An update for the grandparents

Adriana had her nine-month checkup today. We finally got to meet her new pediatrician (for her six-month visit, the doctor didn't have any appointments available on such short notice after we'd moved), and I really liked her--the way she interacted with Adriana, the manner in which she answered my questions, and also just in terms of the overall vibe I got from her.

Adriana handled the visit well. She weighed in at 20 pounds and half an ounce, and was 28.75 inches long--about the 68th percentile for weight and 83rd for height. She was a little bit clingy as the doctor examined her, and as usual wanted to grab everything tool the doctor was using. The only shot she got today was a flu shot, and that seemed to bother her less than the vaccinations she's gotten at previous visits.

Mostly I was happy because the doctor reassured me about Adriana's eating (or lack thereof), saying that breastmilk was all Adriana really needed for the first year, and that she would eat when she was ready. (Less comforting was the comment, "Well, she's precocious--just exhibiting typical difficult toddler behavior.") These are things that I knew, but it was nice to have the reassurance from the pediatrician. She did offer me a few suggestions for foods to try, so we'll be experimenting a bit with those this week.

Character

Now that Adriana is pulling up all the time, yet another level of our bookshelves are being cleared daily. This morning I picked up the books of poetry she'd pulled off the shelf, glancing idly through the pages of an Adrienne Rich collection before returning it too its place. The next book I picked up was my copy of Backroads, my high school's fine arts magazine, of which I was a co-editor my senior year. While the baby napped, I sat and read, flipping back and forth through the thin book, looking at the crazy collection of fonts, remembering faces and conversations as I saw the names on each page, and smiling at the words of teenagers. I remembered the classroom where I'd sat with my creative writing classmates, sifting through submissions--poems scratched out in pencil on wrinkled notebook paper, carefully typed poems with careful meter and rhyme, drawings tucked carefully into sturdy envelopes, and black-and-white photos printed in the school's darkroom. I remembered designing pages, and having staff hand me little floppy disks with their pages on them. I remembered the sense of accomplishment when the other editor, our advisor, and I took the final pages to the printer, and how afterwards Ms. Logan took Meghan and me for an ice cream and then taught us how to parallel park.

I thought about the creative writing class. That last year (I took it for three years) my cousin sat behind me. We were a little clique--Sky and me, Jaron who I'd known since pre-school, Andy who was a friend of both of them, in a band with Sky. I sat and wondered what became of Jaron and Andy as I read their poems, trying to recall when I'd last seen either one of them, and made a mental note to ask Sky. I stopped again as I came across the name of a tall, thin quiet boy from the class, a couple of years younger than I was, someone who I'd completely forgotten about, and I wondered what happened to him; and then what became of the girl whose poem is on the page before, a girl who was good at math and played one of the lead roles in the school production of Three Sisters for which I was stage manager. I read a poem by the woman who edited the magazine the year before I did; it was a good poem, and I hoped that she was doing something interesting, that she was happy. I passed over a poem by a girl I hadn't liked without reading it, and smiled as I read a funny poem by someone from my journalism class. Then there was one by someone I saw a couple of years ago at a wedding, and one by my best friend, who I have been meaning to call for weeks.

And then there was my name at the bottom of one page. I stopped there, looking at my name for a moment, almost afraid to look up at the words above it, words I couldn't really remember. Then I read over the prose-poem. It was a bit trite, I thought. I tried to remember writing it. Was I sitting on my bed? Did I begin it sitting at that corner desk in the creative writing class? Was it something I'd scribbled while sitting at a table in the school library during a free period when I was meant to be doing my trig homework? I stared at the words, but I couldn't recall. I tried to imagine those words coming from me, the memory wouldn't come. It has been too long, as if the words were written by another person completely.

I flipped through the pages again and found another poem I'd written, this one with a sing-song sort of rhyme to it but a similar theme. Again, I thought it was a little trite, but cute, something written by someone else entirely, it seemed. I thought there was probably one more, and I scanned the contents page until I saw my name again. The title listed by my name didn't mean anything to me. I tried to remember writing something with that title, but couldn't. Finally I turned to page 60, and saw the poem. Now I remembered. I still didn't remember writing it, but I remembered the poem. Reading it now, more than ten years later, was strange. It was the only really personal poem of the three of mine in the magazine. I read it over a few times, wondering what I was thinking. It's kind of a funny poem--as if I was simultaneously trying to write out how I saw myself at 17 and trying to define who I wanted to be at that moment. Perhaps I was trying to reconcile the two. What was I thinking when I wrote it? What did my mother thing when I brought home the copy of the magazine? Did I read this poem out loud when we had our reading when the magazine was published? I doubted it, but I couldn't remember.

Adriana woke up from her nap, and I read through all three of my poems again as I watched her play. Will she write poetry as a teenager? Will she someday read the poems that I wrote as a teenager and laugh at how silly her mother was? What would I have thought at seventeen if someone had told me where I would be today?

Writing these down now to help me remember later

Most of the time Brian can calm Adriana when she's fussing, but sometimes she just cries and cries, and then when I take her she calms right down. Usually I think it's because she knows that if I am holding her, she is going to get some milk. One night recently, Brian went to Adriana when she first woke up (an hour after I put her down--it's the most predictable thing about her sleep), but after awhile I went in because she wasn't calming down. As soon as she was in my arms, the crying stopped, and I sat down to nurse her. Sitting there in the darkened room, I suddenly remembered one evening when she was about a week old. We were eating dinner in shifts because the baby, in spite of a full tummy and a dry diaper, was a bit fussy, and after I finished my soup, I took Adriana from Brian and the crying stopped. She relaxed against me, and I paced the room with her in my arms until she fell asleep. Eventually I sat in the armchair and just held her while she slept. I think it may have been the first time I felt competent as a mother.

Two nights ago, Adriana woke up just as Brian and I were going to bed. That's not unusual, and most nights I simply nurse her and put her back down in her own bed, but on Tuesday night, she was wide-eyed and ready to play. Finally I decided that one of us might as well get some sleep, and that it might as well be Brian since when the baby woke in the morning he would be the one to get up with her. So Adriana and I went into the dark living room, and I settled into the rocker with her on my lap. I recited every one of her books that I knew in a slow monotone, and she eventually leaned her head against me. My mind began to float, and I remembered holding her as she fell asleep when she was a few weeks old. In particular, I remembered holding her with her head on my shoulder as I stood at the bedroom window, rocking from side to side. It was winter, so the trees were bare and I could see the beginning of the morning commute traffic down on Glebe Road--bright headlights winding their way along the streets before the sun came up--and the first flights beginning to take off from National. Adriana was completely asleep and I was exhausted, but I stood there a little longer, trying to burn that moment into my mind.

Four generations

Nine months

For a while I thought I wasn't going to handle Adriana growing older well at all. For most of September, she no longer seemed to be the pleasant baby she had once been. She was always cranky, even when we were both well-rested, and that wasn't very often, as she was waking every hour or two all night long. I missed the easy baby she'd been a couple of months ago--the one who didn't fuss all the time and wasn't always getting into things. And then, after we had spent almost three weeks looking at the tooth just below her gums and begging it to pop through soon, we woke up one morning to discover that she had four teeth instead of three, and that we had our (mostly) happy baby back. She still is getting into everything, but that's easier to cope with when she is clearly so delighted with the world she's exploring.

She is happy, energetic, and curious, and she seems to know what she wants. Long days out and about in a carrier are no longer satisfactory for her, because she would rather get down and play. She wants to explore everything, and it's fun to watch her try to work things out: when she discovered that she couldn't open the kitchen cabinets after I taped them shut, she promptly tried opening them from the other side. Once the real cabinet latches went on and she could open the doors a crack, she spent some time tugging at the doors and staring in through the small opening. She raises her arms when she wants to be picked up, and pushes away when she wants to be put down. The pushing away can be frustrating--she rolls away from me during diaper changes (toward the wall when she's on the changing table, fortunately), but usually giving her a toy (or the tube of rash cream if that's the only thing within my reach) can keep her still long enough to snap on the fresh diaper.

She is a little shy sometimes. When we go to a new place or she sees new people, she clings to me a little bit more. It takes awhile for her to be willing to crawl around and explore, and she is quieter that she is when it is just us at home. Eventually, though, her curiosity wins out and she crawls around, getting into things and babbling to herself. She looks up intermittently to find me and smile, and then goes back to playing--unless I am not looking at her, in which case she fusses until she has my attention, and then continues on with what she was doing.

She pulled up once just after she turned eight months old. Brian was sitting right beside her, but I missed it, as I thought the excited voice he was using to get my attention was part of whatever game the two of them were playing. Then last Tuesday I set her on the floor after nursing her in the armchair and she grabbed the edge of the chair and pulled right back up to let me know she wasn't actually finished eating yet. It took me a moment to register what she was doing, but then I applauded her. She mimicked me and, having let go of the chair to do so, immediately fell. We keep trying to trick her into doing that again (what can I say? It was cute), but now she knows she needs to hold on, and will just clap one hand against whatever she is pulling up on. Now she pulls up at will, using my jeans so she can let me know that she would like to be picked up, or using the bookcases, so that she can clear all shelves within her reach of books and CDs.

She still isn't much for solid foods, but she seems to actually be eating some of the banana I give her (as opposed to just mashing it around), and occasionally lets me spoon feed her a few bites of cereal or pureed pears. Sleeping is going better than it was when we were awaiting the fourth tooth, but she is by no means sleeping through the night. I usually feel reasonably well rested though, since cosleeping means I don't really have to get up with her, and because Brian gets up with her in the morning when she awakes between 6:30 and 7:00 and I get to sleep in until 8.

Her very favorite thing is blowing raspberries. At this point I don't think it's physically possible for her not to blow raspberries if someone near her does it. If she is warming up to cry, sometimes I give her a Bronx cheer and she replies in kind, ending the bout of fussing. If I wake her up taking her out of her car seat she will start blowing raspberries before she has even opened her eyes. When I sing "The Marvelous Toy" to her, she wants to make the noises, too, but lacking the coordination to make the noises "zip," "bop," or "whrrr," she just blows raspberries.

Right now I really enjoy the fact that we can play together now. She loves peekaboo and games of chase. "I'm going to get you," I say, and she crawls away as fast as she can--which isn't all that fast, especially because every few feet she turns to see if I'm still chasing her and has to stop, sit, turn, and then get up and crawl again--shrieking with laughter. Or I crook my index finger and whisper "tickle bug's coming," and she giggles and wiggles as I get closer and closer before I tickle her. She laughs when I sing her the boa constrictor song and help her touch her toes, knees, belly, neck, and head. Best of all is just lying on the floor while she climbs back and forth over me. I sing to her while she clambers about. and she squeals and we are both very happy.

Nature walk: Castle Rock State Park

We spent a good portion of our Sunday wandering the trails at Castle Rock State Park with one of Brian's colleagues and her husband. I don't know where I'd gotten the idea that the park was out in a very dry, hot, flat area, but the park wasn't anything like what I expected, and I was quite happy about that. I do tend to be timid about rocky trails, so there were a couple of spots that challenged me a bit--mostly as I found myself wondering if Adriana was really safe in the backpack or considering the fact that if I went up I would later have to come down. As it turned out, Brian and Adriana were fine and I only had to sit down and slide over some rocks to get myself down twice. The views were well worth it.


The view near Castle Rock Falls.


Brian and Adriana love their new backpack carrier.



Stopping for a snack along the trail.

Not everyone can be a visionary

Last night after dinner, Brian took a banana from the fruit bowl and began to peel it.

"Wouldn't it be awesome," I suggested, "if one day you opened a banana peel and instead of fruit it contained a freshly baked brownie? Just right there waiting for you in its own hermetically sealed package?"

And he looked at me like I was crazy.

I take Harry Potter more seriously than Brian does

When two lanes exit the freeway at the same time, I tend to choose the one furthest to the right, so that I am out of the way of people who realize that they are in the wrong place at the last minute and do something stupid. And maybe also because I drive like an old lady, at least according to my friend Adam.* Yesterday as I was getting ready to merge from 280 to 85, I started to move into the far right lane. But there was something about the big pickup that I would have merged in behind that stopped me. The man behind the wheel wasn't driving erratically or too slowly, but something about the rack on the back of the truck that was loaded with what looked like metal beams made me uncomfortable. I stayed in my lane and passed the truck as we approached the exit. Then I heard a loud clank, and in my rearview mirror I saw one of the metal beams hit the pavement. The car behind the truck, which was following further back than I think I would have been, had to swerve as the beam bounced toward the shoulder.

I related the story to Brian last night and he informed me that Gavin de Becker would have been proud.** I had had a similar thought myself, only I had thought I was going to please Professor Trelawney. I guess our minds just work in different ways.



*Not that that stopped him from always taking a ride home from me after health econ. I guess a ride from an old lady driver is better than taking the Metro.

**Well, what he actually said was much more crass, but as I started to type it, I remembered that my little baby cousin*** reads this website, and I got very self-conscious about my language.

***Hi, Ruthie! Sorry, but I think you're going to be in your thirties before I stop thinking of you as the baby cousin.

Of course

1. As I was sleepily trying to finish Ines of My Soul before going to bed on Saturday, I came to a line that said one of the character's "soul escaped his body, captured among slim, moss-covered tree trunks as soft as velvet." I thought, "He died? And I missed it?" I'd known the story was building towards this death, and I was rather tired, but I didn't think I'd miss such an important event. But the next lines revealed that the character was still alive. I guess I'd forgotten whose work I was reading. This was an Isabel Allende novel: of course souls can go flitting about while their owners still live.

2. I decided it was a sign I'd been reading a lot of Allende over the past week when, as I read the opening pages of My Invented Country yesterday and came to the legend that the Arakis of Easter Island levitated the moais, I merely thought, "Oh, well, I'd never heard that theory before, but of course that's how they managed it."

That's klassy with a 'k'

Or, Brian's going to be so freakin' impressed when he gets home tonight

When Adriana started to crawl, we bought cabinet latches. Brian thought he was buying adhesive ones, but it turned out the adhesive was just to help hold the latches in place so you could screw them in. Reluctant to actually screw things into the cabinets in our apartment and risk losing money when we move out, we've been meaning to check with the leasing office about this. We were able to put it off for some time, while we waited for Adriana to figure out how to open the cabinets, and then for her to realize that this was a fun activity. After chasing her away from them 44,783,293,286 times this morning (approximately), I finally went and talked to them today and was told that they "cannot grant permission to cause intentional damage to the cabinets." Punks.

There are adhesive cabinet latches available online. They're more expensive than the kind you attach with screws, but I guess I'll have to order them anyhow. But to make my life easier until they arrive, I've worked something out:







Brian thought I was kidding when I threatened to tape things shut with duct tape. Well, he's not always very observant when it comes to things I've done around the house. Maybe he won't notice?

The food thing

Adriana's transition to solid foods hasn't been easy. The first few times we gave her cereal she seemed to enjoy it. She gave avocado a try one day, but after that she wasn't much of a fan. I thought maybe it wasn't sweet enough for her, so the next food I tried was sweet potatoes, which she also turned down. Bananas were also rejected. I tried offering the food after she had nursed, before she had nursed, and in between feedings. I tried different consistencies of food, finally diluting things with breastmilk so much that I wasn't sure she could taste anything but the milk. I tried giving her pieces of things to feed herself. I tried leaving the room while Brian fed her on weekends. I switched back to cereal, but she was no longer quite as interested. A friend said that her baby loved pears, so I bought some pears and pureed them one afternoon, planning on freezing them and starting her on them the next day. But she was just sitting there playing while I was in the kitchen, so I put her in the high chair and fed her some right then.

She loved it. Or sort of loved it: she made a horrible face with every spoonful, but then she would lean forward and open her mouth to ask for more. Success!

Except the next day? She wouldn't eat the pears at all. Or the cereal. Every time the spoon would come toward her, she would shut her mouth and turn her head to the side. It was discouraging. I would try to talk with other moms about it, but nearly everyone said something to the extent of, "Oh, we started a little earlier than we probably should have, but she really seemed ready. And she loves it! She'll eat anything we put in front of her." Which was lovely for them, I'm sure, but not exactly helpful information for me. Eventually, I put solids on hold for a while. I told myself that we'd get back to them after our Labor Day weekend vacation. But when I tried then, I was again met with the sealed lips and turned head. She'll eat when she's ready, I told myself. It's not like she's going to be getting her driver's license and refusing any food but milk.

Then the other day I picked up some bananas. I was about to eat one the other day, when I decided to see how Adriana would do. I put her in the high chair and let her watch as I broke off a piece of the banana at ate it. Then I gave her a big piece to see what would happen. I don't know how much you could actually say she ate, but at least she was willing to play with it. And so long as feeding the baby is fun rather than stressful, I think it will be much easier for me not to worry about whether she's actually eating the food.

Sitting in the darkness, baby on your knee*

Last week I went to see a movie** with Adriana for the first time with Diaper Days, and that went fairly well, so I informed Brian that I was going to go see the most recent Harry Potter while I still could. I figured that if I went to a matinée of a kids' movie during the school year two months after it came out, I could get away with bringing an infant in. Brian was instantly jealous (he was already envious that I'd gotten to go to Diaper Days last week), and decided he could leave work a bit early to join us.

Adriana handled it pretty well. Last week when she wanted to babble and giggle at the screen I could let her, because other babies were crying. Then if she wanted to blow raspberries during quiet moments in the movie, I could handle the fact that other moms were turning to look and smile. But yesterday, as Harry and Mr. Weasley entered the Ministry of Magic, Adriana started waving and cooing in her highest pitched voice (I think she's noticed that when people wave and say "hello" or "bye-bye" their voices go up an octave, so she tries to imitate this) (or maybe I am giving her too much credit), I realized that, given where we were, it wasn't actually cute and quickly whisked her away. We spent a lot of time bouncing at the back of the theater until she was ready to nurse to sleep, and then she stayed asleep even though the loudest scenes at the end of the movie.

While I'm glad I saw the movie, because I love all things Harry Potter (I just finished rereading the entire series; you would think I would have better things to do with my time), I was more disappointed in this movie than in any of the others. I mean, the second one sucked, but the book wasn't very good in that case either. I realized afterwards that my imaginings of the book were so vivid that it was almost as though I had seen the movie before. Except the movie that I'd seen was totally different from what was on the screen yesterday, and I honestly think that my version of the Weasley twins' grand finale and the scenes in the Ministry at the end of the movie were better--more colorful and spectacular. I understand that adapting such a long book for the screen is difficult and there were some bits of the story that had to go, but you would think they would have at least done a better job with what they had left. And they could have given Bellatrix Lestrange more time on screen.

At any rate, it's nice to know I can go to a movie now and then (although I will likely stick with Diaper Days--much less anxiety that way). We were going to see a fair number of movies back in December, despite the fact that sitting still for so long was rather uncomfortable (and near impossible given the fact that I needed to run to the bathroom every half hour), and I'd missed that.



*Name that (slightly modified) tune!

**2 Days in Paris, which was absolutely fantastic, with people talking a lot and absolutely nothing happening. And Julie Delpy. I think I might be a little in love with Julie Delpy, for reasons that I cannot explain.

I think baby classes are called enrichment activities because of how much they cost

Last week Adriana and I went to The Little Gym. Some friends took their babies when they were her age, and I thought she might enjoy it. Plus, I thought it might be a good way for me to get to meet other moms of babies. I looked forward to it all week. And then we got there and...I wasn't impressed.

I wanted to like it. At first I told myself the reason that Adriana didn't seem to be enjoying it was that she was teething and that she hadn't slept well the night before. I thought about going back this week. It wasn't until I was describing the whole experience to Brian and I realized that everything I said was negative that I realized that maybe The Little Gym isn't for us, at least not right now. It was frustrating to me how quickly we moved from one activity to another: the teacher would pass out bells to ring in time to a little song that we would sing, we'd sing the eight lines or so of the song, and then it was time for the bells to be put away; Adriana hadn't gotten a real chance to explore the bells and play with them. The we'd be off to play on some bars, helping the babies pull up on them; Adriana would just be warming up to the idea and exploring this new part of the room when it was back to the big mat again. There was some sort of "free play" time, but at that point nearly all the toys were dumped out at once and I think Adriana felt overwhelmed. I sat beside her while she watched what was going on in the rest of the room, holding a ball in her lap and just staring. The teacher came over to try to encourage her to play and Adriana started to fuss and crawled onto my lap. Whenever we tried a new activity after that she would cry. Not fuss. Cry.

We have been attending a Mommy & Me yoga class every week. Adriana loves playing with the toys there and chasing around after the other babies and kids. I've been impressed with the teacher and her ability to instruct the women in the class while supervising the mobile babies and helping the newest moms find comfortable positions for nursing. It's not the most relaxing yoga class I've ever done, but it's fun to see the babies play and I do get some good stretching done. I was feeling that something like The Little Gym would give Adriana more of a chance to play with other babies (I know they aren't really playing together at this age, but she does seem to get a kick out of watching other kids and it's adorable to see them check each other out), and it was something that really was for her, not something for me that I was taking her along to. I actually felt sort of guilty for a little bit for deciding not to go back to The Little Gym. What if I really just thought the songs were stupid? What if I was just being selfish? What if by not going back I wasn't giving Adriana a chance to warm up to it? But then I remembered the crying. And I remembered that she doesn't cry at yoga (unless a toddling baby happens to land on her, and I think that's a little bit different). And that she'll learn to walk and play and all those things just fine without big red mats and bars to push on. Yesterday I watched her in yoga while I stretched. She picked up a blue plastic car and turned it over in her hands, studying it, tasting it, hitting it against a sippy cup that another child had dropped. She played with it at her own pace, then came to me and patted me briefly before she crawled off to blow raspberries on another baby's socks. Maybe she would warm up to Little Gym if I gave it another chance. Maybe in awhile we'll try again. For now we'll still with the yoga.

Brian = funny

1. The other day I was reading the Washington Post online and saw the news that Bush would be nominating Michael Mukasey as Attorney General. I read bits and pieces of the article out loud to Brian, and when I quoted the line that called Mukasey "a retired federal judge and law-and-order conservative," Brian said, "Law and Order conservative? I thought that was Fred Thompson."

2. This morning we read through the list of Pirate Phrases from the Talk Like A Pirate Day website, so that Brian would be fully prepared to participate at work today. But when I suggested that he wear an eye patch he reminded me ever so kindly that "It's Talk Like A Pirate Day, not Dress Like Moron Day."

An open letter

To Adriana's front tooth:

I hate you. Just cut through already. Please?

Sincerely,
Adriana's mama

Saturday morning Brian and I decided that it would be a nice day to head over the hill to Santa Cruz. So we did. Just like that. It was a wonderful day with perfect weather and we did everything we wanted to. We wandered around Pacific Avenue for a bit and got burritos at Taqueria Vallarta, before going up to the Circles, where one of Brian's friends is living just two blocks from our old house. We walked from there down to West Cliff, wondering how many times we'd done that walk in the past. We saw otters, cormorants, pelicans, and maybe a seal. We watched surfers at Steamer Lane. We made it down to the Boardwalk where we took turns riding the Giant Dipper and the Hurricane. We ate Marianne's ice cream on our way back along West Cliff. We walked by our old house. We watched the sunset at our favorite beach. We headed back home tired and happy.

The whole day was exactly what I wanted--what I needed, even, after feeling homesick for Santa Cruz recently--but there were little perfect moments throughout the day that made me so happy:

• Brian's friend Ben held Adriana while Brian and I went on the Giant Dipper together. I love the speed and twists of coasters, but my favorite part is just as the train reaches the top of the first rise and is about to drop. It was fun to have that moment with Brian right beside me.
• On our way back along West Cliff, we stopped at a bench overlooking the bay so that I could nurse Adriana. I fed the baby and looked into her eyes, while she patted my mouth and a cool breeze blew our hair around. When she was finished eating I stood her on my lap and told her that this was where Mama and Daddy used to walk together when they were first dating, when we were living together, and when we were first married, but that it was even better now that we were there with her.
• Then we went to Natural Bridges and spread out a blanket on the beach so that Adriana could crawl around a bit. She ventured toward the sand a couple of times, but didn't seem to like the way it felt, so Brian and I leaned against one another and watched the sunset with the baby climbing around in front of us, pulling up on our laps, smiling and blowing raspberries. I think it was the most beautiful sunset ever.

I still miss Santa Cruz, and in some ways I'm sad we're not living there. But it's nice to know that it's right there.

Good things

1. The new Girlyman CD. It was released in the spring, but I didn't buy it until recently. Brian pointed out that some of the songs have more of a pop sound do them than previous albums--possibly because there's more percussion involved than in the past, but I'm fine with that. I mean, good songwriting, excellent guitar playing, and fantastic harmonizing--what more can you really ask for?

2. My new glass pendant from Dolce Beada, purchased last weekend at the Mountain View Art and Wine Festival. I fell in love with one of the pendants when we were downtown for the festival on Saturday, and when I stopped by again to ogle it when we went to the farmer's market on Sunday, Brian convinced me that an un-birthday present wouldn't be a bad idea.

3. The slightly cooler weather we're having. Highs in the low seventies are awesome.

4. Yoga. I've found a great postpartum yoga class here. It's not as strenuous as the class I used to go to at Spiral Flight, and there's a too much chaos with all the babies for it to be really relaxing, but I get some good stretching in. Plus, I'm impressed with how the teacher manages to guide us through stretches, wrangle the crawlers and toddlers, and help the newest mom find a comfortable nursing position ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

5. Baby's new tooth seems to just be cutting through her gums. Maybe tonight I will get to sleep for more than 90 minutes at a time.

Eight months

Why didn't anyone tell me that having a baby would wear me out? Even though Adriana still doesn't move very quickly, chasing after her is somehow exhausting. We're slowly childproofing things around here, so that I don't have to spend the entire time chasing after the baby as she get into the cat's food, plays with the stereo, pulls the phone off the hook, or heads for the cords under the desk. I spend what seems like a ridiculous amount of time repeating, "Gentle. Pat the kitty gently." We go back and forth with her sleep. We recovered from the cold last month only to face two new teeth coming in (only one has actually broken through so far; the other one remains just below her gums, where we can see it, taunting us) and the disturbed sleep that comes with that. Last night I put her down to bed at 7:30, and she woke up every hour after that until went to bed and let her sleep beside me. After that she was up only twice, so I counted it as a good night.

My main frustration these days actually isn't sleep, but that Adriana seems to have decided that she's not interested in solid foods. Finger foods are the only thing she doesn't pick up and put in her mouth. When I present her with a spoon of rice cereal or applesauce, she no longer leans forward for a taste, choosing instead to seal her lips and turn her head away. I'm trying to be patient with it. I like nursing her--we both get so many benefits from it--and I know she is getting enough to eat. She will eat read food when she is ready. Still, I wish she would drink milk from a sippy cup from time to time.

As tiring as this age seems to be, I am really loving it. Adriana claps, waves, bounces to music, and giggles. She is learning about the world and it's fun to watch that happen. Although we've shown her her reflection in the mirror since she was a newborn, she somehow is more aware of it now. I don't think she's aware that she's seeing herself, though. About a month ago I gave her a toy with a mirror on it, a hand-me-down from some friends, and it was amazing to watch her explore it. She would lean over the mirror and then pull away, only to lean over it again a moment later for another peak. She tapped it gently with her finger, leaned down to taste it, and looked up at me and laughed.

She loves being around people, and wants to be put down on the floor so she can play with other children whenever we go to a La Leche League meeting or yoga class or anything where there are other babies. She is particularly fascinated with toddlers, crawling around behind them or staring at them with awe from across the room. But I find it comforting that she checks in with me often. She crawls across the room to get a toy or check out another baby's blanket, and then turns to make sure that I am looking at her before returning to the task at hand. It's sweet to have her crawl over to me and pull up onto her knees using the leg of my jeans as she asks to be picked up once she's decided she's had enough.

I do find that I must remind myself of how wonderful these little things are, though. "She's only little once," I tell myself nearly every day. It's my mantra. It gives me perspective. And it works. When Adriana is having trouble falling asleep for her nap and I find myself bouncing her in my arms and wondering if she will ever sleep, I think, "I will only be able to hold her like this for such a small part of her life," and bouncing her a few more minutes until I can lay her in her bed doesn't seem so bad. Later in the day, when I start to wonder how long before Brian gets home, so I can put together dinner, or get some wash put away, or maybe just read a book without one eye on the baby, I tell myself, "She's only little once," and then I am happy to stack blocks for her to knock over for the 54,898th time that day and read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom one more time. I Some nights, when nursing isn't doing the trick to get her back to sleep, I sit with her in the rocker in the dark living room, tired and wondering why she thinks it's time to be awake, and then I remind myself that she's only little once, right now, and I can relax while we rock back and forth and wait for sleep to come.

Nature walk: Montaña de Oro

We stayed in San Luis Obispo over Labor Day weekend, using the wedding we were attending as an excuse for a nice little weekend away. We spent most of Sunday in Montaña de Oro State Park, walking the Bluff Trail. I picked it because our California Hiking book (dragged across the country to where it was on longer useful and then back again) gave it a 1 for difficulty and a 10 for beauty, and that seemed about right. It was an easy walk, about three miles round trip over flat paths, with stunning views of the ocean. It was also about 20 degrees cooler there on the bluffs than it had been fifteen miles away at our hotel. We saw pelicans--which I love in spite of the fact that Brian says they are smelly (although he did manage to take about 70 pictures of them in two minutes using continuous shooting--why did I tell him about that setting on my camera?--when we saw dozens of them swooping and diving), because they look like pteradactyls--ane saw pelicans--and what might have been cormorants. We also saw a lot of other people--it seems to be a popular walk. And for good reason; look:








One thing we discovered this weekend was that, although we usually think our individual styles are different on nature walks, that's not actually true. Usually I complain that I want more exercise than I get walking with Brian, because he feels compelled to stop every two minutes to examine footprints (usually left by yet another raccoon, or someone's dog) or pick apart coyote poop (I think I'm supposed to call it "scat" since he's playing with it) to see what this particular coyote may have been eating. Brian agreed this weekend to do the walk my way. Which involved stopping every two minutes to take yet another photo of the coastline that was nearly identical to the vista I was compelled to shoot moments before. Oh well.

Madeleine L'Engle, 1919-2007

On Thursday, I read Dance in the Desert to Adriana for the first time. On Friday I came home and read the news that Madeleine L'Engle had died the day before. I was stunned. I have a shelf full of her books, and they aren't going anywhere, but it still feels as though I've lost a good friend.

I can remember approximately when I read each of her novels for the first time, beginning with Meet the Austins the summer before second grade, but I don't actually remember doing so. I don't remember what it was like to pick one up and read it cover to cover for the first time, not knowing what was going to happen next. Because now, after reading the books over and over for twenty years, I know exactly what will happen next, as if they are no longer stories authored by someone else, but my own memories. Now, I rarely start at the beginning (and go on till I come to the end and then stop); I can pick up any of her books from my shelf, open to any page, and read bits and pieces--the parts I like the best, the parts that suddenly have more meaning for me because of something going on in my own life, or the part that I happen to open to on that particular day.

I was in college when I started reading L'Engle's nonfiction. I made my way through the Crosswicks series, and some of her more religious books. I found that my ideas of Christianity and spirituality were very much in tune with hers, as though I'd been reading these books all along, which surprised me, but when I wondered aloud about this to a someone I knew, she pointed out that if I'd been reading L'Engle's fiction since I was seven years old, it wasn't at all astonishing to find that I had internalized a lot of the author's themes. She was right, and I continued to devour the books, finding reassurance in having those themes spelled out so clearly at a time when I quite needed some form of spirituality.

I love all Madeleine L'Engle's books, but the fiction is what has remained most important to me. A Ring of Endless Light is by far my favorite. I suppose that when I first read it, when I was ten, the dolphins in the story were what appealed to me most. I had a stuffed dolphin that my Grandma Ruth had bought for me at Marine World, and I named it Basil after the dolphin in the book. And it appealed to me because my own grandfather had just died (which is, I assume, why my mom had given me the book at that particular time) and I could relate to Vicky Austin watching her own grandfather die. But even as I got older, the book remained important to me. I thought that might change, that as I got further from Vicky Austin's not-quite-sixteen, I might not identify with her the same way, but that hasn't been the case at all. Maybe I still need it because the confused adolescent in me can find reassurance in the story, or maybe the story and its themes are more universal. Whatever it is, it's the book I turn to most often, sometimes for comfort, sometimes just because I want something familiar to read. I think I'm on my fourth copy of it, having worn several out in the past two decades.

Even though I love Light the most, A Wrinkle in Time is a close second. I can't imagine not knowing the story. Earlier this summer, Brian started his new job before our apartment became available, so we spent a few days in corporate housing down in Santa Clara, and we laughed at the rows of new, perfect, nearly identical condos on the same road. "I half-expect to see little boys all bouncing red balls in sync with one another," Brian said, surprising me with the reference. I will forever think of that neighborhood as Kamazotz because of that. At dinner this evening, the world of people with no eyes came up in the conversation. I often quote Mrs. Whatsit to the cat when she does something less than graceful, offering her liniment for her dignity as she stalks away. At a seminar in grad school we were asked if we knew the first line of our favorite book: "It was a dark and stormy night," I told the professor, getting a chuckle from her and some of the others in the class. I became good friends with a guy who knew exactly which book I meant. Brian and I go through periods of reading aloud to one another. A couple of years ago we tried to do that with Wrinkle, a book that Brian read as a child but not since then, but we only made it a few chapters in. Reading it out loud to Brian felt strange to me. Somehow it just didn't sound right. Or, more exactly, it didn't feel right; it's a book that millions of people have read, but reading it aloud I felt as though I were sharing a secret. I suppose that that's why I haven't seen the movie versions of Wrinkle or Light that were released in the past few years: even though I usually enjoy seeing the film adaptations of books, these are somehow too special to me.

I've been a bit sad this weekend, feeling that I've lost something. Even if Madeleine L'Engle herself wasn't a friend, all of her books certainly feel to me like old friends. I grew up with these characters, reading the books over and over again. The first time Brian and I went to New York, I insisted upon going to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where L'Engle was a writer-in-residence and librarian. Several of her novels are set around the cathedral, and I had to admit to Brian as we left that, not only did I expect to run into one of the fictional characters, but when I imagined that happening, I also thought that they would somehow recognize me. It was a silly thought, I know, but after reading the books so many times, it somehow seemed possible. And I thought that Madeleine might have understood.