Snow in Denver

Finally!

20 Thoughts in 20 Minutes

I am not much in the mood to post lately but if I don't write something soon we will be on our Christmas vacation, so here are 20 random things I have been thinking about. I am giving myself 20 minutes to write it, because Amelia is napping and there is other stuff I want to do.

1. With the simple adjustment of Amelia's bedtime, all of our sleep problems have been solved! Oops, not really. After that one post about the early bedtime, Amelia started waking up, babbling and sounding fairly happy, at 4:45 am or earlier. So we moved the bedtime later. After 4 days, it was still happening, so we moved it back up to the earlier time. Now she's waking between 5:30 and 6.

2. I am so sick of thinking about sleep I could scream. Yet I still really, really want to sleep better.

3. I am confused about weaning. Sometimes Amelia seems to be self-weaning, other times she is a nursing fool.

4. I am disgruntled at the mixed messages I perceive about breastfeeding. When women are pregnant and have very new babies, the message seems to be "breastfeed or else!," a message that is more harmful than helpful. Then once the baby reaches a certain age--maybe 9 months or so--it's "hurry up and wean." Is this just in my own head?

5. Amelia has a new friend who is a hitter. What do you do when your baby hits other babies? And what are you supposed to do when your baby has a temper tantrum?

6. I miss my family. You know who you are. Come visit us.

7. Actually I have been very, very sad that we love so far away from our families. If we lived close to family Dean and I could leave Amelia with people who love her and desperately want to see her while we--gasp--saw a movie or something. What were we thinking?

8. That said there are a lot of things I love about my life here. I have a lot of friends. I love our house. Denver is amazingly interesting and easy to navigate. And

9. despite what you may think after reading my grouchy blog posts lately I am so, so glad that Dean has a job that allows me to stay home with Amelia while she is a baby.

10.* In a perfect life, I would go to a yoga class every day, get a massage every week, and write for 2 hours every morning.

11. I have been writing some. I am taking a "master class" that requires a "manuscript." So I have been reworking my manuscript. It's getting shorter instead of longer.

12. I wrote this series of poems that was 40 words each, 4 words per line for 10 lines. Now I don't like it and I am making the lines twice as long. But some of the poems want to be 5 lines and some want to be 6.

13. It was supposed to snow 6 inches here last night and not a drop. Denver has negative humidity, I swear. But after a week or so of unseasonable warm weather, now it is very cold.

14. Amelia is starting to say "no." Sometimes for no apparent reason. It often sounds more like she is just making the sound for the letter n.

15. Teething, you will be the death of me. I am attributing all of Amelia's weird sleep and fussiness to teething. The upper molars are breaking through at approximately 1/16 of a millimeter per day. Sometimes, out of the blue, poor Amelia starts wailing and gnawing on her fingers. We are making liberal use of Ibuprofen, Baby Orajel, and cold teethers.

16. I am still wearing my pajamas. If you want gift ideas for me, think warm pajamas.

17. Also: warm slippers, the ingredients for margaritas, those wrist warmers that are like gloves without the fingers, and gift certificates for yoga classes and massages. And could you come here and watch Amelia while I go to the yoga classes and get the massages?

18. If you asked me what I wanted to Christmas in the past couple of weeks and I said I didn't know or nothing, sorry. I just thought of that list as I wrote it.

19. I also like Anthropogie gift cards.

20. But what I really want more than anything is for all of our family to come visit us a lot. All of you. Everyone. And if you are Gano, we are serious when we say we want you to live next door.

*In rereading number 10--and the rest of this post, for that matter--it occurred to me that am a very spoiled person. I already have what tons of people would consider a very perfect life. I really do love my life, even if it's not perfect. Winter is making me grouchy. And underneath a lot of these superficial worries are more substantial ones, like how Amelia is going to grow up in a world filled with poison and melting polar ice caps and war and a Congress full of politicians who overuse the phrase "the American people" and can't get anything done. But my 20 minutes are up. So let me just add one more thought:

21.** What I really, really want more than anything is for everyone on earth, to be able to have the space to breathe, to consider the kind of world they would want to leave for the people who will come after them, and to be able to, with love in their hearts and in ways big or small, make the world that kind of place.

**Now I feel like a contestant in a beauty pageant. But it's been over half an hour and the clock is ticking. Peace.

Early to bed...

late to rise!

Amelia has been waking up at 5 or 5:30 am more often than not these days. This weekend, we kept her up till the ungodly hour of 7 pm on Saturday and Sunday nights. Both nights we had something we wanted to do outside of the house (Saturday we went out to dinner; Sunday we saw Christmas lights at the Botanic Gardens). She was literally in bed asleep at 7 so this was only 15 minutes to half an hour later than usual. (I don't think she ever really adjusted to the end of daylight savings time.)

Yesterday she was up and wide awake again at 5 am and a mess by 9:30, so she took a very early, and shorter than usual, nap. She was yawny by 4:45 pm, so I decided we should put her in bed by 6:30. We gave her an early dinner, and she ate well, but as soon as we took her out of the high chair she had a meltdown. She cried while we filled the tub and when we put her in the tub. Se we got her right out and took her upstairs and she was in her crib asleep by 6:20.

After one wake up at 3:00 (I went in at 3:30), she is STILL SLEEPING--and it's 6:55!!!

For the Record

There are a couple of things I wanted to record in yesterday's post, but as we know, I was interrupted. If I don't write this stuff down I forget it within two weeks.

First: teething. Yesterday I was going to write that Amelia seemed to be getting her molars but this morning we discovered that the one on the left side has almost broken through! Finally. She has been gnawing on things on that side and drooling like crazy. Now for the other side. Then, totally unexpectedly, while we were reading our pre-nap stories, I noticed that not one but both of the two bottom front teeth are coming through also! (These are the two on either side of the two very front teeth, which she already has.) So that is three new teeth at the same time. Maybe that has something to do with her disrupted sleep?

(Note: if you are Dean and you happen to be reading this, normally I would call you at work to inform you of this breaking news, but Amelia and I have plans to show you her new teeth when you get home. Try to look surprised.)

Second: naps. It has been a long time since I complained about naps and I wanted to record the progression what what has happened. If you recall, Amelia was moving from two naps to one and her doctor had suggested that I keep her up till 1:00, saying that if she napped in the morning I should wake her up after half an hour. I tried that once and let me say that it goes against every fiber in my mother being to wake a sleeping baby from a nap. But I did it and Amelia was sleepy again by noon. However we had unusual circumstances that afternoon and she ended up falling asleep in her stroller. In my second stupid move of that day, I tried to pick her up from the stroller and move her to her crib. It didn't work and that was the end of the waking-the-baby-from-a-nap experiment.

My next idea was to keep her up until 1:00. The problem with that is that she would wake up still crying and very tired in an hour or less. So I tried leaving her in the crib to see if she would go back to sleep. She would not. After that, I decided to forget the whole thing and let her sleep as long as she wanted whenever. For about two weeks she would go down anytime between 9 and 11:30 but then sleep for at least an hour and a half, sometimes nearly 2 hours. And this past week or so, she has been pretty consistently going down at 11:30 and sleeping for almost 2 hours.

So we have once again hit a predictable pattern, which makes everyone happy, mainly me. It's just so hard to plan anything when you have no idea when the baby will need to nap. With this pattern I know that if need be we can have a short outing in the morning and a longer one in the afternoon. The only sad thing is that most of Amelia's friends are still taking two naps so she is basically asleep when they are awake and vice versa. The other moms are very concerned that the two nap thing will end but actually, I prefer the one longer nap. Amelia's second nap was always unpredictable anyway. This way we actually get out of the house a bit more.

Anyway I am sure this new pattern will last only as long as it takes me to really start getting used to it--here's hoping that this riveting information about Amelia's naps and teeth have enriched your Friday. I am off to read.

Breaking News: Motherhood Remains Challenging Beyond Baby's First Year

I don't know when I am going to stop being surprised that parenting is hard work.

I guess when you have a newborn and you are shocked and exhausted, everyone's first instinct is to tell you that "it gets easier." I have told several new moms and dads that very thing over the past 14 months. And it is true: compared to having a newborn, having a 14 month old is much easier. But every day presents new challenges. I never seem to hit the stride I keep expecting to hit.

The main issue continues to be sleep. We went to a playgroup the other day and it seemed like all the other moms were radiantly well-rested. Their babies, all roughly Amelia's age, sleep 12 or 13 (13!) hours a night. (Well, there was one other mom whose baby sleeps worse (much worse) than Amelia. Interestingly, Amelia and that baby are the only ones who are still breastfeeding.) Amelia was only waking up once around 4 am but since our return from Santa Fe she was been up at 1:30 and 4 or so and is more often than not up for the DAY at 5:30. We have been trying to let her work it out on her own but she has had a little cold and half an hour of crying is all I am willing to do when I know she is not in perfect health. After all, when I have a cold I wake up stuffy and thirsty and such. So if she does not go back to sleep within about half an hour, I go to her and nurse. I alternate wildly between thinking that this is the best thing for her and thinking that she is just in a bad habit of nursing back to sleep. Last night between 1:30 and 1:45 I had decided I was DONE nursing at night and I was not going to do it EVER AGAIN but by 1:45 Amelia sounded so sad and tired that I had to will myself to wait 10 more minutes to go to her. And when I did she was stuffy and her little cheeks were wet with tears. So I felt terrible for leaving her in there alone for even 25 minutes.

Self-doubt, anyone?

Obviously, I have not solved the sleep issue. Please let me know if you have the answer.

In other news, Amelia may not have been a toddler on her first birthday but she is definitely one now. She toddles from hither to yon all day long. She almost never crawls anymore. And: she has tantrums. Toddler tantrums. If she doesn't want to get into her carseat or her stroller, she arches her back and screams. If we won't let her, say, bite into a grapefruit or climb on the stove, she protests with gusto. She has her own agenda now and it involves exploring anything and everything at her own desired pace.

So one of the new challenges is to pick the right battles. We try to make our house so that we don't have to say "no" all the time but we can't anticipate every potential tantrum-causing event before it happens. I have been trying to pick a few things to be very firm about, like the aforementioned climbing on the stove. She has been trying to use the handle of the drawer under the stove as a stairstep and grabbing the knobs on the stove to pull herself up. Obviously that is very dangerous, especially if something is cooking. So when she does this I give a stern "No, no."

After I did this the second time I found out that Amelia may have inherited my very strong sensitivity to being scolded. I was, by all accounts, an excellent baby so I wasn't scolded very much but when I was I would cry and cry. (I also cried a lot.) I hated thinking that I had done something wrong and that anyone was mad at me. When Amelia turned around from the stove to see my grave expression her own face crumpled and she burst into tears. Not tantrum tears, hurt feeling tears.

So there again is a new challenge. I tried to simultaneously comfort her and emphasize that she can't climb on the stove.

The same thing happens when we remind her to be "gentle" to the Christmas tree. Actually after only a few times of this she really won't touch the tree at all and just looks at it. So I suppose we are doing something right, at least as far as holiday decorations are concerned.

It's so interesting watching Amelia's little personality. She is definitely more extroverted than both Dean and I combined, but she also seems to be a kind little soul. She hardly ever takes anything from another baby anymore, which is not kind of rare from what I have seen. She will walk up to the baby and his or her ball or whatever it is she wants to see and put out her hand, but then stop and just look. Of course if said baby does not "share" the item fairly soon, unless Amelia is distracted into playing with something else) it is another story.

The good news is that while parenthood certainly makes life infinitely more challenging, it makes like more interesting and more delightful to an equal degree. Amelia has been "dancing" and has moved from what Luli named "the cool jerk" to a little twist and bounce. It is adorable. She loves music. (I wonder where she gets that?) I will try to capture her new dance on video soon.

What else? Amelia eats a ton now. Some of her current favorites are soy sausages, Cheerios, cheese, rice, raspberies, pears, green beans from a can, chicken salad, and these Snap Pea Crisps. (Take the time to read the product description. It's hilarious.) She drinks a lot of whole milk from a sippy cup and recently discovered orange juice. And she is a pro with the sippy cup now, having finally learned how to hold it up. (I taught her (!) by making game of putting the sippy cup in my mouth and dramatically throwing back my head. I was proud.)

She can say "baby" for sure also "momma." She is working on replacing "ball" for "dog." She understands a ton of what we say to her, and will follow fairly complicated directions.

Her hair is getting very long and has to be brushed every morning--she wallows in her crib and wakes up with crazy bed head. To fix her hair, I put a towel in the sink and set her on the bathroom counter. She plays with the toothbrushes and things while I douse her with detangler and comb. And comb and comb. Then she gets a little ponytail.

In mommy news, if you remember that book contest I entered, I am pretty sure I did not win because I have heard nothing about it, but this spring I am going to take a class designed to help writers create their first book. It's not cheap, but I think it will be worth it, as it will get me out of the house and working with other writers again. (And since it is in the evenings, it will be a catalyst in making us learn how to put Baby A down without nursing.)

I obviously lost steam on my influential book project but I been reading, among many other things, Leaves of Grass. I promise to write about it soon. If you don't know anything about Leaves of Grass, it's got a really interesting history so check it out. (There will be a quiz.) I have also been reading a lot of other books. I am 1/4 to 1/2 into at least 3 novels and 4 books of poetry, plus two issues of Poetry and an article about the stock exchange from The New Yorker. I seem to have a short attention span.

Maybe I should use the remainder of naptime to read. Of course as I am typing this last sentence, Amelia is waking up.

Swing Time

Hand-me-down

Here's Amelia in her green snowsuit last year





and Micah in it this morning.





He is an angry starfish.



Micah might not want to wear this coat next year...





Dads and babes on the way to the park

Cousins at Thanksgiving

Micah!

Amelia and Micah Skyped with Luli and Guru











and played in the Jumparoo.











We were thankful to spend the day with family!

Micah and Amelia 2

Micah and Amelia!

Untitled

It is winter here. We woke up this morning (at 4:30, but I don't even want to talk about that) to a very lightly snow-coated world. Under the full moon, it was pretty and peaceful and I baked a pumpkin pie, but now the sun is out and it is windy and bright and terrible. Snow sparkle in the wind so you can see where the wind is going. And the wind is swirling.

I dislike winter. I think I have reptilian roots somewhere and part of my soul freezes when it is cold outside. I am vaguely but constantly itchy and grouchy. Baking, putting up Christmas trees, and drinking hot chocolate help, as does yoga and wearing my bathrobe all day long. Or big sweaters. As long as they don't itch.

I have been writing this morning so that explains some of the weirdness of my opening paragraphs. I am writing about dreams and from the voice of Ryan in Teen Mom, so I am bit out of my normal speaking voice.

We got the results about the lead. Turns out there is a little lead in the dust in several places in our house. We had some work done on the porch that exposed some old paint and some unseen chipped paint inside. So now the outside is cleaned and the inside has been touched up and I am doing to try to mop every other day. Hopefully that will solve the problem. Amelia will be retested in two more months.

I feel guilty for buying an old house and for not mopping it enough. You read all these articles and things that encourage moms to let the housework go a little--and then you find out there is lead in the dust on your floor. The irony is I sweep twice or even three times a day some days. But that just sweeps the lead dust around. Horrifying.

Something about winter is making it very clear to me that we have actually MOVED to Colorado and are not just here on an extended visit. I feel a little shocked. It also has to do with our first experience here that made me realize that we are essentially all alone. We had norovirus. (This was not actually diagnosed by a doctor but it was some sort of terrible stomach virus so I am calling it norovirus.) Amelia had mild symptoms last Saturday, the night before we were leaving for Santa Fe for a week (Dean had a conference for work). Saturday night, I also had symptoms, much less mild than Amelia's. All night. It was terrible. So at about 5:30 Sunday morning, I faced a dilemma. Option 1: In the aftermath of a terrible stomach virus, with a baby who also might still have a stomach virus, get on a plane. Option 2: Stay home, alone, with a stomach virus, and take care of a baby who might still have a stomach virus. Alone.

I have some very nice friends here, but they have babies too. And it takes a special friend to come over and take care of your baby and be exposed to your stomach virus so they can take said virus home to their babies. Pretty much the only person you can ask to do that is your mom. And all moms in my life are about 1500 miles away.

So I decided that if I could keep down some crackers and ginger ale, and if Amelia was okay, I would go. I did and she was, so we went.

We had a nice time in Santa Fe after about Tuesday. (Dean spent Monday battling the norovirus. To any Federal Public Defenders who find themselves feeling a bit under the weather this week, we offer our deepest apologies.) However, Amelia was oddly whiny for most of the week. I don't know if she missed her crib and her Gee and her high chair and her nightly YoBaby Yogurt Drink or if she was perplexed that we had apparently moved to a hotel room or what. But she was whiny. It got old. Also, she slept great in the hotel till the last night, when she woke up 3 times. And she has been making up 2-3 times a night since we got home Sunday.

We are still nursing. I am perplexed. Sometimes I want to quit and sometimes I don't want it to end. Before we left Amelia had pretty much weaned herself to 3 nursing sessions a day but traveling always makes her revert to the breastfeeding habits of a newborn and now it's like every time she sees me she dives for the boobs.

Who knows. Maybe after Christmas we will go cold turkey. We leave for NC again in about 3 and half weeks and I don't see the point in making any huge changes before then. I think after that we are going to swear off all travel till the spring.

This is not the cheerful Amelia Update I had intended to write. But now Amelia is awake. Until we meet again, my friends, drink a cup of hot chocolate for me.

Lead and Coal

At her one year check up, Amelia was tested for lead, and her results were on the high side. For the past couple of weeks, we have been searching for the source of her exposure. She has spent her life in two very old houses. While we can't test the DC house, we have had the Denver house tested thoroughly and are waiting for results.

The man who tested our house was very kind and informative. He reassured me a little about Amelia's lead level (a nine), saying that while lead is very bad for babies and children, a nine is on the high side of normal, to the extent that there is a normal.

He spent 5 hours at our house, testing and explaining. I know a lot about lead now. But one of the things he said stuck with me. He was going off on a tangent about cadmium, saying that now that lead is being more regulated, some companies are switching to cadmium (for example, see this recall of a toy from McDonald's here).

Then he said, "But it's not just lead, and it's not just cadmium. There are thousands of terrible things in our environment, and we put most of them there ourselves, or allow them to be there."

About a week later, I read a post on Beyond Friendship Gate, my friend Caroline's blog. She has been learning and speaking out against coal ash for awhile now.

Coal ash is waste from coal-fueled power plants. Its disposal is currently unregulated.
While we are continue our search for the lead in Amelia's environment, please take a minute to read Caroline's post about coal ash.

The EPA is taking comments from the public about coal ash until November 19. If you decide that you would like to speak out against coal ash, you can comment in less than a minute by using a pre-written letter here. If you like, you can do what I did and add personal comments at the beginning of the letter, too.

I know lots of people in our families have been concerned about Amelia's lead exposure. Dean and I have certainly been worried. But the truth is that there are thousands of other things she comes into contact with that are similarly harmful. Lead is just one that we have become more careful about fairly recently. Please take a moment to learn a little about coal ash, and to speak out sometime against it during the next four days.

November News

Amelia is walking!

She took some of her very first steps at her Nanny's house in late October. From there it was a gradual progression. She would "cruise" between chairs and such. But one morning Dean and I sat about 3 or 4 feet apart and played "walking", having her walk back and forth between the two of us. She did it several times, and from there just started walking more and more on her own. If she wants to get somewhere really quickly, she will drop to her knees and crawl, but otherwise she is venturing out on two legs pretty often.

These are from last week, one of her walking to me,




and then back to Dean.




Amelia is changing by the day. She is more and more aware and interactive. She has started initiating games like peekaboo: she'll put a cloth over her head and then uncover herself, grinning, or hide behind the couch and peek back out at us. She points at EVERYTHING, wanting us to name objects--and wanting to hold them, which can be problematic, because it turns out there are a lot of objects around our house that a baby should not hold. She has started really playing with a few toys, too. In addition to rolling a ball, which she has done for awhile, she will move her toy car and dump truck on the floor making a rmmm, rmmm noise, and just the other day I showed her how to hug and rock her baby doll. She gently hugged the doll--threw her headfirst onto the floor.

Sleep-wise, night sleep is holding steady at one wake-up a night, more or less. We are struggling with naps. This one nap or two thing is really difficult. Usually, no matter what I try or when I put her down, Amelia ends up sleeping for about an hour. If that hour is in the morning, she wakes up happy; if it's in the afternoon, she wakes up screaming. I think an hour is not really enough for her, because of the difficult wake up in the afternoon, and the fact that if she naps in the morning she is a complete mess by about 5 pm. But I really don't know what to do about it. So we are trying to go with the flow.

Speaking of which--I thought I was going to have a long, long time to catch up here, but SOMEONE is babbling in her crib. ("Ball, ball!") So more ASAP.

I Voted

Yes, I voted--and for the people I meant to vote for--but barely.

Let me start with a little story. Once upon a time, when I was a teacher, I had no patience for students who didn't read and follow directions. "Take your time," I would harp. "Read the directions. Read carefully!" If someone asked a question which the directions obviously answered, I scolded them and sent them back to the italicized font at the top of the page.

I myself have always had a very good track record for reading and following directions, going all the way back to the fifth grade, when my class was given a worksheet that instructed us to "Be sure to read ALL the directions first before doing anything else." I read through all the directions: 1. Remember to read all the directions; 2. Draw a circle; 3. Draw a line through the middle of the circle; 4. Walk to the back of the room and sharpen your pencil; 5. etc; 6. etc; 7. etc. As my classmates drew circles and sharpened pencils, I read through all the directions, finally reaching 30: Now that you have read all the directions, don't do anything on this page. Take your blank page to your teacher for a surprise.

I was the first one to the teacher. I got a candy bar.

So today we woke up early to vote before Dean went to work. We strolled Amelia in her pajamas to the polling place. The lines were very short. I got my ballot, and the man who handed it to me told me to draw a line to connect the broken arrows for the candidates of my choice. I took my ballot to my little voting cubby, where I did read one set of directions, which was posted on the cubby wall: Read your ballot and use the provided pen or pencil to vote. If you make a mistake, you can receive up to two replacement ballots.

Huh, I thought to myself, stupid Americans. Who would need two replacement ballots?

And I began to select my choices, carefully filling in the spaces between the arrows. Filling them in completely. With a thick black line.

When I got to the top of the second column, my eyes fell on the directions at the top of the ballot. Fill in the space between the arrows with only one single line. Making extra marks can void your ballot.

As you may or may not know, the race for Senate in Colorado is very tight. I very much do not want one particular candidate to win, because I strongly disagree with that candidate's ideas about abortion. So I did not want my ballot to be void. I thought I better go check if it was going to be.

The poll workers were concerned. Yes, they said, I needed to mark only one single line. After a flurry of flipping through the pages of a polling handbook, my first ballot was marked VOID and I was handed a new ballot.

I was flustered. I was embarrassed. I was in a hurry because there was a lot to vote on. I had only had half a cup of coffee. For whatever reason, I went back to the cubby and carefully drew a straight, single line--in between the arrows for the Senatorial candidate I did not, NOT, NOT mean to vote for.

I stood there for a few minutes, feeling like a complete and total idiot. I couldn't go back and tell the poll workers, who I had left about 5 seconds ago, that I had messed up another ballot, but I couldn't stand there and vote for the wrong person.

I slunk back to the poll workers. They kindly but gravely informed me that they were legally required to state that this was the last ballot I could receive; even if I messed up again, I could not have any more ballots.

"I understand," I replied.

So I went back to the voting area. I went to a different cubby this time. I very, very carefully chose the Senator I wanted, and drew a single, straight line to connect his arrow. I figured no matter what else, I should really try to get the Senator right. But I made it through the whole rest of the ballot, even the proposed Constitutional amendments and Ordinance 300, the question of whether Denver should create an "extraterrestrial affairs commission to help ensure the health, safety, and cultural awareness of Denver residents and visitors in relation to potential encounters or interactions with extraterrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles." (I voted yes on that last one. Why not?)

As I took my ballot to the collection box, the woman handing out the "I Voted" stickers congratulated me. "Good job," she said. "It is difficult to follow all those directions."

I smiled weakly, said thank you, and left as quickly as I could.

In conclusion, this is what people mean by Mommy Brain. For me it's a combination of chronic exhaustion and the feeling that I am always in a hurry. I guess before I was a mom I had lots and lots of time to follow my thoughts to wherever they went. Now, not so much. And, pre-Amelia, it was much easier to finish a task. Now unloading the dishwasher can take all day. So I think I try to do everything as quickly as possible. Including, it seems, voting.

Trick or TrEATING

Trick or treating started early around here today. It's been getting harder and harder to keep Amelia still while changing her diaper, so this morning while I changed her I handed her a fun-size Twix out of the Halloween candy bowl that happened to be within reach. I thought she wouldn't be able to break through the shiny wrapper, but when I took it away from her, I notice that she was chewing thoughtfully.



I had to switch her to Cheerios and milk.



She's going to be a skeleton for Halloween. We are going to the park for a neighborhood costume playdate at 4:00 this afternoon. Then we are invited to a party at 5:00, but we will have to see how fussy Amelia is by then. We might just come home and give out candy, and let Amelia see the older kids in costume before dinner and bed.

Speaking of dinner, here she is in her costume the other night. She has been getting more independent about eating, and as you can see, she was eating her prunes from the jar by herself: first with a spoon (sort of), and then, when the spoon got too bothersome, with her bare hands.



Just for the record, here's Amelia last Halloween, when she was 4 weeks old.

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley

This is the first book in the Academy of American Poetry's list of groundbreaking books, all of which I have decided to read (or reread). I couldn't find the title they actually list, but I found a thin paperback called The Poems of Phillis Wheatley With Letters and a Memoir that contains a reproduction of the book Wheatley published in 1773.

To be honest, these poems didn't do that much for me at first. They gallop along in almost unvarying iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets--but that sort of extremely formal poetry was more typical in 1773 than it is now. Wheatley wrote a lot of poems about death, particularly the death of children, which was creppily interesting. But in my notes I scribbled that I had "more questions than answers." Because Phillis Wheatley was a slave. And her poetry mostly seems rather--or very--oblivious to that fact.

You can read about Wheatley's life here, but basically she was sold into slavery at the age of 7. It became apparent to her mistress that she was very smart, and she was taught to read and allowed, even encouraged, to write. (The memoir notes that she was sometimes "allow[ed] to polish a table or dust an apartment" but she kept writing material nearby in case a line came to her.)

As I read more about Wheatley's life and read her poems, I kept wondering, would any of the poems reveal a slant? As in, would they ever comment on her situation at all? I was also wondering, as I read what the back cover of my book describes as "mostly elegies for the departed and odes to Christian salvation," is this really a groundbreaking book or is it more accurate to say that Phillis Wheatley was a groundbreaking poet? I guess that, being a poet so steeped in the contemporary confessional/lyric tradition, I was hoping for Wheatley's poems to criticize slavery or mourn her kidnapping or somehow otherwise acknowledge her astounding and rather atrocious personal situation. But that kind of personal focus was not particularly common for poems in 1773, and even if it had been, Wheatley's poems wouldn't have been published if she had done those things.

Browsing the Internet, I came across this June Jordan essay that somewhat takes on my questions and concerns. In it, she reimagines Wheatley's life, lingering on the extraordinary set of circumstances that led Wheatley to write at all, and to write the kinds of poems she did. She draws connections between Wheatley and the state of African American poetry (in the 80's, which I think is when she wrote the essay). Although I don't agree with every part of the essay, I love the poem at its end, which to me best states why Wheatley's book was likely chosen by AAP as the first groundbreaking book of American poetry. Here are its closing lines (you can read the whole thing if you follow the link to the essay above):

"They taught you to read but you learned how to write
Begging the universe into your eyes:
They dressed you in light but you dreamed
with the night.
From Africa singing of justice and grace,
Your early verse sweetens the fame of our Race."

In conclusion, I enjoyed learning about this poet. Wheatley's life, which was fascinating enough for its first 19 years, gets even more fascinating (and tragic) after her book was published, and her poems are the kind that you have to take one at a time, line by line. They are, for me, anyway, relatively difficult but satisfying to puzzle out. As I have gone back to them every now and then over the past week or so, I have found more and more lines that surprise me and draw me in. I hope to keep reading more of Wheatley even as I move on down my list.

Practice What You Preach

The counters are crowded with dirty dishes. The beds are unmade; there is laundry to be done. There is a poopy diaper on the stairs, waiting to be taken up and rinsed. But I am sitting at the computer, writing.

This morning I had the luck of a longish phone conversation with a dear friend, one I don't get to talk to nearly as much as I would like. She, also a writer, was frustrated with the business of life, the constant demands of home and job and children and family. She is called to the page but can't find a moment to answer. "Take an hour," I urged her. "Take an hour this week and go somewhere, and write. Even if it's just in your journal about how you are feeling. Even if it's crap. Just write."

Lexicon, 12 and a half months

Ball: a ball; a ball-shaped item such as a pumpkin or a light fixture; a dog; if you are at the zoo, an elephant!

Bye: good-bye; while poking your finger in someone's eye, an eye

Gee (pronounced with a hard g as in ago): Suki; another small animal not established as a ball

Hi: Hello!

Read with me!

A few months ago I started a new blog for reading poetry. I invited some friends I knew from my various poetry programs to read and write about our reading. Long story short--or short story short, really--I just deleted the blog. Despite what I think was true enthusiasm for the project, both from me and my recruits, it never got off the ground.

Why is it so hard, even for poets, to make time to read poetry? Is it just me or do others have this problem too? When I manage to stop myself from using Amelia's naptimes to clean the house, I am much more likely to write than to read, and when I read, it is much more likely to be fiction than poetry...

I want to change this. One of my goals for the fall is to read more poetry. Ideally, I would like to read a book a week. By "read," I don't necessarily mean sit down and read every page from beginning to end, the way one reads a book of fiction, but instead to spend time with the book, a good chunk of time, and read as much of it as I can depending on what else is going on that week and my interest in the volume. And then I would like to write a brief review or comment on the book, here on this blog.

Since I will be using this space to comment on the books I read, I thought I would invite all of you lovely blog readers to join me in the reading. Then you can comment too, if you want.

I found a guiding hand to help me get started, too. Poets.org, a website I really enjoy, has this list of groundbreaking books of poetry. I am going to go down the list. I have read some of these books, not every one, but I am going to reread the ones I have read, and comment on all of them.

So the first one is Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phyllis Wheatley. I have never read this one, and she looks like a very interesting author. Realistically, a book a week might be a lot for me, but to get started, I am going to make a trip to the library to get this book by Monday, and I will write a comment on it sometime the week of October 25. Yikes! Now I am committed. I hope some of you will go find this book in your library or local bookstore too!

P.S. You should explore poets.org. They have great stuff, including a list of poet Halloween costumes.

Mount Bancroft

As you can see, I am still trying to catch up on documenting all of our summer hikes and such. Toward the end of August, we hiked up Mount Bancroft with Jim, Luli, and Opal. After a bumpy ride to the trailhead--oh, wait, there was no actual trailhead. This was a trail-less hike. So we basically walked straight up the side of the mountain. As we got started, Dean's description of this hike changed subtly from "It won't be hard!" to"It won't be that hard!"

As we climbed to the first ridge, we passed all these different parts of an old car: the engine, doors, wires and other assorted weather-beaten plastic and metal pieces. I thought that would make an interesting poem somehow.

After awhile, Dean, Amelia, Luli and Opal left Jim and I behind. Therefore, because the sleeping Amelia was being held hostage from me, Mount Bancroft's summit is the only Rocky Mountain summit I have actually reached so far. Jim could attest that I did it after a fair amount of complaining. But when I got to the top it was definitely worth it. There is a reason people go all the way to the top of tall mountains: it's beautiful up there!

Here are some pictures of my ascent, our rest at the summit, and Amelia sleeping in her backpack.






A note to other parents who might backpack with a baby: Amelia slept for much of her trip up the mountain and the entire descent, probably close to 3 hours, and we found out at the bottom that that was probably too long for her to be still in her backpack. She was cold, and it seemed like her hands and feet were asleep.

The trip down, without a trail with switchbacks, was challenging. But we made it! It was a fun hike with family, certainly one I will remember for awhile.

House Tour: the Long-Awaited Conclusion

This is my and Dean's bedroom:




It's hard to take a picture of the bedroom that's not all bed but the room has lots of slanted walls like Amelia's room.

Here is a shot of the stairway:



Not pictured are the two bathrooms. They look funny in the pictures. But they are nice bathrooms. We like them.

Finally, here is a more recent picture of the stone pathway Dean built this weekend!



It is the first step in the reconstruction of the backyard (thanks to Jim for pulling up the stones and tilling all the grass!). We are planning another backyard garden, featuring an asparagus bed and a sandbox for Amelia. So far we are enjoying the lovely pathway.

The One Year Old

I am officially the mother of a one year old! I got over most of my sadness on Amelia's birthday after writing my letter to her and talking to some friends on the phone. Then Amelia and I met our friends Ali and Anna (who just turned one on Monday) at the Denver Botanical Gardens--their children's garden is my favorite place to take her in Denver. We had fun playing and talking, and then Amelia slipped on a block and got her first big knot on her head. On her birthday! So life goes on.

Amelia had two birthday parties. First she had a party at her Grand-aunt Linda's house. Then Sunday afternoon, we had a little party for her. A few Book Babies friends and neighbors came over for about an hour. We had cupcakes. Sadly, I have pictures of neither party. I have pictures in my email of the first party that I don't know how to download, and I have picture of the second party but not any with Amelia alone, and I don't think I should post pictures of other people's babies on the Internet without asking their mommas. So here are some recent pictures of Amelia in her high chair.







What a funny bear.

Amelia at one is a lot of fun. Dean and I agree that we could keep her at this age.

Oh, she said her first word: Ball! She shouts it. She definitely says it when she sees a ball, so we know it's a real word, but she also says it when she sees a dog, and about 7,000 other times a day. She said it as soon as she woke up this morning. Ball! Ball! We got her a basket of balls for her birthday, so there are plenty of chances to say it.

In other Amelia news, she taking baby steps between pieces of furniture but has yet to venture out on her own two feet. She drops to her knees to crawl if she wants to get somewhere far away.She has learned to play with Suki a little by throwing a ball to her (which also gives her a chance to say Ball!). She still seems to be transitioning from one to two naps. We had a pretty successful one-nap day Monday when she napped from about 11:30-1:15. But since then she has had two naps. She went down this morning at 8:30! Which is how I am able to write this. It seems that if she sleeps till 7, she will have one nap, but if she wakes up earlier, she'll take two. Who knows. Night sleep is okay--she has been waking at 11:30, crying for a just a minute, and sleeping again, then sleeping till 3:30. I have been breaking my 4am rule. We are going out of town again next week, so my new rule is 3:30am till we get back from that trip and can reestablish things. Having a baby is hard.

All right, I want to try to catch up on a few more posts before A wakes up...

Birthday Card

from Bubbles. Amelia shows off her dancing skills...

Amelia's First Birthday Presents

from her Gano and Grand-aunt Susan are the second video. I realized after this posted that I had also included this first video that I tried to take of Amelia making herself laugh by hiccuping...



Here is the birthday present video:

Letter to My Baby

Dear Amelia,

Today you are one year old. The morning started off like most of our mornings, except we think that Suki woke you up meowing. Your daddy got you out of your crib, played with you, and then brought you to me in bed to nurse. You laugh with excitement when you get in the bed. You like to play with us and climb on the pillows and the headboard. It's why we can't bring you there to actually sleep.

After you went down for your morning nap, I checked my email. Every week I get a newsletter from a website called babycenter.com. It is about you. It always says "My Baby This Week" and it tells about the development of a baby your age. Today it says "My Toddler This Week."

I read the title and burst into tears.

I have been excited for you to turn one for a long time! You are so much fun and get more fun every day. We think you know how to say "baby" and "bye" and "hi" and "ball." And possibly "baby shoes." You like to dance when you hear music. You love to make people laugh. You are learning how to walk. So I am not really sad that you are turning into a toddler. But still I have been crying on and off all morning.

I told your daddy about the email and he said, "Don't worry. She's still our baby, and will be for a long time."

There is so much I have wanted to write about you and to you this past year. I have written it in my head on walks and at nighttime but most of it never made it to paper. I wanted to describe each little change in you. I wanted to write all about my hopes for you. I wanted to write everything I remember about your baby year before I forget more than I already have.

But since I have had you, I have to live more in the moment. We play and sing and walk and eat and nurse and climb the stairs. You are not one to sit at the computer unless you can bang on the keys. So much of what I wanted to write has been lost. Even today I know I can't write all that I want to. You are napping but you will wake up soon.

So here are just a few things I will say, on your first birthday:

I remember when the ultrasound technician said "It looks like you are having a little girl!" and being so surprised, and later so happy.

I remember last year on this day, your due date and the day you were born, your daddy walking around saying, "What a punctual baby!"

I remember driving to the hospital listening to The Beastie Boys, watching the fall light on the leaves. I remember giving someone directions at a stoplight, between contractions.

I remember feeling like I was losing something, waiting in the lobby of the hospital to be taken back to a room.

I remember your daddy holding you for 3 hours after you were born, in the middle of the night.

I remember when you got your first teeth.

I remember thinking I would never get to sleep again. (I still think that sometimes.)

I remember when you first liked to read books. Your three favorite books so far have all involved a peek-a-boo surprise.

I remember, just the other day, when you heard music and began to dance.

You are waking up, talking in your crib. When I go in to you you will be standing, talking, holding out your giraffe to me. So quickly, one birthday wish for you:

I have been thinking lately about your future life, and how happy I want you to be. How tempted I am to wish you a life with no trouble, no hardship. But besides the fact that such a life is impossible, I don't think I would wish it for you, because when I think back on my life, it is the hard times and the troubles as much as the happy times and the blessings that have made me the person that I am. I can't imagine what your troubles will be, and I find it heartbreaking that you will have any. But I hope that no matter what happen in your life, that you always know how many people there are in the world who love you. I hope you always know how much I love you and how much your daddy loves you. All of these people will do anything to help you. We see the beautiful, sweet, funny, social, loving baby that you are, and we can't wait to see the person you will become. Happy birthday, Amelia! I have a feeling you will knock our socks off.

All my love,

your momma

Are You Sleeping? Continued...

Yes we are! We've been night weaning, and here's how things have been going:

CIO Night 2: Silence till 2:20. Yelling--not crying, just angry "Ba-ba-ba"'s for about an hour. Real crying for about 10 minutes. Dean went in to check. Initially, more angry crying, maybe 5 minutes worth, then silence. Slept till 6:15 or so with no night nursing.

CIO Night 3: Loud and sudden yell at 3:45. Silence. Babbling increasing to crying-ish sounds at 4:00. Waited a couple of minutes, nursed. Silence for 15 minutes, then quiet talking. Slept till 6:30 or later.

CIO Night 4: Less than one minute of crying at about 2:00. Crying at 4:30. Nursed, slept till 6:30.

CIO Night 5: No crying till 5:45. Nursed, slept till 7:00.

CIO Night 6: No crying till around 4:00. Nursed, slept till 6:45.

I forget what night we are on now, but the last couple of nights have looked a lot like night 6.

Yea!

I couple of things have really helped this time around. The main one is my true and firm commitment to not nursing Amelia between bedtime and 4am. Before I might have given in at 3:00 or 3:30 or 3:45, and the thought did cross my mind those first nights, but I stuck to my rule. It has really helped because nursing at 3:30 one night can lead to 3:00 the next, then 2:30, and suddenly it's 11:30 and you find yourself wrenched from your deep sleep and walking to the crib. I actually see now that we probably could have just gone with no night nursing at all--no milk till the morning--but the 4am limit helped me hang in there those first nights because I knew that at least we would get a few more hours of sleep in the early morning. I think I will go for total night weaning in a month or two, after we are (HOPEFULLY) more used to this new pattern, and I am able to bear the thought of losing those early morning hours of sleep for a few nights.

NOW... we are in the battle of the naps. I think Amelia might be switching from two naps to one. Notice how she did this just as I had gotten totally settled into the pattern of two naps. My days have gone nothing like that schedule I posted since the day I posted it. It has helped with the allotment of chores throughout the week, but that's it. She has been heartily resiting each and every nap. I am a bit at a loss about what to do. I think I am going to try moving her morning nap back later and later till I find a time at which she will go to sleep with less than 15 minutes of fussing and sleep for more than an hour. Preferably more than 2 hours if it's going to be her only nap. That's the ideal, anyway; we'll see what actually happens.

Camping With A, Part 3: Mount Elbert

I am still trying to catch up on documenting all of our summer fun.

After our first night of camping with Amelia, we headed for Mount Elbert, Colorado's tallest mountain.

This is a picture of Mt. Elbert from the car window.



I took it the afternoon after the Windsor Lake hike. I was more than a little intimidated.

But Dean assured me that even though Mount Elbert is obviously very tall, it is a relatively "easy" hike because it is also a fairly long, so you gain the elevation over a long distance. We weren't sure we could make it, but we decided to give it a try.

It started off well, flattish and woodsy. We did have to stop after about 20 minute to give Amelia some milk, but then she fell asleep. So we kept going up, up and away as she snoozed. Her sleep is a real motivating factor to keep going. We kept passing a man and his son and their dog, then they would pass us. As the trail got steeper and steeper, the man got more and more tired. His son kept leaving him behind and they would communicate on walkie-talkies. (Well, probably not walkie-talkies really--the 21st century version.) It made me feel better that someone else was having a hard time on the hike, although actually I felt pretty good, much better than the previous day.

After we passed the tree line, the trail got even steeper. You could see a summit in the distance. Dean said it was a false summit. I thought he was kidding. He wasn't.

Here are some shots from after we passed the tree line.





Finally, I got very so tired and hungry that we had to stop, even though Amelia was still asleep. She woke up and we had a little picnic.



Then we packed up and started off again, but we didn't get much farther. Amelia was complaining about being in her backpack and needed a longer break. And I was tired myself. We were still pretty far from even the false summit, so Amelia and I decided to play in the grass while Dean kept going for a little while.

He kept going for about 20 minutes, then passed some descending hikers who told him he was still pretty far from the top. Since the weather was looking a little questionable, with dark clouds in the distance, he decided to turn around.

Here are some pictures from he took while we waited.







Amelia had a fun time standing and playing with rocks and flowers.



In the meantime, the man and his son had passed by me and Amelia. The man, panting, sort of flung himself in the grass beside the trail, and the son kept going.

When Dean returned we went down, down, down. Amelia slept again for most of the descent, but woke up and got fussy toward the end. We were probably pushing the limit of how long we could realistically hike with a baby. We entertained her with songs, but we were all glad to get back to the car.

It was an ambitious hike, and we didn't make it to the summit. But I am gad we tried. We will not have another chance until Amelia is old enough to hike it herself, unless Dean and I go alone, because A will probably be too heavy to carry that far next year.

It was very beautiful. I do think I could have done made it to the top, too, which made me feel good.

Happy Birthday Sophie!

The Housewife

Lest you were been misled by an earlier post in which I was somewhat cheery about housework, let me state for the record that I am neither emotionally nor intellectually fulfilled by the life of the housewife. Yet lately I have found myself loading the dishwasher, unloading the dishwasher, folding clothes, and sweeping up a curious mixture of shredded wheat shards, crushed Cheerios and cat hair all day long. Chores and the state of the house have been driving me crazy. It seems like no matter how much (laundry, sweeping, straightening up, etc) I do there is still more (laundry, sweeping, straightening up, etc) to be done. And it has started to eat away at time I would like to spend doing other things, when I am not playing with and caring for Amelia of course, such as writing, reading, posting here, and, perhaps most importantly, watching Teen Mom.

At the same time I really do like staying on top of what needs to be done around the house. Dean is more than willing to do his share and more but he already comes home to The Amelia Channel (all Amelia, all the time!) and it is more fun to hang out and relax during the evenings and on weekends than to catch up on weekly chores. Since I am home all the time anyway it seems like there has to be some way to find a balance between completing the tasks that need to be done and spending some of Amelia's nap time doing what I like, want and need to do to feel like my life is more than breastfeeding, housework, and singing "The Wheels on the Bus."

So, the other morning I began to imagine what the job of "housewife" and "stay at home mom" would look like if I had to go into an office to do it. I figure there would be more structure. Tasks organized into a sort of daily and weekly routine rather than a nebulous and perpetual blob.

So I made a list of everything I do: all the chores, errands, outings and fun things I usually do in an average week. Then I divided them up by how often they need to be done. There are daily chores like sweeping. There are every other day chores like doing a load of laundry or diapers. There are things that really only need to be done once a week, like going through all the mail and paying bills, and irritating administrative things like making appointments or trying to consolidate your various retirement accounts, a result of changing states and jobs several times, into a single IRA.

Next I drew up a little schedule:



I am hoping a loose structure is going to help me better use my time. As you can see my and Amelia's workday day is divided into 5 main segments: morning playtime, morning nap, midday playtime, afternoon nap, and post-nap. We go to the park in the mornings but I am happiest when the kitchen is clean, the beds are made, and I have showered before we go. Otherwise that stuff eats into A's morning nap, which as you can see I most like to use to write. Midday playtime is the best time to leave the house for errands like grocery shopping or for fun things like Book Babies or lunch with Dean, which we have decided to do once a week. (Sometimes I will join Amelia and Dean for lunch and sometimes I will leave them to their own devices for an hour while I go to the library, something I am very excited about.) We really spend most of Amelia's waking time playing or reading or the like but I am usually able to get a few things done while she pulls pots and pans out the of cabinets or turns the pages of board books on her own.

And, as a bonus, now readers of this blog can easily look up what I am doing at any given moment. Note that we are on Mountain Standard Time. :) As you can see, I am right on track: it is Thursday afternoon and I am writing on the blog. However, I am noticing that I forgot to add Teen Mom to my schedule. Pencil that in for right now.

Deja Vu...

So we are crying it out again. After consulting with several other breastfeeding mothers I decided that I had to make up my mind either to commit to night weaning or accept the fact that Amelia was going to wake up 1-3 times a night for however long and not worry about it anymore. Then Tuesday night, she woke up 3 times, at 11:30, 2:00 and 4:00. The anger I felt about being wrenched out of all my deep sleep plus the exhaustion and despair I felt on and off all day yesterday indicated to me that I need to commit to night weaning. Yesterday morning it was like I had had no break from Amelia at all and I did not feel like playing, talking, singing, or reading board books. Since those are important parts of my job, I decided:

no more milk between bedtime and 4 am.

I explained the new plan to Amelia yesterday evening as she went to sleep. She seemed game.

Last night she cried, on and off, for 20 minutes at 12:30, less than 5 minutes at 3:00, and then again 4:45, when I went to her. Oddly, she cried LOUDLY when I put her back down after the 4:45 feeding, but only for about 5 minutes. Then she slept (mostly--there was some faint babbling) till just after 7:00 am.

Whew.

It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. Of course I was wide awake between 12:30 and after 2:00.

I am hoping that after 3 nights she will be back into her previous pattern of sleeping most of the night... and then, one fine day, I will be able to sleep all night too.

Cousins

We got to meet Micah this weekend! It kind of looks like Amelia was caught in the act of interrogating him. But they were just discussing serious world events.

Are You Sleeping? Are You Sleeping?

because we are not.

Sigh.

I mean, it could be worse. I am very aware that it could be worse. Amelia does not wake up and stay awake. She is not waking up every hour, like another Book Baby we know, whose poor mother looks worse than I do. But. She. Is. Still. Waking. Up. Every. Night! At least twice, usually around 2 and 4 am. But last night it was 10:30 and 4.

Now. I know several people with brand new babies, and I am aware that to them it sounds super luxurious to have a baby who only wakes up twice. But Amelia is 11 months old and I am losing my ability to persevere. And my ability to even remember words like persevere.

It's not the waking up so much as the fact that I cannot go back to sleep after waking up--although it's getting very old being wrenched out of all my deep sleep cycles too. We had that stretch, that beautiful stretch, of Amelia sleeping till around 4 or 5, then going back to sleep till 6 or 6:30. I can do once. It's fine. But then 10:30 or (and sometimes AND) 2:00 AND 4 or 5 is getting me down.

I don't know why the stretch ended. What she was doing was crying out--VERY briefly--just a few wahs--and then going back to sleep. Since I knew she was in the pattern of going back to sleep, the wahs didn't really wake me up enough to stay awake. I think one night she didn't go right back to sleep, so I nursed her, and now we are back in the bad pattern.

I have read all the sleep books. I hate all the sleep books. Happy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child is like the baby sleep gestapo. At the other end of the spectrum we have The No-Cry Sleep Solution--seriously? I don't think it's possible to get a baby to sleep with NO crying. The Ferber idea of intermittent checking sounded good--except Amelia gets much angrier if you check on her and then exit her room than if you just leave her alone in there.

Last night we tried crying it out and she cried for 45 minutes, getting angrier and angrier. I am probably not committed enough to the crying it out for it to work. I don't know. I might really need to night wean, like A's pediatrician told me.

Do you have ideas? Will this magically get better when she turns one? I am trying to hang in there another month.

I am discouraged. I am losing hope. I am relying on frozen cookie dough to get by.