New video with L learning to crawl -- rather, already knowing. Didn't catch enough in the act of learning...
parenting
Fan Participation
I sometimes play guitar for L. She likes it, but she doesn’t sit quietly and listen, much to my dismay. It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate music — she loves music. The problem is she wants to play too:
It’s not that I mind her playing. Rather, it’s somewhat dangerous: her little fingers fit between the strings and a tug can cause her sudden pain as the string digs into her.
Still, it’s an enjoyable way to pass some time.
Horse
The Girl met her first horse the other day:
She wasn't exactly thrilled.
I loves you, [L]
Last night, before L went to bed, I’d put in a Nina Simone CD, figuring it was calming enough to play in the evening.
Little did I know.
A few minutes later, while trying to put the Girl to sleep, I began the CD again. She wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t settling down. I rocked her, walked her, bounced her gently, talked to her — all the tricks, but she was just not completely calming down.
When track six — “I loves you, Porgy” — began, instant calm. So I did the logical thing: hit repeat and put the Girl to sleep by playing one of the loveliest songs ever…about fifteen times.
As an aside, here’s a very sweet claymation video set to a Simone song:
Eight Hours’ Sleep
Who would have thought it was possible for a little, sweet, burpy seven-month-old to sleep a full twelve hours, enabling parents to get work done and get eight hours’ sleep?
Who would have imagined that a body used to significantly less sleep can sleep a full eight hours without the whole system going haywire?
Who would have thought it would only happen one night?
Landmines
When the Girl is being put to sleep, she sometimes gets angry. Scratch that -- furious. She can howl and scream and whimper endlessly when I'm the one trying to put her to sleep instead of K.
I usually just wait her out. She'll literally scream and push and wiggle and cry until she literally passes out. While she's doing this, I simply walk around the apartment, holding her close, and whispering sweetly (or as sweetly as I can manage while every last nerve in my body is being assailed simultaneously). There comes a time when she's crying, then whimpering, then crying, then tumbling quietly toward sleep -- until something disturbs her and reminds her, "Oh, yes, I am indeed irritated."
That's when toys can become landmines.
There are two beeping, flashing, musical toys that are particularly deadly. In one of them (a caterpillar that plays about four songs and flashes lights where one wouldn't think caterpillars would have lights) has expired: the batteries are dead, and gosh darn it, I just can't seem to remember to replace them. Touch it and it begins a loud, loud, loud symphony.
The porcupine is not much better. Give it a kick (as I did last night) and it begins talking to you. Nothing too intelligent, but you wouldn't expect physics from a porcupine.
Last night, I kicked it dead center. I'm not sure which woke L: my sudden, frustrated gasp, or the porcupine.
Swimming, Redux
The video is fixed — don’t know why it wasn’t playing, but I just re-“compiled” it and it seems fine.
Update: Some folks tell me the video stops halfway through. I give up on this one…
Swimming II
We’ve been taking L to swimming lessons at the local YWCA. Within a few weeks, we’ve gone from calmly moving her about the pool (“Dig, dig, dig! Kick, kick, kick!”) to dunking her under water after blowing in her face. She doesn’t much like the former, and the latter sets her to screaming more often than not. The instructor suggests that it’s the water running down her face when we pull her back up that upsets her.
Still, we take her regularly and follow the instructor’s advice, on the hopes that it’s the unfamiliarity of it all that is bothering L.
There’s a progress report at YouTube.
Update
I don’t think any of us could have anticipated L’s success on the potty chair. In the past ten days or so, L has done her messier business almost exclusively in the potty chair.
So, she’s potty trained, right!? I mean, a couple of accidents, statistically speaking, are fairly meaningless. And the fact that she’s not telling us that she needs the potty chair is a function of her age and development and nothing more. After all, she knows what it’s for — every time you put her on it, she does her best to have a BM.
Well, admittedly, she’s not potty trained in the truest sense of the term, but I think we’ve laid a fairly sure foundation for a quick, painless training when the “real” time comes…
Solids
We've entered the wild, wonderful world of solids,
which means a number of things:
- It takes a little more time to prepare for a feeding;
- Feeding is more labor intensive;
- Post-poop clean-up is more labor intensive; and,
- Preference begins to rear its finicky head.
On the other hand, feeding is more amusing and more conducive to photography.
