fun in threes, sometimes fours
the girl
The girl has begun reaching for things. For anything. If it's in her field of vision, she'll put out her little hands and try to grab it.
The other day, she grabbed a glass of water while we were eating dinner and turned it over on K. First time, certainly not the last.
And so, for the first time, I proposed making pre-planned video. "Just go around the apartment and hold her in front of things," I asked K.
L, most unexpectedly, also has her own little canal. It too is singularly effective at channeling .
L doesn’t do much of anything without putting her full effort into it, and pooping is no exception. But with pooping, she has a particular gift. Without some much as a raised eyebrow, L can expel her cottage-cheesy poop with such energy that, upon impacting the diaper, it follows the path of least resistance, right up her back.
A good poop means that she leaves wet marks mid-way up her back. A spectacular poop goes three-fourths of the way up to her shoulder blades. Her personal best is just below her shoulder blades.
It’s spectacular. I had no idea babies could achieve something as wondrous as pooping halfway up their backs. And when she’s done, there’s a little mischievous smile that, though I know is from relief, seems like it just might also have a bit of pride mixed in.
We went to visit family yesterday. This meant a lot of time in the car, which meant, for L, a lot of time in the car seat.
We discovered, much to our surprise, that L doesn't really like the car seat as much as tolerate it. Imagine -- she doesn't like being strapped into a virtually immovable position for hours on end.
We think liquids might help, because she seemed to cry much less violently during that last hour when she was working on a bottle of tea.
In Poland, in summer, potatoes -- those ever-present tenants of the Polish table -- are always served with fresh dill. All told, I had to scrape of pounds of it during my years there, and no one could understand that I just don't like the stuff.
"Tea!? You give your 5-month-old tea?" I can just hear the voices now. Well, to call it "tea" is really a stretch. It's a special granulated herbal concoction J brought from Poland with her. It's made specially for infants, and it's made from dill and aniseed. To my nose, it stinks like the dickens, because I don't like either one. But the girl likes it, and it eases her stomach, and it will undoubtedly ease time in the car.
After all, K and I buy green teas for the road. Why shouldn't she have something to drink to?
Maybe it's just one of those paradigms you slip into when your baby is breastfed. Additional drink is like additional food -- unnecessary. What we're learning is that that is only true -- duh -- for the first four or five months.
When I was in Poland, I eventually reached a point in my linguistic development at which I understood everything going on around me. It wasn’t fluency, because in any given sentence there might be one or even two words I didn’t know, or couldn’t immediately place, but I learned that understanding 100% of the language doesn’t mean understanding 100% of the words spoken.
Once I reached that linguistic milestone, it felt I’d always been at that point. It felt like I’d always been able to understand everything, even though I knew it wasn’t the case. Like swimming and reading, understanding Polish was something I couldn’t remember what it was like not to be able to do. (What an awful example as a teacher I’m setting with that sentence! And this one…)
Today, we went to see my cousin and her recently-adopted baby. The little girl — S — is six weeks. She’s about a pound heavier than L when she was born. And I looked at that little girl, her eyes still mostly closed, and I couldn’t imagine L being that size. I know she was. We have the pictures to prove it. But, as with the language, I just feel she’s always been this size; that she’s always been able to hold her head up; that she’s always been able to look around, to smile, to cry from boredom, to giggle, to coo.
And then, a little voice: “That is how you’ll wake up one morning and realize she’s going off to college and for a brief moment, feel complete unprepared for it, and feel she’s completely unprepared for it.”
It’s not quite synonymous with “taking for granted,” but it’s awfully close.
And I think that’s one reason why I’m trying so hard to write in this silly blog so often. To mark the lines of development; to make a record for later — to make an online baby book.
Besides, what else am I going to write about in my newly realigned universe?
L's had a lot of hair since she was born. Recently, we decided that it had grown too long -- at least the little lock that was swooping down into her eyes.
First step: wet the hair and get it standing up -- as Elmo looks on...
Next: cut it. Given L's propensity to jerk suddenly when a flash fires, I didn't actually get a shot of that.
Finally, comb it.
And in the end, she looks like one of those wet-hair-look Euro-trash boys (and I say that with tongue firmly in cheek).
All she needs now is a tracksuit and she'd fit in perfectly at any Polish soccer match...
When playing with your child, some common sense is in order. After eating, for example, is not the best time for bouncy play.
That's fairly logical, but there's a derivative from this: after eating (up to, say, an hour after), avoid any play that places the child's head directly above your head.
As a newly washed car is to a bird, so your face, with it's stupid, wide-open-mouth smile, is to your child...
L is gaining increasing control over her hands -- so much so that she now can use her fist as a substitute when she's lost her pacifier.
I originally wrote this several weeks ago, then put it on hold for some reason or another. Now it's off hold, but I forgot to change "three months." As of today, she's just a little more than a week shy of five months.
Translation: we have a budding thumb-sucker.
Now, sucking a thumb is not bad. All parenting books I've read say as much. In fact, once L starts teething, our pediatrician informs us, it'll be better if she sucks on her thumb than on her pacifier.
But for some reason, whenever that cute fist goes partially into her mouth, K and I instinctively pull it back out and re-insert the pacifier.
Why?
After all, a thumb is much more convenient than a pacifier.
I suppose it's an unfounded worry that, by letting our little girl start sucking her thumb, she'll have a hard time later stopping. As she's only three months old, it's about like us worrying that she'll want to go to a school known more for partying than learning.
It's called "exaggeration."
The Girl plays to the accompaniment of one of the most famous songs ever written.
Sunday was the second time we'd been to Chimney Rock. The first time, we were sans L, sans camcorder, sans D70. That, of course, means lots of images of the Girl and a bit of video of the Girl.
L began the day in my custody:
But fussiness overwhelmed her about 2/3 of the way through the outing -- only K could comfort (what alliteration).
More pictures at Flickr; video coming soon.