out on our balcony to read while while we share a sandwich for lunch most days. Any neighbors who are home during the day are probably getting tired of those same books over and over, but I can't think of a nicer way to eat lunch.

She's usually a little shy around strangers, but she can be an incredible ham when she's in a place where she's comfortable. We were doing some dancing around at our yoga class yesterday, and Adriana didn't want to be held as the younger babies were, so she joined in the dancing on her own. She knew everyone was looking at her and laughing, so she danced more, grinning and waving her arms.

She still isn't eating a huge range of foods, but she is eating a fair amount and it's all healthy (well, with the exception of garlic fries at baseball games), so I can't really complain. Most nights she sleeps pretty well. She always wakes up at least once, but I don't mind that--I kind of like bringing her into our bed to nurse and snuggle. Sometimes I expect her to already be in her bed and there is a moment of groggy panic when I hear her cry and can't find her in our bed. The other night I reached for her to my right, found she wasn't there, and turned over to move her from between Brian and me, and discovered she wasn't there, either. I was lifting up the blankets, terrified she was smothering somewhere before I realized that she had just slept for five hours in her own bed and was now standing up in it, looking at me frantically searching for her while she cried to be picked up. And then I lifted her out of her bed and and she rested her head on my shoulder and stopped crying, just like that.

A few months ago, a friend whose baby is less than two months older said of her little girl, "She's not really a baby anymore; she's such a little girl now." And I was surprised by that, because Abigail and Adriana are nearly the same age, and of course Adriana is still a baby. But now as I look at her studying the rosemary on the balcony or looking at a book by herself, I know exactly what Becca meant. It makes me appreciate the time that we spend curled up nursing in the armchair or playing in the bathtub, when Adriana seems very much the baby, even more.



At the ballgame



Picnicking on Russian Ridge


Hiking with dad


Ready for lunch and stories on the balcony


Making the windchimes make music

Recent conversations with Brian

While we listen to the music on this post from Rachel's blog:

Me: I actually like organ music. One time Cyndi and I were at Temple Square, and--

Brian: Let me guess. You didn't get drunk and have sex with anybody?

***

Out of nowhere as he is doing dishes:

Brian: You know, I really love proof by induction.

Me:

***

As I read his cousin's Facebook profile:

Me: Rachael likes your music and my music. She likes Jack Johnson and Simon and Garfunkel, and she likes Jurassic 5 and Ozomatli. Okay, basically she likes everything except country.

Brian: Oh, I'm sure if you asked her, she'd say all kinds of nice things about Shania Twain. California Jews love Shania Twain.

Me: (giggles)

Brian: I should feed you pizza and wine more often. You laugh at more of my jokes.

Me: Feed me pizza and wine? I made the pizza and opened the bottle of wine. And did the dishes afterward.

Brian: Wanna make out?

Travel journal: San Francisco

As we headed out of the city yesterday, I lamented to Brian, "I don't know about today. I mean, the Giants lost and I got peed on."

He pointed out that it had been an awesome day of doing touristy things in San Francisco: after the baseball game (which, yes, the Giants lost, but it was preseason, so it doesn't count, and we got to lounge around in the sun and look out at the bay)(oh, and I shouldn't forget to mention that it's good to be back at a ballpark that understands the importance of garlic fries) (also: baby's first ball game! baby's first garlic fries!), we walked up to Coit Tower (and actually went to the top of the tower, which I'd never done), then climbed up Lombard Street (I cannot believe I'm actually talking about doing a marathon in San Francisco; nice, flat San Diego was totally the way to go before), and then went for a trolley ride. And (and!) we did it all with my friend Mark who I hadn't seen in years. Which, all in all, comes out to more positives than negatives, even if being peed on (at least it was by my own kid) does get count extra on the negative side.

Quiet

I started to write something last Tuesday, but I realized quickly that it was basically going to say, "GAHHHH. THE NOISE. MAKE. IT. STOP." Because the noise of the gigantic fan that had been running in my apartment since Sunday afternoon was making me a little bit insane.

On Sunday, Brian seemed to be taking the flooding in our apartment more seriously than I was. I mean, after we'd discovered it and called maintenance and whatnot. I was stressed out when it was happening, too, but once someone had come to pull up the carpet pad, set a gigantic fan going, and promise to return to check on my washer the next day, I felt that I was doing okay. I contemplated leaving that night with the baby, but with my sister using my dad's spare room and Adriana's "Jewish grandparents" out of town, I decided to just stay put until morning. We left the fan running overnight, and I joked about people who spend a lot of money on white noise machines when we'd gotten this one for free. But even with being out of the house all day on Monday and for a good chunk of Tuesday, by Tuesday afternoon all the "white noise" was giving me a headache. Now I was the one strung up and cranky and Brian seemed relaxed. He turned off the fan when he got home on Tuesday night, and it was amazing what the relative quiet did for my mental health.

My mental health was improved even more on Thursday, when the floor was totally dried out and a man came to put down new a new pad and re-lay the carpet. And Friday when the maintenance guys finally fixed my washer and I no longer was going to have people in and out of the apartment checking on things. And Saturday, when we finally caught up with the laundry (I was wondering how three people could wear so many clothes in one week, and seriously considering a nudist colony), it was good to feel like things were finally back in order.

Now the refrigerator is humming, the washer is spinning, and the baby is dancing to the Dixie Chicks while playing with a beeping kitchen timer. And the house seems quiet.

Am totally psychic

Yesterday I correctly predicted who was at my front door, just moments after I heard knock. Of course, this may have been mostly because on my way to answer it, I saw the huge puddle of water in front of my washer and when you are in an upstairs apartment and your hallway is flooded, the knock on your front door is pretty much certain to be your downstairs neighbor coming to inform you that her ceiling is dripping.

Sometimes I really want to buy a house. But then something like this happens, and it is quite nice to have an emergency maintenance number to call, so that someone else will come pull up the carpet, dispose of the pad underneath, and set a giant fan going. "Nice" because someone else is dealing with it, I mean. Having my hallway and bedroom carpet all pulled up isn't nice. Toddlers and exposed nails? Not a great combo. Adriana was good about staying away last night, but we're abandoning ship today. Grandpa probably needed a baby fix anyhow.

Nursing nursling

Today at yoga, as we mamas began our sun salutations, Adriana picked out a baby doll from the toy box. It was naked, but she found a little t-shirt for it, and, unable to coordinate actually dressing the doll, wrapped the shirt around the doll and carried it around for a while. Finally she sat down next to me, lifted her shirt, and pushed the doll's head against her chest. My little nursling pretending to nurse! She nodded seriously and made the noises she does when she's imitating adult conversation, while we all laughed.

14 months

I just have to say that 14 months is SO MUCH BETTER than 12 or 13 months. I mean, I survived those months. I am here to tell the tale. But I am so much happier now. Of course, I'm not sure that what's changed is Adriana. I think a lot of it is that I really needed to adjust from babyhood to toddlerhood, and I don't adjust very quickly to change. But with some time, I can manage it, and I have. So I am handling my toddler better and because of this, or because Adriana is getting better at expressing herself, or perhaps because of the alignment of the planets, life is seeming pretty good these days. This is not to say that it's all sunshines and rainbows and unicorns around here. But now our daily routine is something along the line of sunshine-tantrum-rainbow-tantrum-unicorn-tantrum-tantrum-chocolate- tantrum, rather than just tantrum-tantrum-tantrum-tantrum-tantrum-tantrum-hey- I-know-what-let's-have-another-tantrum-tantrum-tantrum. See how that's an improvement?

Adriana loves to read books. I had been afraid for a while that she just wasn't going to enjoy reading (because a child's behavior at one year old is surely an exact predictor of her behavior for the rest of her life, right?), but now it seems that it's all we do. Her favorites from last month, Good Dog, Carl and Doggies: A Counting and Barking Book are still at the top of her list, but we also spend a fair amount of time reading The Little Engine That Could and The Paper-Bag Princess. A lot of the time we read only a page or so before Adriana goes wandering off, but other times she will sit quietly through the entire story--and then sit through it two more times in a row. Sometimes I think she could sit here and read books all day, but we're also spending a lot of time at the park. She loves to watch older kids play, and she'll try to hug the other toddlers who are close to her size. She climbs up the play structures and sometimes will climb down carefully, although usually she wants to hold my hand or go down the slide on my lap.

Another favorite thing is music. It was one of Adriana's first signs, and almost whenever the house is quiet she will go to stand by the stereo and request that I put on music. She claps with the audience on life CDs and dances to bouncier songs. She seems to be a big fan of the Dixie Chicks, Erin Mckeown, and the Clash, in particular, but she'll dance to pretty much anything peppy. sometimes when we're reading her a book she'll take a "dance break" when a song catches her attention, and will stand up to bounce to the music for a few seconds before returning to the story.

She still doesn't have any words, although she is babbling a bit more, but she is continuing to sign. She signs "dad" when she hears someone coming up the steps in the evening (and will pitch a mighty fit when she realizes that it was our neighbor and Brian isn't actually home yet), and "mom" when she hears me in another room or sees any female figure in a book. She signs "dog" when she sees a dog in the park (unless it's a really small one, in which case she signs "cat") or when she hears one bark outside. She's starting to put together series of signs, such as "eat" and "ball" when she wants a grape, and she recently threw her sippy cup to the floor, telling me "all done water" with signs before raising her arms to be picked up and signing "milk."

Her sleeping and eating have improved a great deal in the past couple of weeks. One night, after a visit from her grandparents, we sat down to dinner, and Adriana devoured her food. We kept bringing her more because she kept eating. She woke up once that night, and I thought I was in heaven. The next night she repeated her eating and sleeping, and I thought I was living some sort of charmed life. On the third night, Adriana refused to eat much and I didn't worry about it, until that night when she woke up every two hours and I discovered that even after a year and a half of interrupted sleep my body had quickly become enamored of more solid sleep--I could hardly function the next day. So our evenings are now rather tedious as we spend several hours trying to get the baby to eat. I don't do too much coaxing, I hope, and I try not to let myself get too emotional about it (you may think I'm kidding, but this is my ability to sleep we're talking about here), but I do follow the baby around and give her bites of food every time she gives me the chance. I do worry about the habit of not feeding her only at the table, and not making her sit down with us, but putting her in the highchair when she doesn't want to be doesn't seem to make matters any better. Plus, I figure any habits she has this week, good or bad, are likely to change within two weeks, so I just go with whatever works.

She is more willing to eat a variety of foods these days, and she doesn't make horrible faces whenever she tastes something new, but it must be food she can feed herself. She eats a lot of beans, asparagus, carrots, grapes, rice cakes, and cheese. It may not be the best or most varied diet, but at least it's relatively healthy. I haven't noticed her nursing much less, except at night of course, but losing those night nursings did seem to affect even my daytime supply, making nursing painful for a few days last week. The problem seemed to be solved with some fenugreek. So now I smell a bit like pancakes, but there are worse things to smell like, and now nursing Adriana doesn't leave me in pain and her frustrated.

Best of all right now is the way she seeks out cuddles. She leans her face in for a kiss, gives hugs and pats, tugs on my jeans when I'm standing, so I will sit down and make a lap for her to sit in. After her nap, she likes to sit in the armchair with me and snuggle for a bit while she wakes up. We don't read or listen to music or anything. It's one of my favorite times of day.

Nature walk: Monte Bello Open Space Preserve

All week long, Brian talked about wanting to get out for a hike on Saturday. On Friday night we discarded plans for Big Basin in favor of staying a little closer to home, when we read about the Monte Bello Open Space Preserve on Bay Area Hiker. We ended up not following the walk from the website, instead doing a loop comprised of the Canyon, Bella Vista, and Indian Creek trails--which came to about 5.5 miles. It was a perfect, sunny spring day, a perfect day for a hike.

Gloaming

Reading in the car while the baby slept (bringing her into the house usually wakes her up, so I just carry a book around in the diaper bag) recently, I paused when I saw the word "gloaming." Another one for my list, I thought, and my mind began to wander. "Sunset" had made my list, and when I saw "dusk" on Eleeza's, I realized that "twilight" should have been on mine. Considering how so many words for the same thing make me happy, I decided that it must be something about that time of day, some kind of magic to the sinking of the sun, the ending of the day. And I think that magic seems stronger this time of year as it becomes apparent that we are on the other side of Solstice at last. In the winter it becomes dark before I've had much of a chance to notice, but as the days begin to lengthen, I can appreciate sunset, dusk, twilight, the gloaming. I can indulge nostalgia for other times when I've noticed that particular time of day.

I remember drawing with chalk on the back patio and playing on the swingset and picking plums off the tree and eating them in the evenings--a whole series of memories I can't quite place in time, all mashed together in my mind.

I remember playing outside after dinner with our new puppy when I was ten years old, my brother and sister and me, all chasing and being chased.

I remember walking home from the house of a friend who lived up the hill from me, my clothing damp and leaving me just a little too cold because the sprinklers had come on while we were sitting outside and we thought it would be a good idea to run through them, even though we were old enough to be too cool for that kind of thing.

I remember coming up the slope from McHenry, probably sometime in spring of my junior year of college. I was alone and it was quiet, and as I passed the (hardly used) student center I felt light and happy. The sun had mostly set, but color still streaked the sky and the bay.

I remember sitting on my front step in Alexandria, watching neighbors climb off the bus and take their dogs for a walk before dinner, while I read poetry.

I remember holding hands with Brian, while he wore Adriana on his chest and we took a walk when he was returned home after work last spring.

Validation

Sometimes I get frustrated when I'm upset because I just want Brian to listen to what I'm saying and agree with me that whatever it is just sucks. Instead, he listens and then starts coming up with solutions. I thought it was just in his nature to fix things, and didn't necessarily understand his impulse.

But yesterday I got a phone call from a friend. She was angry and upset, to the point that she was unable to sleep and could only lie in the dark fretting. I listened to her talk, and wracked my brain for any relevant advice, some sort of solution to her problem. I came up with very little of any use, and finally I just said, with complete honesty, "That's awful. I don't blame you for being bothered by that. I'd be furious."

There was a pause on the other end of the phone and a deep breath from all those thousands of miles away. Then: "Thank you." I didn't laugh out loud, but I was amused at how just hearing someone say that it was okay to be upset about this problem could help my friend calm down that quickly, as well as my own "fix it" mentality.

Travel journal: San Francisco

A few weeks ago, Brian came home from work saying that he wanted to take a vacation. With a three-day weekend coming up, we decided that we should leave town for the weekend but not go too far--it would be the perfect chance to test out traveling with a toddler without spending a fortune on plane tickets and dealing with the hassles of flying with a toddler. We went back and forth, trying to decide between a city trip and a trip that would be more hiking, and finally decided on the city trip, because we've missed wandering around cities, we knew we needed to experiment with that kind of travel with Adriana, and we haven't spent any where near enough time in San Francisco since we moved back to California. Also, it's easier to find a last-minute affordable hotel in the city than up in Point Reyes.

On Saturday we ate an early lunch at home and then drove up to San Francisco. We parked at the de Young museum, and headed inside, only to realize that it was a beautiful day and we would rather spend it outside. We spent the afternoon wandering around Golden Gate Park, loosely following a couple of walks from our deck of City Walks cards: we circled Stow Lake and wandered onto Strawberry Hill, strolled through the botanical gardens, and then ventured into the Sunset district where we grabbed a couple of wraps and returned to the garden, so we could eat and Adriana could get out of her stroller and play on the lawn. I was worried because Adriana hadn't nursed since nine that morning, but she had been nibbling on Cheerios from her snack trap while we walked (we began calling her Gretel over the course of the weekend, because she was leaving a trail of the things all over the city) and was very interested in what I was eating, so I shared my falafel with her and realized that I should be happy that she can go longer between feedings from me.


Turtle in Stow Lake


Chinese Pavilion


Freedom!

Eventually we headed back to the car and went to our hotel (the Westin Market Street--I found a great deal through hotels.com) to check in. We let Adriana wreak havoc in the room for a bit, before I realized that being trapped in a hotel room with a baby who was getting into everything was certainly not my idea of a good time. Even if we weren't yet hungry, it was time to get OUT. We put the baby into the Beco and headed over toward Union Square. Adriana fell asleep on my back as we wandered around the square and surrounding streets. We finally decided to stop and get a bit of dinner, which was fine until I decided I needed to get the baby off of my back. I tried lowering her gently onto the bench of our booth, but she woke anyhow. And she wanted nothing to do with the high chair, so we took turns holding her and eating dinner. And in spite of the late nap, she still went to bed at a respectable hour that night.

We got a fairly early start on Sunday. I wanted to have a big yummy breakfast somewhere but hadn't planned on any place in particular, so we walked down to the Ferry Building, thinking that one of the restaurants there would serve the kind of Sunday brunch I was hoping for. Alas, all the restaurants were closed, so we got pastries at Peet's and let the baby run around outside, patting friendly dogs and chasing pigeons. I studied my walk cards, and we went from the Ferry Building to Chinatown. It wasn't yet ten o'clock, and the streets were fairly quiet when we got there. We peeked inside the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company, and the people there motioned us inside. I stood and watched for a while as the machines turned out perfect circles and people folded them into fortune cookie shapes. One man said something to me, and pointed to a basket of crisp circles that hadn't been folded into cookies yet. I didn't understand him, and he said something again. When I still didn't get it, he pointed to me, then the basket and said, "You. Take." So I did.

At St. Mary's Square, we released Adriana onto the playground. She spent a fair amount of time just playing with the gate, but eventually discovered the play structure--the one that wasn't in a sandbox, as she refuses to walk on or touch sand. She finally even asked to nurse, which surprised me, as I had been expecting a repeat of the previous day. We spent a little more time after our play break wandering Chinatown while Adriana napped in her stroller, and then we tried to get ourselves some lunch.



Lunch was a fiasco. We found the place where my friend Melanie and I ate last fall, which had been recommended by her copy of Lonely Planet. They didn't have high chairs, but back in September when Adriana and Eliza were eight and six months old, that wasn't too much of a problem. At first we weren't concerned, because Adriana was asleep in her stroller, and they let us squeeze the stroller in by our table. But then the baby woke up and wanted out, and the restaurant was getting more and more packed with other tourists, and we ate quickly and left. The food wasn't even that great.

We made another playground stop, but Adriana was obviously still tired and didn't want to play, so we decided to go back to the hotel to see if she would take another nap. She didn't sleep then, but she did nurse well, and we sorted through the deck of walks, and picked out a couple that would take us through the Mission. I had planned on doing the Cole Valley and Haight Street walks, but somehow these other ones sounded more interesting--plus we figured we would end up near some good Mexican food in time for an early dinner--so we hopped on BART up to 24th Street.

I'd never done much walking around the Mission, and it was interesting to take the time to see the neighborhood. It reminded me of DC's Columbia Heights or Logan Circle, with the transition to hipster gentrification in process, but with more murals and more signs in Spanish. There was a beautiful playground with murals and a mosaic dragon, but Adriana had conked out in the stroller again. Starting to get hungry, we headed toward Valencia--it was early, but we thought if we ate something light, we could have a second, later dinner. We just knew that we needed to get food before we got cranky--a valuable lesson we learned when we first traveled together back in 2001. We stumbled upon Dosa, and I immediately remembered that on a trip to California when we lived on the east coast, but the only night we were going to be in the city on that trip it had been closed. I gave up on the idea of Mexican food (or even on the idea of one of Jeff's pizzerias, since I'd left the list at home). They weren't serving dinner yet, so we settled into a coffeeshop for a snack. Adriana woke up while we were there, but we were able to keep her happy with Cheerios and repeated readings of Good Dog, Carl.

After the disaster that was our lunch, I was a little intimidated by going into another restaurant with a rambunctious toddler, but the staff at Dosa handled it great. We stashed the stroller by the coat rack, and they had a high chair ready for us. I was also relieved to see two other groups with babies--it made me feel much more comfortable. Adriana loved the pappadam that they brought to our table, and our dosas arrived quickly and were delicious. We live near some excellent Indian restaurants, but I had missed South Indian food. Still, we didn't linger over the meal, and we wrestled the baby, our daypack, the carrier, and the stroller out through the crowded restaurant fairly quickly.

The busy day had left Adriana tired once again, and after dancing around the hotel room to the radio (she was quite pleased that she could turn on the clock radio herself by just pushing on the sleep button), she was asleep by 8:30.

We were determined that on Monday I would get my brunch, although we decided that we might grab something light beforehand to make that possible. But our dinner the night before had been early, so I woke up starving at 6:30. I showered quickly and ran across the street to pick up something at Starbucks. After juice, croissants, and hot chocolate, second breakfast seemed unnecessary, so we decided to pack up our things and head out to Land's End for our final walk before heading home.

The City Walks routes all begin at a spot along a bus route, but because we were driving we began just above Ocean Beach. We loaded the baby into the backpack, stopped to look out at the water, and were pleased to see dolphins porpoising just out beyond all the surfers. Realizing that we had taken a long enough time getting out of the hotel that we could eat again, we decided to grab second breakfast at Louis' before heading out on our walk. Adriana and I shared a big plate of pancakes that were fantastic.


Those little specks are dolphins, I swear.

The views along the Coastal Trail were fantastic. We marveled at the wide open ocean and speculated about the container ships we saw making their way toward the bay. We had intended to walk to the Palace of the Legion of Honor and then back to our car, but when we came around the corner at Land's End and saw the Golden Gate in the distance, we started talking about walking all the way there. I am a bad judge of distance but it looked like it could be done. And Brian had never walked across the bridge. We went back and forth as we walked, wondering if we could do it. As the trail emerged out onto the road, there was a sign that included distances: 2.7 miles to the bridge, 1.7 miles back to the Cliff House. Adriana was tolerating being in the backpack fairly well. Some of the time she babbled and giggled to herself, and when she started with her "Eh? Eh?" noises, we knew to check to see what she was signing for--usually she just wanted her water bottle, sometimes she was requesting a snack, and once she had asked for milk. So long as we met those needs promptly, she was fine. We decided to do it.





Things did get a bit confusing once we'd emerged from the Coastal Trail near Eagle Point. We could see the bridge, and we could see the beaches below us, but walking through Seacliff, we were unsure if we were on the right track. We stopped at China Beach, hoping that there would be a ranger or someone there (I don't know, it seemed reasonable at the time) who could help us. Instead we used the restrooms there and gazed back up at the huge houses above us. While we were there I thought I heard a cat meowing, but decided I was probably crazy. But, as we were leaving, I heard it again, and noticed a large, grey-striped cat sitting there looking at us. I approached it, in spite of Brian's warnings that it was probably mean. I scratched his head and noticed he had a tag on his collar: I PLAY BEACH I KNOW WAY HOME KTHX. I laughed, remembering our neighbor in Alexandria who had been stuck with vet bills a couple of times when her cat had been picked up by well-meaning strangers who had noticed his limp. He was a former barn cat who liked to be outside and had had the limp as long as Karen had had him. He died last year, but I thought that if he were still alive I would have had a similar tag made for him.

Back on the road, confused about whether we were actually going to find a trail to follow, I dug through our deck of cards and found a walk from the Golden Gate to Baker Beach. That didn't quite connect us back to the Coastal Trail, but we were able to tell from the map on the back of the card that we were on the right track. As we walked down toward Baker Beach, we started wondering if we would feel up to the walk back--after all, between the baby and the backpack itself, Brian was carrying an extra 30 pounds on him ("Hey, I lugged around an extra 30 pounds when I was pregnant with her," I told him). Once we were past the beach, the signs telling us how far to our destination were more frequent, giving us the encouragement we needed. There were several artillery batteries along the coast, and we stopped at the first one we came to, Chamberlin, but I refused to walk down the steep steps to the other ones, determined to just make it to the Golden Gate.

And then we were there, just like that. First it was right ahead of us and we could see the cars heading onto it, and then we went through an underpass, and suddenly we were on the other side. We stopped on the grass for a drink and a snack and a diaper change. As we sat there on the grass, Brian asked me, "Do you want to walk to the other side?" I considered it for a moment, thinking that it wasn't a very long bridge and that I was feeling pretty good, before realizing that he was joking. Instead, we picked up our things and headed back the way we'd come. We laughed noticing the little three-wheeled yellow cars we'd been seeing around since Saturday, because this time we could hear the computer talking to the passengers, reminding them to look to the left at the stop sign before continuing on to the right. "In case you don't have your wife with you to nag at you," I told Brian.


The other side!

The walk back seemed shorter than the way there. The sun, which had come out sometime between our pancakes and when we'd reached the beach, was starting to disappear into the clouds again, so we kept up a good pace to stay warm. Adriana was starting to lose patience with the whole endeavor (she had napped a little bit on the way to the bridge, but the backpack isn't ideal for sleeping), so I walked along putting Cheerios and pieces of freeze-dried apples into her mouth, since she'd given up on feeding herself.


Looking back the way we came.

We made one last detour, up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor. We watched a couple having wedding portraits taken while we stretched out our legs and backs. Adriana asked to nurse, so I fed her and then took a couple of pictures of Rodin's Thinker. We circled the parking lot, studying the Holocaust Memorial and admiring the views of the city before looping back down to the path.





It was a relief to see the Cliff House in front of us at last. We passed by it back to our car ("Look at that view!" a Go Car computer exclaimed to its passengers as they came around the bend and passed us). We wondered about heading back into the Mission to find a good taqueria, but instead opted to head back down the peninsula, giving the baby a chance to rest. We saw hang gliders and parachuters as we drove down the Great Highway, which seemed somehow like the perfect end to the weekend.


Finished!

And it would have been the perfect end. We would have come home triumphant, pleased that we had managed a successful trip with the baby, having figured out how to travel in a city and do a decent length hike (10 miles!) with a toddler, but we pushed things a little too far by deciding to grab a bite of dinner in Palo Alto on our way home. Adriana woke up as we got her out of the car, and proceeded to let her discontent to be well known. Brian drank his margarita while I took her outside, then I went back in to drink mine and eat my enchiladas while he occupied her looking into storefronts, and then we switched again so he could eat. Finally we went home, where Adriana delighted in seeing all her toys again, and fell fast asleep by eight o'clock. And we weren't too far behind her.

So now we feel pretty confident about traveling with a toddler, although I am a little terrified of taking her on a plane. We know how to meet her needs while we're out and about, and if we do so promptly, we don't have to move at a much slower pace than we used to. Last fall we declined a trip with some of Brian's colleagues for a hike near Stinson Beach, but now I think we could handle it. I'm looking forward to doing more hiking, and to doing more walking around the city. The City Walks deck of cards was a good investment, I think. I wish the cards included a bit more detail, both on distances, and on some of the things you come across, but they gave us good starting points. The walks are pretty short and easy, but they can also be combined with nearby walks for a longer outing. We did the walks from eight cards over the weekend, so we only have 42 more to go.

Happy Valentine's Day

I am sort of amazed at how grown up she seems compared to this time last year.

13 months

I was going to post this on the eleventh, but then fate intervened. And by fate I mean a gigantic tantrum that lasted seemingly forever,* and left me shell-shocked and exhausted. Adriana didn't want me to sit at the computer and type. She didn't want me to play with her toys with her. She didn't want to be held or snuggled or nursed. She didn't want me to put her down. She didn't want to play peek-a-boo. She didn't want her sippy cup, but she also didn't want me to take it away. She also didn't seem to really want to arch her back, hurl herself to the floor, and scream, but she did plenty of it anyhow. It was a warm day and the windows were open and I started to wonder what the neighbors were thinking, as the baby was screaming and sobbing as if in pain. After about an hour of her screaming and my attempts to comfort her, I asked her if she wanted to read Good Dog, Carl, Adriana's book of the week. Still crying, she went and found it in the other room, and brought it back to me. She sat on my lap, shuddering with residual sobs, and I read her the book over and over. Whenever I started to set the book down to reach for another one, she protested, so we looked at the same picture book for about 40 minutes. Then everything was fine. Adriana toddled off to play by herself, and I sat and stared, wondering how on earth I would ever deal with a two-year-old, if this is what a one-year-old is like.

But then, awhile later when she was playing by herself, I sat down in the armchair, hoping to finish my book, and Adriana brought me over another book that she loves these days and asked to be picked up. We read that book over and over too. Adriana would look back and forth between my face and the book with a big smile, as I counted dogs and made barking noises. Sometimes she would take the book from me, and then turn the pages and babble. And then she leaned back against me, sighing and stroking my face, and we snuggled there in the armchair.

In spite of the tantrums, things are more positive than negative these days. Adriana is so loving right now. She gives her monkey and her doll hugs and kisses, and carries the monkey around the house. She come to me with her arms open for a hug, and pushes her open mouth against my cheek for a slobbery kiss. She loves other babies, and will crouch down in front of a baby in a carseat at yoga, so she can wave and smile, or gently pet the hair of a baby having tummy time on a blanket near his mama.

While she can go longer between feedings now, there are still days when she hardly eats any real food. But there are days when she eats well, and I actually notice a decline in how much she nurses. She loves to eat Cheerios, beans, bananas, little pieces of tofu and cooked carrots and sweet potato and chard. She doesn't object to strong flavors, often sharing our curry with us, although sweet things, such as toast with peach jam, are also big hits.

She walks relatively steadily now, getting where she wants to go (and is frustrated sometimes when we insist on putting her in a stroller or backpack). She climbs the play structure at the park (with me hovering right behind her), and easily climbed onto the hearth and the couch at my sister's house last weekend. Sometimes she crawls after a ball, and I love to see her do that--babies look so funny when they crawl. But whereas a month ago she would drop down to crawl when she wanted to get somewhere quickly, she usually realizes quickly that now she can get there more quickly on two feet.

I've struggled some with adjusting to toddler-hood. I think some women have difficulty adjusting to life with a baby, but I feel that I was able to get into that routine fairly quickly (or perhaps it just seems that way in hindsight) and instead am hitting a sort of wall as I try to deal with a determined toddler. Some of it is that I miss having a little baby. Some is that I am simply learning to deal with these new challenges. After my yoga class on Sunday, Brian and Adriana were waiting for me on a nearby plaza. It was wonderful to see Brian kneeling down, playing with Adriana, and even better to see the little girl in striped leggings and a navy blue windbreaker turn to see me and toddle over with an excited grin on her face.


*And then I didn't post yesterday because fate intervened in the form of a sunny day that totally required a trip to the beach.

Parkfairfax

Sometimes I am surprised by what it is I miss about our time living in DC. I wasn't surprised to miss my friends or even some of our favorite restaurants, but I wasn't expecting to miss my old neighborhood. When we "lived in DC," we weren't actually in DC--we were in the Northern Virginia suburbs. I went out a month before we moved to find a place for us to live, with visions of a cute basement apartment in Georgetown or a row house in Adams-Morgan, or maybe some sort of apartment in Dupont Circle. But the reality of all those things wasn't exactly what I'd pictured--the Georgetown basements I looked at were dim and cramped, Adams-Morgan was out of our price range, and the one Dupont high rise I checked out was...a high rise. I was soon calling about listings in Arlington and Alexandria, and on the morning of the second day of my househunt, I took a bus from the metro to a development in Alexandria which had cute, colonial brick condos, plenty of trees, and even parking. I called Brian afterwards to tell him I thought I'd found us our place, excitedly telling him that it was large, full of light, and not a bad commute for either of us, although it wasn't on the metro. I'd lived my whole life in the suburbs, and, in spite of romantic ideas of city life, apparently that wasn't going to change any time soon.

We lived in that neighborhood, Parkfairfax, for all of our five years. After three years, when we wanted to move to a place with an extra room and a washer/dryer (and when our landlord wanted to sell the unit we were living in), we moved just down the street from the place I originally picked out. Parkfairfax was built during the 1940s, just a little south of the Pentagon. There were some things about the apartments that let you know that the place had been built that long ago--weird wiring for the light switches, and original wood countertops in some kitchens. There was a condo association that kept everything looking rather Camazotz, I suppose--they had an azalea sale every May and a bulb sale every fall, so that most people's gardens were similar, and there were rules about what you could have out on your patio--but it did seem sweet and even sort of quaint. As a Californian, I was amazed that the large lawns weren't watered--they just stayed green most of the year--and by the brick buildings, which I was pretty sure meant we were all doomed in the event of an earthquake.

Mostly I miss Parkfairfax in the evenings when I close the blinds in my bedroom so that the people in the next building five yards away can't peer directly into our windows. I miss my Parkfairfax bedroooms. In our first apartment there, our windows were at ground level, but they were partially hidden by large azaleas. I could lie in bed and peer through the bushes at our little patio. Our second place in Parkfairfax lacked a patio, but the bedroom window was perfect: nearly right up against it was a dogwood tree, and an oak towered over the open space below us. In the winter the trees were bare, and we could sort of see across to other apartments, but they were far enough away that we couldn't see much. In the spring the dogwood bloomed, and then it and the oak leafed out, keeping our room relatively cool and shaded--in fact, I hadn't realized how much darker our room was in the summer until I stood there just before we moved and remembered how bright our room had been as I'd laid in bed in labor with Adriana back in January.

But what started me thinking about this was something that completely took me by surprise. When I went to vote on Tuesday, I missed voting in Parkfairfax. I loved getting ready for work a little earlier than usual and then walking over to the nearby synagogue to stand in line with my neighbors while we waited our turn. Even if I didn't know many of them by name, we recognized each other from our bus rides (I think half the neighborhood rode the bus to the Pentagon Metro every day) and walks, and we would all nod and smile politely. The last time we voted, when I was quite pregnant, we waited with a man who lived across the street from us and rode the bus at the same time most mornings, and as he stood with his two-year-old in his arms, he joked with Brian about doing curls to get ready for our baby. When I was sent to wait in another line because when we'd moved the previous year I hadn't changed my address but the registrar somehow knew about it, I wasn't the only one in that line who had to change my registration right there because I had moved within the precinct. Maybe I'll feel differently when we've lived here a bit longer, and perhaps the fact that not working means I was able to vote after lunch, when there wasn't any line, rather than before heading in to the office. But I definitely missed my old community this week.

Signs

One of my professors from Santa Cruz started encouraging Brian and me to do sign language with Adriana last summer. His granddaughter is only a few months older than Adriana and, by nine months old, was already able to communicate a bit with it. Brian and I thought it sounded like a great idea, and in fact, I'd been occasionally signing "milk" to her before nursing since she was a few months old, but we hadn't been really dedicated about it. Eventually, though, I checked out Sign With Your Baby from the library. We read a chapter here and there, looked up a couple of signs, and then when back to just signing milk occasionally. I knew she recognized the word when I said it, but

So a week or so before Christmas, when Adriana signed milk for the first time, we were surprised and immensely pleased. After enjoying this new ability she had to communicate we started adding more signs. Soon she was pointing at the stereo and signing for music when she wanted me to turn some on, or signing when she noticed music coming on during the news in the evening. Brian is better at it than I am, pointing at something and making the sign for it over and over as they play: he is the one responsible for teaching her "ball" and "monkey," her two favorite toys.

It's fun watching her catch onto a sign, and she is learning a couple of new ones every week. Early last week I put her in her highchair and gave her a slice of cheese to snack on while I cut up some vegetables for soup. She started to fuss and I went to get her out of the chair, but then seemed to sign "eat," so I gave her another piece of cheese, which she ate happily. On Friday as I was folding laundry, Adriana kept dropping her sippy cup into the hamper, and then whining for me to get it out. Each time I went to retrieve it for her, I would ask, "Do you need me to get your water out?" putting a ridiculous amount of emphasis on "water" and "out" as I signed them. Finally, I heard the cup hit the bottom of the hamper and looked over at the baby, who was patting her mouth with an open hand. Not quite the sign for water, but close enough. And she's done it over and over since then, both when she sees her cup and when it's not there but she wants a drink.

I heard somewhere that babies that sign often talk late, probably because they can communicate without speaking. I'm not sure if there are scientific data to back that up, and I think I've also heard that it doesn't affect when babies talk and that babies who sign talk earlier. But at eleven months old Adriana didn't have any words at all, and now, at nearly thirteen months she still doesn't (according to my baby book, I started at nine months), but I am finding it doesn't matter. She is going to be a late talker, so it relieves us all to have Adriana able to communicate with us beyond just fussing. Normally when we are at my dad's for a visit, I have trouble knowing when to feed her, because even when she seems to be fussy and a little hungry, she is so busy playing with Grandpa and getting into cupboards, that she won't eat. Last week when we were there, I didn't worry about nursing her until she asked, which she eventually did, and she really ate, too, not just nursing for a second before pulling away to see what she was missing.

This morning, I was awake but still exhausted, so when Adriana began to stir, I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, hoping she would go back to sleep. Instead I felt her sit up and then touch my face. I opened my eyes, and there, so close I couldn't even focus, was a little fist signing for milk.

Words I like

• persimmon
• covert
  
• trousers
• indigo
• chuckle
• gossamer
• sea
• onomatopoeia
• rosy
• crud
• delight
• cascade
• ache
• riverbed
• stagger
• daffodil
• ombudsman
• silver
• bitterness
• bougainvillea
• sunset
• hobo
• curve
• arabesque
• mourning
• olive

Sentimental

A few days ago, walking through the Stanford campus, I inhaled the scent of the eucalyptus trees, and was suddenly surprised by a memory of a night nearly exactly seven years ago. My mother had just died, and Brian and I had returned to Santa Cruz. We were invited to the home of some friends, and I reluctantly consented to go: I knew I needed to get out of the house, and most of our friends didn't know yet, so I wouldn't receive too much sympathy that I wasn't prepared to handle. No one said anything to me about my mom that night, which was something of a relief, but our host walked us out to the car and gave me a rib-crushing hug. Imprinted in my mind now are the intermingled sensations of the cold, coastal night air, the scent of the eucalyptus trees along Western Drive, and the almost-painful embrace of someone who understood.

This morning I sat at the kitchen table while the baby napped, sipping hot chocolate and watching the rain. The image that came to mind was my first day in Madrid in May 2001. A bright, refreshing morning had given way to a gloomy and wet afternoon, and Brian and I wandered through the narrow, winding streets, which are bronzed in my memory by the rain of that day and the time since then. Lost and wet, but still having a good time because it was the beginning of our trip and everything was exciting, we took refuge in a crowded cafe where I ordered a cup of the rich, thick Spanish hot chocolate, and immediately fell completely in love with it. I don't remember the rest of the day at all.

Pet peeve

I hate it when people whose first language is so obviously not French talking to someone whose first language is so obviously not French insists on pronouncing "croissant" in the French way. What is the point? Other than to make me have a fingernails-on-the-chalkboard cringe when I hear you order your coffee and cwah-sahhhh?

The Runner's High

I am here to profess my true love for a shoe store.

Six years ago I signed up to walk a marathon. At the beginning of the training, I bought a new pair of running shoes, some Nikes that I liked the feel of. But on the very first walk on which I wore them I was left with a painful blister on my little toe on each foot. I tried again on the next weekend's training walk, and once again was hobbling by the time I'd gone five miles. I sucked it up and bought myself a new pair of shoes, and gave the almost-new Nikes to Goodwill.

A couple of weeks ago I realized that my Asics were losing their support--probably because I've been walking around in them since before I was pregnant with Adriana. They were my third pair of the same shoes--once I had found a pair I liked, I would just walk into The Running Company in Georgetown on the way home from work and say, "I need a new pair of these." Now that The Running Company isn't on my way anywhere anymore, I looked for a good athletic shoe store recommendation online and decided to try out The Runner's High in Menlo Park. I picked out a pair of Brooks, and as I paid for them, the saleswoman told me about the store's return policy: I could return the shoes in ten days for a full refund or in thirty days for store credit, even if I'd worn them outside. On Friday I walked five miles at Crystal Springs with Mary and found that the shoes came up too high in back so that they were rubbing the skin on the back of my ankle raw. That night I told Brian about the return policy and we speculated whether they really meant it: would they give me all my money back if I tried returning a pair of running shoes with a bloodstain on the back?

Turns out the answer is yes. I walked into the store today, handed over the shoes and my receipt, and explained what had happened. I told the guy who was helping me about my old Asics, and he brought me out a pair. I put them on, and they felt just right. He had processed the exchange and placed the shoes in the basket under Adriana's stroller by the time I had finished tying my chucks back on.

WYDSILSMOTDKA*, Part II: Carriers for bigger babies

Steph! Clara! I'm so glad you asked.

By the time Adriana was four months old, the one-shouldered baby carriers that I'd loved were causing me a lot of pain, and I'd never really gotten the hang of the Moby, so I was down to just one carrier--my meitai. I was considering purchasing another one in a different color, because really, how can you have only one baby carrier to choose from, but I was sometimes frustrated by the readjusting I had to do with the meitai, so I started looking at other carriers. In the fall, we ended up with two new ones.

Beco
At a Bay Area Babywearers (formerly NINO) meeting, I tried on an assortment of "soft structured carriers"--an Ergo, a Beco, a Sutemi, and a Patypum, and maybe another one. I didn't completely fall in love with the fit of any one of them over the others--they all seemed pretty similar to me--so I went with the Beco because it was the prettiest, and I am a sucker for a pretty baby carrier (I have the "cocoa butterfly" pattern--approved by me for being pretty but not too loud, and approved by Brian for being not so girly that he won't wear it, although I actually think it's more girly than the green dragonflies of the meitai that he objects to, but what do I know?). That carrier has become my default. The Beco is more bulky than a meitai, so I can't shove it into a diaper bag as easily and it somehow doesn't feel as snuggly. The bulkiness is partly because of the big waist strap, which I think helps distribute more of the baby's weight to my hips. I like that I don't have to tighten the straps up after I've had it on for a while, and in the wetter weather, I don't have to worry about long straps dragging on the ground when I'm putting it on outdoors.

At first I used the Beco just as I had the meitai, with Adriana strapped to my front. I found quickly that the sternum strap, which goes across the back for a front carry, doesn't shorten quite enough to make this comfortable for a long haul; the shoulder straps would start to slip relatively quickly. Still, it was good for getting the baby and groceries up to the apartment, and for longer carries, I could lengthen the shoulder straps and wear them crossed over my back. That gave me more support, and made the shoulder straps unable to slip. (If you do this carry with it, take the sternum strap off and place it in the pocket so you don't lose it!) Where this carrier has been invaluable, though, is in getting Adriana onto my back. Someone at the Babywearers meeting had helped me figure out a way to do a back carry in the meitai, but I was never sure that I had Adriana securely in there. The Beco, with its clip closures, made me more confident that I had things right. Now I rarely carry her on my front, and she travels around town on my back and often spends time there in the evenings while I am fixing dinner.


Deuter KidComfort II
Shortly after the Beco arrived, Brian decided that he really wanted a frame backpack carrier for hiking with Adriana. We went to REI and tried out everyone they had, which included the Deuter, a couple of Kelty carriers, and the REI one. It figures that the most expensive one is the one we both liked the best. It seemed easiest to adjust, which is important when there is a 10-inch height difference between you and your spouse, and the seat seemed the most comfortable for Adriana. I also liked that it had a good-sized pocket/backpack underneath the seat.

Adriana loves riding in this carrier. We use it for the farmer's market every weekend, and she really seems to enjoy being up high and able to see what's going on. (In the Beco, she can see to the sides but not over my shoulder, as she rides so low that sometimes people don't notice at first that it's not just a backpack that I've got on.) Brian is the one who carries her in it, and he seems fine with the fit. I did carry her home in it once, and it didn't feel quite right, but I don't think I'd really taken the time to adjust it properly. We've only used it on a couple real hikes so far, although I am hoping to use it more this spring. He was able to do a fair amount of maneuvering in it. I was worried at first about whether Adriana would be able to fall asleep in the backpack, but although it takes her longer (for a while we were taking the stroller to the farmer's market, and we would time the walk there with her morning nap, which was perfect), she does manage; it doesn't seem as though her head is quite as comfy as in the Beco when she sleeps because she's not pressed right against us, but she can just lean her head forward slightly and rest it on the padding. After our failed attempt to see Body Worlds, Brian and I both wished that we'd had this carrier with us. Perhaps if she'd been up high and able to see everything, she wouldn't have objected so strenuously to the fact that we weren't letting her run around.


I'll try to update this post with pictures later, but naptime is ending soon, and I need a snack. A nursing mother needs her calories, you know.

*Original review of carriers here.

Ah, the trials and tribulations of a white, upper-middle class liberal

On Tuesday I turned on KQED for All Things Considered, and after listening to the pledge drive spiel a couple of times, I went online and made my pledge. Then I kept listening to the program and kept having the news interrupted by the pledge drive spiel. When Brian came home, I complained, as I always do, that it doesn't seem fair that after I've handed over my credit card number I have to keep listening to them asking me for money. But you know what makes it worse? When they add cooler gifts further on in the pledge drive. Next time I am totally waiting to pledge until I hear them name off a gift that I want.

I think gracefulness comes later

Photos courtesy of Grandpa Andy.

Twelve-month stats

We saw Adriana's pediatrician on Tuesday. She (Adriana, not the pediatrician) was 22 pounds 2 ounces (68th percentile) and 30 inches tall (78th percentile). One more inch and she'll be half my height! They say (and by "they" I mean a few of my girlfriends) that if you double a child's height at her second birthday you'll know how tall she's going to be as an adult, so Adriana should definitely get to be taller than I am. Oh, and her head circumference was 18 inches (93rd percentile). It's amazing to me that she has grown so much in the past year--her weight has more than doubled (some babies triple their weight in the first year, but since she started out big she hasn't), she's grown eight inches, and her head has grown by four inches.

Adriana also got three immunizations--the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, the Hepatitis A vaccine, and then the booster for the haemophilus influenzae type b. She screamed her head off from the time of the first shot to when the nurse finally left the room, but then she had a pretty quick recovery and hasn't had a fever or any other reactions. The chicken pox vaccine was also offered, but we've decided to delay it for the time being; the doctor said we can do it whenever we want or not at all, but if Adriana doesn't get chicken pox by the time she's eleven years old or so, we should probably consider going ahead with it. I'm thinking we'll probably do it before then, but I hate for her to get too many shots at once.

One thing that was revealed by Adriana's vocal dislike of having her hips examined was four swollen spots on her gums--the poor baby is working on four molars at once. I had been a little upset by her sleep patterns and was considering night weaning, but now that I know what's behind the wakings, I have more sympathy for her and will try to give her what she needs (which is to say, Tylenol before bed and milk whenever she wants it).

Definitely back in California

Yesterday in Palo Alto, an older man saw me and exclaimed, "You have a baby on your back!" It's a reaction I get often, and I usually just nod and smile. (Brian thinks I should say, "Shit! How'd that get there?" or something to that effect.) This man stopped me, though. "What do you call this contraption?" He studied it carefully and asked me a couple of questions about it. Then: "My stepson and his husband are adopting a baby this year. I'll have to let them know about this."

12 months

It's much easier to say "twelve months" than to say "one year." I guess I am in some sort of denial when it comes to acknowledging that my baby is becoming a toddler. Although, in spite of the fact that I am finding parenting a toddler to be more challenging that parenting a baby, I am enjoying this age just as much as I've enjoyed every other one.

Over the past month Adriana has started signing for milk. It's funny how such a little thing is such an amazing change around here. She fusses and signs and I know exactly what she wants. Or sometimes she just fusses and I ask her, "do you want milk?" Sometimes she makes the sign in reply and I know that she wants to nurse. I am thrilled by this communication, although she has been making other sorts of signs for a while now--raising her arms to be picked up and pointing at things she wants. We are trying some other signs with her, and while she seems to understand some of them (Brian signed for "ball" the other night without saying it out loud, and she went and picked up the ball), she isn't attempting to make them herself.

She walks fairly well now, without reaching for my finger to hold most of the time, and her skill at and willingness to walk increases noticeably every day. Last Friday I set her down on the floor when we arrived at yoga, and she got to her hands and knees and crawled over to the ball she wanted. On Wednesday when we got there and I set her down, she immediately toddled over to the toy she wanted. She still falls down a lot, but now she can pick herself up off the floor without pulling up on anything. In some ways it's nice--trips to the park are more fun--but it's also made her slightly less portable. We tried to see the Body Worlds exhibit in San Jose last weekend but had to make a hasty exit because the stroller and the carrier were both unacceptable to her, and I wasn't prepared to let her walk by herself in a crowd.

And of course there is the climbing. It started with a ride-on toy that her Grandpa Ted gave her for Christmas. At first I thought the toy was obnoxious because of all the stupid songs it would play at the press of a button, but it kept Adriana busy while I fixed dinner or (gasp) went to the bathroom ALL BY MYSELF. But then I discovered her standing on the toy in the middle of the room. She squealed and waved at me. She quickly learned that she could push it over to the bookcases to get to things that were formerly out of her reach, or to climb onto the couch, where she leans back against the cushions looking mighty pleased with herself. And then came her discovery that she could squirm her way onto other furniture without a stepping stool, so that one day I could leave her alone in a room for a few minutes, and the next I was fearful that within two minutes she would have climbed onto the chair and from there onto the chest where she could hurl CDs to the floor and open and close the stereo. So right now our projects are teaching the baby how to turn around carefully and slide off the furniture safely, and figuring out a way to keep the electronics in this house safe from curious little baby hands.

I am comforted when other women I meet say that their children didn't really get going on solids until 18 months, because Adriana is still going back and forth. There was a week or so when she greedily ate breakfast and lunch with me. Now, she has a few bites and is finished, and she must feed herself those bites--having me spoon-feed her is once again unacceptable. But she is eating more food at dinner with us now (another reason to appreciate the later bedtime is that I don't have to fix her dinner at 5 or 6 and then make a real dinner for Brian and me after he gets home from work), gobbling up black beans, carrots, enchiladas, and pretty much anything else I put on the highchair tray.

She is sleeping better at night (although still not through the night) than she was a few weeks ago, but she did not get the memo that all the other babies got about going to bed by 7 or 8, and instead prefers to be up until 9:30 or 10. For a while that was bothering me, but then I figured out that if I stopped trying to get her down to bed at 8, I would stop being frustrated by her refusal to sleep at that hour. I am fairly sure that the late bedtime is the result of her tendency to nap later in the afternoon than she used to, but because she is still taking two naps a day and is sleeping in an hour later than she used to, I am trying not to complain.

And it is hard to complain when we snuggle up to nurse down for the night, and after she finishes eating she rolls away and lies there in the dark, just looking at me. Then she pats my cheek and comes back for just a little more milk before drifting off.

My job just got 5,784,998 times harder

I mean, look, now I'm going to have to pay attention to the child:



After mastering walking (well, "mastering" is used fairly loosely here), she's decided the next step is climbing the furniture, apparently. Unfortunately she hasn't yet figured out how to climb down safely. Or that mama doesn't like it when she pushes all the buttons on the stereo and throws CDs on the floor.

Merry Christmas

With my whole heart

I read somewhere, maybe in one of Madeleine L'Engle's books, that there are essentially two prayers: "Please?" and "Thank you!" I told a friend earlier this week that the insanity of the winter holidays was starting to get to me, and I needed to see the ocean to give myself perspective. So today, even though there is stuff to be done around the house and errands to run before Christmas, I finally took the time to drive down to Santa Cruz. As I drove over the summit on Highway 17 this morning and caught my first glimpse over the tops of the trees of the low-lying clouds over the bay, it was that second prayer, the prayer of thanksgiving, thanks for the beautiful world, for being here, in this life, with all that has been given to me, that sprang to my lips.

A suburban housewife for one year

A year ago today, I woke up with nothing in particular to do. It was the first day after I'd quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom. I tried writing about the strangeness of it that day, and again a week later, judging by the dates of unfinished files in my Google Docs folder. I was exhausted at that point, so every time I wrote a sentence I needed a nap, which wasn't conducive to getting much writing done. And what was there to say? It wasn't a very exciting thing to write about:

This morning when the alarm went off, I stayed in bed. Brian got up, turned it off, and went downstairs, while the cat curled back up beside me. About half an hour later I wandered downstairs for some orange juice, just as Brian was heading back up to get ready for work. I did the Sudoku and puttered around a bit. When Brian left for work, I wandered around the house aimlessly for a little bit. I had told Brian that on my first day at home, I wasn't going to set any goals for accomplishing things. I was going to eat and sleep, and just enjoy not doing anything. Getting things done could wait until Thursday. But after I checked my email, I started a load of laundry, made the bed, wrapped some presents, and tried to clear out the slow-running bathroom sink with baking soda, vinegar, and boiling water (which totally failed, but did make cool noises).

So it wasn't particularly interesting, although no longer being required to show up for work was a relief, even if I had had an easy desk job. It was nice to not have to commute up to Glover Park from Alexandria each morning. When I got tired during the day, I could lie down and nap for an hour. I tried to get something done around the house each day, and I tried to get out for a walk every day, but other than that, my only task was growing the baby. It was strange to become "a stay-at-home mom with no kids," although apparently, according to what I wrote last year, one of my friends had noted when I described myself that way that the Bush Administration would probably just call me a stay-at-home-mom, and even give my fetus Medicaid. (I have no recollection of that conversation, but I know exactly which friend would have been the one to say that.) I ended up with three weeks off before Adriana's arrival--three weeks to rest up, to allow myself time for the quiet contemplation of the end of pregnancy, the strange turning inward that seems to happen for most women. That was a huge blessing.

Then Adriana arrived and everything changed. Moments for quiet contemplation seemed few and far between, even with our easy-going little girl. IN the early days, when I wasn't busy with her, I was too exhausted to think. But there wasn't that scary end-of-maternity leave date looming six- or twelve-weeks ahead on the horizon. I found it comforting that for the time being, my sole job was to nurture my baby.

Before we were ever married, Brian and I talked abstractly about kids ("our subjunctive children," we referred to them), and I recall him saying that he assumed that if we had children I would continue to work afterwards. I was thinking along the same lines at that point, but as we began to talk about starting a family more seriously, I realized that it was important to me to be able to stay home with our baby, and Brian agreed with me. I feel incredibly lucky that we were able to afford to give up my salary. That means it's important for us to stay a one-car family, and that it will take longer for us to get to a position where we can buy a house. Most of the people around us were very supportive of our choice, although there were a few comments that annoyed me because they made me feel defensive ("Your brain will turn to mush!") and others that made me want to jump to the defense of families where both parents work ("It's really the best thing for the baby."). For the most part I haven't felt the need to proclaim that "Of course I work!" or that "Adriana is my job!" when people ask me if I work, although when couple of (childless) friends have commented that they wished they didn't have to do anything Brian has had to listen to me bitch about them that night.

There are days when I have my doubts, days when Adriana and I are both sleep deprived and cranky, days when I wish someone else were dealing with her refusals to nap and the constant fussing. Then I think that trying to do another job on so little sleep wouldn't be fun, either, and I'd really only get to spend time with Adriana at the end of the day, which is not her finest time. There are those days. But most days we play together and I use her naps to take some time for myself or get things done around the house. She holds my finger and leads me around and around the apartment on her wobbly legs, stopping to laugh at the cat or investigate a magazine that was left on the couch, and I am completely aware of how good life is, how lucky I am.

In one of the posts I began last December, I wrote, "I spent most of my final commute home wondering if I'd made the right decision. All that time and money spent on grad school to become a stay-at-home mom? Would I go absolutely crazy in the first three months of being home alone with the baby? Should I have at least kept working right up until when the baby came?" A year later, I do feel that it was the right decision. That's a nice feeling to have.

Best husband I ever had, part 2

Last night we ordered pizza so that we wouldn't have to cook or do dishes, and after the baby was in bed we divided up some of the housework that needed to be done.

"I just don't know how the kitchen got so messy all of a sudden," Brian said as he emptied the dishwasher and cleaned off the kitchen counters.

"I haven't done the daily straightening up I do in here the past couple of days," I told him.

"Were you trying to make a point?"

I explained that, no, it was just that the baby had been a handful the past couple of days (that's what I get for gloating about the fact that she hasn't been teething--I think she is again), and since we had planned to go out on Wednesday night anyhow, I just hadn't done the normal clean-ups I do before I cook dinner. And then said something along the lines of being impressed that I can cope with the baby all day and still manage to do even minimal tidying up, and how sometimes on the weekends the amount of time he gets with the baby seems like a lot. Basically I don't remember exactly what he said, just that it warmed my housewifely heart.

No other sight spreads cheer so well

Last year I realized for the first time that people really do have themes for their Christmas trees. One friend's tree was all done up in blue and silver. We went over to someone else's house and their tree was decorated all in red and white. I was surprised by both trees, because in my world Christmas trees are covered in multicolored lights and a variety of ornaments of all colors that have been made and collected over the years. These themed trees were absolutely perfect, though.

I thought about those perfect trees last weekend as Brian and I decorated our Christmas tree, a tree that we both agreed on immediately, and then got home and discovered it was too fat to fit where we'd planned to put it. We passed the long string of lights around and around getting them just right--and then discovered that we'd done the strand the wrong way, so we didn't have the plug end when we got to the bottom of the tree, and we wound them back around the piece of plastic, and started over again. We dug out ornaments that I've been collecting since we first moved in together, including a bunch I made out of plastic yogurt lids, photographs, and glitter glue that first year when we didn't have any ornaments. Now we have a bunch of glittery ornaments that I bought at the Crate and Barrel outlet last year, pretty glass globes that I've picked up in various places, delicate outlines of rose windows from Cathedrals we've visited, a ceramic giraffe that says "Baby's first Christmas" and is personalized with Adriana's name and the year, and of course my photo ornaments--Brian and me at our college commencement (I miss those hot pink leopard print sunglasses), the two of us sunburned in Hawaii, his parents kissing under some mistletoe, our friend Jeff rolling his eyes, my mom and me in San Diego. We put all these treasures up on the tree--with none lower than about three feet--settled a sock monkey at the top, and stood back to admire our work and eat some warm gingerbread. It's its own kind of perfect.

***

Last night I sat in the dark and rested my cheek on Adriana's head. I could smell the Christmas tree behind us, and I thought about the huge trees we had when I was growing up and how exciting it was to find our favorite ornaments as we dug through the decorations every year; about decorating our first tree together, even though we weren't going to be home for Christmas that year; about sitting in a room that was dark except for the lights of the tree last year and feeling Adriana kick at my ribs; and about how someday Adriana is going to be as excited about Christmas as I am. And then I stopped myself and thought about how Christmases past and future were less important in that moment than the simple fact that I was rocking my baby and smelling the Christmas tree right then.

Maybe writing this down will help me remember sooner next time

Why is it so hard for me to remember that the days where leaving the house with Adriana seem the most daunting are the days that it is most important for me to do so? This morning Adriana slept for half an hour, about an hour after I expected her to take a nap, and upon awakening went immediately back to seeming cranky. It seemed that if I was holding her she was wiggling away, but every time I put her down she was fussing for me to pick her up. At 2 this afternoon, I realized that we were both still in our pajamas, and I hadn't even brushed my teeth. Taking a fussy baby out of the house is always somehow a terrifying thought, but eventually I remember that staying in with her when she's like that is worse. So I got us both ready to go and by 2:30 we were out the door. Immediately I felt better. We walked downtown, where I picked up a few Christmas presents and got a hot chocolate, and stopped at the park to play on the swings on the way back to the house. When we got home, Adriana was getting fussy again, but I was somehow more prepared to deal with her mood.

Eleven months

I hate telling people that Adriana is eleven months old. Whenever I do they always remind me that she is nearly a year old (because, what? I might not have noticed?), and I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

I say that, and I do sort of miss Adriana being a tiny (tiny! ha!) baby, but I'm also finding that I love and will miss every stage she goes through. Right now, she is playing with us more and can communicate with us, to a certain extent, and is just a lot of fun. Which is what I say every month. I should probably just write, "My baby is growing up! So I am sad! But she is more fun to play with now and learning lots of things! Because that's what babies do!" And then I could copy and paste that every month and save us all some time.

That would be nice, but it's not what you'd expect from the woman with the 10,000-word birth story, now is it? So:

There are some days when I wonder if this is what eleven months is like, how on earth am I going to deal with a two-year-old? That's usually when Adriana is fussing to be picked up, and then fussing to get down as soon as she's up, and then arching her back and screaming when I put her back down. But then she takes a nap (we still get two a day out of her; ssshhhhhhh) and after an hour or so we are all much happier.

Right now Adriana seems to be between bouts of teething, and it's heavenly. We still aren't sleeping through the night, but I can handle waking up only once or twice. We've talked about the possibility of moving her to her own bed, or even her own room, but she does seem to sleep for longer spells when she's snuggled up with us, and I am content to have her warm, cuddly body beside me this winter. She still not a big eater, but now that there are a few things she'll eat regularly and she seems more willing to try the new things we offer, I feel okay about it. I know she's getting what she needs nutritionally from me, and that at this age "real food" just lets her experiment with different tastes and textures.

I am constantly forgetting how high she can reach. Things set near the edge of the kitchen table are easily within her reach, and I have been surprised at how far back things need to be. We have a couple of little poofs we bought in Spain that she climbs on top of to reach things on shelves that used to be safe from her little fingers; I'm in trouble when she figures out that the kitchen chairs can serve the same purpose. She is closer and closer to walking. Over Thanksgiving weekend she pushed herself to a stand for the first time without pulling up on anything. When I set her down on the floor, she stands for a second on her own, before slowly lowering herself the rest of the way to the ground. She "cruises" easily around the furniture, and when I am in the kitchen she often pulls up on my leg, and I walk around slowly as I do dishes or put away groceries so that she can "follow" me. I get a kick out of letting her hold one of my fingers while we walk, as if we are holding hands and going for a stroll. She giggles and shrieks with excitement as she takes her pigeon-toed bow-legged steps on her fat little feet. On Saturday she took her first unaided steps. Of course, she promptly fell over and has only done it twice more since.

She loves music, and will stand in front of the stereo bouncing in time with the music. Sometimes when a song ends, she applauds. She waves bye-bye when we say to, if she feels like it. She gives hugs to her stuffed monkey, her grandparents' dogs, other children her age, and would even hug the cat if the cat would tolerate it.

She is very much a mimic. I comb her hair after giving her a bath and then hand her the comb so she can try to comb it herself. If I give her the bottle of baby lotion to play with as I am rubbing the lotion into her skin, she tries to dab on more lotion from the closed bottle. Unless she is too busy trying to fit the bottle into her mouth---she is, after all, a baby. She watches the way we feed ourselves and tries to mimic with her own little spoon.

There was a song we used to sing at camp when I was little:
Late last night while we were all in bed
Old Lady Leary left the lantern in the shed
And when the cow kicked it over she winked her eye and said
"It's gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight."
Fire fire fire!
Water water water!
Jump, lady, jump!
Ahhhhhhhhh....splat!
Adriana likes to shriek and will copy us when we do so, so I sing the song to her and she copies me when I shriek at the end. Now when I just start singing the song she begins her shrieking. It's kind of cute. And also probably a trick I am going to regret encouraging. I should have just stuck with singing "ba ba ba" instead of "na na na" for the chorus of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" so that she could "sing along" with me on that one. Well, live and learn.

Book review: The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming

Lemony Snicket's The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story is awesome. It made me laugh a lot. You should read it.

December in California

I still have the Washington Post set as my homepage, and I am still registered with a metro-area zipcode, so when I opened my browser the other day I saw that it was snowing in DC, and I was a little sad. I did love the (rare) snow that we got when we lived there. It wasn't until that afternoon when I took the baby to the park to play on the swings that I realized that it's probably best to not have snow days anymore.

Lesson learned

If you are heating milk to make yogurt and you smell something suspicious from the general direction of the baby, TURN OFF THE STOVE BEFORE YOU TAKE THE BABY TO THE OTHER ROOM FOR A DIAPER CHANGE. Because burnt milk smells bad. And also because when you hear the noise of the milk boiling over and come running out to the kitchen to turn off the burner with an undiapered baby on your hip? Well, let's just say that no good can come of that.

At yoga on Friday there were two new moms--one had a six-week-old baby, and the other was the mother to a three-week-old. I had my normal reaction to seeing little newborns--basically a longing for the days when Adriana was that wee and squooshy. Because, you know, what I really need around here is another baby.

But I was surprised by what hit me next: a very intense series of memories of how crazy I felt those first few weeks.

I remembered being in the hospital room alone with her the day we were going to go home. I carefully dressed her in the sleeper that was to be her going home outfit. Then, studying her as she lay in the bassinet, I panicked, afraid that she wasn't my baby. I quickly undressed her again, checking the name tags on her wrist, both her ankles, and her umbilical stump. And then I held her and cried because there was surely something wrong with me if I didn't recognize my own baby.

I remembered standing by myself in a dark room, looking out the window at dusk, while Brian held the baby in our bedroom. It was only a few days after we'd brought Adriana home from the hospital--she must have been a week old at the most--and I felt helpless and scared. I cried, wondering if I loved the baby enough, if I loved her too much, if I would be able to be her mother. I felt that Brian was handling being a new parent better than I was.

I remembered cradling her in my arms in the middle of the night and, seeing her eyes shining in the dark, having a sudden fear that she was possessed by demons. I bit my tongue and made a conscious effort to keep holding her, knowing that I wasn't being rational, and telling myself that the fact that I knew I wasn't being rational was a good sign. But I didn't tell anyone--not Brian, not my midwife, not my closest friends--about that moment for fear that someone would try to keep me from Adriana.

I remembered an intense fear that there was somebody in the house. I knew I was not being rational, but to reassure myself I checked closets and under the bed, the baby clutched tightly to me. For a couple of days I wouldn't leave the baby alone in a room by herself even for a moment because I was afraid that whoever was in the house would steal her away if given the chance. I clung once again to my knowledge that my fear was irrational, telling myself that reading Outside Over There as a child had somehow scarred my psyche.

I remembered my first day home alone with Adriana. I nursed her and changed her diaper and set her down in her little chair. I sat in front of her and looked at her wondering what to do next. She wasn't hungry, wet, or fussing--just awake and looking at me. Surely there was something else I was supposed to be doing. But I didn't know what it was, so I sat and cried.

Adriana was nursing as class ended on Friday, and then she needed her diaper changed, so we were the last to leave. As I was rolling up my yoga mat, the instructor and I talked about those early days and how sweet they are, and then I tentatively confessed a couple of my moments of postpartum panic, forcing myself to laugh them off. It felt good to finally say them out loud.