Things that made me happy last night

1. Going outside to admire the color of the sky at sunset and seeing a rainbow.


2. Two silly monkeys with their "big smiles."

Hi Mary Ellen!

Look! It's not a sandwich recipe anymore! Aren't you happy?

Instead, here are some pictures of a little girl eating corn:

Brian's Farmers Market Sandwiches

Brian has made these sandwiches the past couple of Sunday nights, made almost completely with goodies we bought at the farmer's market that day. The measurements are approximate as we didn't really measure anything.

• 1 small Italian purple eggplant, cut into 1/4-inches slices
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 1-2 medium tomatoes, sliced and seeded (we've been using the "celebrity" variety from a farm in Paso Robles, which are firm and a bit tart)
• 4 slices of bread (The first time we used the excellent honey whole wheat sandwich bread from the Great Harvest folks and they were good, but Acme Bread Company's levain is much sturdier and holds up to the grilling )
• cheese (we used queso bravo last week, but I preferred the mild gouda we used last night, next week I want to try their edam)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• handful of chopped fresh herbs (we used mostly basil with a bit of oregano)
• canola oil

1. Brush the onion and eggplant with canola oil and grill until they are tender and have thick grill marks on them.
2. Whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, and herbs.
3. Assemble the sandwiches, brushing the vegetables with the herb mixture.
4. Grill the sandwiches until the cheese is melted and the bread is toasty.

A year ago, today, a year from now

A year ago today I was surrounded by boxes in our new apartment, reading the new Harry Potter book while Brian unpacked and minded the baby. I felt slightly guilty, and kept reminding myself that he had been warned months in advance that he was on baby duty once that book arrived. Was it my fault that the book's release date happened to fall on the first Saturday after we moved in?

Today I rode my bike to a La Leche League group in the morning., ate lunch with Adriana out on the deck after we got home, and then put her down for her nap. We'll do the grocery shopping and a bit of planting this afternoon.

It's hard for me to wrap my mind around a year from now. What is life with a two-and-a-half-year-old like? Before I had a baby I could envision my life a year or two into the future without much difficulty, but now things change so quickly that it's hard to say.

18 months

For forty-five minutes once a week, things are fantastic. I mean, things are pretty good most of the time, but this month Adriana started a toddler gymnastics class, and for the forty-five minutes we are there, we are essentially in the proverbial padded room. She climbs and slides and bounces and balances, and if she falls she will land on something soft. It is still my instinct when I see her start to fall to reach out to catch her, of course, but the other day I just slowed her fall and let her tumble gentle from the structure she was climbing from to the mat. She rolled over, pushed herself to her feet, caught sight of a tunnel to crawl through, and headed off towards it. I felt a little funny signing her up for gymnastics. I mean, classes? At one and a half? And the last class we tried out didn't go so well. But at this age the class has no structure--it's just free play in a padded room, and the teacher will give individual instruction if we ask--and Adriana is clearly having fun. She runs in circles on the big trampoline, falling and picking herself back up, over and over again. She holds my hand and concentrates as she puts one foot carefully in front of the other on the balance beam. She does her funny, floppy somersaults uphill on the wedge-shaped mats. And she hides behind my legs and peeks out at Teacher Russ if he tries to talk to her (although at the end of class, when he gets out an ink pad to give each kid an animal stamp on their hand, she runs to him and holds out both arms for stamps).

Adriana is a pretty flexible kid when it comes to the schedule and pattern of our days, but I am discovering that she likes other things a certain way. Before she get in her high chair to eat, she likes to have her monkey, panda, and baby all lined up to watch her. If I don't close a drawer or cupboard in the kitchen completely, she'll run to close it for me, or, if she's trapped in her high chair, whine and point until I do it. When she catches me without my glasses on she'll sign for glasses and point to them until I put them on again. If water splashes on the floor while I'm doing dishes, she'll get a towel to wipe it up.

It's fun to notice the things she has figured out. These days she knows all about getting ready. If she joins me in the bathroom after I shower, she points to the deodorant and motions as though she is putting it on, then indicates the lotion bottle, knowing the routine. After I've dried her off after her bath, she spreads out the towel on the floor and lies down for me to put a diaper on her. Her grandma had gotten out a baby silverware set when we visited last week, and Adriana picked up the pusher and immediately pulled it along her cheek, since it looked to her like one of her daddy's razors.

She wants to do everything I do. If I am on the phone, she goes to get hers. When I get out the vacuum, she follows me around with her popper. When I fold laundry, she takes clothes and towels out of the basket and hands them to me, one by one. She follows me around and inspects all the plants that are at her level when I am watering them.

She has become a better eater, but it still surprises me when she eats an entire banana or gobbles up the potato salad I just put on her plate and then demands more. One of her favorite foods is strawberries, which she demands whenever she sees me slicing them up for my cereal. I am more than happy to feed them to her, because although she eats dinner every day and lunch most days, in the mornings she doesn't eat much. I suppose it's because she nurses as she wakes up, or because she is too busy watching Brian get ready for work and checking out all her toys (sometimes it seems as if she is surprised they are still there). This past week, though, she hasn't eaten nearly as much. Instead, she is nursing--often and for long periods of time. I keep blaming the heat, since I often don't want to each much in the 90-degree weather we've been having, even though that seems a bit weird, since warm milk and snuggling don't seem that appealing in the middle of a heat wave either. Whatever it is, it makes me hungry and thirsty to be nursing so much, even if it is hot, which is totally why I need so much ice cream and lemonade.

Signing is definitely Adriana's language of choice. She hasn't added any actual words in the last month, but she has over 50 signs now, and they seem...unconscious: one night when we were in Colorado, Brian and I both woke up and watched Adriana as she squirmed and cried between us, signing "ball" with her eyes closed. This morning as she woke up, she signed "toothbrush please," and then she nursed and fell back to sleep.

Everything seems so adorable. She walks on tiptoe and gives kisses to her reflection in the mirror (also high fives and terrorist fist jabs) and dances to Ozomatli and Dan Zanes and Melissa Ferrick. If you hold her hand and ask her to spin, she'll go around in circles, but if she doesn't have a hand to hold, she just twists her body and shakes her head from side to side.

I still struggle a bit with parenting a toddler, but things are improving and I am starting to love this age. I can tell because when I sit down and think about what to write this month, it's all about gymnastics and funny faces and cute little moments. We're still dealing with early onset two-ness and what to do about the hitting, but those aren't the first things that come to mind.

Season with a prayer and song (and some fresh herbs from my deck)

Today I am longing to buy a house. I go back and forth on this. We have some money saved for a down payment, but what we could buy with that amount in the area we have chosen to live is pretty ridiculous. And buying just sounds so terrifying--permanent and reeking of responsibility. But from time to time we (well, I) get the urge to buy , so we (okay, I) look at listings and scoff at the prices and decide that our apartment is just fine, and also it comes with maintenance staff.

The other day I started pulling up listings again, and this time I limited my search to single-family homes. I didn't want to look at condos, because my house lust this time was actually yard lust. Or, really, garden lust, because it's not as though I just want a place to set up a swingset for Adriana--I rather like going to the park. It's sort of funny if you actually know me. I mean, Brian gave me a plant shortly after we started dating. I promptly forgot to water it, and in promptly keeled over and died. Nine years later, I'm sitting here thinking that it would be great to grow a vegetable garden. And all because I've kept some herbs alive on my balcony for a couple of months.

I would love to grow some of my own vegetables. I want to plant chard and asparagus, tomatoes and eggplant. We go to the farmers market nearly every weekend and I can get perfectly beautiful produce there.* In fact, I declined an offer to share a CSA box with a friend because I like going to the market every week.** But the entire process of growing things in post on my balcony has been so much fun, from picking out the plants at the farmers market and nursery, to getting my hands dirty while I planted them, to watering them and checking their growth, to finally being able to use them. It's incredibly rewarding to go outside to trim some basil for a pesto, some oregano for a vegetable stew, or mint for mojitos, and now I am getting greedy and wanting to grow even more.

Maybe a rental house?


*My friend Adam told me I was "such a housewife" last week because I mentioned something about the eggplants starting to show up at the market. So I informed him that corn was coming in, too, but cherries and blueberries are on their way out.

**Although I admit that I am not very adventurous, and maybe the CSA box would help me branch out a bit.

Four items

1. Adriana does somersaults now. She get into a sort of down-dog position and then I either help her flip over, or she tries to do it herself. Every now and then she really does a proper somersault herself. The rest of the time she just falls over to the side. Whichever way it ends up working out, she giggles a lot.

2. Last night Adriana ate curry so hot it made her nose run. And when she ran out of curry she started dipping all her other food in the leftover sauce on the highchair tray.

3. Early this morning Adriana woke up crying and I pulled her into my bed with me. After she nursed she got up, crawled back into her own bed, and collapsed back into sleep.

4. Approximately 4,956 times each day I ask Adriana for a big smile. Because it makes her make this face:

Where somebody knows my name

I was excited to move back to California last year. I knew I would miss our life and our friends in DC, but California was home and I was glad to be going back. But as much as I thought of California as home, it has taken some time for Mountain View to become home. The home in California in my mind, my heart, was our little house in Santa Cruz, our friends' home in Berkeley, my dad's house in Martinez. It was all the places I used to go to and the things I used to do. Mountain View was...Mountain View. It was nicer than I expected it to be, but it wasn't what I knew. It's been nearly a year now, but at last it is happening, at last I feel at home. It's not that I'm any more settled into our apartment or that I've finally found a routine--those things happened ages ago. It was just one simple thing: at last month's Thursday Night Live, I ran into someone I knew.

It's funny how that has made such a difference to me, and how happy I have been since then to wave to people I know at the farmer's market or have a friend suddenly sit down beside me while I'm watching Adriana play somewhere. When we moved here, I knew exactly one person in the area. I joined a playgroup and La Leche League and attended yoga classes. All of those things were hard for me. I'm an introvert. I joke with Brian that the reason I keep friends so long is that I'm terrified (and too socially inept) to make new ones. And while that may not be the reason that I keep my old friends around, the fear is certainly real. But being lonely is worse. It's not as though I've forged a lot of close, personal friendships here. Those will come with time (would they come sooner if it weren't so easy to maintain older friendships in this world of cell phones and email?), but seeing a friendly face and stopping to chat at the grocery store or the mall or the farmer's market or the playground has made an important enough difference for now.

Nature walk: Red Rocks

Brian and I recently spent a few days in Colorado. His cousin was getting married in a little town four hours outside of Denver, and it seemed like a good idea to tack a couple of days onto the trip. We spent several days staying with Brian's grandfather outside of Denver and also got a chance to visit an old friend in Boulder.

I am a person who loves the water. I am enamored of the ocean in particular, but rivers and lakes are also fine. I tend to forget that there is also beauty and peace in other landscapes as well. But when I was in Colorado there was no denying the beauty: the scale of things in the Rockies put everything in perspective, especially as we drove west on I-70 to get to Meeker for the wedding, and the light is different--more pale and more intense, in a way I could not capture with my camera. I definitely want to go back to Colorado. I want to spend more time hiking high up in the mountains, and perhaps explore some areas on the western slope--the Glenwood Canyon area especially stood out to me.

The only hike we did on this trip was around the Red Rocks Amphitheater, which is not far from Brian's grandpa. We chose the Trading Post Loop trail, which was described as a challenge 1.5-mile back country trail by the sign at the trailhead. We actually found the trail to be fairly easy, but since we had a four-hour drive ahead of us, it was probably for the best that we did something quick. And in that mile and a half, I did manage to take about 100 pictures, so in awe was I of the geology.

Wishes

Yesterday I ran some errands at the Stanford Shopping Center. After I'd finished the shopping, Adriana and I played around the Merfrog Fountain for over an hour. She climbed up and down the steps, reached under the rail to splash her hands in the water (and then dried them on my pants), tried to imitate the older kids who ran around in circles, pointed at every dog that walked by, and fell over every now and then.

A mother with two young children stopped for a while. She was giving them pennies from her purse to toss into the fountain, and then she tossed in one herself. Adriana watched the boy and girl with interest, and their mother handed her a penny. With a look of complete glee, Adriana threw the coin overhand into the fountain.

I wondered what the little boy and girl were wishing for as they tossed their coins and what it was their mother had wished for. What will Adriana wish for one day when she is old enough to understand the concept? And then I realized that I cannot recall what sorts of things I used to wish for as a child throwing coins into the fountain outside Martinez City Hall when we went to visit my grandma at work or blew the seeds off of a dandelion. Did I wish for something concrete--a new toy or an ice cream cone? Or was it something more abstract, as my wishes are now when I indulge my childhood superstitions.

And I watched Adriana, realizing that not all my recent wishes have been all that abstract as I remembered all the coins I tossed into fountains and dandelion seeds I'd sent flying not so long ago, wishing for baby.

Science lesson: Shattering Pyrex

Yesterday as I was putting away some dishes, two Pyrex measuring cups that I had nested together on a shelf above my head came crashing down and bounced off of my water glass on the counter onto the floor. I put the measuring cups back up on the shelf, stuck the baby in her highchair, and set about cleaning up the shattered water glass. Later in the day, when my friend Adam and I were getting ready to make margaritas, I pulled down the measuring cups and found that they were wedged together. It sometimes happens, since they aren't really meant to be like that, but unlike all previous times, just giving them a little twist didn't do the trick. I assumed the impact from the earlier fall is what made the difference.

Adam and I considered the possiblities as we took turns twisting and prying at the cups. Hot water? Cold water? Which would make the glass expand and which would make it contract? And besides, if they both expanded or contracted, what good would it do? Where was an engineer when the humanities and sociology majors needed one? (Oh, right. He was at work, celebrating his 30th birthday with a singing telegram in the form of a gorilla in a tutu.) We decided that ice would make the glass contract, both of us having some memory of water being an anomaly because it expands as it freezes. But then Adam started to worry about whether the glass would break if exposed to extreme temperatures.

"No, I think Pyrex is meant to survive temperatures like that. That's why you bake with it," I said. "Besides I think it was made for like train lanterns or something initially. I read an article about it once. Maybe in the New Yorker. I mean, doesn't that sound like a New Yorker kind of article? A twenty-page exposition on the history of Pyrex?"

Adam turned to Google, typing in "nested pyrex stuck," or something along those lines. And then began reading articles about an investigation into exploding Pyrex. After a few of those he came to a message board where people had discussed exactly our problem. Drinking glasses would be easier to separate, as Pyrex by design doesn't expand or contract quite as easily with temperature changes, but it could be done. I filled the one-cup measure with ice and poured water of the top of it and then submerged the quart-sized measuring up into a sink of hot water.

Adam went back to browsing articles about Pyrex that had essentially exploded at high heat. I tried wiggling the measuring cups apart after a minute, but stepped away when I discovered they were still wedged together quite firmly. Adam read a paragraph to me, and I stopped him.

"Pyrex isn't supposed to do that. And those were probably at much higher temperatures that just the water from my tap." And then there was the sound of shattering glass, as the outer measuring cup broke. Big pieces came off the top, shards of glass scattered around the sink and onto the floor, and the bottom part sat in the sink full of little cracks.

Incidentally, this is the second time I've managed to do in some Pyrex. At one point I managed to drop a large baking pan on the floor at just the right angle to break it into several large pieces.

Nature walk: Purisima Redwoods

I had intended to save hiking in Purisima Redwoods for a hot summer day, when the elevation and shade would provide respite for Brian from my whining about the weather. But then I started planning to do it Memorial Day weekend and invited Rachel and Lincoln and changes in plans make me a little crazy, so even though it was cool and damp, we went ahead. Which was fantastic because cool + damp + redwoods =



BANANA SLUGS. I still remember a song about banana slugs from sixth-grade camp. If you aren't nice to me, I'll sing it to you. (Right here is where I should totally post a picture of Rachel cowering in fear that I will actually sing said song. But I didn't take any pictures of Rachel because I was too busy aiming my camera at slugs. And poop.)

Also, do you know how much joy it brings me that someone felt compelled to named something "sticky monkey flower"?

17 months

Yesterday I ran into someone I hadn't seen in a couple of months. I admired her six-week-old baby, asleep in her stroller, and then my friend turned and saw Adriana coming towards us and exclaimed that Adriana wasn't a baby anymore, that she'd turned into a kid. I looked at Adriana running towards me with a green ball in her hand, grinning, her bangs falling into her face, and I realized that, yes, she is a kid now, not a baby. And instead of feeling melancholy over that, I was happy. Then last night she fell asleep in my arms after dinner, and I sat there for a long time, chatting with my dad and sister, just glad to have this change to hold her and admire her long lashes and flushed cheeks and her little, tired body that fits so perfectly in my arms, no matter how big she is getting.

She has begun babbling constantly it seems. She says "woof woof," "moo," and "baa," when asked what dogs, cows, and sheep say. She says "muh" and shakes her head when she means "no." (She says "muh" an awful lot.) She learns new signs quickly, and has started signing "please" and "thank you" on occasion, which I find sweet. Yesterday she fed me one of her Cheerios while I was getting us ready to leave the house, and then started freaking out. When I turned my attention to her, I realized that she was frantically signing "thank you." So I thanked her, which I usually do when she feeds me but hadn't this time because I was distracted, and she was happy. In general, when she makes a sign--whether it's "ball" when she sees kids playing soccer at the park or "bird" when she hears one chirping outside--she keeps making the sign until we say the word to her.

A couple of weeks ago we got Adriana her own "big girl bed." It's a twin bed pushed up against our bed, and we are slowly making the transition. I played with her in the bed the day it was delivered and she lovede being tucked in and kissed goodnight. Then she would kick off the covers and do it again. When we lie down to nurse she prefers to lie in her bed rather than ours. I think she is glad to have a little more space to sleep in at night, as she seems to be sleeping much better (most nights, anyhow) now that she's in her own bed. I move into her bed to nurse her when she wakes up around 2 or 3, and if I am still awake when she is finished, I move back over into my bed. Sometimes I pull her in with me, and she has even crawled back into her bed a couple of times when I've done that.

Not too long ago, Adriana fell off a slide at the park. Brian had gone up the play structure with her and she was going down the slide by herself. I was sitting on a bench nearby, not near enough to catch her, as she went down the slide as she has done on her own plenty of times before, and shot off the bottom, landing on her back. (I think it was because she was wearing Robeez instead of sandals, and they didn't drag and slow her down.) She was more scared than hurt, and soon was climbing up to go down again. That time she again went too fast, but I was there to catch her. After that, she would climb up but refused to go down the slide, even on a lap or with someone there to catch her. In a way I was relieved. It's kind of nice to know that the child can actually learn from what has happened, and nice that she has a bit of fear. I've been wondering where this kid who climbs everything and goes down the biggest slides at the playground came from, given the fact that I am just about the world's biggest scaredy-cat. But I was also a little sad, because being a scaredy-cat is boring and frustrating. So even though I have been attempting to coax her down toddler-appropriate slides for the past ten days or so, I had mixed feeling yesterday when Adriana finally got over some caution and climbed to the highest point on the play structure at the park (easily 10 or 12 feet up, maybe more--I am a bad at guessing that kind of thing), and started to go down the slide by herself. In the end, I decided not to stop her from climbing, but I made her go down the slide in my lap.

Some days I'm better at this than others. Some days when Adriana shrieks for the 94th time that hour because I didn't respond to her quickly enough, instead of looking at the clock to see how much longer until Brian comes home, I kneel down in front of her and tell her that it's hard being little and hug her, and then offer her a snack or a toy or just tickle her. Some days, instead of just being glad that I managed to get both Adriana and myself dressed and that I had a chance to bake (and eat most of) a pan of brownies while she napped, I manage to plan and shop for meal for the week, wash and put away three loads of laundry, vacuum the house, fix dinner, and put together puzzles, read stories, and play at the park with Adriana. Most days fall somewhere in between. But every single day I know I am lucky.

But Adriana sure loves the cat

Noticing a pattern

Last month, Adriana said "dog," her very first word. Yesterday she started in on her second: "woof woof."

No wonder the cat doesn't like her.

16 months

We spent some time in DC this month, visiting with friends from London who have a baby two months older than Adriana. It was funny to see how different they are, even though they are so close in age. Abigail is much more verbal than Adriana, speaking very clearly in her husky little baby voice to ask for what she wants, instead of fussing or signing. But Adriana is the more kinesthetic of the two girls, sliding gleefully down the slide, and running up and down a little hill outside the Hirschorn by herself, even after taking a couple of spills, while Abigail wanted to hold a hand. That difference really made tangible for me who Adriana is right now (and it's amazing that she is somebody right now--a real little person).

She is stubborn and excitable and independent and daring. She likes to try to climb up the slides, and while she will ask for help if she can't do it, if we refuse to help her, she'll keep trying to do it herself. I'm terrified when I see her climbing the play structures at the park, but I take a deep breath and let her go--staying near enough to catch her if she takes a big spill, letting her take occasional little spills in the hope that she'll learn, and applauding her when she goes down the big slide without any help. For a while I assumed that she was a sort of a daredevil because she was just a little kid who didn't have any sense yet, but as I watch other children at the park, I see that other kids her age are more cautious. That worries me and makes me proud. As far as I can remember, I was always an extremely cautious kid, and I think in some cases it held me back., so as much as I worry about the falls she might take, I force myself to let her climb.

With other activities she's less independent, or at least she gets frustrated easily. She struggles with a little puzzle she has. She'll try only once or twice to put a piece in, and then gives it to Brian or me to put in. She doesn't want to try to put the jacket on the toy monkey herself. but brings both things to me so I will do it for her.

She still isn't speaking, but she manages to communicate. She learns signs fairly easily these days, only needing to see them once or twice, so we have been working on signs for different kinds of food, and she now specifies what she wants by signing for cheese, beans, veggies, or grapes. She points out babies, kids, dogs, and birds everywhere we go, signing frantically until we say, "Yes, there's a baby." Or a bird or dog or whatever. Her eyes are sharp, too, so sometimes we think she's just making signs for a moment before we catch sight of the dog she's noticed across the street. And she recognizes the sounds of a dog barking, a baby crying, a bird chirping, and kids shouting, and will make her signs then, too.

I've found this age challenging. Some days I'm back to where I was a few months ago, wondering how on earth I'm going to survive her being two if this is what one is already like. Other days I even wonder how I'm going to make it until that evening when Brian gets home to help me. Last week she had her first real, public meltdown. It was at our mommy-baby yoga class, so there are worse places it could have happened, but it was still no fun. Adriana was still functioning on East Coast time and I wanted to her get back to normal, so instead of letting her nap when she wanted to, I hauled her off to yoga. Part way through class, in the middle of some sort of tantrum, she threw her water bottle, hitting another kid in the head with it. I took her out of the room to calm down for a bit, but it wasn't too much longer before the next tantrum began again, and I packed us up and left. She fell asleep as soon as I strapped her into her car seat. And now I've learned my lesson about not letting the baby sleep when she needs to. Over and over since she was born I've needed to be reminded to take my cues from her, to do what works, to not force things, to pick my battles carefully. It's challenging, and it's hard to remember to do when she's screaming and kicking, but then we get through those hard times and the easy times, the times where we snuggle and read stories, or run up and down a little hill at the park, are more frequent and make me think that this is the best time ever.

Nature walk: Wilder Ranch

Or, My Second Mother's Day!

Because my first Mother's Day went so well, I decided to plan another one just like it--except in California. We would drive down to Santa Cruz, have brunch at the Walnut Avenue Cafe, and then walk at Wilder Ranch. We decided to execute said plan on Saturday rather than Sunday, partly because the weather was supposed to be a little nicer that day, and partly because our Sundays are already so perfect and we've been out of town for the past couple of weekends, and I've missed our routine of yoga, farmer's market, and a picnic at the park. (You know life is good when you get to pick whatever you want to do one day and you want to do exactly what you do every week, Brian said; he's right.)

Brunch was absolutely perfect--hot chocolate with whipped cream, orange juice, and French toast with grilled bananas, walnuts, and vanilla yogurt. I've been considering getting a bicycle, so we stopped at Spokesman for me to ride a couple and to check out their child seats. I can't remember the last time I was actually on a bicycle and I hadn't missed riding, but I don't know why not. I felt a little wobbly as I first climbed on, but you know what? It was just like riding a bicycle. (Why, yes, I do amuse myself.) I felt fast and easy and free as I pedaled and coasted in loops around a nearby parking lot. I still haven't bought a bike yet, but hopefully this weekend I'll be bringing one home.

We finally headed up to Wilder. There are nice walks on the far side of the freeway, but I really just wanted to walk along the cliffs, so that's what we did. There were tons of red-winged blackbirds around, chirping noisily from the bushes, and then darting overhead with their flash of brilliant red. The landscape was bright with flowers, and we saw otters playing and eating in the water below us. It was windy and chilly, so we didn't walk long and instead went back to the ranch where we watched a blacksmith work and Adriana was fascinated by the chickens.












Afterwards we stopped by the Boardwalk so I could take a quick turn on the Giant Dipper, which right there tells you that my day was pretty much perfect. How can one ever complain about a day that involves a trip on a roller coaster? And then we ate dinner at Al Dente before heading home. Perfect.

Kinship

For a while now, I have done this thing when I wake up in the night and have trouble getting back to sleep: I lie in the dark and imagine what my friends are doing in various time zones around the world. Somehow I find it reassuring and relaxing. When Adriana was a newborn, things changed, though. As I groggily nursed the baby and then rocked her back to sleep after she ate, I imagined all the other mothers who were awake with their little ones. It made the middle of the night feedings less lonely.

For the past few nights, Adriana has had a fever and last night she couldn't keep down any medicine that would help. In the wee hours of the morning, I lay in bed with they hot little baby on my chest--it was the only way she would sleep. I worried about when she would start to feel better and about how I would function today with so little sleep. And then I thought of all the other mothers who were up with their feverish children, kissing the hot foreheads, stroking the damp hair back from the little face, worrying about when it would all be okay, and I started to relax.

Peek-a-boo

On our trip to Tilden a couple of weeks ago, Adriana had a great time playing peek-a-boo around a tree with my friend Jeff.










It seems like they are having much more fun than when she first met him a year ago:

I'm guessing any future babies will be super-colicky to make up for this easy one

I don't know how parents of colicky infants manage. Last night, about an hour after I put Adriana to bed, she woke up crying, which is totally normal. I normally snuggle and nurse her for a few minutes and she goes right back to sleep. I don't know what it is about that one-hour mark, but this has been going on for probably six months now--it's probably the most predictable thing about her sleep. But she's had a little bit of a cold since the end of last week, and last night she couldn't nurse for more than a second or two because she was too congested to breathe through her nose. I tried keeping her upright for a while, hoping that would help the congestion so she would get to where she could breathe well enough to nurse, but, angry that she was awake and that I wasn't nursing her, she cried and screamed, making the congestion worse. Brian and I contemplated whether something else could be wrong, came up with nothing, and I finally just sat in the armchair, held her close and waited.

Thirty minutes after she had originally woken up, she was asleep again. Thirty minutes of inconsolable crying left me feeling so helpless. How do parents whose babies cry for hours every night ever manage?

Nature walk: Tilden Regional Park

Who knew there was more to Tilden than the merry-go-round and steam train? On Saturday, Brian, Adriana and I headed up to Berkeley for a walk with Jeff, and did a six-mile loop through Tilden, that didn't take us by either one. Not that I have any objections to the merry-go-round or the train--in fact, I'll be quite happy when Adriana is old enough to appreciate them--but last month we went with friends to Vasona Park, where she was underwhelmed by the train and frightened by the bell that rang at the start of the carousel ride (and thus spent the entire ride nursing), so I was more than happy to let those things wait. We did stop in at the Little Farm. I'm not sure Adriana really appreciated it, but the rest of us did.







We did pretty much exactly the hike suggested by Bay Area Hiker. It was a nice walk, with pretty views of the canyons and then, at the end, wonderful path with a view of the Golden Gate in one direction and Mt. Diablo in the other.

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?