Parrot

The other day Sadie and I were over at our friends D and T's house for a play date with their incredibly adorable year-old son, and the topic of my cracked-out day care instructor came up. This led to a conversation about baby development. T mused that the time in between nine and twelve months was when the most stuff seemed to "happen," -- the big developmental leaps, the ability to move around, the refining of personality.

Sure enough, in the weeks following that play date, Sadie has been transforming day to day before our eyes in ways that completely astonish me. Her growth from six months to nine, while impressive in little individual ways, was almost a throwaway compared with that she's suddenly done in between months nine and ten. At six months, she sat and fell over frequently. At seven months she...sat longer and fell over slightly less frequently. At eight months, she was still rejecting anything but puree, napping three times a day, and still occasionally falling over.

Now? It's basically impossible to catalog the things that are drastically and immeasurably changing, as she leapfrogs over her past accomplishments every day with new ones.

For one thing, she stands. Like, LOVES to stand. I place her standing up in her play pen, holding onto the top bar, and she stands there, squealing with glee from her new, tall vantage point. She's tall, this baby. She looks like a skyscraper, all weirdly narrow and still going when most other babies stop. She has realized, from watching other people, that moving your feet up and down is a necessary component of walking, but she doesn't quite understand how it figures in -- so when you support her while standing up she lifts her feet in place and stomps them back down again, all, "Am I doing this right?"

And remember all that lunacy over the crawling, or lack of it? Yeah -- last week, she decided she was ready to start. Some babies take months to learn how to crawl; this girl had utterly no interest in it until she hit ten months old and NOW she's not just ready, she wants to master it immediately. So she flips over all the time -- on the changing table, on the floor, when I'm putting her in her carseat -- and commences with the very loud grunting and flailing of limbs as she attempts to move forward. What happens right now is that she actually moves BACKWARD, and please believe me when I say I've been attempting to capture this on video, because this is the kind of shit I'm going to enjoy showing her when she's older.

Lastly, my very favorite development is the parroting. If there's one area in which I never had to do the stupid first-time mom "my baby isn't as far along as ALL THE OTHER BABIES" panic-dance, it's talking. Right from the start, Sadie couldn't wait to start babbling, and now she keeps up a steady stream of conversation at all times, even if it's just to her toys, or, casually, to the air in front of her. 

And now, quite out of the blue, she's begun mimicking the cadence of words and phrases. Not the words themselves -- but the tone of them.  "Uh oh!" is a favorite, that being the thing I sing-sing most often when she drops stuff, because it's more pleasant to the ear than "Really? You had to hurl your pacifier across the room AGAIN? You know that's the last clean pacifier, right? All the others are in the dishwasher. I'm not going to go wash off this pacifier. I've done it five times already. A little dust is not going to kill you. Here you go and this time try not to -- DAMN IT TO HELL WHAT DID I JUST TELL YOU?!" And so instead I say, "Uh oh!" and she sings it back to me in the same pitch, smiling sweetly and waiting for me to shriek, "smart girl!" and cover her with kisses, which I do, inevitably, every time.

Gourmet Palate

I've long been meaning to write about Sadie's increasingly bizarre mealtime habits for awhile now, but it always seems like a task too daunting to undertake.

Now I'm finally ready to launch into it, but first, VOX BLOGGING PLATFORM, would you please stop taunting me by advertising for Diapers.com in the sidebar while I'm trying to write my update? How did you know that I am really in need of both an Ergo AND a crate of Earth's Best formula, yet can afford neither one? When did I start pining for ergonomically forgiving baby carriers AND organic high-end formula? How did my life come to this?

Okay, so, the long and short of it is that mealtimes used to be fairly non-eventful, and now trying to pack three meals into the baby has become a focal point of my life.

For one thing, for whatever reason, Sadie has begun carrying on a love/hate relationship with her highchair. She loves to pull on the buckles that fasten her in, but hates the act of actually BEING fastened in. She'll scream with anger when I snap the tray into place, pounding on the plastic like a prisoner rattling a tin cup across the bars of his cell. Then she'll begin to heave herself violently back and forth, with so much force that she is capable of actually MOVING THE CHAIR ACROSS THE ROOM in this manner. She accompanies the rocking with indignant yelling.

The only way of dealing with this is to distract her with finger food. Sadie has only in the past month discovered the ability to pick up food with her hands, and this is currently both a delight and a frustration. She can pick up a piece of cheese or a Cheerio with no problem, and sometimes she succeeds in putting it in her mouth, but more often it slides off one cheek onto the floor (where the dogs make an immediate lunge for it), or it winds up stuck to the back of her own hand, where she can no longer see it. Either way, this failure infuriates her and she starts up again with the yelling and heaving.

At some point, when she's sufficiently absorbed in stabbing at Cheerios, I'll approach her with a bowl of actual food. She's usually pretty good at letting me spoon it into her mouth -- assuming, of course, that what I'm feeding her is to her liking.

Her tastes are getting pickier, you see. She used to love oatmeal mixed with fruit puree every morning, but now it bores her and she ignores the spoon when she sees it coming at her. When she does finally accept it, she chews with the greatest amount of ennui she can muster. Even a spoonful of yogurt, her favorite food in all the world, doesn't do much to spice it up.

What she wants is variety and excitement in her meals, and it's all I can do to keep up with her. Pureed avocado and banana are no longer acceptable, but mashed with a fork is okay because she can scoop the food up and play with it. More ends up being flung to the floor and rubbed into her hair than winds up in her mouth. Pureed vegetables of any other kind are decidedly NOT okay. Meat is barely tolerated, accompanied by much coughing and protest.

In an increasingly desperate attempt to get her to eat homemade food -- and more determined than ever not to resort to jars except in emergency situations -- I've branched out into some trial-and-error baby food recipes. With some, we've had great success; with others, not so much. The three ice cube trays full of mashed potato, peas and carrots sit sad and untouched in the back of our freezer, since potato is apparently the devil, waiting for the morning when I'm hungover enough to throw the whole shebang into a frying pan and turn it into poor man's hashbrowns.

Here are a couple of recipes that have actually worked:

• Wheaty Meaty Stew: credit Scott for coming up with this dish's catchy title. (And thank goodness Sadie likes it, because it would really make me sad not to be able to say "Wheaty Meaty Stew" several times a day.) This could also be called Everything But The Kitchen Sink Stew, because it contains ground beef, rice, spinach, squash, celery, carrots and about a million other things, all cooked together and run through the food processor. The result is a toxic sludge with tiny orange chunks floating in it that Sadie thinks is utterly delicious.
• Turkey Apple Stew: I took a bunch of cooked chopped apples and pureed sweet potato, and added them to ground turkey and some rice. Sadie was good with this one until she accidentally inhaled a mouthful into her windpipe. She's a little more cautious about it now.
• Cheesy Turkey Pasta: That's what WholesomeBabyFood calls this dish, but I tend to think of it as Turkey Vomit, because when you combine cottage cheese and ground turkey and steep the whole thing in chicken broth, guess what it looks like? It also contains pastina, which is a kind of pasta that resembles coarse sand, and a dash of garlic powder and dried basil for good measure. The whole thing looks so disgusting I can't bring myself to sample it, but so far it's been a huge hit.

And so it goes. I understand now more than ever why people give up on this whole baby food making thing and turn to jarred food -- it's so much easier to simply buy a jar labeled "lentil chicken pasta stars" than to cook up a batch yourself. And I don't know honestly how much money we're saving by doing this -- organic food isn't cheap, and sometimes when I see baby food at Ralph's being advertised for $4.00 for 5 cans, I wonder wistfully if it wouldn't just make more sense to start jarring it. Yet at the end of the day, I love making food for Sadie. It's a therapeutic activity that makes me feel good  -- and there are few things more satisfying than serving her a homemade concoction, then seeing her face as she processes the new taste and then opened her mouth wide for more.

Development/Delays

Oh, what fun infant day care has been! In the space of less than two months, it has transformed me from a confident, knowledgeable mother to a helpless, shivering bundle of nerves -- convinced that the only thing that might prevent my child from growing into a developmentally-delayed pile of goop is the possibility that she might first expire from relentless chest colds picked up from other children.

We knew it was only a matter of time before Sadie got sick. We've been incredibly, remarkably lucky thus far -- up until last month she's never had so much as a single sniffle, despite my sometimes lazy cleaning habits. (I once caught her wrapping her mouth around Pepper's tail stub, which is about an inch long.) Then she began day care, and within two weeks had caught a mild cold.

She threw it off with ease, but last weekend we threw a barbecue to celebrate the 4th of July, Scott's birthday and the (amazing) fact that he's lost over a hundred pounds. That was a loud, noisy, hectic day, and she'd been running a low-grade fever a few days earlier, though she seemed recovered by the time we threw the party. Apparently not. She returned from a sleepover at my parents' house that same night with a rumble in her chest, and by the next morning it had turned into a full-blown chest cold.

I had never realized before this point how completely sad and pathetic a sick baby is. Oh my God. Between the hacking and the coughing and the chest burbling, she would cry and sleep and cry again. It sucks not to be able to explain to your baby why she feels so bad, and to reassure her that she'll be better soon. Besides, my secret worry was that things might get worse.

Panicked, I put in a call to my pediatrician's office, then I called back again, and left multiple messages, until I got a frosty call back from the nurse on duty, all, "YES, CAN I HELP YOU, IRRITATING WOMAN?" She warmed up a little when it became obvious I was just a nervous first-time mom, and reassured me that as long as Sadie wasn't running a fever and still had an appetite, there was little need to worry.

She was right, and Sadie was on the mend the next day. It's taken her awhile to shake the cough, though, and she's still napping more than normal. When she baby-babbles, she sounds like she's picked up a pack-a-day habit. She sounds like Bonnie Raitt.

None of this is the major concern, though, because apparently what I should be worried about, according to the woman who runs Sadie's day care, is the fact that her lack of mobility is a HORRIBLE THING and this, truly, is what I should be worrying about. 

I mean, here's the thing. She loves to stand, can do so if supported, and struggles to get up on her feet when you pick her up under her arms. She sits, rolls around, all of this.

But she doesn't try to get from Point A to Point B. She doesn't scoot, cruise, walk or crawl. She doesn't try to pull her legs up underneath her when lying on her belly. She doesn't really lie on her belly, period -- at least, not for longer than the time it takes to grab whatever toy is in reach so she can roll back over again and play with it. If you take the toy out of reach, as I've said before, she immediately loses interest in it, or else she kind of fusses in its general direction before shifting her attention elsewhere.

I'm sure, as a day care operator, it's got to be annoying to have to deal with a baby who is going on 10 months old and still won't go after something that's out of reach. But really -- to the point where she had to mention it to Scott when he picked her up last week, and then AGAIN to me on the phone today? This was, in essence, the conversation we had:

HER: I want to talk to you about Sadie.

ME: Okay.

HER: And I understand you are a first-time mother, so you don't know. You don't have anything to compare.

ME: .......Right.

HER: She needs more activity.

ME: Activity?

HER: She needs to learn how to crawl, and she is not crawling.

ME: I know she isn't...but don't some babies just learn late?

HER: (in a very patient voice reserved for mothers who need to be told not to put Mountain Dew in their baby's bottles) I understand you are a first-time mother. But some babies, their muscle tone isn't good. And there are exercises you can do to help her learn how to move. Have you talked to her doctor?

ME: Well...at her nine month checkup, she didn't seem to be concerned about it. And I know some babies just get a late start...

HER: I think you should talk to her doctor. Because she won't crawl, and she won't hold a bottle.

Okay. Nothing inspires unease like hearing your child's day care instructor say, in the sort of tone your auto mechanic might tell you that your timing belt has snapped, "She won't crawl, and she won't hold a bottle." I mean, we've had the bottle discussion before. I'm working with her on the bottle thing. She KNOWS how to pick up a bottle; she just decidedly doesn't want to DO it. Now my worry is that my daughter's obstinance is going to get her expelled from day care.

"Attitude problems. Issues with authority," they'll write on her report card. And it will go on her permanent record.

I know I'm being overly dramatic here, but...yeesh. I went ahead and talked to our pediatrician (that office sure has been getting to know me well the past couple of weeks) and she sounded...unconcerned, to say the least. What she did do was refer me to a service that sends physical therapists to the homes of children who have physical developmental delays. She also mentioned that because it's a state-run service, it's free of charge but that Sadie might not even qualify and oh, even if she did, it could take months for them to fit me in for a consultation.

Months.

Like, presumably by the time I got in to see them about my non-crawling daughter, she'll already be at the stage where she's not only crawling but also walking, jumping and running.

Faced with the choice of whether to spend the next few months agonizing, or simply not worrying about the whole thing, I think I'm going to have to opt for the latter. Of course, if my daughter winds up flunking day care, sending her down a lifelong path of failure and confidence issues, she'll have nobody but me to blame.

Summer

With the arrival of summer came babyhood on a whole new level. Sadie eats food off our plates (today it was tiny bits of cheese, mushrooms and sausage off our pizza at Costco), gives wet sloppy kisses to everything around her, and now understands a lot of what I say. "Hungry," "bottle," "sleepy"...I think I'm going to have to start watching my swearing. Shit.

Here's where we are in life right now. Sadie starts daycare full time starting next week. It's worked out so well having her there part time that I've kind of gotten spoiled. The more she's away, the more work I can do, and the more work I can look for. I've had more work in the past month than in the past two years combined, all of it very welcome and rewarding. I've been writing for a living for years now, but now I finally feel like a professional writer. I'm also helping my mother out with a massive-scale filing project one day a week.

All in all, there's a lot to do, and while putting a nine month old baby in daycare five times a week may sound like a lot, the truth is that we still spend a lot of time together. I'll drop her off in the mornings, then pick her up around 3:30 every afternoon. That way we still have all afternoon and evening to spend together, playing at home with the dogs or sitting in the shade under our orange trees in the backyard, or running errands. She's now old enough to sit in the shopping  cart instead of in the Baby Bjorn, looking around at everything and everyone.

Meanwhile, now that I've got mornings to myself, I have a giant laundry list of stuff I'd love to get done that's been put off since I first got pregnant a year and a half ago. Like, for instance, organizing the closet. Arranging a garage sale. Donating to Goodwill. Pulling out all the failed plants in our vegetable garden and preparing to seed in late summer. Dust under EVERYTHING, because the dust bunnies have begun banding together and forming a rebel army.

Well, I was going to update more, but Her Royal Highness just woke up from her afternoon nap. I'm the court jester, so I'd better get ready to do some entertaining.

9 Month Check In

Sadie turned 9 months today.

How is it possible that she's been on the outside for as long as she was on the inside? She's been born for, like, five minutes, and while I'm not positive of the exact numbers, I'm fairly sure I was pregnant for roughly forty years.

Our daughter is the happy light of our lives. Yeesh, that's so goopy to write. But Sadie, one day when you read this, at least you'll know that I really meant it and haven't just been blowing smoke up your ass telling you that you were a great baby. You really are a great baby.

She has a tooth now, one tiny tooth in front, on the bottom, on the lefthand side. She stands by herself, hanging onto the ottoman or her Winnie the Pooh activity table, yelling "AHHHHHH" to make sure we can see her achieving her awesome feat. She talks to us, very seriously, in alien baby garble. She eats food with chunks in it.

She thinks water is funny. She thinks my knee is funny. She thinks when I use her as a gun, yelling "lock and load!" and run around the house pointing her head at the dogs while making "pew pew pew" noises, it's funny.

She loves the shape of leaves against the sky.

She curls into me when we arrive at daycare, looking shy. She does the same when we're out running errands, but then she makes eye contact with the person standing nearest to us and gives them a flirtatious smile.

She wears a sun hat without protest, still hates having lotion put on after her bath, and pretends not to know how to hold a bottle on her own. Simultaneously, she will strike at my hand as it holds the remote control like an angry cobra, pulling it away and hitting a button that causes our entire entertainment system to freeze up and go into convulsions.

She likes Ricky Nelson's "Calendar Girl" and being danced around the kitchen. She likes banging a plastic spoon against the tray on her high chair. She likes sitting in her carseat, furrowing her eyebrows at a set of plastic car keys. She will root around in the cupholders attached to the carseat because she knows that's where a pacifier sometimes lurks. She will find the paci and shove it into her mouth backwards, frown, pull it out and reinsert it correctly.

She never cries when you pour soapy water over her head.

She makes a Stunned and Surprised face when you feed her something she didn't expect to like, like shredded cheese, then looks up at you all, "MOM! THIS SHIT IS GOOD!"

She melts into the baby swings at the playground, smiling as she swings forward to meet you. Sometimes she falls asleep in the swing.

She is the best baby anyone could have asked for.

Baby Sadie and the dogs

Videos

A couple new videos. This one was taken yesterday after we got home from day care. She's finally starting to put it together in her head that in order to get places, you have to, you know, move your legs.

Sadie scoots

This one I took while I was at the dermatologist while she was being especially cute and chatty. I'm sure the other people in the waiting room appreciated it.

Sadie at the dermatologist

Finally, the two of us being goofballs:

Baby Sadie Laughing

Blom Brain

Whenever I consider changing my hair color, I'm reminded of the simple fact that being blonde accurately represents a huge facet of my personality: my extreme absent-mindedness. Why hide this with false advertising, I say? Better that people know what they're up against.

When I became pregnant with Sadie, pregnancy brain combined with blonde brain, and then when Sadie was born and my focus became laser-pointed at her on a constant basis, my absent-mindedness with regards to everything else in my life morphed into something of epic proportions. It is Blonde Brain meets Mom Brain. It is Blom Brain.

So this morning, I didn't have a lot on the docket so I figured I'd take Sadie over to a magic show they're holding for young kids every Wednesday morning through the month of June at a local mall. I knew some moms who were meeting up there, in the "center plaza" area of the mall.

The first thing I did, once I'd bundled Sadie into the car along with the Bjorn and my purse and the diaper bag, was to realize that my feet were suspiciously comfortable. That's when I realized that I'd left the house in my pink, fuzzy memory foam house slippers.

After I'd changed into actual real-person shoes, we arrived at the mall. I put Sadie in the Bjorn and we meandered around. Oh, I should also mention that I'd managed to tweak my back while loading Sadie into the car seat, so I was sort of comically hobbling through the mall with an 18lb. baby attached to my chest and a diaper bag swinging from my arm, with only the vaguest idea of where I was actually going (I figured "the center" was a good bet).

I saw no kids anywhere. I asked every store employee I saw where the Kids Club was meeting, you know, with the magician. They were like, "Huh?" I had no contact information for the moms I was supposed to meet up with other than email addresses, so I just kept wandering. I accosted a mom at Coffee Bean who looked like she was on her way to something, but she also had no idea what I was talking about. "I'll keep an eye out for you," she offered kindly, probably noting the look of pain and bewilderment on my face.

I think it was about my third lap through the mall that I pulled out my phone and rechecked the invitation. Did I have the right day? Yes -- Wednesday, June 16th. The right time? Yes -- 10:30am. The right location? Yes, it was in the damn center plaza of the Sherman Oaks Galleria --

Oh.

Um...I guess this is the point where I mention I was walking around Fashion Square.

"Let's go home!" I said brightly to Sadie, glad that she's not yet old enough to find her mother lame and embarrassing. On the way out I walked past Coffee Bean mom and sort of kept my head low so she wouldn't ask me if I found the Kids Club. We went to the park instead and I pushed Sadie on the swings for awhile and pretended like that had been my destination all along.

Yeah, I'm a blom.