I have known autumn just long enough

This morning, I labeled a box "Summer clothes: 18-24 months/80cm," and put away Adriana's warm weather clothes. It's California, so it's not terribly cold yet, but I'm pretty sure we've had our last truly warm weather for a while, and tank tops and sun dresses seem unnecessary. You would think I'd be sad to see summer go: no more strawberries or nectarines at the farmers' market, no more after-work trips to the park for Brian and Adriana. But I'm happy. Halloween kicked off the holiday season for us, the season that starts with Halloween and ends with Adriana's birthday, stopping at my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and our anniversary in between. Delicata squash and sweet persimmons have arrived at the market. I no longer think it's too hot to ride my bike instead of driving (although sometimes it is too wet). The weather is perfect for hot chocolate and pumpkiny treats. I do sometimes wonder what Adriana and I are going to do with ourselves when it's been pouring for a week, but I have activities in mind and she seems to have outgrown (for now) the stage where being constantly outdoors and active is a requirement to avoid tantrums.

Plus, this year she was old enough for the pumpkin patch.

Elections

1988: I was in the fifth grade and fascinated by the first presidential race that I remember, although I'm not really sure I grasped the idea that Bush and Dukakis had different ideologies and policy plans. In fact, I'm not sure exactly what it was that had me so intrigued, but I was interested enough to work out that even though I would be 18 in 1996 I would miss the election by exactly two weeks.

1992: I caught on to the concept that the three candidates had different positions on the issues, and I followed the race with interest. Two of the social studies teachers at my high school were organizing a trip to Washington for the inauguration, and I desperately wanted to go, but I knew it would be expensive, even with fundraising, and I didn't want to ask my parents.

1996: I was disappointed that all of my new friends in the dorms at Santa Cruz were able to vote (or chose not to, which baffled me), but I wasn't quite old enough.

2000: In the spring, a friend asked in the dining hall at school if I was paying attention to the Republican primaries, and I informed him that I was afraid of McCain. "More afraid of him that of Bush?" my friend asked, astonished. "Yes," I told him. "Gore can beat Bush no problem." That November, it was dark and chilly while I stood in line to vote at the church around the corner from my house, and then went home and listened to results come in on the radio. I stayed up late and went to bed not knowing who the next president would be. If fact, it was weeks before it was clear.

2004: Before work, Brian and I walked to the synagogue near our house to vote. We waited in line with our neighbors, voted, and then headed in to DC for work. The following day, I joined others in the conference room at work and watched Kerry's concession speech. In January, disappointed though I was about the election results, I realized it was finally my chance to see an inauguration. I gathered with thousands of others, peering through the crowds on 7th Street toward Pennsylvania Avenue, hoping for a glimpse of something. Finally, we gave up and went home.

2008: Pleased that I was back in California where the primary was happening early, I was excited as I walked to the polling place up the street with Adriana in her stroller and marked my ballot for Hillary Clinton. I was torn between her and Obama, and I decided that I liked her health care plan and that she seemed more experienced. And, truthfully, I am a feminist and the mother of a little girl: it was exciting to vote for a woman for president. Still, I was teary with emotion when I listened to Obama accept the nomination over the summer, and I was proud to mark my ballot for him, and felt gleeful: who would have though I would vote for a woman and an African American for president all in the same year? Yesterday I woke up excited. I listened to the radio all day. I stopped by the Obama office in Palo Alto and made some last minute phone calls to voters in Missouri. I dressed Adriana in an Obama t-shirt, and went to my friend Rachel's house to watch the results come it. I cried a little with Jon Stewart declared that the race was being called for Obama, and more as I held Adriana in my lap and listened to Obama's speech.

Go Obama!

Therapeutic

Today was Adriana's first appointment with the speech therapist. I really liked the therapist, and Adriana warmed right up to her. Of course, I sometimes think she will warm up to anyone with books about dogs and some new toys. Mary, the therapist, played with Adriana, asking her about the toys and signing to her. She offered suggestions to encourage Adriana to talk more: repeat the sounds Adriana makes back to her; try to use "mm-hmmm" and "uh-uh" for yes and no, since those sounds seem to be along the lines of what Adriana's present sounds; hold her hand to our throats so she can feel our voice; ask her questions and leave a pause in which she might answer, rather than just answering the question for her; and play with an echo microphone (she loaned us one). We already do a lot of these things, but it's good to have the encouragement.

Mary also recommended that I talk with Kaiser about getting Adriana in for a full hearing screening. Adriana's screening at birth was fine, and they did a limited one at the evaluation which also seemed normal. But different sounds are at different levels and frequencies, and if Adriana's range of hearing is limited, that might explain why she doesn't make too many different sounds. I don't think the screening will show any such limitations, but it certainly couldn't hurt to confirm.

***

Adriana napped early today, falling asleep in the car on the way home from therapy. That left us plenty of time to go to the park after we finished the errands I needed to complete after she woke up. At least, that was my plan. But as we carried groceries up from the car, a few big rain drops began to fall, and by the time everything was put away, it was really raining. I have been dreading the rainy season, fearing being cooped up inside for months on end with an active toddler. As soon as I realized that today wasn't a great day for the park, I began to get tense, but then it dawned on me that Adriana was in a fine mood. We played with the cat, chased each other around the house, and then I cut up some apples (Honeycrisps are in!) and cheese, and we cuddled up on the couch to read Curious George. At some point over the summer I began to worry about my sanity when we couldn't spend all day every day at the park, and I even began to make a list of what activities were available to us each day of the week. I'm a little less worried now. I mean, I think when we have a long rainy stretch in January and February I will be getting antsy, but I'm glad to report that afternoons at home aren't the end of the world.

Product review: CARES Harness

When we flew down to southern California for the July 4th holiday, we realized that just because a child can fly on a parent's lap for free until she's two years old, doesn't mean she should. And on the flight home two days later, which wasn't as crowded, we discovered that our car seat doesn't fit in airline seats--at least not the ones on Southwest. So when we bought our tickets for our flight down for Halloween, I bought a seat for Adriana, and told myself I'd buy a new car seat beforehand. But spent a lot of years in school perfecting my procrastination skills, so even though I had emailed a couple of groups of parents for recommendations on airplane-compatible car seats, suddenly it was the afternoon before our flight and I had nothing. Well, nothing except an indulgent father-in-law and a recommendation for a CARES Harness. I found a local store that carried the harness, and then emailed Brian's dad and explained the situation to him, asking him if he would buy a car seat that night.

The harness was incredibly easy to use: you just lower the tray behind the child's seat, loop the harness over it, and tighten it up (and then lock the tray back into place); the child's arms fit through the straps, just like in a car seat, and the airplane's seatbelt goes through the loops at the bottom. I read the instructions when I was initially on the website, and that was plenty of information to install it when we boarded the plane on Wednesday. I slipped it over Adriana's seat, tightened it up, and buckled her in. She was a bit low to see much out the window, but she was happy to have her own seat anyhow. On each flight she did get a bit antsy--paging through the Sky Mall catalog looking for pictures of dogs and scribbling on her MagnaDoodle only lasted so long. But after she nursed or had her diaper changed or whatever her request was, she was fine with being buckled back in. I think on a longer flight she would get in and out a lot more, but it's really no hassle to take her in and out and when she needed to stay in, it was fairly easy to keep her occupied. And the harness fit neatly into one of our carry-on bags. I am obsessed with being able to travel with only carry-on luggage in spite of having a child* (which I even accomplished when we went to DC for a week), so not having to drag the car seat through the airport felt wonderful.

I think the CARES Harness was worth the $75 I spent. I don't think we do an excessive amount of flying, but this year we are going to have flown down to visit Brian's folks five times, and come January 11, we aren't going to have the option of bringing Adriana as a lap child, even if we wanted to. It's nice not to have an active, 34-inch, 26-pound toddler crammed into a crowded airplane row with three adults, and it's a relief to be free of dragging a car seat through the airport. We'll have to figure something out when we fly some place else. Will we check the car seat at the ticket counter? We did that for Adriana's first flight, back when she was three months old, and then ended up stuck at LAX for a couple of hours after our flight landed, because it had ended up on the flight out of Dulles after the one we were on. If we are renting a car we could rent a car seat. Except for Adriana's second trip, when she was four months old, we tried that, and the car rental agency's car seat's weren't great: first they tried giving us a toddler seat for a child who couldn't sit up by herself for more than a few seconds. There were no instructions for installing the infant seat they finally found for us, and we were never totally happy with how secure it felt. Which leaves us back to gate checking our car seat, which isn't great, but isn't the end of the world, either. Not having to deal with it for our weekends in southern California is certainly nice, and the car seat we have there for Adriana now will last her for years.

Halloween report, 2008

For the third year in a row we're down at Brian's parents' house in South Pasadena for their crazy Halloween. We broke last year's record for trick-or-treaters: this year we ended up with 1,961 little beggars. At one point, we were getting about 24 per minute. Please see Tables 1 and 2:

Table 1: 12 Years of Trick-or-Treaters


Table 2: 2008 Breakdown


We spent some time yesterday afternoon working on our jack-o'-lanterns. I'm not quite as pleased with my owl (especially for the amount of time it took) as I was with the witch I did last year, but Brian's grim reaper came out pretty well, I think:






Adriana had a fantastic time. We took her around to a few houses to check out the decorations and get mama some candy, but she really enjoyed being at the door, watching the other kids in their costume and "helping" hand out candy and water. And also looking cute: she picked out her own costume this year. I was leaning toward a dragon costume, but once she caught sight of the shiny pink wings on the butterfly costume further down the rack, I didn't stand a chance. I mean, she pulled it down and was dragging it around Old Navy. Clearly those wings were meant for her.

Calm

Yesterday I watched Adriana get more and more worked up, happily so, and then crash very suddenly. It's not exactly a rare occurrence, but yesterday I started really thinking about it.

We've been taking a music class this fall, and yesterday morning was the last one. We got there early so that there was time for a snack before class--a must if Adriana is going to want to participate rather than cling to me, or play nicely with the other children rather than stealing their maracas and running away. She played with instruments during the first part of the class, and stuck fairly close to me, although she definitely wanted to get up and move. When it was finally time to get up, she spun in circles until she went careening away from me, then spun some more until she fell over dizzily. As we began to move around the room, she took off running, giggling and squealing as she weaved in and out among the children and their parents and nannies who were moving more slowly in a circle. I laughed at her, thinking it was sweet how excited she was, but not too much later she started trying to slip around the baby gate at the entrance to the room. I bought her back in and she melted down, screaming and trying to push away from me. I carried her over to the corner and nursed her, spoke softly to her, stroked her hair. Her eyes focused on my face, and I felt her body relax. After just a few minutes, I asked her if she was ready to go dance with the other kids some more. She nodded and pulled away from me and for the rest of the class she was fine.

I've gotten used to the melt downs, to a certain extent. I know how to prevent some of them (food, naps, and not trying to do too many things in one day), and I usually know how to handle them when they do happen. But as Brian and I were talking about the day after Adriana was in bed, I realized it's like the discovery of her shadow, something I never thought you needed to learn: how to calm yourself down, how to come down from being happy and excited without throwing a temper tantrum. But when will she learn it? And how can I teach her?

Actually, I suppose it's something that many (most?) adults are still learning, or at least need to be reminded of every now and then.

To the best father-in-law I've ever had

To Michael Pollan and the editors of the New York Times magazine

You do not mean "like." You mean "such as."

21 months

A couple of weeks ago, Brian and I looked at Adriana as she climbed onto a chair and looked over at us and we both had the same thought: she is such a child now. And a couple of nights ago as we put away the pouches that Lynn had returned to us now that her baby is getting bigger, we reminisced about the days when we would bounce Adriana to sleep in them, and Brian said, "It's like that was a completely different kid." I told him that the difference was that that was a baby and now she is a playful little kid.

Adriana loves to be chased now. She takes off on her way out of the park, running, hoping I'll chase her, turning back to grin at me and make sure I am. Peek-a-boo is starting to turn into something more like hide-and-seek. She is getting better at climbing ladders and she is starting to figure out that she can jump off of things (as opposed to just jumping in place). She puts together her puzzles with ease. Her baby and her monkey are still her favorite toys--she feeds them, diapers them, nurses them (she even puts a hand into the neck of her shirt, mimicking my action as I unhook my nursing bra before I nurse her), and dances with them. She wants to take them everywhere, and it can be a bit of a pain to try to keep track of this entourage, so one day last week I persuaded her to tuck her baby into bed and leave the monkey to take care of the baby when I was trying to get us out of the house for our play group.

These days, she is fascinated with drawing. In the past I had let her scribble with crayons in restaurants or at the church nursery where we go for La Leche League meetings. But her grandmother was drawing for her and letting her draw with a ball point pen on post-its the last time we had the grandparents here for a visit. Now Adriana grabs for pens whenever she can find them and goes running off to find a piece of paper. I am trying to discourage the pens, because she doesn't necessarily keep it on the paper. Instead, I have some washable crayons for her, but the best thing is the MagnaDoodle I bought for our recent long car trip. She draws and erases, draws and erases, and is so pleased with herself. And just over the past two weeks it's been interesting to watch how she approaches drawing develop. At first she would hand us the pen/crayon/MagnaDoodle and demand that we draw for her. Then she started requesting certain things. I drew approximately eleventy frajillion cats on the way up to Humboldt, but she would sometimes take the picture from me and scribble over it a bit. And now, while she still likes me to draw for her, she is more likely to sit and scribble without asking me for help, or scribble purposefully when I ask her to draw me a cat or a bird.

She has days when she eats well, and days when she still mostly wants to nurse. If I cradle her at all, it seems to remind her of nursing and she starts asking to, which in most cases is fine. I do catch myself offering her real food first, when she asks to nurse--not a conscious decision to move more toward weaning, although I suppose that's exactly what it is. Most of the time it fails, though; once she has asked for milk, milk is what she needs. She does eat fairly well most of the time. Less sensitive to textures than she used to be, she is willing to try a variety of foods. We are struggling with some food sensitivities--it seems that most fruits cause some eczema around her mouth--so we are trying to figure those out. It was one thing when it was berries and stone fruits, as those are seasonal and I figured we could wait until next summer to see if she outgrew them. But tomatoes and apples? Those are a way of life, so now we are considering our options.

Over the last month Adriana added two "words" to her repertoire: "nie," for "neigh" when asked what a horse says, and "Ana" when asked to say "Adriana." She says "moo" (well, "mmmmmm") when she sees a picture of a cow. She's been telling us what a cow says for some time now, but it's only recently that she has begun to volunteer the information. She's up to about seventy signs now, and she nods "yes." For a while she would shake her head "no" or do nothing. Now she has an adorable full-body nod. She is practicing to be two, though, so her first instinct much of the time is to say no. Then she will change her mind and nod, or just do whatever you asked her to do.

Sometimes I am counting down the days until November 11. I hear that at 22 months, kids start to even out--with their sleep and tantrums and clinginess and everything. There are days when I think we are already on our way there--on Saturday night we even managed to go out to dinner, walking downtown and back (with Adriana in the stroller, miracle of miracles) and sitting in a (child-friendly) restaurant without a single meltdown. And there are times when I wish we could slow down or go back in time. She snuggles on my lap after a nap or holds my hand while we walk down the sidewalk, and I want to hold onto this time as long as possible.

Better

The last thing I saw before I fell asleep last night was Adriana sleeping beside me. I closed my eyes and listened to her breathe, and promised myself that today I would do better.

Nothing particularly bad happened yesterday. Adriana was her normal toddler self, alternating between being a charming, happy little girl and a stubborn, willful child. As I write that the juxtaposition of those two things seems wrong: can't she be charming and willful, happy and stubborn at the same time? Anyhow, she had her normal ups and downs, but there are some days when coping with the downs is somehow beyond me. For much of the day I was impatient, telling her "no" without explanation, carrying her when she wanted to walk because I was in a hurry, offering distractions instead of getting down on the floor and playing with her myself or encouraging her to help with what I'm doing. She threw tantrums and my headache grew, and neither of us had much fun. She asked to nurse more often than usual, and I think that was good. It forced me to stop what I was doing, take the time to really focus on her, to just snuggle with her in the armchair.

As I tried to relax into sleep, I felt guilty. I know I'm not going to be a perfect mother, and that I don't need to be. Toddlers are adorable and fascinating, but they are also energetic and demanding and challenging, and I do not have an endless well of patience. That is okay. But lying there in bed in seemed so obvious to me that I could do better, so I reached over and stroked her hand with one finger and promised her silently that I would.  

Photos: Arcata Farmers' Market

All summer long I walked around the Mountain View farmers' market, admiring the piles of rosy peaches, the baskets of gleaming strawberries, the mounds of richly colored greens and wished I had my camera with me. But the market is crowded and we are trying to manage a toddler and our shopping, so I never get to take any pictures. We spent last weekend up in Humboldt County, visiting friends, and I had a chance to walk around the less crowded market in Arcata with my camera while Brian kept Adriana occupied with chalk art during Pastels on the Plaza. It was obviously a cooler climate--only a few berries and no stone fruits were left--but late summer and early fall vegetables that were in were still gorgeous.

Photos: Pastels on the Plaza

Over the years I've seen photos of the art my friend Lynn has created for Pastels on the Plaza, and I've always sort of wished I could go see her work and that of the other artists, so this year we drove up to Humboldt County the first weekend in October to check it out.

Lynn's sponsor was Jitter Bean Coffee. In honor of their "Daddy's Special," she worked from a photo of her husband and their new daughter. I didn't end up with a photo of the finished piece, but I do like these ones I took of the work in progress:

Other artists also did impressive work:

There were some small squares marked off for kids to create their own work. While I wandered around admiring the market and the art, Brian and Adriana got to work:

Elitist

Seven hours into our nine hour trek home from a weekend up in Humboldt County:

Brian: I can't believe I'm letting Adriana just reach in to the bag of Pirate's Booty.*

Me: Why? Is that somehow worse than handing her pieces to eat?

Brian: It just gives me images of her parked on a couch, watching TV with a bag of Cheetos.

Me: But this is totally different. These are the Whole Foods version of Cheetos, and she's listening to NPR. In a Prius.

*Actual conversation did not contain hyperlink. Although that would be totally awesome. And also maybe possible if I had an iPhone. I'm pretty sure iPhones do that sort of thing.

Hope

In the late 1920s or early '30s, my Grandma Edith saved up for a hope chest. The beautiful smelling Lane chest came to me when she died in 1994. I put things in it and covered the top in candles from Hot Topic. Then it stayed at my dad's house while I went off to college, lived in Santa Cruz with Brian, and then moved to the east coast for graduate school. Last summer when we moved back to California, I finally got the chest into my own home. Adriana likes to climb on top of it and worry me. Sometimes she hits at it with a toy, and I worry about her damaging my gorgeous chest, but then I think that if the thing survived my dad and his two brothers, it can probably handle a little bit of abuse from Adriana. 

The one thing I didn't do when we moved it into our apartment was open it. But we are slowly starting to clear out our office to turn it into Adriana's room, and there were a few things I thought it would be nice to add to the chest, so last week I dug out the key while Adriana napped. Inside I found:

• yearbooks, starting with the fourth grade (1987-88 school year) all the way up through high school, with the exception of the sixth grade for some reason;
  
• copies of my senior portraits, which feature braces on my teeth;
  
• a photo album from my childhood;
  
• my sash with patches from Bluebirds and my beaded vest from whatever came after Bluebirds;
  
• a scrapbook, with certificates from Camp Fire (candy sales!) and elementary school (perfect attendance! honor roll!), and a blue ribbon for my first poem--as well as the original copy of the poem;
  
• a book about NASA;
  
• an illustrated book of poems about dragons;
  
• the poster advertising a reading in Oakland by Maya Angelou that my dad took me to;
  
• a plastic recorder;
  
• my old Gloworm--the batteries were dead, but at least they didn't leak;
  
• a sky blue crocheted (or knitted?) baby blanket and bonnet;
  
• the cap and gown from my high school graduation, along with the tassel and diploma;
  
• a certificate stating that I had been admitted to UCSC. 
  

I returned everything to the chest except for the books, the Gloworm, and the recorder. Before I closed up the chest, I added a few more things:

• my neatly framed degree from UCSC;
  
• my degree from Georgetown, still in the envelope;
  
• tassels from my UCSC and Georgetown graduations, plus the master's hood from Georgetown;
  
• my baby book, which my dad finally gave to me last fall after I pestered him to look at it every time I was at his house;
  
• Adriana's baby book, along with several outfits I am saving (her coming home outfit, the fuzzy pink sleeper we liked to put her in, her first Christmas dress);
  
• the copy of the Washington Post from the day Adriana was born (although it has since occurred to me that I ought to have saved the paper from the day after her birth, since that would tell her what happened on the day she was actually born);
  
• my wedding album and videos from the wedding that I have never watched. 
  

I am looking at the chest now, and thinking about the different things my grandmother and I chose to put in the chest. I never got to ask her what she had in it, but it was her hope chest, so I assume it was full of things she was saving for when she was married and left home. Tablecloths? Bed linens? China? Did she sew things and put them away for her future life as a married woman? I wonder what she kept in the chest after she was married, after she had children, after those children were grown and gone. Perhaps it simply served as storage, a place to keep extra blankets. 

Here I am, a couple of generations removed from the tradition of hope chests. Instead of saving items for the future, I am filling it up with little bits of my past. Instead of things that will be put into every day use, I carefully place items that I will rarely use, things I will take out, turn over in my hands, and put away again. I still call it a "hope chest" out of habit, but it's not clear from what's in it exactly what I'm hoping for.

Incantation

One night when Adriana was a few months old, I came out of the shower to find her crying in Brian's arms. As I dried and dressed before nursing her, I began to recite Good Night Moon. She began to calm down as soon as I began, and had completely stopped crying by the time Brian handed her to me

"Dude, you're like the Michael Jordan of mothering," he told me. I laughed and assured him that it was just hearing my voice and knowing that she would get milk shortly that soothed her.

It's been over a year since that happened, and I'm starting to think that Margaret Wise Brown worked some sort of magic spell into her words. Last night was one of those nights when I was ready for Adriana to be in bed before she was. After reading stories for nearly an hour, and putting her back in bed several times, I laid down beside her in bed to see if she wanted to nurse again. She cried and struggled to get up, and I began, "In the great green room..." Instantly she stopped fussing and rolled toward me. As I recited the rest of the poem, she latched on, tugged my hand to where it would rest on her cheek and ear, and stroked my arm. By the time I finished she had closed her eyes and after only a few more minutes I tiptoed away. 

Then

Now

Assessed

At Adriana's 18-month well baby visit, her pediatrician (whom I absolutely adore) expressed some concern about Adriana's lack of spoken language. It wasn't a huge concern now, but there is sometimes a long wait to get in for an evaluation, so the doctor suggested I begin the process soon and gave me the phone number for our county's Early Start program. 

We had our assessment at Early Start yesterday and I think it went well. By playing with Adriana and interviewing me for an hour, an early intervention teacher and a speech pathologist assessed Adriana's development in five different areas: physical, including both fine motor and gross motor skills, as well as her vision and hearing; adaptive/self help, which covered eating, sleeping, and dressing; cognitive; social/emotional; and communication. Adriana scored well above the baseline measures in all areas except for communication. There they found that her receptive language is quite good, but determined that she had a 50 percent delay in her expressive language. Basically, her level of speech is that of a child half her age. 

I am actually a little bit excited about this. We all want our kids to be perfect, so in some ways I feel like I should regret that they found a delay, but I knew the delay was there, and I think I would have been more bothered if they said everything was fine and weren't going to do anything. I am relieved that everything else looked good to them. There was a bit of nagging fear that she'd be on the autism spectrum, I guess. I mean, my gut instinct told me that she wasn't, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't find something excessive to worry about. 

Soon we'll meet with a social worker to set up a service plan, but it will probably involve weekly individual speech therapy at first and eventually probably continued therapy in a group setting. We'll also learn a lot about what we can do to help her out at home during the therapy. For now they said we were doing the things they would initially recommend: sign language, music, and animal noises. She does seem to be making some progress on her own, as well. Sunday night she was mimicking us (trying to say her name and "eggplant"), which she rarely does, and making new sounds (p and l). I know--I've known--that she'll get there at some point, but it's a relief to know that my instincts were right and that there is going to be a little bit of help to get her there.

20 months

Every month, I sit down and think about the challenges and the blessings of another month with Adriana. There are some months when I think the challenges seem to overwhelm the blessings, but as I write this after a rough week, the blessings are so apparent. Yes, Adriana did keep me on my toes each day. Yes, she threw tantrums over seemingly small things. Yes, she terrified me as she tried to do things at the park that she's just not physically capable of doing at this point, and would have hurt herself if I hadn't been there. Yes, there were days she barely napped, so I didn't get a chance to write it all down when I wanted to. But. But. There are things that I never thought about as things people had to learn, such as what a shadow is and how to jump, and I get to be there as she works those out. I got to play "Ring Around the Rosy" over and over again and heard her giggle each time she fell down, to see the delight on her face as she hung from the monkey bars at the park, to watch her studiously pour water from one container to another in the bath, and to feel her lean in for a kiss as she wrapped her arms around my neck. She left me exhausted, but she also left me in awe.

A few weeks ago, Adriana settled into a nice schedule: she woke up around 7:30 every morning, napped for two hours starting at 12:30, and went to bed at nine. I loved the predictability of it, and wondered why I hadn't tried to get her onto a schedule months ago. Then she changed her mind, and I realized that I hadn't gotten her onto a schedule so much as she'd gotten me onto one, and having it yanked out from under me was hard to cope with. I keep blaming her lack of predictability for making me nuts, but I think it's probably more closely related to the fact that she isn't going to bed until ten o'clock.

She is also going through a very clingy stage. She has always been clingy with me, but evenings lately have been rough: if she can't be in constant physical contact with me, she should at least be within one foot. If I want to get myself a glass of water six feet away from where she's sitting at the dinner table? Totally worth a tantrum. If I dare to walk into another room to get something? CALL CPS HER MOTHER IS ABANDONING HER. It's actually okay once I've left the room. I can go take a shower and after she screams and cries and throws things for a few minutes, she plays happily with Brian. Until I come back, at which point if I stop touching or looking at her for a second, we're back to where we were before. It's tiring, and it's all I can do sometimes to remind myself that this is only a stage, that she's only small once.

Yet she also is very independent in some ways. (Perhaps that's actually connected to the clinginess?) She wants to walk everywhere now, and usually fights the stroller or the Beco (although once she's in one or the other, she admits defeat and settles down), and it's fun to walk places with her. She knows she has to hold a hand when we cross a street, and usually when we walk along the sidewalk, she reaches up for a hand to hold. It feels so perfect to walk down the street with her and Brian, Adriana between us, holding our hands. She wants to sit in a regular chair, not a high chair, and feed herself. She's always been a bit like this--strong-willed and wishing she were more self-sufficient--but now she is much more vocal about what she wants, screeching when I try to do something for her.

She is making more attempts at words that she has in the past, although usually, no matter what we've asked her to say, she just tells us, "ba ba ba" or "ma ma ma." Instead she continues to sign constantly, picking up signs almost immediately (and has over 60 now). Reading with her is fun, because she knows so many signs and tries to tell the story too. For each page of Good Dog, Carl, she makes at least one sign. She's also paying more attention to the pictures now. Toward the end of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, another current favorite, she started signing "bird," and finally I asked her where the bird was. She pointed and there in the corner of one of the pictures there was a little bird in the tree that I hadn't even noticed.

She notices everything and is very busy. She will sit still for a story (sometimes several, or at least the same one several times in a row), but other than that it seems that she's constantly moving. Every day we go to the park, and she climbs up and down stairs, goes down slides, attempts to climb ladders, hangs from bars. She digs in the sand, throws and chases after a ball, kicks her legs to try to pump herself even higher in the swings. She keeps me running as I play games with her and try to keep her from falling. And even though I complain about her dare-devilish ways, I am also rather proud.

There are days I look at Adriana and I am just amazed that this is the little baby I had just last year. There are these little gestures she has--brushing her hair out of her eyes, sticking her tongue out a bit when she concentrates, tipping her head to the side as she watches something I am doing--that just make me want to cry, because they seems so perfect to me. I watch her when she's asleep, and I am amazed at how beautiful she is and I have to remind myself that picking her up just to hold her could wake her up. But sometimes I can't help myself and I slip into bed with her, even if she doesn't need me at that moment, just to enjoy the sweetness of being near.

False cognates

When Adriana started using the sign for eyeglasses to refer to drinking glasses, Brian suggested making an effort to say "cup" instead of "glass," but since she isn't trying to wear drinking glasses or drink from my eyeglasses, I haven't bothered. She seems to understand that the same word works for more than one thing.

I often offer Adriana choices of things to snack on. "Do you want cheese or grapes?" I ask, and she signs her decision. A few days ago I asked her, "Do you want banana or edamame?"

"Mama," she signed.

"Banana or edamame?" I asked again.

"Mama," she signed, and pointed to the freezer.

I thought maybe I was wrong. I thought that she wasn't really saying "mama" for "edamame." But then at the park a couple of days later she pulled the little container of edamame out of the diaper bag and handed it to me to open.

"Mama beans, please," she signed. Oh well.

If we got a TV, maybe she could get herself up and watch cartoons

On more than one occasion during my pregnancy with Adriana, I woke up and immediately panicked because she wasn't there, so real had been my dreams that I already had the baby and she was there in bed with me. "Where's the baby?" I ask, startling Brian awake. Then she was born and there were a couple of times when I opened my eyes, saw the empty cosleeper and felt the panic well in my chest again for the second before I realized that the baby was in my arms.

Shortly after eight on Saturday morning, I opened my eyes and saw that it was already after eight. I'd stayed up too late reading, so after nursing the baby and feeding the cat at 6, I'd gone back to sleep for much longer than usual. Surprised that Adriana hadn't woken me up yet, I rolled to face her bed. It was empty.

"Where's the baby?" Brian sprang out of bed almost instantly. He was only gone a few seconds, but in that time I was able to reassure myself that Adriana hadn't manage to climb up onto the window sill and fall out (which I actually do worry about with this little monkey), nor was it likely that someone had entered our apartment, come into our room, gone around our bed to get to Adriana, and carried her away. For one thing, I probably hadn't been sleeping very deeply for the past couple of hours. And the thought of Adriana not shrieking when picked up by a stranger? She won't even let Brian pick her up out of bed if I'm still there.

Brian came back to report that she was playing around our desk and was fine. As we snuggled back into bed, I thought it was nice that our apartment was safe enough that she could wander around without us paying too much attention. In fact, just last weekend, I dozed off while nursing Adriana when she woke up from her nap, and after she'd finished, she got up and played by herself for a fair amount of time before Brian realized that someone ought to be paying attention, so that she didn't continue to strew Cheerios from her snack trap around the house. Finally, I heard Adriana leave the office and close the baby gate behind her. The house was quiet again. Until she began shrieking. This time I jumped out of bed. She was standing on the kitchen table. She saw me and smiled, and then requested a diaper change.