The Girl loves to imitate what she sees. This can be quite practical, in our laundry “room” for example.
Eventually, trash night will be her responsibility. For now, it’s nice to have someone willing to load and unload the drier.
Fairly far down the list of our house renovations is the finishing of this room. By the time we get to it, I’m sure L will be helping with that as well.
We are slowly creating a late-winter, Sunday afternoon ritual that is focused on swing time for the Girl. We headed to Southside Park Sunday, and as we sat there, K and I realized it was a better choice than our usual one: less crowded and closer.
The Girl was pleased, too.
Such a change from the first time we were at Southside. Still wobbly-footed and wary of being alone, she wouldn’t let us out of her sight.
And naturally, we didn’t want her out of our reach. Wobbles turning to dangerous tumbles — the nightmare I continually endured at playgrounds last year. “They’re made to bounce,” Nana and Papa say, but my gut isn’t made to bounce: it dropped every time she fell, filling my head with visions of — well, no need to go there.
Now, when she’s playing, the Girl makes the choice whether or not to play near us, and I’m only moderately paranoid. I’m sure that moderate paranoia will continue until she’s in her thirties or so.
Or maybe it is a permanent fixture.
It is the flip side of the joy of seeing her smile, of hearing her laugh. It is the worry that it won’t always be so. And why worry about that? Certainly she’ll have her share of bruises, emotional and physical, and it’s only natural that I want to protect her from them — at least minimize the impact. Yet we learn from the pain. In theory.
L still doesn’t learn from the pain. At least, she’s not convinced. She knows the cat doesn’t like being tugged and violently hugged, and she knows what the cat’s claws are capable of, but every few days, the Girl tests the hypothesis again.
At least now the threats are visible, and the cause and cure clear.
Indeed, this is the only time that K and I can kiss the pain away. Pain floats away, removed with a kiss that is then blown into the empty distance. “Bye bye!” L says after we blow away the kiss that took away the pain.
Broken hearts and disappointment aren’t so easily mended.
But with everyone playing on a cool Sunday afternoon, these thoughts drift away.
The guns are still plastic.
The Girl has always loved dancing. As her coordination grows, so does the intricacy of some of her moves.
Occasionally she’ll get a partner.
The partner is often stiff with fear.
Why are elephants seem so wise? Because it looks as if every experience is etched on their face:
Why do giraffes seem so elegant yet goofy? Lumpy, bumpy heads.
Why do baby orangutans seems so playful?
Because they are, even with empty Folgers containers.
Why does the Girl seem more and more independent? Because she is. She gets her zipper going, hops with joy, then rips off the jacket and cries, “Try ‘gain!”
She’s not quite this independent, but give her some time — she’ll be there before I’m ready.
She already realizes how far away she is from baby-hood.
While much of the country still seems to be under snow and ice, we’ve had a warm spell. Spring comes early in South Carolina, with temperatures already in the mid-60s. It’s likely to cool back down, but for now, we’re enjoying the warmth.
Such a change from the last group of pictures from this time of year. L requires a larger and larger arc on the swing to provide the same satisfaction. “Higher” she can now ask, and I wonder how much longer we can even use this swing. Certainly this will be the swing’s last spring.
And yet there are plans for the replacement, and a tree house in the same area. “In a few years,” K says, but those few years will melt faster than the single snowfall we experienced here (in January of ’07).
The little girl, evident in this picture, will quickly replace the lingering lines of baby, and before we know it, she’ll be talking about having a tree house.
We moved into our house eighteen months ago, with grand visions of how we were going to upgrade, remodel, and improve — and the understanding that would take years.
Many of our accomplishments are sort of like the ASP I would write during my brief stint in IT: no one on the outside has any idea what’s going on under the hood, so to speak. We’re remodeled closets, replaced plumbing, added insulation, installed new windows, installed a new door, fixed every single faucet in the house, changed some of the outlets, and a handful of other projects. Except for the door and windows, the rest is invisible.
We’re not even finished with the initial decoration, though we’re one room closer as of today. The Girl’s room is almost done: two more rugs to buy and a couple of pictures to hang.
K finished the curtains this weekend, with a little help from our friend.
The result:
Perhaps the best part: L loves her room. She loves sitting at her table, putting together puzzles (which, at this age, means instructing one of us to put them together, or better yet, Papa), coloring, having a snack — anything. We return home and she immediately asks me to accompany her to “pie-ku,” her L-ese version of “pokoj,” or “room” in Polish.
When I was a teenager, I was infatuated with a girl who lived in Idaho; I lived in Virginia at the time. We spent a fortune on postage and the occasional phone call.
I can’t help but wonder how that would have transpired in today’s wired world, where L can show babcia in Poland what she’s drawn.
If anything, the relationship would have burned out sooner, I’m sure.
Nana and Papa came over, ostensibly to visit the family, but everyone knows who the main attraction is.
First, Papa had to help L with her puzzle. The Girl can’t quite manage the puzzle by herself, but with some help, she can put it together in a few minutes. Then it’s always the same: “Try again!”
Next, bubble time, and here’s where the fun really began. As is often the case, Nana and Papa came bearing a gift: a new Tinker Bell jacket, with a flashing lights the illuminate Tink’s pixie dust when pressed. We hung it in the closet so L could get to it, and every so often, she would run over and give Tink a press. Papa decided to play a little trick on the Girl. Every time she activated the lights, Papa blew some bubbles from the small buble maker.
L almost caught him in the act a few times.
Tricking her, though, is getting more and more difficult. And talking about her while she’s there is impossible: she understands just about everything now, and a quiet “Should we take her for a bath now?” can elicit loud protests: “No baff! No!”
About a year ago, when Dziadek was visiting, we went to the aquarium. The “we” consisted only of Dziadek and me, as the Girl was sick and K was exhausted.
Yesterday, we tried it again.
“Big fish! Big fish!” the Girl chanted the whole day, excited from the moment she woke up.
The drive to Atlanta was excruciating for the Girl. “Big fish! Big fish!” The time spent in Ikea was torturous — “Big fish! Big fish!” — until we got to the children’s area. Heading out to the car was accompanied by — well, you can probably guess.
Finally, we got to Big Fish Land:
She was initially a little nervous about the whole prospect. It was MLK Day weekend, and the crowd was stifling. Add to it the intensity of the experience and the general darkness in all the exhibits, and it’s easy to see how a little girl might be a bit nervous at first.
She found her bearings soon enough, though, and was soon found everything fascinating, especially the crocs:
For some time, L was more interested in the stairs than anything else, much to the probable irritation of a number of people.
The trip home was filled with excited stories about whom we saw. “I L fish, i Mama fish, i Tata fish!”
When we got home and set up L’s new easel, one might guess what she wanted to draw.
But that guess would be wrong.
More images at our Flickr Georgia Aquarium set.
The Girl is learning to golf.
The crocadile sits at the end of the rug, patiently awaiting its feeding, but the Girl is more interested in directing everyone else to shoot. And of course Baby gets pointers, too.
I was always a pack-rat growing up. I think it’s genetic, or maybe not. I do know Nana saved a lot of my toys through the year, and the Girl has finally started playing with some of them. My old animal collection.
She’s excited about being able to recognize animals — sometimes in Polish, sometimes in English — and she enjoys telling us what various animals say.
This is also a “sometimes in Polish, sometimes in English” thing, for Polish dogs say “how how” (spelled phonetically in English) whereas American dogs say “woof-woof.” Pigs here say “oink oink” whereas their Polish counterparts say “kwee kwee” (again, spelled phonetically in English). When we ask her, “Co mowi swinka?” she replies “kwee kwee!”; to “What does a pig say?” she’ll respond “oink oink.” That differentiation is a recent development, and it’s only one of many little linguistic markers she’s passing. She’s connected “kupic” (“buy”) and stores, so every time we pass a store, she says, in her wonderful mixed-up fashion, “Tata, mamma, kupi clementine.” Now she’s branching out: “Mama, kupi malinki i grapes.”
In short, she’s really coming to the understanding that she’s learning two languages. The other day, she said to K, “Mamma, bug!” K, not making out what she said, asked, “Co?” (“What”). “Pajak,” she replied, specifying not only animal but genus: spider.
The last two weeks, I’ve been on Christmas break — one of the great advantages of being a teacher. Teaching a new course (English I Honors), I wasn’t planning on having much time to myself as I was planning to, well, plan. Starting Monday, I’ll be leading the class through Romeo and Juliet, and I’ve never taught that particular selection. I did Macbeth when I was student teaching, but “Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and caldron bubble.” with twelfth graders is a far cry from “What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?” with gifted eighth graders.
I had high hopes for a productive time, especially during the second week, with Christmas behind us. And then L got sick: a moist, lingering cough that kept her out of day care for a week. But one thing you learn having a two year old is that she can imitate anything, including Tata working.
Very quickly, it became a favorite, though I’m not sure how. The name’s origin was simple enough: unable to say “jacket,” L turned it into a shorter “jack.” The rest, though, is mystery.
Jack came to be for L what blankets and teddies are for other toddlers: her grounding. She had to have it with her, and when she was not wearing it (which was rare, if she had her way, even in summer), she was carrying it. Getting to her to agree to hang it in the closet was a Herculean task, and we simply decided that there was no reason why it should hang in the closet if it caused much turmoil in her life.
One parting was inevitable, though, and it happened soon enough. She outgrew it, and we introduced a new jack. She liked the new jack just as much as the old one, and quickly developed the same bond. Red jack was stowed away and quickly forgotten.
Until K decided to do some rearranging and repacking. And then, this morning, L discovered red jack. The original jack, the mother of all jacks.
Fast as her little increasingly nimble fingers could manage, she unzipped the plastic storage back that held jack, pulled it out, and held it close and tight, crying, “Jack!” as if she’d encountered a friend she hadn’t seen since school days.
“Oh, no, sweetie,” I said. “This jack is entirely too small.”
The prospect of losing jack a second time — “I’ve been looking everywhere for you” her babbling seemed to say — was too much for her. L fell in the floor, distraught and screaming.
“But you have another jack,” I reminded her. “Do you want to get it?”
The fussing quickly subsided and she meekly answered, “Tak.”
That jack was held close for the rest of the morning.
I do this on a daily basis: in my teaching, with my interpersonal skills, in my parenting. The old seems to be so comfortable that, even when something new is working better, the old slips up and takes hold before I know it.
Perhaps L’s rediscovery of the original jack suggests a goal for the year: to be more conscious about slipping into old, comfortable habits.
She can ride it if she likes. It’s got a basket, a bell that rings, and things to make it look good. (Who can name the source?)
Yet she was vastly more interested in putting things in said basket (though I suppose it’s techically not a basket…).
Busy and calm — a typical Christmas for us, I suppose. Days of preparation and cleaning, and finally, the table is set, the barszcz is ready, and the guests are all making themselves comfortable.
Barszcz, mushroom soup, cabbage and mushroom pierogis — the courses tumble onto the table, one after the other, and I’m thinking the same thing I always do: so much time spent preparing this food, and yet it’s just disappearing. No matter how slowly we serve, it never seems to be slow enough truly to savor the food and the conversation. It’s like eating one’s favorite cookies as a kid, with the conflicting urges: devour them yet save them.
After dinner, we head to the living room for gifts and a Belgian ale sampling. First up, the king of Belgian ales: Chimay.
Gifts for everyone, but K and I are waiting for a couple.
L, having had a birthday less than weeks ago, has few surprises in an effort to keep from “spoiling” her. The truth is, she already has so many toys that we can hide many and she doesn’t notice. But she was thrilled with her DVD: Horton Hears a Who. We’ve been reading it before bed for weeks now, and she adores the story. Any time the Wickersham brothers appear, she starts yelling, “No! Not nice!” She might attack the TV when we show her the film.
Nana and Papa get our new obsession: hardcover photo books from Blurb. One was a book of pictures of the Girl throughout the last year; the second was a photo book about Nana and Papa’s trip to Central Europe for our 2004 wedding.
Christmas Day begins with some swinging and time with our guests’ dogs, who have been relaxing in the basement. Throughout the week, whenever we would ask L who’s coming, she would squeal, “Doggies!” Four friendly dogs and she was absolutely in heaven.
Christmas Day brought new guests and new adventures. L had a couple of playmates, one of whom having L’s temperament and energy level. There was lots of climbing, chasing, and screams of laughter. It gave us a chance to see what it would be like to have more children. Someday. Right now, L is enough to keep four adults busy.
We got our Christmas tree last Friday, but with the party and accompanying chaos, we didn’t get it decorated until Monday. For L, the empty decorations box was the most interesting.
She played for a little bit, posing as well: she’s taken to saying “Cheese” whenever the camera is aimed in her direction.
Eventually, L was especially helpful. “L turn!” she cried every time K or I hung an ornament from the tree. At first, she herself needed some help.
But in true L-independent fashion, she quickly declared she must do it “Sama! Sama!”
That declaration that she must do it “Alone!” is both a blessing and a curse. It bodes well for her future, but it often results in rice spread for a square mile beneath her chair and yogurt smeared about everywhere. Then again, is it really a curse, your daughter learning to do things independently? Some cleaner and a paper towel takes care of it, so what’s the big deal? Besides, what are we going to do — discourage independence?
“When you wake up,” I told L before her Sunday afternoon nap, “it will be time for ‘Happy to you!'” She’d been waiting all week, and she was too excited to fall asleep immediately, but eventually she drifted off.
When she awoke, it was her day.
First, lunch. In two years she’s gone from milk and mush to shrimp, an all-time favorite.
Papa held the Girl as Nana practiced with their new camera. “It was rated best in this level at this price by this place and that,” said Papa, proudly relating the story of how he got it for a song.
The guests arrived and L became the center of attention. She’s used to it, I guess: she demands it often enough, though fussing or simply asking.
“Mama, trzym,” she says. “Hold” in Polish, but L-ized. She’s not shy about asking for attention, though we we she’d ask for it like that more often.
Candles out and it was time for gifts. L had a little helper, F: the son of Polish friends we met here. He wanted to help with the candles, but L and I had practiced. She knew what she was doing.
F began by helping L with her presents; by the end, he was unwrapping them for her. A year ago, that might have been problematic: the Girl was more interested in the paper and boxes than the presents. This year, she knows what’s inside is what counts. Hopefully, it’s a lesson she’ll apply universally.
The GIrl came away with quite a haul: Tinker Bell, a couple of games, a Madeline book, a Pooh phone. It was tempting to hide some of the toys and bring them out a little later, but for now they’re all out — literally.
Of course, Nana got the sweetest present of all.
Happy to you, L. Two down, one hundred and two to go. Sto lat!
It’s clean-up time now, but the party was a success — and so was the extinguishing of the candles.
More to come.
Later today, L will celebrate her second birthday party. Her birthday is not until Tuesday, but one doesn’t have parties on Tuesdays. We’ve been practicing: thank you, happy birthday to you (which comes out “happy to you”), dziekuje, sto lat, blowing out candles, and so on.
Last night, K baked a cake, as I did some touch-up work on our new door.
The cake, when finished, was quite a masterpiece:
Today, we tried blowing up some balloons, but L was a bit wary:
Right now, she’s asleep. “When you wake up,” I told her, “It’ll be time for ‘Happy to you!'”
I’m surprised she even managed to go to sleep.