27 months

I remember reading somewhere that the period from 18 to 22 months was a challenging age. That was reassuring to me at the time: I wasn't the only one struggling with how to parent my child at that age, and there was a light at the end of the tunnel. And it really was true. Around the time Adriana reached 22 months, things did seem remarkably easier. I feel that in the past few weeks we've reached another challenging age, and I am starting to wonder if these things go in four-month cycles. There are more days lately when I feel my patience wearing thin. I wonder if it's just me--am I not eating right, not getting enough sleep--or if it's something about Adriana. It's probably a little of both, although I think there's more of the latter. She's testing limits right now, and getting frustrated with them. She pours a cup of water on me--because she wants to see what will happen, because it might be funny, because she can--and then throws a tantrum when I refuse to give her the cup back. She puts on her shoes when I ask her to do so, and then kicks them off as we are about to head out the door, smiling her most charming smile as I grit my teeth because we needed to leave five minutes ago. They are nearly all just little things, but over the course of a day they start to add up and by Friday afternoons I am usually watching the clock, counting down until Brian gets home. 

It's a good thing she's cute and clever to make up for her shenanigans. She gives me a tight-lipped smile, sticking out her chin, when she knows she's been mischievous. She bounces and moves from side to side very solemnly when we ask her to dance. She throws kisses to people when she says goodbye. She knows nearly all of her letters (X is usually confused for a K), and shouts them out when she sees them. She surprised me by spelling out "Petsmart," reading the letters on the big sign out from the of store, although she did call attention to the 'A' several times as she went along--it is her letter after all. She recognizes numbers and will point to the one you ask her to, but she doesn't label them the way she does letters, instead just pointing them out as "number" when she sees them. 

She talks constantly. It's not exactly that I wish she would stop talking, although the thought has crossed my mind when I've heard, "Mom, now!" a few too many times in one afternoon. Even though she likes to have what she says repeated back to her, she is usually content to babble to herself, and that's what she does as she rides on the back of my bike or in the car, and when she is drawing or playing with blocks on her own. She labels everything--"blue car, white car, purple truck," she says as we walk through a parking lot--but she is also really beginning to speak in sentences now, more than just the three- or four-word commands she's become an expert on. "I put my new shoes on my feet," she told me a couple of weeks ago, and when I looked she had indeed put her new sneakers on. Each word is it's own exclamation, so instead of a natural sounding sentence, there's a very staccato feeling, but she is very excited to be telling me everything, so it is fun.

I've been particularly interested lately in watching her friendships develop. At this age they are mostly too young for anything beyond parallel play and fighting over toys, but she does take an interest in what the other children in playgroup are doing. And they do interact beyond the little squabbles: she runs to greet her friend Samantha with a hug when she spots her at the park, and when her friend Douglas comes over to play they go straight for her bed, where the alternate between jumping and snuggling down to pretend they are sleeping. 

She seems so grown up these days. Part of it is that she's just getting big. Her pants all seem a little too short, and she outgrew her shoes rather suddenly a few weeks ago. She fell asleep in the car on the way home one day recently, and as I carried her snoring up the stairs, I realized that even with her head resting on my shoulder her feet were dangling all the way to my knees. But it's also her personality. She remembers more things, and talks to me about the things we've done. She gets herself out of bed after her nap a lot of the time, instead of crying for me. There are times I miss having her as a baby, but this imaginative, funny little girl is a pretty good replacement.

Lovey

Adriana has two baby dolls. One is about ten-inches long, and has a plastic (but phthalate free!) head and limbs and a soft body. The other is completely soft, with a stitched on face. When I bought that doll at Christmastime, I thought it would be a nice toy for Adriana to snuggle with, since it was so soft. But the first baby is by far the favorite. She does like the second baby--its shirt and diaper are easily removed, so it is good for really playing mommy. But Adriana is nearly as content to mime a diaper and outfit change with the doll she calls Little Baby. I think soft face that so enamored me is actually what turns Adriana off. She has definitely shown a preference for dolls that look more like real babies; at the little school we go to, she shuns the Cabbage Patch Kids and dolls that look like older children in favor of the dolls with baby faces. Plus, its smaller size makes it perfect for cradling in her arms to pretend to nurse, or to have tied to her with the scarf that she likes to pretend is her own little Moby wrap. And so it has become Adriana's constant companion.

I did try to encourage a "lovey" at one point, maybe about a year ago, offering Adriana a stuffed monkey that a friend had given me in college. Adriana does adore the monkey, and he has been a favorite at times. But she has never been attached to him the way she is attached to Little Baby. The doll comes to the grocery store and the farmers' market, to the doctor's office and to friends' houses. It has played hide-and-seek in Dolores Park and listened to stories at the Red Rock story hour. When we get into bed at night or naptime, Adriana makes sure she has Little Baby, and she holds the doll to her chest for milk as she rolls towards me to nurse. In the night when she wakes up, she sits up and finds Little Baby again before settling back down to sleep. It's sweet to peek in at her and see her sound asleep with her doll clutched tightly in her arms. 

I do live in a bit of fear of losing Little Baby. When we're out and about with the doll, I constantly check to make sure Adriana still has it in her arms or that it is peeking out of the pocket on the diaper bag. It has become a family joke to place the blame for missing items on the cat, and Adriana accepts this for a lot of things, but I think if Little Baby were to disappear, there would be trouble.

Diaper bag packing FAIL

As we were leaving the farmers' market, Adriana announced that she had a dirty diaper. I knew I had exactly one baby wipe in the diaper bag and that I would have to be efficient, but when we got back to the car it seemed her announcement had been premature. Still, she was a bit wet, so I put a fresh diaper on her and we went on our way to the park. But as we were leaving there, she made her announcement again, and this time it was clear that she meant it. There weren't any families we knew at the park, but I headed over to one group of moms and explained my situation, and they laughed and one gave me a few wipes. And then we headed over to the restaurant for lunch so I could use the changing table there. And so I was standing there in the restroom with Adriana on the table when I discovered that the diaper I'd put on her at the car had been the last one in the diaper bag. Hedging my bets, I put Adriana's pants back on her and headed back out to the table outside where Brian and his parents were waiting for us. I explained what had happened and we all laughed, and Brian headed up to Longs to buy a pack of diapers. 

Everything was fine until Adriana announced, "Pee." 

"Should I take you to the potty inside?" I asked her.

But then the expression on her face changed. "Pee," she said with more urgency. And then my father-in-law pointed out the growing puddle beneath Adriana's chair.

Honestly, I think these were the kind of mistakes I was supposed to make when she was a few weeks old. Shouldn't I know to check what I have in my bag before leaving the house by now?

Guess what she hears me say a lot

Whenever we read The Runaway Bunny, Adriana points out the mom and the baby on each page. She'll make other comments about some of the pictures, too, but those vary from day to day. Except for the picture that shows the mother bunny as a mountain climber, climbing to her little bunny who has become a rock high above her; when we reach that page, Adriana tells me the same thing every time:

"Baby," she points. "Mom. Baby! Get down!"

I guess she knows what happens when babies climb up too high. And I suppose I should be glad I only have to pluck her off of the kitchen table and the back of the couch, and occasionally climb up a tall play structure at the park when my baby is making me nervous. 

There are certain things I look forward to when it comes to Adriana growing up. For instance, I'm excited about her new interest in toilet training, and it will be nice when I don't have to have an eagle eye on her as she climbs things at the park. But it will be a sad, sad day when she figures out that simply because she runs to a tree and turns her back to me, she is not actually hidden. 

Portrait of the artist

Adriana loves to draw. The MagnaDoodle I bought last fall for a long car trip was a fantastic investment, and crayons and paper can occupy her for a long time--she often sits in the kitchen and draws while I fix dinner in the evenings, and when we flew to Florida last month, she spent more time drawing on the flights (and in restaurants and in her great-grandfather's house) than pretty much anything else.

She'll bring one of us her MagnaDoodle, or hand us a crayon when we're sitting with her while she draws, and ask for a picture of a flower, a monkey, or herself. Brian and I are not exactly artists, but our skills are enough to impress a two-year-old. But I found it frustrating to constantly get these requests. Even if we were sitting together, and I wasn't using the crayons to occupy her so I could get something else done, I wanted her to be the one drawing. Who cares if she can't draw a cat? She can scribble, right? So I draw her the giraffe she asks for and tell her to put on the stripes, or make the main part of the requested 'A' and she can put the line through the middle. But then she is back, asking me to draw a picture of her in her flower shirt holding her baby doll, or a monkey holding a balloon in a tree. 

Now I think all that watching was good for her. On Saturday night, Brian's parents babysat while he and I went out to dinner. When we got home and were sitting around talking, Adriana got out her MagnaDoodle and began to draw. er scribbles have changed a great deal over the past few months. Instead of covering a piece of paper in one color, she changes color often (making sure to tell me with each change what color she is using). She went from short little marks to longer scribbles to very specific little "designs"--she makes rows and one-inch high scribbles, for instance. But now we were seeing another change. She carefully used the "pen" to make a potato shape and drew a lot of lines coming out from it. Then she erased it and as she started again, I asked her what she was drawing. "Ana," she said. And there was the potato shape again. She drew two squiggly lines out from the side. "Arms," she told us and then "Wegs," when I asked her about the two squiggly lines that came from the bottom. The two lop-sided circles inside the top of the potato were eyes, of course. And then she made a similar, smaller drawing right beside her--her baby, she told us. 

It's such a funny little milestone, and yet it was the one I've gotten most excited about in a while. Putting on her own socks and shoes is quite nice, but this, to me, showed more than just an improvement in her coordination. It somehow made her seem more grown up, in spite of her footed pajamas. 

26 months

I have always thought of Adriana as independent. She seemed to want to support her own head from a very early age, and she refused almost all solid foods until she could feed herself. Watching her and comparing her to other kids at the park, I felt that, even though she wanted me right with her most of the time, she didn't reach for me for help as often as some of the others reached for their caregivers. But I think her need for independence has become even bigger lately. Her lack of true independence means she compensates by exerting her authority when and where she can. "Ana do," I hear many times a day, whenever I attempt to help her with something she wants to do herself, which is pretty much everything. She picks out her own clothes each day (and heaven forbid her cupcake dress is in the wash when she wants to wear it--which is several times a week--or I offer her white tights instead of pink) and does her best to put them on herself. If I try to pick out what color hair bows she wears or try to put her shoes and socks on for her, it's a crisis. She tells me what she wants for breakfast and lunch, although, strangely, given her unwillingness to let me feed her as an infant, she mostly wants me to feed her now.

Sometimes her independence makes me nervous. She wants to climb up on a step stool to reach things, rather than having me get them for her. And at the park she terrifies me as she tries to imitate children several years older than she is. As she tried to stand up on the rails of a seesaw at the park, I put my hands out near her, spotting her, ready to catch her if she fell. Every time I got nervous and actually put my hands on her, she said, "No, Mom," in such an exasperated tone that I felt that I was gaining insight into our relationship ten years into the future. But at the same time, I'm excited to see this independent personality emerging.

She's also a bit of a bossy personality. She continues to talk more and more, and has definitely mastered the imperative: "Mom read book," and "Mom sit down," and other such orders are frequently heard around our house. "A three word sentence," my friend's husband commented one day at the park as Adriana directed me to push her in a swing. "Yes," I said, "but I'd rather it were four, with a 'please' at the end." He suggested that I should just be glad that she wasn't already tagging "now" onto her little sentence. The next day she ordered me to read her "monkey book" and I told her I needed to finish what I was doing, and she grabbed my leg and said, "Mom, please read monkey book, NOW." Okay, fine, it was, "Mom, pwee wee monk book, NOW." But I understood exactly what she meant. And I did as I was told. She knows so many words now, and she will try to say most things you ask her to say, provided that she is in the right mood and that the word is no more than two syllables. Even on the two-syllable words, the second half is mostly slurred, but she is making the attempt. If you ask her to say anything longer she smiles and tells you, "No."

A couple of weeks ago, her speech therapist ran though some sort of language inventory with us. At this point I am not really concerned about her speech at all, but it was good to hear that, according to this particular index, she has the language skills of a 22-month-old. I don't feel that I'm rewriting things to say that I wasn't incredibly concerned from the time we began the evaluation process last summer--I wished she would talk and figured getting her evaluated couldn't hurt and it might help. I honestly don't know how much the therapy has helped--I have a feeling this would have happened naturally, when she was ready--but the therapy is fun for her, and I am just glad she is talking. Even if it is to boss me around.

Sick and wired

On Saturday, Adriana had a runny nose. There were a few sneezing fits and her eyes were watery, so I assumed it was hay fever, since there seem to be so many blooming plants all of a sudden. Sunday I decided it was a cold. And Monday, as we struggled awake in the face of Daylight Saving Time, I decided again that it was just spring allergies. But, whether it was a cold or allergies, I didn't think a trip to the doctor was entirely necessary. Still, not sure if the rattle I was hearing in her breath was coming from her chest or her throat, I called the doctor's office and they told me to bring her in. I sent Brian a quick note to let him know the plan. He didn't think the doctor's trip was really necessary. I was ambivalent--whenever I call the advice nurse hoping for reassurance, they end up telling me to bring Adriana in. I picked up the phone to cancel the appointment, but called Brian's mom instead. She suggested I just go to the appointment for the reassurance, even if things were fine. Figuring that maybe we could at least get an antihistimine if the doctor thought it was allergies, I decided she was right.

And so I was surprised when the doctor, instead of telling me it was just a cold and to give Adriana plenty of fluids or agreeing that it did seem like hay fever, looked at Adriana sitting there with her dress off and expressed concern over her breathing before she'd even listened to her chest. But I think it was good that I was surprised. That surprise meant that instead of worrying or panicking I just accepted what the doctor said, as she pressed her stethoscope to my baby's back and then ordered some Albuterol treatments and a chest X-ray. 

Adriana was amazingly good throughout it all. In fact, her good behavior was part of what had me and my mother-in-law concerned: while Adriana is good about sitting for stories, she is not ordinarily a kid who just wants to sit in the rocking chair and snuggle for an hour. She is not the kind of kid who lies quietly on the floor when she is set down--she either demands to be picked up or goes off to do something else--but on Monday I would find her exactly where I had left her. The frighteningly good behavior continued at the doctor's office. She sat quietly on my lap for the exam, and then patiently let me hold the nebulizer mask over her face while she received Albuterol to open up her lungs. She looked passively at the little teddy bear gadget on her finger that monitored her blood oxygen saturation (which, how on earth do those things work? I swear they must be magic) and stroked my arm with her free hand. She is normally a bit shy in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar faces, but this seemed particularly unusual. She did seem more energetic after the treatment, which brought her oxygen saturation up from 95 to 97 percent, and actually walked down to get her x-ray instead of insisting that I carry her. She sit perfectly still on the table for her x-rays, as I reminded her about the X-rays Curious George got. And back upstairs, she sat quietly for another Albuterol treatment, which brought her oxygen up to 98, while we waited for the doctor to come back with the X-ray results. 

We ended up with a diagnosis of bronchiolitis in Adriana's left lung (which is often caused by RSV and can be a serious issue in babies, but is less frightening in toddlers), and we were sent off with a nebulizer to continue Albuterol treatments for the next couple of days. Realizing that I hadn't eaten in hours and that I couldn't get the nebulizer and Adriana both home on my bike, I called Brian to meet us downtown for dinner and a lift home. Adriana had a fit of energy then (Albuterol can make kids hyper), and it was good to see her back to her normal self as she did a few laps in front of the doctor's office--up the stairs then down the ramp--and then insisted on walking the block and a half to the restaurant  for dinner. But at dinner she grew quiet again and ate only a bite or two of her pasta, and by the time we got home we discovered she had a fever. And because we were at home she fought us as we tried to give her the Albuterol, but eventually with snuggles from me and a Curious George story from Brian (and the promise of a "special sticker" afterward--one of the Curious George ones I've been hoarding for when we get to the bribing stage of potty training) she settled down and then went to bed without much fight.

After that I was totally drained, and yet I felt as though I imagined the Albuterol was making Adriana feel--tense and wired. The whole day was catching up to me, from the early wake-up, the shorter-than-usual break I got when Adriana took only a brief nap, and of course the craziness of what had happened at the doctor's office. None of it ended up being a big deal. Yes, she was having a bit of trouble breathing, but it wasn't a crisis by any means. Still, I had been hesitant to take her in at all, and had expected to be sent home with a pat on the head and a roll of the eyes at my first-time-mom anxiety, and had ended up holding my baby's hand for her first X-rays. I sat in the arm chair, stunned. I sent a message to a friend describing how I felt after my day. He suggested that I needed to go sledding, and as silly as that sounded (especially since I am in the bay area, not on the frozen tundra of the upper midwest) it really was exactly what I needed: the exertion of tromping uphill in the snow, the exhilaration of flying back down on a sled--just the simple physicalness of it--to help with the tension I was feeling.

Instead I went into Adriana's room and listened to her breathing, which was no longer as shallow as it had been, and then climbed into my own bed...and then went back to listen to her breathe a couple of more times before I finally managed to fall asleep.

Recipe: Sweet potato coconut soup

While Brian likes to point out that "no one cares what I had for lunch," I feel compelled to post recipes from time to time. You care what I had for dinner, right?

This is based on a recipe from Fresh Food Fast by Peter Berley. For a while I was doing it with tofu instead of beans (about eight ounces, just cubed and tossed in with the liquid), but then Brian and I realized we don't really like tofu. We usually have it served over rice, and if you serve it over brown rice, that healthiness combined with the beans and the different colored vegetables should probably let you justify any number of chocolate chip cookies for the rest of the week. I mean, orange veggies, leafy greens, whole grains, legumes? SO HEALTHY. 

Also, this soup was one of the first real foods that Adriana ate. She tried a bit of rice cereal at seven months old, and then turned up her nose at most solids (especially purees). But just after her first birthday she chowed down on this. Apparently I just wasn't offering her interesting enough flavors.

Sweet Potato Coconut Soup with Black Beans and Chard 

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 medium onions, chopped

2 small or 1 large sweet potato peeled and diced (one-inch)

1 tablespoon ginger, minced

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 jalapeno, minced

2 teaspoons ground coriander

1 (15-ounce) can black beans

1 (15-ounce) can coconut milk

2 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

1 small bunch chard, center ribs discarded, sliced thin

juice of one small lime

handful of cilantro, chopped

1. Heat oil in large pot over medium-high heat. Saute onions 3-4 minutes, until softened.
2. Add sweet potatoes, ginger, pepper, garlic, and coriander. Saute 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
3. Add beans, water, coconut milk, and salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes.
4. Stir in chard and simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes.
5. Stir in lime juice and cilantro and serve.
   

Baby's first joke (I think)

Adriana came and found me while I was folding laundry.

DAD-WHERE? She asked, something she wants to know pretty much every day.

"Where do you think he is?" I asked. Usually she replies WORK, but this time she just repeated her question. "He's at work," I told her.

DAD-WHERE? Adriana repeated.

"Work," I said. We went back and forth a few more times, and finally I said, "I don't know, where is Dad?"

MOON, she signed. 

"Dad's on the moon?" I asked. She nodded, and then giggled so hard she had to sit down. For the rest of the morning as played with her baby or read books, she would stop every now and then, sign DAD-MOON, and collapse in a fit of giggles. Pretty soon I was laughing too, and I didn't even get the joke. 

Head and shoulders, scabs and toes

I don't think of Adriana as a particularly clumsy child. In fact, I think she's quite well coordinated for her age. But she is an active little girl and takes her fair share of tumbles. As a result, her knees are frequently a bit banged up--one of them always seems to have a scab. 

Still, I thought she knew what her knees were. She points to any body part you ask her to, her knees among them. She follows along when I sing "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes." But the other day she pointed to a scrape on her ankle and told me "knee." I guess she was less clear on what exactly her knees were than I thought. 

25 months

Last week we flew to Florida for a few days, to visit Adriana's great-grandfather, and the trip certainly demonstrated the highlights and challenges of this age.  Adriana cooperated well at the airport, provided that we gave her plenty of warning for things. I told her as we got in the car to head up to SFO that when we got to the airport I was going to put her in the carrier until we'd gone through security, so instead of fighting me as she often does when it comes to carriers and strollers these days, she happily let me swing her around onto my back. We warned her that her monkey and shoes would have to go through the X-ray separately, and so she didn't object when Weed was tucked into Brian's bag and I placed her shoes in the plastic bin with mine. She does well with quiet play these days, even independent play, so the flights to and from Florida were uneventful. She drew with crayons, played with her doll and her monkey, looked at pictures of dogs and cats in the Sky Mall catalog, and then had some milk and slept for at least an hour. Flight attendants and other passengers stopped to tell me what a good girl she was. Once we were in Florida, she did surprisingly well with being in an apartment that was not exactly child-friendly. She had her crayons and her legos, and there was a piano to play on. For the most part she didn't show too much interest in the fragile knick-knacks that were down at her level (a couple of ceramic cats were an exception to that). 

But we also witnessed a couple of full-scale tantrums that surprised us. She was out of her normal routines and not getting quite as much freedom to run as she is accustomed to, and it was frustrating for her. We thought we knew what tantrums were a year ago, but now she's really gotten the hang of them: every now and then when she is upset or overtired or overstimulated, we witness the wrath of the two-year-old, as she hurls her body to the floor, kicks, screams, and throws things. I've found it's best to let her  blow off steam for a minute or two without interfering (although we do have to make sure there's nothing in her way that she might accidentally hurt herself on), and then she is willing to be soothed, usually by nursing, but sometimes with some other distraction. And so we faced this twice in Florida, both times in our hotel room when she was feeling cooped up and frustrated. But for the most part we were able to head off the worst of her tantrums. Several meals were eaten at shifts, so that Adriana could get outside to play. Of course, in some ways that aggravated the problems more, because it meant that she wasn't eating well. Adriana has always been a bit of a quirky eater, and eating when there are distractions is nearly impossible for her--and restaurants are full of distractions. We took food back to our room after breakfast, picked up snacks at the supermarket, and sometimes just nursed a bit more often than we normally do at home. It was good to see her eat a good meal the night we got home, gobbling up a bowl full of vegetable barley soup, rather than the diet of French bread, string cheese, grapes, and Cheerios she'd been subsisting on while we traveled. She has been such a good eater lately--eating a real breakfast in the morning, two light lunches most days (one before her nap, one after), and a decent dinner--and it was hard to watch her intake of "real food" decline throughout our trip. 

Adriana's language explosion continues. I kept a careful list of the words she said and how she pronounced them, up until she reached 100 words. Then I couldn't keep up with her and going to the computer every time there was something new, and I stopped. She combines words now into little sentences. "Mom read book," she commands me many times a day, bringing me a story to read. "Ana get ball," she exclaimed over and over at the Children's Discovery Museum earlier this month. And her spoken language lets her demonstrate the other things she is learning. She can identify colors and likes to label things--blue cars, purple balls, brown shoes. She sorts things constantly: I leave her alone to play while I shower and come back to discover that she has stacked all the red legos in one tower, the green in another, the blue in a third and is working on the yellow ones.  She sometimes builds with her alphabet blocks, but she nearly as often just divides them up by letter, as she is recognizing and naming some letters. She surprised us the first time, pointing to a capital letter A and telling us, "A, Ana," since I always say her name when we are looking at alphabet books. She also now identifies B for baby, M for mom, D for dad, and S for Sam. She tries to fit other letters and numbers into these categories: V gets matched with A; W, N, and 3 are all M to Adriana; 5 might as well be S; and O is a D, according to her. Going through the airports on our trip, she spotted the double A of the American Airlines logo and shouted, "Two! A! Ana!" with great glee. She describes her games and gives me instructions as I play with her, in a mix of spoken and signed language. During a tea party, she signs cookie and places an imaginary one on my saucer beside my cup. As I pick it up to take a bite, she tells me, "No, dip," and demonstrates dipping her cookie into her tea before tasting it (and I have no idea where she learned that). She signs panda and then says "eat pie," as she serves her toy panda a pie made of legos. She uses her made-up sign for "where?" as she speaks the word of what she's looking for. 

I am thrilled right now with the joy that Adriana takes in things. We've had a great deal of fun this past month taking her to places we thought she'd like: the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Oakland Zoo, and Butterfly World and a park with a carousel in Florida. At the aquarium she ran eagerly from tank to tank, signing fish, demanding to be picked up for a better view, and then demanding to get down so she could run to the next tank on her own. She watched with great excitement as river otters played and wrestled in the water (although she backed way nervously as their game took them close to the glass where she was standing). She gazed in awe at sharks circling before her in a room that looked into a great tank. At the zoo, she leaned away from us when she was in our arms, trying to find some way to get closer to the monkeys and lions and elephants. She talked about that trip for days afterward, telling us about the monkey that was jumping in the trees, the monkey that was sleeping, and the elephant that pooped. At Butterfly World, it was hard to get her past the initial walkway into the garden as she pointed to flowers and butterflies, exclaiming over the colors. While the carousel in Florida wasn't the first she's been on, it was the first time she seemed old enough to really enjoy the experience, and after two rides she still was begging for more: "Mo' neigh! Mo' neigh! Mo' neigh, pwee!" Everything is amazing to her and it's so much fun to get to witness her joy. 

In honor of the tenth anniversary of our first date, today I will poke fun (gently, of course) at my husband

I'm not sure if this is the lamest reason or the most awesome Brian has ever given me for requesting a ride home from work:

"If I pedal home in this rain, my hair will run."

I am *so* glad she is talking

At SFO last week, I took Adriana into the restroom with me.

"Mom pee," she observed. And when I didn't respond she repeated herself. "Mom pee! MOM PEE!"

Finally I gave in. Just as she likes us to say aloud the words she signs, she likes to have her words repeated back to her. "That's right. Mom's going to the bathroom."

"Mom pee! Yeah!" She exclaimed one more time. And then as I zipped up my jeans, she waved to the flushing toilet. "Mom! Pee! Bye-bye!"

The people waiting in line smiled at us as we emerged from the stall. 

Two year stats

Last week was Adriana's two-year check up with her pediatrician. She weighed 26.5 pounds, which surprised me, partly because she has been clingy lately, so I've been carrying her a lot and she seems heavy, and partly because, according to the doctor's charts, that puts Adriana in the 47th percentile for weight. She's been dropping in the percentiles, which is totally normal, but still, she was in the 99th percentile when she was born, so hearing that she was below the 50th seemed sort of weird. She cooperated nicely when the nurse measured her height, standing up straight to show that she is 34.5 inches tall--which puts her in the 66th percentile, and is a good two and a half inches taller than her mother was at her age. It pleases me that she'll get to be taller than I am some day. Not that there's anything wrong with being 5'2"; I just want her to have an easier time buying pants that fit. 

I punched her numbers into this website. The percentiles are slightly off; every doctor and website seems to be using a slightly different chart, but you can see how she has averaged out over the past two years. 

 

It was an otherwise boring doctor's visit. We didn't do any immunizations. I wasn't going to mention anything about nursing to the doctor after a bad run-in with a nutritionist earlier this month, but Adriana of course began asking for milk and sticking her hands down my shirt the moment the doctor walked into the room. But the pediatrician was very encouraging, just as our last one (who retired this fall) was, and said we could just chat while Adriana nursed so that she would be comfortable during the exam. Now we don't have to go back until next January, assuming Adriana stays in good health. Fingers crossed!

I've been here before

Seven years ago, Brian and I went with friends to the benefit concert that John McCutcheon does every year for Santa Cruz's Resource Center for Nonviolence. Actually, he does two concerts, an evening one and a daytime one, and for one reason or another we ended up at the Saturday morning concert with our friends Brian and Chantal, and I think we were all surprised to find ourselves in the middle if a family concert. We had fun and enjoyed the music, but we were seriously out of place there, all of us in our early twenties, just married, and childless.

This year, though, as I sat beside Chantal and listened to the music, while Brian and Brian chased our little girls around the church (perhaps they are a little young yet), I realized that now we definitely fit in a little better.

We were lucky, too, that Saturday was such a beautiful day. We sat in the sun outside the church afterwards, snacking and visiting and letting the little ones play. It didn't feel like January, and it didn't feel as though much time had passed since the last concert, except I think I am even happier now than I was then.




Finally, our friends left to take their baby home for her nap, and Brian and I realized that it was too gorgeous a day to live Santa Cruz just yet. Hesitantly, feeling a little silly, I suggested to Brian that it had been nearly exactly ten years since our first date, it might be fitting to go to the same restaurant for lunch--especially because it was near the beach and probably had patio seating. He grinned and immediately called Palapas to get directions. (Actually, he called and asked if they were open, if they had outdoor seating, and how to get there. I laughed, wondering if they wondered how they even existed since we obviously knew so little about them.)

We had a lovely lunch. Adriana was a good behavior, the table had a view of the water, and the food was yummy. Afterwards, we skirted the resort and walked down to the beach, Adriana chasing and stomping on her shadow as we went, to the great amusement of some of the people eating outdoors at the resort restaurant. There are days when I realize I need to put the camera down, and not live life from behind it, but I do regret that I had left the camera in the car when we went to the beach. It wasn't the first time Adriana had been to the beach, but it was the first time since she'd gotten over her anxiety about sand. We all took off our shoes and rolled up our pants (we really hadn't planned for this). I wish I had a photograph of her tentative steps on the sand, and then of Adriana and Brian making their way down toward the water, side by side, shadows stretched out long behind them; a picture of Adriana and me snuggling and singing "Puff, the Magic Dragon," as we looked out at the water and one of Adriana burying Brian's feet in the sand. I wish I could have recorded the beautiful plants on the faces of the cliffs, and the reflection of the late afternoon sun on the bay. And there are impossible pictures: one of Brian and me scrambling to get Adriana, ourselves, and all our things out of the way as we realized we'd sat down a little too close to the water, and one of her holding on to both our hands as we made our way back up the beach to go home. But the camera was in the car, and instead of focusing on taking photos, I was focused on Adriana and Brian, and in a way I need the photos a little less because of that.

At the end of Saturday's concert, Mr. McCutcheon spoke about the next day's "We Are One" concert, saying that he'd called Pete Seeger to tease him about singing on the Mall to support a President for once, and to ask what he would be singing. And then everyone there in the church sang the song, "This Land is Your Land," but all day long it was Pete Seeger's song "Circles" that was running through my head:

All my life's a circle, sunrise and sundown
Moon rolls through the nighttime till daybreak comes around
All my life's a circle, still I wonder why
Seasons spinning 'round again, years keep rolling by

Seems like I've been here before, can't remember when
I got this funny feeling we'll all be together again
No straight lines make up my life; all my roads have bends
No clear cut beginnings, so far no dead ends

I've met you a thousand times, I guess you've done the same
Then we lose each other; it's like a children's game
But now I find you here again, the thought comes to my mind
Our love is like a circle; let's go 'round one more time

Smart kid

I was in the bedroom yesterday, folding clothes, when I heard Adriana demanding that Brian read to her. He sat down in a glider, and she began insisting that they sit in the arm chair to read. They argued back and forth for a minute, and then I heard him say, "Adriana, who's the boss here?"

And I couldn't stop laughing when I heard her respond, "Mom!"

Break in

Up until I was pregnant with Adriana, I'd had the same nightmare for years: someone would knock on the door, and when I opened it and realized that had been a bad idea, it was too late; the bad guys would push their way into the house. The dream changed over time, with different people as the bad guys--the strange, bearded homeless man with a dog on a chain who had come to the door in Santa Cruz that day to offer to repaint my house number on the curb; the weird manager at the Safeway in Alexandria who would follow me around the store; people that I seemed to have invented in my imagination--and different locations, although usually it took place in whatever house I was currently living in. Even in my dreams I would remember that this was a recurring dream. Someone would knock on the door and I would be hesitant to answer, because it seemed just like my dream. "Don't be silly," I would chide myself. "That's just a dream." And then I would open the door and the events would be set into motion once again. The dream never got further than the initial break in; as I would push against the door to try to keep the bad guys out, or wonder how they were now at the window, or run away trying to find a phone, I would wake in a panic.

My dreams changed when I got pregnant, though. I was still an active dreamer and remembered a lot of detail from my dreams, which is apparently normal during pregnancy. I still had nightmares sometimes, but usually they were about the baby. The home invasion dreams were gone.

Until this past week.

On Saturday night, someone broke in to the club house/fitness center at our apartment complex and stole both of the televisions. We had noticed the big, flat screen TV in the main room on when we'd walked by on our way back from dinner that night, but Sunday morning when Brian's mom was walking by, she noticed it was no longer there. Brian went down to check and found that a window had been removed. Brian called the security folks, and on Monday I talked briefly with the police who came by to check things out. In the end, it's not really a big deal, right? The "bad guys" broke into a place that they knew had no people in it. Property was taken, no one was hurt, and most of the people in the complex probably don't even realize it happened. I didn't even realize it was bothering me, even when I double checked that the front door was locked before going to bed, despite having already heard Brian do the same thing, or when I closed the windows, even though we live upstairs, before going out on a nice day, even though I left them open all summer. It wasn't until the small hours of Monday morning when I startled awake from that same dream, the one that I hadn't had in three years, that I realized how much it had upset me. I'm telling myself that I'm not being unreasonable, that someone broke into a window that I can see from my own bedroom window, that I am not doing anything particularly unusual by simply making sure my apartment is locked up when I leave. But I hate that this dream is back and that I am worried about this kind of thing.

24 months

My sister asked me at Adriana's birthday if now that Adriana was two I would stop referring to her age in months? I said that yes, I probably would, but then I started thinking about how I sit down and write a blog entry every month on the 11th (or soon after!). I suppose she's not changing as much every month as she used to, but I love having this record of what she was doing when.

Even if she's not changing as quickly these days as she used to, the past month has brought startling change as Adriana's spoke language develops. For some time I've kept a list of Adriana's signs, so I always know how many she has (nearly 100, now), so I decided to create a list of her spoken words--not the words she just echoes at the end of our sentences, but the actual words she uses to describe objects and actions. At eighteen months, that list would have had only three words on it. Two months later, she was up to five or six. Now she has almost 50. The majority are words that she also has signs for, but for the most part she doesn't sign as she speaks. I wonder, though, if I were a better signer, if she would; one is "supposed" to sign as the word is spoken when signing with kids, but I am lazy and once Adriana has acquired a sign, I stop using it. That means her signs never really improve, but I still understand her, so I don't worry about it too much. It's a good thing that I naturally continue to use words as she acquires them, because her pronunciation isn't great yet (not that it should be): "k" and "s" sounds at the beginning of words are "d" or "t." Although that comes in handy when we utter certain words that we would rather she didn't parrot back to us. ("Um, I'm afraid I taught the baby her first swear word," Brian confessed to me a couple of weeks ago. And then I heard Adriana in the next room, shouting, "Dap! Dap!" "Kick" is also a bit of a problem it turns out.) There are times when, after hearing "no" for the 5,478th time in an hour, I start to wondering why it was I wanted her to talk so much. But it's still wonderful to hear her voice, and I think it's adorable to hear her versions of "please" and "all done."

Adriana has been fascinated with babies for some time, but now she is watching the big kids at the park carefully. She still notices every baby and loves to go investigate (and stare when one is nursing), but now she is watching how the four- and five-year-olds clamber up the play structures, jump off of swings, and chase each other around. She climbs ladders with relative ease at the park these days, and her fear of slides after a fall this spring is long gone--she goes around and around on even the biggest slides at the park. Sometimes she does want me to go along with her, but after one or two tries in my lap or by my side, she pushes me away to do it by herself. Having mastered jumping with both feet off the ground a few months ago, she has now moved to jumping off of things. She spent an hour on Christmas Eve (after a short, late nap in the car, which was enough to keep her up until almost midnight), jumping off of the armchair into Brian's arms, yelling "dup" for "jump" each time.

It's fun watching her play with all her new Christmas and birthday toys. Santa Claus brought her a new doll with a stroller and a diaper bag, and she loves pushing that stroller around and diapering her baby, but she is also quite enamored of her Duplos and bristle blocks. She will play quietly building towers by herself for close to an hour.

She is my little helper, although sometimes she's more of a "helper." One day last week I was folding laundry, and every time I folded a piece of her clothing, she took it from me and ran off to her room to put it away. I thought that was excellent, until I walked into her room and found all the clothes unfolded and in a heap in front of her dresser. But she does do a nice job sorting socks, dividing them into three piles and exclaiming, "Mommm," "Da," or "Ana" for each one.

She picks her own outfit most days. Sometimes I pick out two different outfits and let her choose one of them, but other days I just let her open the drawers and choose. There are days when she ends up at the park in blue and orange striped pants and a pink polka dot top, but because I pick outfits she often finds things that she knows she's worn together before. And she is enamored of tights for some reason, so she wears a lot of dresses these days. That may be a problem this summer when it's too warm for tights and the slides are too hot for bare legs, but for now it's cute. She is determined to put her shoes on by herself, so she prefers to wear mary janes rather than sneakers, because they are easy to do by herself.

Sleep is sometimes an issue for us still, but I suppose that will just go on for some time. We've experimented with night weaning (starting it out of desperation one night when she was nursing for 30 minutes out of every 90), and while it seemed to go well at first, it now seems like more trouble than it's worth, so we're backing off a bit, and just being grateful that she does sleep better than she used to and that she still takes a nice nap most days. She did skip her nap altogether for the first time the day before her birthday, and while it didn't go badly, I would miss my quiet time after lunch if it disappeared altogether, even if it would make weekends easier.

I know these are supposed to be the "terrible twos," but I think I am enjoying this stage more than I was a year ago. I love seeing how independent Adriana is becoming and playing games with her. I mean, I do miss the baby days sometimes, the way I could just pop her in a sling and tote her around wherever I was going without having to think about food and nap schedules and whatnot, but getting to know her as a person is one of the best things I've ever had the privilege of doing.

Two years

I woke up early this morning, just as the first grey daylight was starting to seep around the blinds. I was in Adriana's bed, having gone in to her in the night. We were both on our sides, facing each other, and I stayed very still, listening to her breathe, admiring the curve of her cheek, her tiny mouth, the arms clutching her hat to her chest. I thought of where I was two years ago. At this exact time, I was probably laboring in a hospital bed, scared and tired, just a few hours before her birth. And then I added three hours for the time difference of her being more in Virginia, and realized that it was exactly two years since she'd been born. At this exact time, I was watching her be cleaned up and examined by the pediatricians in the operating room, listening to her cry and crying myself. This morning, at the risk of waking her, I took her in my arms and pressed my lips to her forehead, remembering that first day in the hospital when we were finally in our room in the maternity ward together, holding her skin-to-skin with me under my nightgown, and I marveled then and now that she was my baby.

You know, this only happens when other people are coming to dinner

When Brian and I first moved in together, we spent several weekends driving to yard sales all over Santa Cruz in order to furnish our little house. At one we found a crock pot for fifty cents. It was dark orange, all one piece, and missing its lid, but hey, it was fifty cents, why wouldn't we take that home? It served us well for more than seven years (a dinner plate worked fine as a lid), but this fall I was in Target and spotted a crock pot. It was red, you could take out the bowl to clean it more easily, and it was $19.99. I decided I was a grown up who needed a crock pot that wasn't older than she was and put it in my basket.

Tonight my friend Cyndi and her little boy were coming over for dinner, so in the morning I put some spaghetti sauce together to simmer all day long in the crock pot. We spent the afternoon at the park, and when we came back to the house I put water on to boil for the pasta, and checked my sauce. It seemed a little thin, so I took the lid off to see if I couldn't thicken it up a bit. When Brian came home and showered and hung out in the kitchen with Cyndi and me. Suddenly he got a funny look on his face and leaned over the stove, studying the crock pot lid where I'd set it. I watched him as he picked the lid up.

And then it exploded.

It turned out that I had put the pot of water on the back burner but turned the front one to high, and then I set the glass crock pot lid on that hot burner. The glass had looked funny somehow, and that was what caught Brian's attention. I'm just glad that it exploded right after he picked it up, rather than have had a horrible accident by having it happen when he'd brought it closer to his face for examination. Brian cleaned up the mess while Cyndi and I occupied the kiddos. And then we ordered pizza, because, although we couldn't see any glass in the uncovered spaghetti sauce, we didn't want to find out the hard way.

Anyhow, that's twice in about six months that I've used heat to explode glass. I think my resolution for 2009 will be to not explode glass all over the kitchen while I'm cooking.

Christmas traditions: Ornaments

Decorating the Christmas tree is always one of my favorite Christmas traditions. I like pulling out all the different ornaments, remembering where they came from, and finding the perfect place for them on the tree. This year Adriana helped decorate, and it was fun to give her unbreakable ornaments to hang down at her level.


In fact, we had so much fun decorating with her that the week after we did our tree, we went up to my dad's house to help him with his. There, Adriana was less interested in hanging the ornaments than she was in going through the ornament box and telling other people where to hang the ones she picked out.




While we were at my dad's, my sister and I sorted through ornaments, selecting the ones that we wanted for our own trees, since even with an eight foot tree that we decorated on all sides my dad had more than enough.

I came home and hung the "new" ornaments on the tree and thought of how much these things all mean to me. I realize they are all just things, but I love the way pulling them out of the box every year brings back so many memories.

I bought this glass ball at Appalachian Spring in Georgetown the year that I was pregnant with Adriana. I love beautiful glass ornaments and this one reminded me of one that my mom had when we were growing up.


When we were sorting out ornaments at my dad's, I found the one I had been thinking of. I hung them near one another on our tree.


That same year I also bought a lot of cheap ornaments at the Crate & Barrel outlet in Old Town Alexandria. I like these ones because they're sparkly.


Last fall, I was eager to find the perfect "Baby's First Christmas" ornament to personalize for Adriana. In my head it was silver and engraved. Then I found this china giraffe that was absolutely perfect.


At one point when I was in elementary school, my mom let each of us pick out an ornament at Macy's one year. I chose a wooden rocking horse. Every day as Adriana studies the tree and points out ornaments, she smiles at this one and exclaims, "Neigh! Neigh!"


The first year that Brian and I were living together, I insisted on picking out a seven-foot tree for our little house, even though we weren't even going to be there on Christmas day--and even though we didn't have any ornaments to put on it. Remembering ornament projects from preschool, I began saving yogurt lids, and with those, a stack of photographs, some construction paper, and some glitter glue pens, I made a bunch of ornaments. I'm not a very crafty person, and the ornaments do have a bit of the preschool project feel to them, but we still have a lot of them around, and I love them because of the pictures of our friends and family, and also because it's nice to remember that first Christmas together. I meant to make more this year, but it will have to wait until next year, I think.


When we first visited the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, I noticed in the gift shop a pretty little ornament that outlined the shape of the Cathedral's rose window. I didn't buy it and later wondered why. So when I saw a similar one at National Cathedral I of course purchased it. And then at St. Paul's I found one that outlined some of the iron work in the Cathedral. I try not to buy too many little trinkets when we travel, because I don't like to have a lot of clutter (not that you could tell that from looking at our house), but ornaments make perfect souvenirs: we get them out once a year, pretty little things that remind us of the fun we had on different trips.


I love hummingbirds, so I was pleased to pull out this pretty little one that Brian's mom gave me last year.


For the first week that we had our tree up, Adriana would point to it and sign "bird," and she was talking about that hummingbird. But after we brought home ornaments from my dad's house, she is much more interested in my favorite ornament from childhood, Big Bird.


I loved Paddington Bear when I was little, so my sister handed me this ornament to take home. But the real reason I was pleased to take it is that some friends in Washington really adore Paddington, and seeing this little guy on my tree reminds me of them.


That first year that we were living together, Brian perched a sock monkey that my friend John had made for my 21st birthday on top of the tree. It started as a joke, but that we left him there. When I was pregnant with Adriana and we were finally getting our own tree again, we bought a pretty star to put at the top of the tree but ended up returning it. We just liked the sock monkey better.


The tree skirt wasn't anything I ever really thought of when I was growing up, and it wasn't a decoration that was important to me. But when Brian and I got married, his aunt embroidered a tree skirt for us, and every year I take it out of the closet and marvel at it. The little details are so perfect, and it's so special to me because I know that Aunt Janet made it just for us. It reminds me of her, although she lives in Florida and I've only met her a few times, and it reminds me of when we were just married, right after Christmas, and what a special time that was in our lives.

Christmas traditions: baking cookies

Some of my friends have mentioned baking with their children, children who are about Adriana's age. My first instinct is always: ARE YOU CRAZY? And yet...it started to sound like fun, so I bought a bucket of Christmas cookies cutters and some red and green sprinkles, got out my Grandma Ruth's recipe, and on Saturday Adriana and I got to work.

In the morning I rolled out the dough and showed Adriana how to cut out shapes:




All the best chefs wear hats when they cook.

And after her nap, I turned Adriana loose with a bowl of frosting and some colored sprinkles:





In the end I learned several things:

1. If you start nibbling bits of cookie dough when you think the toddler isn't looking, the toddler will start nibbling bits of cookie dough when she thinks you aren't looking.
2. If you leave cookies on racks to cool and those racks are too near the edge of the counter, you may find small bites taking out of a few of them when you come back to do the decorating.
3. Nonpareils are round. Which means that when they spill, they ROLL. Stick with the colored sugar for sprinkles.
4. Old people (you know, like thirty-year-olds) are such freakin' conformists. Who says you are supposed to frost the puffy, light-colored side of the cookie? What's wrong with frosting the pan side? For that matter, what's wrong with frosting both sides? 
5. Why yes, it does make a mess. And it is so totally worth it.
   

Oh, Christmas tree

Last year, before Adriana was even a year old, I was determined that our family would have Christmas traditions. We picked out a tree at a lot along El Camino Real and brought it home to decorate. Which, in spite of my eagerness to start some traditions, we did while Adriana was napping. This year, though, my plan to create Lasting Holiday Traditions and Memories, Dammit (TM) actually involved participation by Adriana. We went to the tree farm, had a picnic, selected our tree, and then brought it home to decorate. I mixed up some gingerbread, and that night after dinner, we strung lights on the tree and hung up the ornaments, and then we settled down to admire our work and eat our sweet. And it was so much better than last year, because Adriana was there, pulling ornaments out of the boxes, hanging them on the low branches, and being lifted to the higher ones, and (of course) nibbling on gingerbread afterwards.

23 months

When Adriana wasn't talking at all, it seemed as though everyone would tell me, "Well, she'll talk she's ready, and she'll probably start with complete sentences." While the first part is certainly true, I'm glad the second isn't. She seems to be going along with the normal beginning language, that some kids do at eight months and others not until they're three: her words aren't always entirely clear, but I can interpret them fairly easily, and there are certain sounds that are harder to make. "S" is apparently a hard one. "Please" is "pweesh," and "stop" is "dop."

I do love the way that her signs and spoken language are combined. In some cases, she signs the word that she is saying, but she usually doesn't. She does follow up signs with different words. Her stuffed monkey got dropped down the stairs outside the other day, and now as she looks at the bandage we put on him afterwards, she signs "monkey" and "down" and then says, "BOOM!" And then she goes on in signs to tell me mama put on a band-aid with cats and flowers.

Brian and I keep marveling at how much Adriana is saying all of a sudden. She doesn't have a great number of words, but she seems to be babbling constantly (at least when it's just us; she gets shy around others) and is frequently mimicking the last word we say. I am finding her shyness rather adorable. She'll smile at strangers, but when they talk to her or approach her, she turns her face toward me, or steps behind my legs. That's only with adults, though. With other kids, she is very sociable, and she eagerly approaches dogs.

Adriana eats several almost-meals a day: a bowl of cereal or slice of toast for breakfast, fruit and yogurt before her nap, some sort of snack after her nap, cheese and crackers and veggies while I'm cooking dinner, and then some of whatever we're having for dinner. But she is very easily distracted when she is eating. When there is a lot going on around her, she won't eat, even when she's hungry. And Brian and I often both sit at the dinner table long after we've finished our food, because Adriana is still making her way slowly through her dinner, and if either one of us gets up to do something else, she'll forget that she's supposed to be eating.

The rest of the time, though, she can be very focused. A friend recently described how her two-year-old pretends not to hear when she's being called because she doesn't want to stop what she's doing. Adriana also gets so busy she doesn't seem to hear us call her, but I don't think she is deliberately ignoring us. She honestly gets so focused on her sticker book or whatever she is doing with her toys that she doesn't hear. I actually have memories of being scolded in kindergarten for similar behaviors: at the end of a free play time I would hear my name being called and look up to see all the other children sitting down for circle time, and I would be there in my corner looking at a book or surrounded by the crayons and paper I had been using. "I didn't hear," I would protest when asked why I hadn't put things away and come to the circle. And Mrs. White would ask how it was possible that I hadn't hear when everyone else had, and I would have no answer but I would know that I truly hadn't heard. So when I describe about Adriana's deep focus on certain things to her speech therapist (in order to explain why Adriana won't answer questions as part of a listening game while she is playing with a doll house), and the therapist says that it will serve her well later in life when she needs to concentrate in order to study, I think that she is probably right, but I still feel bad for both Adriana and the kindergarten teacher. For now, I just make myself decide whether I really need Adriana's attention. After all, lunch can wait a few minutes if she's busily playing by herself--and it gives me a chance to read for a bit. And if I do need her to change tasks, a light touch on her arm and a "look at mama" usually get her attention. Of course, she may shake her head no and try to continue with what she's doing once she's heard what I'm asking, but at least I know then that she's heard me.

I am really loving the mixture of baby and "big girl' that she is right now. She reaches for me when she's upset, and falls asleep in my arms when she's tired. But we go out to eat and she insists on sitting in a chair, a real chair, not a high chair or a booster seat, and eating with a real fork. She wants to walk, not ride in the stroller or the Beco. Of course, when we walk some place, she is still everywhere--off to try climbing up someone's front steps, picking up pine cones to examine, carefully studying fire hydrants, or gathering colorful pieces of litter. Usually I am patient and watch her explore. Still, it feels as though I say "Are you going to walk or am I going to have to carry you?" about 100 times a day. (The answer is always no, and then she moves a few steps forward before getting distracted again...what was that I was saying about her focus?) So we play games to keep her moving along: we practice walking on tiptoes, or backwards, or like a penguin. We march or see how big we can step. We say "Go, go, go, go....stop," and stop every few steps, because it gets her giggling and she is eager for the "go" so she can continue moving. And eventually we get there. Of course, then we have to get home afterwards, and so the whole thing happens again. Which is sort of just how life goes, I suppose: you do what you have to do to get where you're going, and then the next day you do it all again.

Brian's parents have a copy of Miss Rumphius, one of my favorite books from when I was a child. I thought Adriana might be a bit young for it, but I read it to her anyhow, and she sits patiently for it several times in a row. Last time we were reading it one line really stood out to me: "In the mean time, Alice got up and washed her face and ate porridge for breakfast. She went to school and came home and did her homework. And pretty soon she was grown up." It to me a funny way of describing growing up, of thinking about life, but also very true. And yet it leaves out so much. So even though we get up every day and do the same thing over again, that "same thing" means feeling the prickly bits of a pine cone, or figuring out how glue makes your fingers stick together, or having your first taste of gingerbread, or throwing leaves into a fountain to watch the water push them around. And then you come home and take your bath and read stories and snuggle down to sleep, just as you always do, so that you are rested to do it all again tomorrow.

Today it was a big cup of chai that made me happy

Last night sucked. Adriana was obviously sleepy but determined to stay awake, which she managed until about 11:15. She crashed then and I hoped that being up so late would help her to sleep well.

Ha.

Let me repeat that: HA.

She was up every two hours, crying and wanting to nurse, and with the added bonus of a leaky diaper necessitating a costume change at three. She was up for the day at seven, and I groggily got up with her, dreading spending the morning with a toddler running on so little sleep. I was sure gymnastics class was going to be a disaster. With so little sleep, she would surely be clumsy and cranky and screechy.

But she had a fantastic time. The teacher had set up a tall staircase with a steep slide and Adriana clambered quickly up the steps, slid down on her belly, squealed with delight, signed "more," and ran around to do it again. Over and over and over. And over. She took intermittent breaks from the slide to jump on the trampoline, but she was always back to that slide before too long. At the end of class, she had her first fussy moment because she didn't want to stop, not even for the stamp the teacher gives the kids at the end (which sometimes I think is the highlight of gymnastics for her). But finally she followed me out, ate a good lunch, and fell asleep before the car was even out of the parking lot.

I'm blaming the horrible sleep on all the talking she is doing now. She babbles constantly, often mimics the last word we say, and will usually make an attempt at a word we ask her to say. So as much as this sleep regression sucks? It's totally worth it when I ask her to say please and instead of signing, she grins and says "Pweesh."

What's making me happy

Is happiness contagious? Unhappiness certainly is. At this time last year, I was struggling. Physiologic factors (my brain's chemical tendency toward depression, being within the first year postpartum) combined with situational factors (living in a new place where I hadn't really met many people yet, adjusting to having a toddler instead of a baby) to leave me at the lowest I had been in a long time. I know it took a toll on those around me. Brian and I fought all the time, and I just don't think it could have been good for Adriana. Okay, so maybe the guy next door and the couple downstairs didn't really notice, but still.

And then I got some help and did what I needed to do in order to feel better.

On Saturday I sat on a picnic blanket at the Christmas tree farm. The sun was warm on my face, and as I leaned against Brian and listened to Adriana babble, I realized that these days there is no one in the world I would trade places with. Moments like that one occur every day now: I watch Adriana run ahead of me along the sidewalk; Brian and I laugh together at a lame joke one of us has made; I hear the low murmur of Brian's voice as he reads a bedtime story to Adriana; or I simply have some quiet time in the morning to sip my hot chocolate in peace.

A lesson learned

Look at this picture and see if you can tell what's wrong:



We had a wonderful day at a tree farm in the Santa Cruz mountains Saturday. We had planned on getting a tree at a local lot this weekend, but then a friend mentioned going to a farm to cut one, and I realized that would be such a fun way to spend the day. So I picked a farm, and we headed out.

At first, I felt overwhelmed: the farm was huge and there were so many trees to pick from. "You know that study about jam?" I said to Brian. "This is just too many choices." He told me that my problems was that I was an optimizer rather than a satisfier. Hi. We are nerds.

But it was a fun way to spend a day. We wandered around trying to pick a tree for a while, ate a picnic lunch in the sun, and then wandered some more. We studied trees from different angles, discussed their shape and color, and tried to imagine them in our apartment. It took a couple of hours, but finally, as we admired one and were close to selecting it, Adriana began to throw a tantrum (because--in what was clearly the act of a mean mother--I wouldn't let her hit me with a stick), and, realizing how long we'd been out and how far past nap time we were, Brian began sawing.

And then he went to get the car and hoisted the tree on top and got ready to tie it on. I stopped him.

"Shouldn't we close the doors and put the twine through the windows?" I asked. "That way the doors will close properly and we won't have to worry about them cutting through the twine." He shrugged and we rolled down the windows and did it my way.

And then the tree was on snugly and I began to giggle as I looked at the car.

"What?" Brian asked.

I laughed harder. "We tied the doors shut." I couldn't stop laughing. Once I got control of myself, I climbed through a window and Brian passed Adriana through to me, which she thought was fantastic. Then he climbed in and we drove back through the farm, debating who was going to have to get out at the entrance to pay for the tree. Luckily, they came up to the car to get the money and we didn't have to embarrass ourselves with our mistake in front of others.

Nevertheless: "I am so telling the Internet about this," I informed Brian as we headed back toward Highway 17. "It will help us remember for next year."

Feelin' blue

Hey! I'm not sure if it's because I cut off my hair and he felt the need to go further, or if it's to rebel against how old he must be to be married to a thirty-year-old, but last week Brian felt compelled to go out and dye his hair blue. I kinda like it:



For the first few days it was sort of a shock whenever Brian walked into a room, but now I am used to it. It is kind of funny how many people have asked whether he had my permission in advance ("He didn't need permission, but he had my blessing," is becoming my answer.), and how willing small children are to point and stare when they see a man with blue hair.

Hmmmm

At one point Brian was entertaining himself while reading The Paper Bag Princess to Adriana by telling her that it is a story about what happened to me when I was younger. And so I am not surprised when I read it to her and she points to the picture of Princess Elizabeth and signs "mama." 

But should I be concerned that yesterday, every single time we read her dinosaur book, she signed "mama" as she pointed to the picture of the tyrannosaurus rex?

Forget the trike, the girl can have a pony if she wants it

Adriana signed "mama". . . . and said it out loud at the same time.

Product review: Trike

Kelly: Ask and you shall receive.

I took Adriana into Target a couple of days ago and she refused to ride in the carrier, stroller, or cart, so I let her walk. It actually went surprisingly well, with only two annoying incidents: first she really wanted the barrettes with the long ribbons and sparkly beads, for which her hair is much too fine, and then when she spotted her beloved trike. There was a bit of a meltdown because ADRIANA'S BIKE. That right there? Up on the shelf on display? ADRIANA'S BIKE. And her mean old mother wasn't letting her ride it. 

When I was shopping for a bike last spring, I eyed tricycles in some of the stores, wondering when Adriana would be big enough, looking forward to picking out Adriana's first trike. Maybe the shiny red one? Or the turquoise one with the streamers? What about orange with hot pink flowers? I didn't think she was big enough yet, but her grandma bought her a pink and purple Radio Flyer trike this fall, and Adriana is quite pleased. When I told her we were going on an airplane to Grandma's house last week, she signed "bike." When we were there, she would wake up in the morning and ask for it right away. She spent rainy days ride and pushing it around indoors, and was always eager to take it outside for a spin. She's about 34 inches tall, and her feet already reach the pedals comfortably. She can't pedal very well yet, but she Flintstones the thing around happily, and is positively gleeful if you'll push it so that her feet go around on the pedals. But there you have my only real objection to this trike, something that I didn't realize that I needed in a trike: a steering handle for me. After half an hour of pushing her up and down the block on Thanksgiving, my back was tired. We'll probably get her a trike for our house before too long. But I'm thinking it might have a push bar for me that doesn't require so much hunching over.

Slowly but surely

Last weekend, I was feeding Adriana a bowl of Cheerios, and as she signed "more," she said "moh." I took me a moment to realize what had happened. Wondering if I was right, I fed her another bite, and then she did it again, combining the sign with the spoken words. I gleefully pointed it out to Brian and his dad who were sitting there at the table reading the newspaper. For the rest of the time we were down in South Pasadena, we would ask Adriana to say "more" and she would oblige.

I started thinking it was a coincidence that she had combined that noise with the sign for "more," though, because she was so willing to mimic us, and because she stopped using it in context and in combination with the sign. But then she screeched at me for more green beans the other night while I was cooking dinner, and I told her, "No screeching, please. If you need more food, I need you to say 'more please.'" I meant for her to sign the phrase, but she looked at me thoughtfully for a moment and slowly said, "moh."

***

Yesterday as I was pulling one load of clothes out of the dryer and moving another one in, Adriana ran into the bathroom, yelled "bye," and closed the door most of the way. She opened it, squealed, yelled "bye-bye" this time, and closed the door again. 

***

I count the steps up from our car (12) and then up to our apartment (16), as it somehow seems to keep Adriana focused on moving forward. This afternoon when we reached the front door, I finished counting and said, "And now we're home. Yay!"

"Yay!" she echoed.

Tested

One of the first things Adriana's speech therapist suggested was visiting an audiologist. At our initial evaluation with the county office of education, they thought her hearing seemed fine, but the therapist wanted to be certain that Adriana really had her full range of hearing. The test was today, and I was nervous about how it would go. Would they require her to wear headphones? Would she cooperate? What if there were problems with her hearing? Wouldn't a good mother have noticed the problems and done something sooner? What if there was no problem with her hearing? At least a problem would give us some explanation for what was going on with her speech. Because seriously, the mom anxiety can pull me in every direction at once. Good results? Bad results? No results? ALL ARE POTENTIAL PROBLEMS.

The hearing test was today and it went fine. There were no headphones involved and Adriana was very cooperative. She and I went into a sound booth, and the audiologist sat just outside. Noises would come out of speakers on either side of the booth, and when Adriana turned toward the sound, a little box above the speaker would light up to show her the stuffed animal inside. Next the doctor spoke to Adriana quietly, asking her to point to one animal or another, and Adriana obliged nicely. Next, Adriana sat perfectly still while the doctor used some sort of tool to take measurements of her ears, though she usually struggles when the doctor wants to take a look inside her hears at checkups. Finally, we sat on the couch outside the sound booth, and Adriana was very still and quiet while a little tiny device was put into each ear, one after the other, to send some sort of vibrations to the cochlea that would be echoed back to the device, showing that everything was okay with Adriana's inner ear. 

My only real concern about the whole audiologist experience now that it's over with? A couple of times Adriana would turn toward one of the speakers and be rewarded with the teddy bear playing the drum or dancing pink rabbit--and I hadn't heard any sound at all. 

I think we have a new family handshake

Tonight I didn't want to cook, so we went out to dinner at the Mexican restaurant around the corner. At some point during the meal, Adriana and Brian made some sort of deal (I think about staying in her chair). "Shake hands?" Brian said, extending his.

She looked at him for a moment and then studied her hands, obviously befuddled. Finally, she shook both hands in front of her, as she does after she washes them, to shake off the water. Then she went back to her rice and beans and fish, while Brian and I cracked up. 

"Should I teach her how to shake hands?" he asked.

"Oh, please don't. This way is just too cute."

Christmas, Christmas time is here

I think Adriana is old enough sort of understand some of Christmas this year. We'll put up a tree and decorate next weekend. I point out Christmas trees and lights every where we go. We're reading The Polar Express and A Visit from St. Nicholas often. I'm playing Christmas music at home. When Christmas comes, we'll go to a Christmas Eve service at a nearby Congregational Church and have a nice dinner, just the three of us. In the morning we'll open presents, and then spend the rest of the day with my family. The following weekend we'll head down to Southern California for a repeat performance with Brian's folks. I'm so excited about this season, and the fact that this year I really get to share it with Adriana. I think she's excited about it too. Just so long as I don't abandon her on the lap of any strange bearded men, even with her baby doll for protection.