8 Month, 1 Week Check-In

I'm soooo behind in updating. It's been a busy couple of weeks and there's a lot to report.

Starting next week, Sadie's going to be in day care 3 times a week. I think this is going to be a good thing all around. We've just lost our latest babysitter to the Peace Corps (she's moving to Central America for the next two years to build latrines -- and what have you done lately?) and after doing a little hunting to find a new sitter, I came to a realization: having Sadie at home all day, with or without paid help, isn't an ideal situation for either of us.

For one thing, it means I need to leave the house to work. Our house is small enough that the office and the living room are essentially two ends of the same room; the nursery is too small to play in, so when Sadie and the sitter are playing in the living room I'm about fifteen feet away. This ensures that I get no work done, so it forces me to leave the house and work elsewhere. While that can be a good thing, it's also a costly habit -- when you use a restaurant or cafe's free wi-fi, they expect you to patronize their establishment, every time. The idea of having an empty, quiet house three times a week is very tempting, in no small part because I've been booking more and more work recently and desperately need more hours in the day to complete it all.

But it's not just a selfish need. I think it's going to do Sadie a lot of good, too. She spends a lot of time with adults, aside from the occasional playdate. Frankly, I suspect that after spending so much time rolling on the floor with King and Pepper, she may actually consider herself a dog. Going to a place where there are other kids in other stages of life, crawling and walking and playing and talking, can only be good for her. We found a place only two miles away, run by a kindly Armenian woman who serves her kids borscht and swears they love it; Sadie was entranced by the three well-behaved toddlers who already attend. I feel good about leaving her in the care of this woman, who reminds me of Penny, the French woman who used to watch me and my sister when we were young and would regularly make us butter sandwiches and macaroni in tomato and cheese sauce.

One reason I want Sadie to start watching other kids is because she isn't doing the things kids her age are generally doing by now, which is starting to crawl and pull themselves up on furniture and in other ways experimenting with getting around on their own. She pretty much sits, and reaches for what is within grasp, and when she can't get to it she fusses, but she still hasn't figured out that it's within her power to go get it herself. And no, I'm not freaking out that she'll NEVER get there, but on the other hand, it can't hurt to have a little visual demonstration, courtesy of other kids.

What she lacks in getting around-ability, she makes up for in other ways. She's already figured out clapping, waving, and has a full vocabulary of nonsensical baby babble. She "talks" pretty much constantly, "dada" being her favorite word, and often sounds for all the world like she's speaking a fully realized language that happens to bear a close resemblance to English. No endless "da-da-da's" for this one. It's more like, "a-blah-ya-yo-dah-dum-ggg," spoken in a conversational tone to me while she's on the changing table or to Pepper while she's yanking her ear.

More later, but now I've got to go make Her Highness a bottle.